Lenten Disciplines - Fasting (1)

I began by suggesting that we might think that Almsgiving was the easiest of Lent disciplines - after all one need merely set up a standing order to a charity and that, we think, is that. 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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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. We Watch it, look at it, read about it - but do not attend to it - we are not Present to the Gift. 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].

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.

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). In a very real sense, the food is an expression of the presence of God - He has provided it, without Him you have no food.

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.

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.

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!'. 

Might we not also say around the dinner table??

If we fast we begin once more to encounter God, 

to strip away the excess and thus see everything in its true light - including Food.

[For more Very wonderful thoughts on Food, and Sacrament, and Life,

I recommend the blog of a dear friend which you can find here.]

Lent Meditation - Denial of the body

'For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.'

Talk of denial of the body in Lent, may well evoke images of fasting, of 'giving up' bodily pleasures for a time of prayer. (The Saints of the church always remind us that fasting without prayer is the devil's own work, so to speak)  But for now that is what is not what I wish to explore - there is yet time as Lent still has a few days to run.

Nor do I wish to think too deeply about our disembodied existence in modern culture. If it is true that the average Westerner spends at least ten hours a day sat, as I am now, in front of a screen, then our bodies are little less than a set of levers with which we interact Virtually, and then only if we are working or 'interacting' online. If we are sat in front of a movie or the TV then our bodies are pretty much out of it. Indeed our flicking of the remote from station to station is only a sign that our minds and the chemical reward signals that do so much of the driving of our minds are in control. Our bodies are all but useless.

And yet we Are in a very real sense, our bodies. As we are we Act. Whatever we do is somehow bodily, and we can only engage others through the medium of our bodies, our bodies Express us. We need to be physically present to be Alive. It is an irreducible fact.

             In the beginning the man and the woman were naked and unashamed. they were Present. Knowing and Fully Known. So When Christ comes into the world he comes Embodied, for the Body is the vehicle of Knowing and being Known. How would we for a moment recognise each other apart from our bodies?

This leads me on, perhaps surprisingly to The Church. For many of us in the Western Church, the Church itself has been largely understood, for better or worse as an aid to faith - but that encounter with God in Christ was somehow separate. We see the church as one thing and Christ as another. And of course in one sense this is true, but only I suggest in the sense that the Son is not the Father, nor the Father the Son. In a sense we may I think speak of the relationship betwixt Christ and His Church as 'two in one and one in two' (to misquote an old hymn). Too much?? Certainly to the modern ear, Yes. But to our forebears in faith??

St Paul in his teaching on marriage puts alongside the one flesh union of marriage, the union twixt Christ and the Church, the bride of Christ - the two become One. And of course he is explicit in this regard in his teaching in 1 Corinthians - You Are the Body of Christ. He paints this at the individual level by saying, 'it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.' This presence of God in and through the believers is most starkly put in the story of Anaias and Sapphira - (Acts 5:1-11), where Peter rebukes their deceit to the church as deceit to God

And finally we have the words of the Lord - 'when two or three are gathered in my name, I am Present in the midst of them'

The truth is that we encounter Christ in and through our fellow believers - as Jacob said of Esau 'truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God' - this is no less than that which our true apprehension should be of our fellow Christians. They are God's chosen vehicle to mediate the Love of Christ. We see this plainly in the idea of laying on of hands, such a vital part of Christian praxis. The body of the believer is literally Vital in prayer, in healing ministry, in blessing, in ordination, in baptism and confirmation, in the Eucharist. 

The verse at the head of this article, taken from St Paul's teaching on the Eucharist. Tuned as we are to doctrines of the Presence in the Sacrament, it is all too easy to miss that what Paul has in mind here is as much the body of the church. Put another way, if you do not recognise Christ in each other, then you do not recognise him in bread and wine.

Where accidents of church history and poor teaching have led so many of us to deny this truth, 

it is still the truth and our fellow believers are to us as Christ, if we will believe.

And therein lies so much blessing.

In my previous blog I spoke about following Christ. How we do this is actually discovered in many many ways though mutual submission to one another in Christ. We learn obedience to Christ in obedience to one another. We serve Christ in serving one another. We bless Christ in blessing one another. We suffer with Christ in suffering for one another.

Oh how much our lives might be blessed if we Knew this Truth?

An old hymn which grows out of an understanding the Christ and his church are Not joined together in mystical union says this . . .

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Yet as many many many will testify, we take things to the Lord in prayer and yet we have no peace and we have much pain - for we do not discern the body.

As of old, it is pride that causes us to hide from one another. 

We imagine we are open to God, but we do not trust God in one another

Do we know His Presence in the body?

It is in the touch of another that is the touch of Christ - the One who calls us back to ourselves, our bodies and the more certain and sure presence of God

This is one denial we need to give up for Lent
And beyond . . .

Lent Meditation - Following

Why do we do Lent? We do Lent for any number of reasons. From a devotional angle we do Lent to prepare our hearts for Holy Week and Easter. But in essence we do Lent for exactly the same reason we do anything in the Christian Life - to follow Jesus. In this case we follow Him into the Wilderness, judging that if it was necessary for Jesus in his humanity to learn Faith, perhaps we might also need this lesson.

Over the last few years, the metaphor of Journey has become the dominant one when we speak of the Christian life, or better, 'Walk'. Of course this ties quite neatly at first sight with the idea of following Jesus, except first sight can be deceptive. Talk of 'My Journey', gives the game away. As we explored yesterday, this Life of Faith isn't about us - it's about God. It is only Our journey insofar as it is the journey we make, but Nothing else is Ours. If we are to be faithful to Christ, then it is His journey. He sets the direction, he determines the days itinerary, he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end - indeed His Life is the Meaning of the journey.

As we explored yesterday, when the comfortable 'me' shaped 'god' is discovered - often through Trial - to be no more than the echo of ourSelves, it can feel as if we have lost our bearings. Our lives were Self referential and now they can no longer be if we are to have Faith. But what now is Faith in this strange new world to which we wake from the sleep of death? It is to follow Jesus - and is so doing give up our life.

We have all too easily divorced believing in Jesus from following Him. Some years ago I was part of a small group studying 'discipleship'. One lady member of the group, a Christian of many years standing who knew her Scriptures better than any of us, was not at all happy with the title of the course. 'I do not believe that we are all called to be disciples'. Although this statement sounded  and sounds outrageous, it was in effect the voicing of the attitude most of us have to our faith. That we can have faith, but not follow. We make Our Journey and Jesus accompanies us. This is in the end a death dealing deceit. It is the deceit of a faith that is about Us and not about God.

In the Wilderness the people of God are meant to learn that this is All about following, that the life of faith is one of dependence upon God. Realising that He is the Source of our Life, we can do nothing more than chase after Him. Like a small child who instinctively knows that their security is in the company of their parents - we Must follow.

But that following is disorientating to us - we feel at sea.

Faith is no comfort blanket - it is an insistent Knowledge that we Must follow

That we Must be with Jesus

It is All about Him

Mark in his gospel makes very little of the forty days - his account is sparse 'He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him' - and then Immediately the action moves on. Mark is Always using the word 'Immediately' - he reveals to us that we cannot settle. The disciples find themselves at times confused, at times (literally) all at sea in a great storm, at times in conflict with Jesus - but all the time with Him. And indeed this continues through Jesus' death and resurrection. 'you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But 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.' Mark wants Us to know, this is how it is to follow the Risen Lord too.

Adele Calhoun in her deceptively lovely book 'Invitations from God', puts this aspect of following - that it decenters us, and in a very real sense 'Saves us from ourSelves' - very well.

Following is a huge deal to Jesus, because following builds character, sands away the ego and shapes the heart. Followers can't barge ahead or simply do the next thing that pops into their head. they can't set cruise control or autopilot and zone out on what's happening. Followers must be alert attentive and ready to turn on someone else's dime. Jesus followers take up the challenge of turning where He turns, stopping where he stops, detouring where he detours, loving whom He loves an serving whom He serves.

To Follow is to lay down Our Life and indeed Our version of faith.

It is to learn to be at Sea on the Vast Ocean of God's Love

With Jesus our Only security

'No Man is an Island'

As we pursue this idea of Lent stripping us, that we are revealed for what we are in our essence, it may well be easy to say that it reveals how we are 'individuals'. Yet such an idea, that 'we are all individuals', is anathema to Christian faith, however loudly some may aver. And indeed in purely philosophical terms it must be denied, for how an we know that we are 'individuals' without comparison with the other? So even our 'Individualism' requires others.

To be an 'individual' is to be less than that which we Are in Truth.

The phrase 'the Image of God' is one of the most dangerous in Scripture - [God's Love is from the First a Risk] - for through our sinfulness we all too readily reverse it's meaning. That instead of  taking our reference for what it means to be Human from the God who makes himself known to us in Christ, humans all too readily think our 'best' ideas of what We take to be human, and project them onto 'god'. We create 'God in our Image', a broken and shattered image, 'exchanging the Glory of the immortal God, for a Lie'. 

But let us turn our gaze from this human tragedy, to the glory of Immortal God, whom our faith teaches us is Father, Son and Spirit. Three in One and One in three. 'Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence'. Thus in God's being what do we find,  not Individualism but Persons in Communion. Only within the Being of God can we begin to comprehend the Human, and here we discover that I cannot speak of 'My life', nor you of 'Your life', in any sense of possession. For the Father freely lays down His Life in sending the Son into the World, the Son who only does what he sees the Father doing, freely lays down His Life - neither saying 'My Life', rather saying 'My Life is in effect 'Yours', Given to you. And this Self Giving is given full expression in, to, and through us in the Spirit - 'God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us' 

It is in this laying down our lives that we discover that Life is not so much In us as Between us.

Lent, if we will let it is given that we might learn Not to call our life our own, and so like the manna kept overnight, discover it is turned to maggots, but rather through the disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving relinquish our hold on the life given to us that it might in truth become Life - called into communion and community, into Lives shared, for it is only in the sharing that Life comes into Being, in the space Between.

Lent - Pressing on into Life

Lent it must be said is Hard Work. Yesterday I mentioned the dryness that comes when trying to write everyday, but also that in that sense of 'Nothing left', what was uncovered was the reality about our lives - and that Reality is a Great Gift. 'It is very good to become disillusioned,' as someone once told me, 'for it only goes to show that you were living under an illusion, an illusion which you have now lost.'

The Wilderness is the place of confrontation with Truth, nowhere to hide and nothing to fall back on, the illusory life disappears like a vapour. In disciplines of prayer and fasting and almsgiving, we are stripped back to reveal the reality of our hearts and lives - and there we confront something that we have avoided - which is just how Hard this Christian life seems to be.

As GK Chesterton puts it, 'Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.'  

What Lent often does, is to reveal to us the ways in which we avoid the Hard business of beginning the Christian Life - yes, beginning. The plain truth which often comes to us is that so enamoured are we of our own lives, that we barely notice there is little or nothing in them which is consonant with the Gospel. We have dreamt dreams about the glories of Love and Forgiveness, of Truthfulness and deep community, of Hospitality to the Stranger, to the one who is not like us, and Abundant Generosity towards the undeserving. But it has been just that, dreams, just dreams. And in the cold light of day, when we face the challenge so to Live ourselves - we find it difficult and so do not try, but we continue to allow the dreamlike illusion to be our comfort. We come up with a hundred and one very plausible rationalizations, usually along the lines of 'life is not as Simple as that'. 
But in fact Life is Every bit as Simple, that is why it is so terrifying, because we cannot live it.


We can barely love our friends with deep sincerity, let alone our enemies, we cannot forgive ourselves, let alone others, we hide from the truth and justify deceit in the name of compassion - and so on.


Lent is a good teacher - it reveals the Truth, but then if we will let us it teaches us more. It is in itself an invitation to life, because we have to learn this Life we call faith - it is not just a dream or a set of doctrines or an idea, it is a life. and like our first life it doesn't come naturally at first. When we learnt anything in life - be it to walk, or write, or read, or ride a bicycle, we may well have seen others competent in the Way and thought 'I can do that', and then promptly and sometimes literally fallen flat on our face!


The thing is this - we didn't give up. We pressed on - and now, not only do we do them with ease we actually find enjoyment in them.


The Life revealed to us in Christ is the same and MORE. If we do not give up - if we do not hide behind our 101 reasons why we live a Christian life that is a pale shadow of what we know it ought to be - if we make the effort and look to the author and perfector of our Salvation, THEN we discover, that little by little, bit by bit we learn it - we learn to Perform faith. AND what is more, the more we do it - the more we discover it Really is Life in Abundance, Through our Practice of it we grow into a deeper and deeper apprehension of its Glory


Let us consider for a moment the Practice of Community - something we truly know so little of in the Western World, where we live such self sufficient lives. What Community requires is Openness of life - living lives where All that we are is known. Lives that are not carefully whitewashed tombs, but lives where our hearts, our joys and our sorrows, our sins and our small triumphs are known - that we are Known. To put it another way, lives where we are Loved.


Of course if we are pious, we might say 'ah well I am known to God', which of course is true, to a point. But our hearts deceive us. For to be Fully Known goes against the grain. Often our 'God' in nothing more than a reflection of ourselves. If God Knows us, why do we fear being known by others, why do we hide??

The truth is that we do Not know the Joy of being fully Known by God for we are scared of revealing ourselves to others and our very selves are closed up tight. We are afraid to be Known and we marshall our 101 reasons why it is not necessary to Live Openly, why One Shouldn't! Things we have been told, that due to our inherent desire to flee and to Hide (as did our First Parents) we think the epitome of Wisdom. 

So we are challenged to allow that Knowing to be incarnated - in friends and neighbours. Not to Hide, to be Open. And it is Hard. Very Hard. But as we press on, as we refuse to allow the Lies to have the LAst Word, believing that Reality is the God who is Love in Community, we discover that there is more Life there than we can ever have thought possible. For in the Sharing of ourselves we Give to others. How foolish we are to think we know that it is those things we are happy to share that are gift to others. No. It is the things of which we are ashamed or hide. It is in the revealing of our Hidden selves, that are weak and fearful and as yet ill formed, that others are truly blessed, for they too find the courage to step out into the light themselves - and to begin the journey towards their own growth.


And it is so with all of the other practices of the Christian Life. We are well defended against them - we all too readily choose to live a Christian life that fits and reflects us, having made God in our own image. But if through the practices of Lent we discover that we have been looking not at God but in the mirror, then we may find Grace to Press on into this Life of God - through Lent - Holy Week, to the Cross and then the Resurrection - Pressing on deeper and deeper into Life.

Lenten Almsgivings - Almsgiving (5)

Well I had intended to end this series on Almsgiving with my last post, but a chance comment from a dear friend triggered a further thought, with regard to the secrecy of Almsgiving - 'do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing'.

I have already expressed this in terms of the Reckless Love of God, and Abundance and Light that we flee from, such careful and fearful lives do we lead - seeing perhaps what the World does to those who dare to Live in the Light, rather than the shadow of fear.

However another way to express this Giving, is that of Authenticity. Lent is meant to be a time of paring back to the Essence. What was the Wilderness, for Israel, for Christ, but to 'let go of everything that hinders', that which some nowadays call 'the false self'. Jesus in the Wilderness fasted forty days and was left with nothing, but his Essence - there was nothing but his Pure Life, nothing to sustain him, save who he Was.

Sin, or to put it another way, the Avoidance of God, is like an accretion. Slowly we build a life for ourselves, hiding from God, denying the Life that we have been given. Lent is a time to take hold of the disciplines of the church, and thus, in letting go of those things which we use to build our own life, to discover within ourselves how far that process has taken us away from a Life which is Gift.

With regard to our Human Nature, we in the West tend to fall into one of two errors. Those who are, for want of a better word 'Conservative' (particularly those who take their lead from Calvin), in an effort to magnify the Grace of God (which needs not be done - God needs no advocates :) ), speak of the Depravity of the human heart. As if our Essential nature is Evil, by virtue of Adam's Sin.
Those of a Liberal bent, in part reacting against this, use the phrase 'Image of God' to Justify our sinfulness - that we are by and large Good. Neither I believe is correct, or indeed is ultimately of any use in our journey into God.

Here, Orthodox (Eastern) theology comes to our rescue with its Insistence on the Goodness of our Essence - that we are Created Good and that Nothing can undo that, but at the same time that Who we Are can be Readily buried under our 'false self', our determination to say No! to God, to say No! to who we Are, by our determination to sin.

In Lent, in going into the desert, in prayer and fasting and almsgving, we allow God to remove the layers of filthy rags, our hopeless efforts to be ourselves rather than Be OurSelves - Goodness Created In Love, Through Love and For Love.

When we are stripped away to our bare Essence, we lose our Sense of self - for that is something we have created. Rather we become that which we were always meant to be Pure Act. Nothing now is self conscious, all there is is the Conscious Self, fully Alive - giving no heed to living  - just Alive. No longer living in the realm of careful and fearful calculation, rather set Free through forgiveness and healing to Be. Such that the left hand has no idea what the right is about, and what's more sees no point in caring about it.

This sense of who we truly Are is expressed all around us in the rest of Creation, which waits with eager longing for us to join in and Be children of God.

This is given no better expression than in the life of Christ, who is unSelfconscious, who only does what he sees the Father doing. And this is beautifully spoken of in this wonderful poem of Authenticity written by the Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. that as the rest of Creation cannot help but be Authentic - Christ in Us sets Free Authentic Life. What I Do is Me, for that I came.

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (4)

Finally we need to give alms because doing so, cheerfully ( as God does ), dethrones Money from it's exalted position in our hearts and lives. Just giving it away - Giving the poor their rights, as we are required by Scripture to do - puts an axe to the idolatrous tree of money. Refusing to try and control it, knowing that any attempt to control an idol is naive at best, simply getting rid of it. Just throwing it away.

And if we think for a moment that money hasn't got a hook on our hearts, then meditate for a while on literally throwing money away - listen to the voice saying 'Don't do that!! Put it to good use!! Spend it on the poor!!' and remember who it was that first counseled against such Wastefulness saying that the money should have been spent on the poor . . .

More than ever in the history of the world, with world wide instant communication, never before has economic chaos had so many in fear. We are terrified of what will happen if The Economy collapses - because we believe that it is The Economy that preserves us and keeps us and if we play our part in the Economy, It will look after us. Never before has there been such anger at politicians and bankers - never before - as Pensions look increasingly vulnerable and national economies tremble on the brink. Of course there are those who counsel to take cover - by investing in precious metals :) In other words take cover from Money, by  . . .   :)
The Economy is such a huge idol, we cannot see anything else, and talk of trusting in God INSTEAD OF Money (as opposed to as well as - which is of course an oxymoron) is seen as hopelessly naive.

This is the hook it has on us.

Jesus had no money in the wilderness, indeed we are given to understand he wouldn't even touch the stuff. He had little time for some of the purity laws, and understood that money contaminated you in a  way that hanging around with prostitutes and tax collectors never could. The Pharisees however wouldn't be seen dead in that sort of company, but were well versed in handling money.

I return to a post I made earlier in this respect - the TV evangelist - the point is that I was flabbergasted at his saying he had no idea Jesus said so much about money, and yet given the power of it, I shouldn't have been. It grips us. the one thing it cries out for us not to do, is cut its power off at the root by taking no concern for the morrow and getting rid of it.

Lenten Almsgiving can be our teacher if we will

Lenten disciplines - Almsgiving (3)

So we left Almsgiving thinking about the Prodigality of God - who freely lavishes Love and Goodness on this world he has created. Jesus Knows (or does he?) that only one of the ten lepers will return to give thanks - but does that mean he concentrates his healing on the one who responds - indeed we know Very little, about whether Jesus' healing miracles were responded to in faith. We may perhaps presume that because in a few cases such a response is noted by the evangelists, that it was actually a rare occurrence. But then we may well ask ourselves How frequently do I give thanks? Indeed given All that He lavishes on us if we were to give thanks we would Never stop. For every moment, every breath, every view, every human encounter is Gift, and even the most devout of His followers pay little attention to most of it.

Instead of course our lives ought to be healthily focussed not on the gifts but on the giver.

But this matter of Alms can easily find us out.
As I noted yesterday our 'Giving' is all too often self observant, self judged and self referential - far far more Care Full than the 'secret' giving Jesus enjoins on us. And this Care Fullness is not only individual, but corporate.

In one of my former churches there was hanging upon the South Wall a large wooden plaque, listing many benefactors of the parish. Well of course their giving, even post mortem, was not done in secret, but was different to much of ours in that they gave Alms. They gave to the Poor. Bequests for the benefit of the poor of the parish. How much of our Giving nowadays is to the Church? It might be sobering to discover how high a percentage of Christian giving is effectively to ourselves, making sure We have a minister, or We have a building, or We have . . . well we get the point.

There is a lack of thought about the Almsgiving that Jesus enjoins on us that takes us away from our own pre-occupation with ourselves. For to give alms is to give to the poor

Is indeed part of the reason for the decline of the church is that our wealth, vast as it is, for it is our combined wealth, we keep in the family.

The manna was given daily - it wasn't meant to be hoarded, or indeed invested in bricks and mortar. When it was hoarded it went bad. Are we in the church actually hoarding that which was freely given to us? How many sermons exhort us in giving to Give More to the Church? How many exhort us, as Jesus does, to give it all to the poor?

Jesus always promised to build his church - to tend and care for it. Perhaps if we took him at his word, something quite amazing might happen amongst us  - or perhaps we have drunk to deeply of the myth of Scarcity . . . of which more anon.

In the Lenten disciplines we follow Jesus into the wilderness, to live in dependence on the abundance of God. In the matter of giving we are most certainly unmasked in many different ways.

Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (2)

 Give Alms!
Like this 

‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.' 

Matthew Chapter 6, Verses 2-4.

Yesterday I suggested that when considering the Lenten disciplines of Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving, we may well  suppose the last of these three to be the easiest. After all - all we now need do is log on and give our credit card details to someone and the job's done.We are used to 'managing money' and whether we find it easy or difficult it is in our society a Good Thing to be able to do.Whereas fasting and Prayer seem to require more of us. Fasting makes us hungry and Praying takes time out of busy days. They more directly challenge our way of looking at the world. But is this so?

LIsten to Jesus' requirements re giving Alms? It has little to do with a way of giving that is immersed in managing Money. "Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" - there is little here of a careful and discriminating use of Money. An unconscious Act is hardly a good way to go around managing Money.

Think for a moment, not about giving Alms, but about how we do it. Is it dare we say, thoughtless? Careless? Unthinking? Impulsive? Or do we imagine ourselves as Stewarding our money? Do we pray carefully about what we give? Do we take time to research perhaps a charity and make sure its aims are good? Do we give to the homeless on the street, or do we fear what they will do with it? 

[Listen to how wise this all sounds to our ears] 

BUT, put like this, how much is there of not letting our left hand know what our right hand is doing in Our approach to giving Alms? Is not this approach as self referential as that of the 'hypocrites', in that we like to be able to tell ourselves that we have done a Good Thing by our giving??

We might be aghast at the idea of giving freely to whoever asks, to all and sundry, to those we judge as deserving AND those we judge as undeserving - but why? Does not God do the same? 

The parable of the sower is one of many illustrations of this - he sows without any careful plan or strategy - he does not seem to care where the seed falls. In our modern and 'oh so wise' ways he is a Lousy farmer, inefficient - indeed a Poor Steward of his riches. His ways are not our ways.

He is the Prodigal Father. Unlike his Prodigal Son he does not spend on his own fallen desires, rather he Spends himself on the World, without any careful calculation. In our approach to giving Alms are we like the Prodigal Father, or the careful elder son?

Perhaps this whole business of giving Alms is not so easy after all??

(to be continued)

Lenten Disciplines - Almsgiving (1)

 Give Alms!
(A Lengthy Preamble)

The three disciplines which the church enjoins for Lent are Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. The latter two are those in many regards most counter to the Western culture of which I am part. But while fasting is Obviously Hard for us - [who has not read about fasting and also read a note to go and talk to your Doctor first before doing it?] - Almsgiving seems very straightforward. Indeed given that it requires no time of us, or very little, it may well be thought to be the simplest.

(You may like to ask yourself at this point 

whether Almsgiving feels the easiest of the disciplines to you)

Such thinking about Simplicity betrays us immediately, for where the disciplines are concerned, nothing is simple, and it is no less so with regard to Money (at least for us). It was plain enough for Jesus, but not in a way we might perhaps ascribe to. We talk too glibly of 'money management'. We feel we are Experts perhaps, in personal finance, or conversely, we know we are incapable of keeping track of Money - but the very fact we even think that we ought to be able to 'manage money', shows how far we are from knowing Jesus' counsel in our hearts which, after all, is where it matters.

A few years ago I attended a three day conference on "Christians in the Work Place". As such major conferences often are nowadays, the evening session was 'something different' by way of relaxation from the arduous seminar attending, book buying, 'Worship', and Networking that took place.
            This 'something different' was an interview with someone who had got into trouble with money, so much so, that he had been imprisoned. The person, a well known 'famous TV evangelist', had been convicted of fraud, (which is of course nowadays always a matter of Money - we can be fraudulent in many areas of life, but only fraudulence regarding Money seems to warrant a gaol term), and he was now recounting his story as I suppose a salutary warning. (The more I think about that evening the more I question what was really going on . . .).
           But he said one thing which completely blew my fuses, something I just couldn't believe. He said that prison had given him a Long Time to think, and that he had committed himself to reading the Gospels afresh, and what struck him was 'how much Jesus talks about Money! I had never noticed it!'.

(I was and indeed am tempted to say 'Wise up! It's as plain on the nose on your face!!', but the fact that this man who in all probability had read the Scriptures more than I could miss Jesus' teaching, ought to suggest a degree of humility in this area in myself. After what is the difference between someone who is confident in handling Money, and someone who thinks he has a handle on Jesus' teaching about Money . . . and thus is 'safe to handle Money'??)

The song says, "Money makes the world go round" - we say we don't believe it, but we deceive ourselves, or rather we are deceived by Money. If someone who had no prior knowledge of Money was to examine us individually or indeed as a global entity, and I think say without a shadow of doubt that Money is a Dominant power. And this is as true of the Church as it is of the World.

Recently a former Diocese of my acquaintance passed a lengthy response to a discussion on its boundaries. Hidden away in the amendments was a phrase that caught my eye


'[Synod] requests the Preparation Group to prepare fully costed proposals about how the Area system proposed will benefit mission' 

Costed? Mission? Why? What does the (presumably financial) cost have to do with Mission?? Why can't we think about Mission without thinking about Money? (And Yes, the fact that I automatically read 'costed' in terms of Money Does reveal how much I too am prey to this :) )

All of the Disciplines unmask us - if we think that they are simple and straightforward we are either Saints - or we are deceiving ourselves, or rather in this case we are deceived (just like my fellow struggler with Money, the TV evangelist)

In the next three days we will take time to consider Jesus brief teaching about 'Giving Alms' - about how it is utterly radical and goes against most if not all our embedded ways of managing money - and about how the Church itself has fallen prey to 'the deceitfulness of wealth'

Lent Course Session 2 :- Discipling Discples

Audio for first part of session

Audio for second part

Audio for third part

POWER POINT

Life through the Disciplines

Here at St John's we are exploring the theme of Christian Practices, through Lent. Practices I have come to define as The Life of God (as with many of the things I teach and talk about, what it is only becomes clear to me long after I've started the preparation!).

Practices such as Blessing, Sabbath, Generosity, Hospitality, Truthfulness, Forgiveness - Ways of being that embody what God in the Risen Christ is doing in the world. Of course we tend rather to think about the Disciplines of the Christian life in Lent - Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving being the three chief ones, taking our lead from the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading, in Matthew chapter 6. Lent is a time for disciplined self examination, that opening up of the Heart of the matter as we seek to follow Christ more closely, and the disciplines are helpful in that regard. But how do they relate to the Practice of the life of God? To many in this age they seem quite antithetical - they seem negative, the path of Self denial - how can they bring forth Life. Shouldn't we just get on with Living the life of God?

But that is precisely it, for as soon as we try to 'Live the Life of God' we realise that we cannot. We fall flat on our faces. It is as if we have seen a beautiful painting, or eaten a Cordon Bleu meal, or watched a sportsman perform as the height of his game and said, I'm going to do that!! And go buy some paints or food, or go out on the Sports field and, either metaphorically or literally, fall flat on our faces. For the truth is that the artist or the chef or the sportsman has been training for years and years and we have not. And of course we know this so if we really want to master these things we set about the discipline of doing it and getting it wrong and so learning and repeating over and over again, til it comes right

Yet somehow we think that this matter of Living the Christian Life, the Life of God should be easy - until we try to do it. And then we get discouraged and give up. Or we hear from others on the way that it is hard and so don't even bother to try. Forgiveness is a good case in point here. We see it and we say "I could never do that!" Except the truth is you could, we all can - we are made to, it is part of our human nature made as we are in the Image of God.

this is where the disciplines come in. Before Jesus steps a foot into the ministry of public arena, he goes through a fierce discipline and testing - before the Father will let him loose on the world, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, to learn through the discipline of fasting.

So what is the role of the disciplines with regard to the life of God? Isn't it enough to keep on trying and failing until we get better? Well the Wisdom of the ages tells us that that generally isn't the way, that if Christ had to fast that he might Love the world as his Father does, then so do we. As Dallas Willard  points out, we can't expect to imitate the life of Jesus if we ignore the dimension of disciplining ourselves.

Let us imagine for a moment that learning to Live the Life of God is a little like learning to drive a car. When I learnt, my first teacher was my dad. It wasn't a great experience. Of course like most drivers he had loads of bad habits and so he passed them on. It was only when I sat with a qualified instructor for some focused tuition, that these became apparent. The disciplines are like those sessions with the Expert. They are times when the Only thing in focus is Living the Life. By fasting, or prayer, or almsgiving, we strip away anything that is Not to do with God and His Life, and we are subjected to scrutiny. Through which we learn something of what is getting in the way, blocking this Life of God.

 (Another helpful discipline in this regard is having a good Spiritual Director - someone who is well versed in the Life of God and its ways and who can help us scrutinise the latest blockage on our path. this is never easy but, in our age subjecting our lives to the Scrutiny of another is perhaps even ore difficult and thus all the more necessary!)

The Disciplines uncover the heart and reveal what is hidden there - they reveal what is getting in the way of the Life of God as we seek to grow in faith and holiness. The Disciplines are like the tilling of the ground each season that it might bring forth more fruit. If the practices are the flourishing garden of the Life of God, the disciplines are the pruning shears and weeders that every gardener knows are Necessary.

Each of these three disciplines has an important role to play and so through the next three weeks we shall explore each one further. Beginning tomorrow with the discipline of giving alms.

Test Everything. Hold fast to that which is Good

Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’

Students of Christian praxis and the vitality of the church cannot fail to notice that wherever the church is waning, it is in circumstances where the Victory of Man over Creation through his technological mastery, and (in the Boom Times) his apparent  effective marshalling of the so-called 'Laws of Economics', is most evident.

In those places where we seem to have got away with stealing Fire from the gods and the thread of life from the fates, writing for ourselves a Roman story of Immortality - faith seems to have been fatally infected with the spirit of the age. Now in these days, when as Jamie Smith notes, the Mall has its own liturgy and we may buy our identity, faith is all too often expressed in terms of consumption. Church becomes an imitation of the world around it, but a pale one. The world does a far better job of being the world than the church does. 

Indeed the world mocks the church by stealing its clothes, its fine temples and inspiring texts, as the entrance to a mall in England so witheringly does, using a text from that most apocalyptic letter of Paul's to the Thessalonians. "Hold fast to that which is good" 'Test Everything, hold fast to that which is good - check where the bargains are to be had and go get 'em!'

The church in running after these things shows she has lost all sense of who she is, and her children likewise, often pursuing with as much vigour the consumer dream as those around them. I wonder how many Christians have failed to shudder as they passed through the portals above?

When the children of Israel were still in the wilderness, but stood on the edge of the Promised Land, Moses held the crowds back and told them, "before you go fleeing into this store house filled with good things, I'm warning you, Don't forget who really feeds you, who really put clothes on your back and food in your bellies" But, like children getting a final safety briefing before leaping off the bus to visit a theme park, they're going 'yeah, yeah, yeah - we remember, "don't forget who got us here" - whatever. Now can we go ?', and off they go into the lush land and promptly forget. 

Put another way, they'd never really learnt to believe, even after forty years. They just wanted to get The Wilderness bit over and done with. And we may well feel the same about Lent. A tiresome nuisance we just want to be shot of. Except it is a place of Gift. The place where Life is stripped to its essentials, reveals the essentials of Life.

This past ten days of Lent, I have been privileged to accompany someone on a journey of faith, exploring what might be possible when everything seems to be lost, when the lights go out humanly speaking. Through this journey we have made the most wonderful discovery, that when you take away everything, all you are left with is God . . .

It seems there is no greater threat to faith than a rich life in human terms. Nothing more adept than blinding our eyes to the Good than the good. Why is it that we seem so obsessed for example in our days with 'the problem of suffering' when those in earlier times suffered far more and understood it not as an obstacle to faith, but an opportunity for it? Why do we think our world has fallen apart when a marriage or anything indeed, fails to live up to expectations? When we are thwarted in our Promethean dreams of perfection. Put another way, when we seemingly have it all, it only takes the smallest of flies in the ointment for us to forget God, revealing that in truth we have chosen to be our own gods. 

And what is more, the further we go down this path, the more we move away from any meaningful observation of Lent. Not realising something is seriously wrong, we've given up on the inconvenience of our annual check up.

Yet Lent turns the consumer model on its head - for we do not test, we are tested. We do not put God to the test as is so commonplace in these days, often with the encouragement of those who consider that they speak for Him. Rather we allow Him to put us to the test, for we want to know is our faith the real thing - when all is stripped away is it true for us that He is our Hope? Not is He True, for we know that, are We?

Lent is but forty days, but for it to have done its work we need to come to the point where we would be happy for it to go on for ever, because in the Wilderness we have come to know God and His Goodness and that is worth more to us than Gold or Silver. We have found the Promised Land without leaving the desert. Having tasted - we hold fast.

Lent is only ten days gone - several weeks still stretch before us - Gift if we will have it.

Living with Nothing to lose

"Dust you are and to dust you shall return

Turn from your sin and be faithful to Christ" 

In the liturgy of the church, there is perhaps little to match the seriousness of this declaration, made as a cross is marked in ash on the forehead of a fellow Christian. Echoing the words of God to the Man and the Woman, it reminds us of the most obvious fact about us, that we will die. 

A fact that we hide from at our peril and yet one which our contemporary society seems hell bent on ignoring. Perhaps it is the sign of the end of yet another age, but we seem to pour more and more energy into "Amusing ourselves to death" (to borrow Neil Postman's memorable phrase), which is another way of saying 'ignoring it altogether.

It was not so very long ago that evangelists would appeal to The Fact with regard to conversion - "choose for Christ now - before it is too late, then when you face death you will face it with confidence".  But more and more the emphasis with regard to faith and death has been, "we believe in life before death", to borrow the slogan of the charity, Christian Aid.

Both in their own way miss the point - both are right and both are wrong. Lent sharpens the issue up for us. 

In the Wilderness Jesus learns total trust in God, his Father. In turning down Satan's offer of three easy ways out, ways of avoiding the Cross, Jesus faces that which we must all face. He begins to live as one who has already died - for in death where else will we place our trust and our hope??

But what a life he Lives, as though dead.

The Evangelist gets it right, for we must all die and face God. But he gets it wrong with regard to timing, for we are called to die before our bodies do it for us. Turning to Christ and following Him is not about what will happen some years down the line, it is the decision to die to ourselves and thus enter Life, Now. Life before death, as the charity says correctly, but That Life is only found through the death of self denial and following Christ, in losing everything that we might find Life. It is a Life that is before our physical death but not apart from death. It is not the stuff of simple slogans. 

Rather it is Life through death, before death and overcoming death.

Putting off heaven 'til you die misinterprets eternal life in terms of chronology, that we enter the Kingdom when our bodies expire. The reality is that in Christ the Eternal has stepped into time, that we might in time step into the Kingdom Now, by getting the dying stuff over and done with.

Dust you are and to dust you shall return - we are confronted with the seriousness of death, as were the man and the woman. But a new and glorious way has opened that we might get our dying over and done with, so that we might truly Live - Turn from your sin and be faithful to Christ. 

It is in dying that we Live. In letting go of the small, petty things we think so Significant that we 'Could Not Possibly Live' without them, we discover that we weren't living at all. We are asked through disciplines of self denial to discover that if we stop living for ourselves and start living in and thru and for God, we enter Life.

In a sense we already know something of this in our world - for there are those who are faced with death who suddenly find new life in that they have nothing to lose.

This points us to the Truth - that in losing everything for his sake, we literally have nothing to lose, not even our life - and thus we are set Free to Live.

The Risk of Faith

Yesterday's meditation, based on the writing of Ruth Burrows spoke of the Risky nature of faith.
That Lent calls us to understand faith in a Naked and perhaps terrifying Rawness. So Sharp is the challenge we might almost call it 'the Wound that is faith'.

She spoke of the Stinging rebuke of Jesus to the disciples in the storm - ' "Why the panic? Where is your faith?" Is he not saying, [she asks] "Does it matter if you go down if I am with you?"'

Will we risk all on Him and His Love for us? 

After Jesus has been driven by the Spirit into the wilderness where he fasted for forty days and nights - he is tested by Satan. And each challenge, like his successful tempting of the man and the woman in the garden is based on a subtle shift in the Truth. It is one which we perhaps miss, so enamoured and misunderstanding are we of Jesus' miracles.

'If you are the Son of God' - the Accuser begins - 'change these stones into bread.'

We miss the non-sequitur. Being the Son of God has Nothing to do with being a miracle worker. Satan tries to wrong foot Jesus as he had tried to wrong foot the children of God once before, by questioning their very nature as those whose Life comes not from within themselves, but from above (unless you are born from above you cannot see the Kingdom of God).

"Change these stones into bread?" - "throw yourself off the Temple?" - "bow down and worship me?".

At once these are things that Jesus can do and cannot do. He cannot because he is a child of God, he can because he in his true humanity he can do anything, just as the man and the woman could take the apple and eat. So he was open to temptation, tempted as we are in Every way.

And these challenges are very tempting because they suggest, like that primeval temptation, that they will deliver the goods. [The Ends Justify the Means is The Prevailing Way of thought however much we deny it] But the man and the woman lost sight of the Ends and so lost sight of the Means, the only Means given in Creation, the Life of God - 'Apart from me you can do nothing'.

In so doing they reap Death for they deny the Life that is given that they might Live. Exchanging the Truth of God, for a lie.

Perhaps more than ever we live in a world where the Lies of Pragmatism and Utilitarianism are writ large. We live in a world where we are told that, in order to succeed you Must . . . well we can all fill in our own pet 'Rules for Life' here - our own understandings of what makes for 'the good life'. And blindly we follow them, and then wonder why it doesn't work. 'There must be a way to make it all work!', and if we are religiously inclined we will of course co-opt our puny faith in the god [sic] who makes our lives work for us, and will surely make the world work is we only ask him to bless our plans, our work and our lives. Reaching out for the next Snake oil seller with his "Hundred Proven ways to Succeed" And in so doing we reveal that we do not know who we are, consumed as we are in the lies that turning stones into bread, throwing ourselves off temples or indeed worshiping the Adversary in one of his many guises will do it for us. So desperate are we to live by anything, rather than admit we are not masters of our own destiny and take the risk of  faith.

One of the great gifts of Lent is the stripping away of the illusory powers that are in our hands, 

the revealing of our own perception that in some ways we Are miracle workers 

rather than Children of God. 

It is in coming face to face with our utter powerlessness that we might perhaps be saved if we dare keep in that path and not turn back

Perhaps this is why we do not fast, pray or give alms much if at all?

"Does it matter if you go down if I am with you?"

Watch out for those nuns . . .

Some years ago I went to the funeral of a dear friend. It was a Requiem in an English Cathedral and followed a straightforward Common Worship liturgy. The hymns were old standards, the homily forgettable, but the atmosphere was electrifying. I do not think that either before or since has the presence of the Fire of God been so tangible in worship and I was not the only one who noted this.

Why? Well, the only visible difference between this service and any of the thousands I have attended or led, was that the building was half full of nuns, women who were immersed as my friend had been, in the life of prayer. In the midst of grief, heavens doors were torn open by these praying women.

This Lent, I am reading 'Love Unknown', The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent book by another nun, the Carmelite, Ruth Burrows. Co-incidentally it was my friend who at what she took to be an appropriate time for me first introduced me to Ruth's writings, and I was blindsided. Expecting something 'nice and pastoral', I was exposed to a writing which challenged the very depths of my faith. Raw and uncompromising, her writings are at one time untypical of most books suggested at this season of the church's year, and also Exactly what is required. 'Love Unknown' is no exception.

Just take some time to dwell on a couple of brief excerpts.

Firstly her commentary on Jesus asleep in the stern of the boat in the midst of the storm and the disciples reproach of Him.

"Jesus deflates their high emotion with a reproach of his own. Why the panic? Where is your faith? Is he not saying, [she asks] "Does it matter if you go down if I am with you?"'

And secondly,

and worth meditating on a word at a time

"Our only real need is God"

Lent is a time for testing - for exposing the reality of our faith without bringing us to 'the time of trial'. We give time to setting other things aside, deliberately to face the question 'Is it God in whom I place all of my hope?' 'Is it true - is He all I need, do I Know this?'

Fitting Lent into a busy life?

'What are you giving up for Lent?'

For some of us at least, this may have been a regular question over the last couple of weeks. (Perhaps a dwindling number? Am I alone in thinking that a meaningful observance of Lent is diminishing as a practice amongst western Christians?)

Of course there are a goodly number who are saying 'Don't give things up for Lent! Take something up instead!' And of course this has a very favourable ring for any number of reasons. We like to do something good. Giving something up denies ourselves in a way that we get no reward from - we can see taking something up as a way of both denying ourselves And helping others. So, no more fasting, instead we can have our virtuous cake And eat it! :) BUT, generally our lives are so very busy it is very difficult to take anything new up, or at the very least - we will have to fit it in and around our lives as is convenient to us.

I was thinking recently of a church where attendance at Lent classes had fallen very low. The Vicar was scratching his head, and suggested that , 'because people are so very busy nowadays, perhaps we should just publish the material online for folk to pick up and use when was convenient to them?'. 

            This suggestion was brought to mind at our Lent Class last night, when we shared a reading from Resident Aliens, by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. In it they recount the story of a new pastor who had the bright idea of the church providing a daycare unit for the convenience of people in his parish. But a lady named Gladys spoke out against it - because the people of the parish were generally too busy to look after their children because they were continually chasing the dream of a bigger and better and bigger and better lifestyle. Two cars, lovely vacations and every material convenience - but lacked time for their children. She said she thought the church had no business supporting people in such material acquisitiveness when it so denied community and family. She said that there were families downtown, where both parents had to work, just to put food on the table, but she didn't hear her church suggesting that they were going to go and help out down there.The pastor responded to her "Gladys, with questions like the ones you are raising, we just might become a church after all."

Well the parallel isn't a straight one, but it raised for me how far we seem to go in 'fitting Lent' or indeed 'fitting church' in and around our increasingly frenetic lives.

Lent is a great gift to us and one of the greatest gifts it gives us through the strict requirements of fasting, and intensified times of prayer, and almsgiving, is that faith is not a matter of our convenience, it is not about us. God in Christ takes hold of a people, he sets them apart as his. They are called from whatever is absorbing them, to be absorbed in Him and His Life. "They left their nets and followed him" We are given a new identity when God takes hold of us. Disciples of his Son. It is not something we choose for ourselves. For all of us it is inconvenient as it means laying all our plans and hopes and dreams for our lives aside.

But it is a Glorious inconvenience - for what can be better than to be called into the realization of the Plans, Hopes and Dreams of God - the Source of all Life and Love. If we have but mustard seed faith, then even what is thought the greatest of inconveniences, becomes the instrument of Life.

What are you giving up for lent?? 

Better, what will we give up for Him?

Lent, faith, and the narrow way

Jesus loves his neighbour, like no-one else before or since 

precisely because he loves God, like no-one else, before or since

As we journey through Lent together, and with Jesus there may be something which we find a little odd. Why does Jesus need to be tested in the wilderness. Sometimes our images of Jesus get in the way of how we read the gospel accounts - we imagine him as somehow different to us in his humanity. He is a kind of 'Superman'. How many times have I pointed someone to the example of Jesus for them only to say - 'Ah, but that was Jesus - he was the Son of God!', as if his Divinity over rode his humanity, as if in those difficult moments he faced he switched Off his humanity and switched On his divinity.

This in itself might be worth pondering - does my image of Jesus deny his full humanity, that he was tempted in every way as we are . . . but got through because he was also divine? 

Jesus in his humanity has to learn faith - his Jewish heritage has taught him this. He knows that in only total dependence on God his Father can he live the fully human life he is called to, but he doesn't even go into the desert because of his own choice - no he is driven there by the Spirit. Even in going into the wilderness he has to respond in his humanity in dependence upon the spirit's guidance, in this case firm direction.

He has to learn faith.

Perhaps we might also sit with this thought for a minute or two. If Jesus had to go forty days without food in the wilderness to learn this lesson, what or where has been my wilderness of learning faith. Have I learned faith or a set of beliefs?

It was said that a disciple went to one of the fathers of the church and said, 'Abba, give me a word' The man replied - 'Go and learn what this means "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength" '. 

The disciple departed from him. Ten years later he returned and said 'Abba, I have learnt that word, please give me another' and the Father said to him, 'go and learn what this means, "love thy neighbour as thyself"', and the disciple went from him and never returned.

Faith is utter dependence upon God - it is abandonment to him - trusting utterly in his unfailing love. Loving him with all we have and all we are. Faith gives us Absolute security to Love freely as He Loves, but it is not easy to find. Hard and narrow is the way and few there are that find it. It takes time. Forty years for Israel, Ten years for the disciple and forty days for Jesus, yet it is a work worth the all we have and all we are, as it requires that of us. Lent is given to us as a means by which we might seek out that narrow way.

Through Lent we abandon our reliance on those things we too easily substitute for faith, things that have become tyrannous. We let go of our reliance on food, fasting to discover the truth that the word of God sustains us if you like, miraculously. We let go of our reliance on money, giving alms, discovering the truth that God provides. We let go of our need to rule our own lives and the tyranny of time, in praying much and learning the truth that God orders all our doings and will sustain the world.

When we learn to so trust God, then we discover that He is the source of all life and love - and thus we are set free to love as Jesus does, the one who went this way before us, giving his life over to God.

We may think of our life as a seed. We may tend to think that the key to the Christian life is somehow making ourselves grow in love - certainly that is how we seem to approach this whole question of how do we love our neighbour. We imagine it must come from within Us, but it doesn't, it Only comes from Him. If we give this seed of our lives over in abandonment to God, he plants it in good soil, where it dies . . . and yields much fruit.

A Life given to God is returned many fold to the world

Sermon for Lent 1 - Sunday February 26th

Sermon for First Sunday in Lent 2012

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25

1 Peter 3:13-22

Matthew 4:1-11

Through Lent as the Body of Christ

“Man does not live by bread alone,

 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”

As I sincerely hope you’ve noticed, we have re-introduced the Psalm into our morning worship. [Funnily enough, given what I’m about to say, I began by typing out ‘I have re-introduced the Psalm . . .’ J] The Psalms have been the root prayers of the people of God down through three thousand years. They are prayers that are well tested as sources of comfort and hope, as well as giving us space to vent our spleen before God should we need to do so. And there is only one safe place to vent our spleen!

On the whole, those of us who like myself grew up within the Anglican church and perhaps had little by the way of Private piety would have come across the Psalms in public worship and may well have thought that that was where they belonged – but in truth the Psalms have been used every bit as much in private devotion over the centuries, and indeed they generally read best in that regard. However, there is a small group of Psalms written precisely to be said together. You may have noticed them in your Bible, psalms 120-134 – they are called ‘The Psalms of Ascent’. They were the sequence of Psalms traditionally said in sequence as the Jewish people went on Pilgrimage up to the Temple in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.

I wonder if we have the imaginative capacity to find ourselves in the scene – a group of people – going up together on this journey, three times a year, chanting these old songs of faith. A Powerful communal practise.

I want now while we hold that picture to imagine something else. Last Sunday evening, the last before Lent in many many churches something happened which I guess none of us here have experienced in our church life. As part of the liturgy everyone in church went to every other person and asks them for forgiveness for any wrong they have done them. Why do these Christians do this? Well we might say, ‘because it is good to forgive and be forgiven’ and that is very true – yet it is not something which we have practiced in our tradition, perhaps ever. Actually these Christians do this as preparation for Lent. They are Christians of the Orthodox or Eastern tradition of the church, comprising at least 1/3 of all the Christian in the world today.

I will return to the Orthodox Lent in a little while, but for now just sit for a moment or two with those two images – the community of believers going up to the Temple and chanting the Psalms and The Orthodox believers creating absolute mayhem I guess as they all make the effort to seek out everyone else to seek forgiveness. What a way to go to church, what a way to start Lent.

What both epitomize, is a Truth that many many Christians in the Western tradition have lost – that the Life of faith is Primarily something we do together. Last week when I described the idea of Covenant I took us back to one of the older covenants – where God in Covenant Love takes hold of the people of Israel in slavery in Egypt, the whole people – All of them. Our reading from Genesis speaks also of God’s covenant, this time with the whole earth “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” Taking hold of Israel is awe inspiring, but the rainbow was given as a sign that God in Covenant Love took hold of All Creation. (btw I know that some folk would like me perhaps at some stage to preach on Creation and matters to do with the Environment and I shall do so – but for now I want to build some theological foundations as most sermonizing o these topics has little to do with the faith as revealed thru the prophets, Scriptures and Apostles). God takes hold of all creation.

            The writer to the Colossians says of Christ, in Him all things hold together  - people pilgrimaging together chanting Psalms – people going to everyone else to seek forgiveness – all things holding TOGETHER in Christ. All of these are ringing Rebukes not to the rampant individualism of the world, but of the rampant individualism of faith in the Western Church – For The Church, the faithful people of God are called to reveal AMONGST themselves, the truth of the penultimate Psalm of Ascents, just Before they reach the Temple , How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in Unity.

It is the Common life of the people of God which is given as a light to the nations-  YOU says Jesus are the Light of the world. And here we hit a difficulty for us, for in the English language, we cannot tell the difference between you and you, that’s not You and You, but you (singular) and you (Plural). Christ addresses his Disciples YOU are the light of the world. And it is re-inforced in other ways – Some of you May have flinched a little when I deliberately used non-inclusive language in the reading from the gospel. I very much understand what is at stake here, but unfortunately we can miss something important – there is a Very Significant difference between “Man does not live by bread alone” and “One does not live by bread alone” The former moves us towards a hearing that is corporate – the latter moves us Strongly towards a hearing that is individual. God spoke these words through Moses Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. ³He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. God Leading his people 40 years in the wilderness to teach them Faith. He took Everything away – Quite literally, apart from the clothes on their back and the shoes on their feet – he taught them Faith. This was a lesson of faith, for the People, not individuals. The Life of faith is Primarily something we do together

And Now in Lent, the Lesson is the same – Learning faith is the point of Lent for the people of God as it was for Jesus in the desert. God takes his people into the wilderness for forty years, he takes Us into Lent for 40 days each year. Only One does he take alone – Matthew tells us Jesus was Led by the Spirit into the wilderness to test him, to tempt him. Henri Nouwen puts it well when he says that Jesus is tempted to be relevant, spectacular and powerful “Feed yourself!!” ‘feed the world, everyone will believe in you then – yet he feeds them and as John records they started to desert him – Do something Spectacular!! – Throw yourself down from the temple. They’ll all believe in you then – but he did not even throw himself down from the Cross – Or tempting him with Power - Worship me and I will give you all the power you need.

We live in an age when most of the western church has either disappeared or succumbed to the devils blandishments – it chases after relevance – We Must be relevant to people’s lives and so to some it seems we are like the leader of the French revolution sat at the sidewalk café as the mob rushes by who cries – there are my people! I must follow them!! Or we must be spectacular – building mega churches, having the best technological tools, - Or we must be powerful – well by and large that one has expired J but it supposedly served the church well for over a thousand years and thus remains a deadly addiction should any opportunity arise – secretly we long for the church to be powerful again and seek ways to make it look so.

But Jesus rebukes The Satan with regard to these temptations, and what strikes me is this – he does not suggest another way – he never says, I’m not going to do it that way, I’m going to do it this – because the way of Jesus is simply Naked faith in God – this is what the Spirit leads him into the wilderness to learn as it had led the people of Israel into the desert for 40 years. So he fasts that he Might Learn it really Is True – man does not live by bread alone. Jesus discovers this truth in the Wilderness – Truth Laid bare.

Even the Son of God must learn FAITH and it takes him 40 days – it took Israel 40 years and even then they forgot.40 days for Jesus, 40 years for Israel. How easily we say, “I have faith”. Yet can I go without food for even a day? Can I sell even a tenth of my possessions and give to the poor? Can I lose a tenth of my dignity and associate with the outcasts of society and be known as their friends? Can I turn from the demands of the world – in trust that the world will continue to turn, and spend one brief hour a day in prayer? Oh how many many books are printed now to tell us how to get along on ten minutes a day because we are SO busy. But we are busy because we have little faith.

40 days – 40 days of Lent. And we look at Lent and wonder how it can help and often we do little about it  - I mean we are very well accustomed to perhaps having shared study, but that is pretty much it – we may as Individuals come up with bright ideas. How can I sustain something for 40 days, and what is more as Jesus tells us to, without looking miserable about it? Yet The Church into which we are all baptized has told us what to do in Lent – Pray, Fast and Give Alms – common practices, meant to be done together.

I said I was going to come back to the Orthodox Church. We left them last Sunday evening – gathered together for the Vespers of Forgiveness – going round forgiving and asking for forgiveness from everyone else. Imagine that as a Start to Lent. I have said a little in the week about a Joyful Lent and Lent in the orthodox church is Very joyful – BUT we might look at it and wonder – How can they be joyful when they do THAT!! Here for example is the prayer book they use in Lent – All 700 pages as the services for Every Day are set out (without all the Psalms by the way which they recite in their entirety twice a week :) ) – and then there is the fasting – this begins two weeks before Lent with a prohibition on any meat – then the Sunday before all dairy products are ruled out. In the first week – ONLY TWO MEALS, one on Wednesday and one on Friday – after that it is eased and there so you can have one uncooked meal a day J And I could go on (by the way as is the rule with all Fasting  - NEVER ON A SUNDAY!! Sunday is the day of New Creation, not the old :) ) Well we might ask, how can this be Joyful????

And the answer – because they are all in it together – praying regularly together, encouraging one another each day – they go about it Cheerfully – which is a Good Biblical Word :) Lent is Hard, if not impossible Alone – but Together it can be a journey of Joy

Through Lent as the Body of Christ. This is the title for this sermon. And so may I encourage us to recapture some of that sense of being a community of faith, sharing in faith, growing in faith, together this Lent. You may wish to come to a Lent course – we shall be exploring this theme of Life together through the Practices of faith and I hope that we shall learn far more than I have prepared through sharing our Lenten journey together.

But if you cannot make it, then there is still one thing we could Easily all do together which the Orthodox do. Every week the focus of worship is the Gospel for the coming Sunday. On your news sheet is the Gospel for next week – Let us do this one thing together – each day in preparation for next Sunday, let us read the Gospel – for this is the message of Life, for us all as the Body of Christ here. We go through Lent that we might better know Easter Joy – we go through Lent because All of Life is a preparation for Resurrection Life – and know it in our midst, together.