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.

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.

At the start of Lent

The Western Church traditionally observes the Sunday before Lent by remembering the Transfiguration of Christ, as recorded in Matthew's gospel, chapter 17. There is much Wisdom in this.
As we enter a time where it is all too easy to focus out thoughts on ourselves as we apply ourselves to the disciplines of the season - traditionally fasting, prayer and Almsgiving, and more and more in the modern idiom, taking up some 'Good Work' -  it is easy to lose sight of Jesus and get caught up in all the 'virtuous' things we are doing, being at home with ourselves, rather than allowing Jesus to take us on pilgrimage  through the Wilderness, the only place where God's people learn faith.

There is a sense that the apostles felt this on the Mount of Transfiguration - "it is good for us to be here" - they are all too ready to pitch tent and stay there, but the 'lights' go out and suddenly
"they saw no one except Jesus himself alone."

No bright lights, no voice from Heaven - just Jesus. Lent is a time which asks us "Is He Enough?"

Matthew records that as soon as they come down from the mountain, the disciples find themselves floundering in the thick of the battle

When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.’ Jesus answered, ‘You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.’ And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘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.’

They are perhaps asking, What happened to that Light, the Voice - The Wonder and the Awe of the mountain - why couldn't we have stayed there?? But as Jesus tells them, they have little faith. The plain fact is that the Light, the Voice, The Wonder and the Awe are all present, but veiled in human flesh. He is still Present to them, but they have little faith, they cannot See.

Jesus has his own Mount of Transfiguration experience - his Baptism. There are signs, the Spirit, the heavenly voice. How easy it must have been to ask to pitch tent by this place of blessing. But as Mark puts it The Spirit "drives" Jesus out into the Desert. This Work is Vitally urgent for Him and it is for us too.

As we enter Lent we are called to go with Jesus, to let go of other supports, ease and food, money (as we give alms) - for it is a time of testing. But all we are doing is going with Jesus and in the path of His disciples. Lent mirrors Jesus' 40 days in the Wilderness - we do not go alone. As He was as present amongst the demoniacs and the chaos of his disbelieving disciples, he is present in our Wilderness walk

One of his disciples saw the lights going out, yet spoke faith

 - ironically for he was known as the one who doubted - 

'Let us go also, that we might die with Him'

Whilst we still long to remain comfortable, 

whilst we have yet to learn to See him when humanly speaking the lights have gone out,

we need Lent

The Technological Tick - Jesus Calling

Some years ago - and for a very short time - I wore one of those digital watches which 'bleeped' on the hour - it was my way of practicing regular recollection. My long suffering and very wise Spiritual Director raised her eyebrows at the idea and said 'well I suppose you might think of it as a modern Angelus?'
Needless to say, I didn't carry on the experiment for long,partly because I'm not all that devout, but also I think because a bell heard across the fields calling one to prayer had deeper resonances in more ways than one.'

Just the other day I found myself trying  the same exercise, but now with 'improved technology' - marking certain hours of the day for prayer by setting an alarm on my phone to draw me from whatever occupied me to recollect myself for a few minutes. 

Now there is much to reflect on in this. The Angelus bell, indeed any bell chiming out publicly belongs to settings when we pray together - so my church bell is rung just before worship on a Sunday - however my practise and many similar ones amongst those of us who struggle to pray, are a salutary reminder that more and more we pray 'you in your small corner and I in mine' - that corporate prayer is hardly ever  a feature of our common life in these days and thus we may well ask, 'what if anything is the reality of our common life in Christ?'

But I digress . . .

My alarm ringtone is the same as my call ringtone - a beautiful 30 seconds of a Chopin nocturne which plays over and over, but wondrously and somewhat peculiarly never sounds as if it repeats.  Yesterday I found myself in deep in conversation with two folk I'm just getting to know in the theology department of the local University, when my phone went off.
It is my practise never to answer my phone when in conversation and when I finally came to an awareness that deep inside my jacket my phone was ringing, I made to push the Silence switch whilst maintaining eye contact and conversation. Having switched it to silent, after a few moments I realised I could still hear it.
Desperate NOT to break the conversation I switched the switch the other way but to now avail. It was so very quiet, I'm not sure that my conversational partners were aware of anything more than that my hand kept going to my jacket pocket. Eventually I gave up and apologised. Both men, probably so used to folk answering their phones and interrupting conversation made nothing of it.

I looked at my phone and realised why I couldn't switch it to silent for rather than 'Missed Call' -  I read 'Alarm - Prayer' - I switched the alarm off to continue  the conversation but my two partners had in that instant moved on to a conversation between themselves.

Now here's the thing and it may seem a 'Silly Pietistic Question' - but 'do I allow time with Christ to interrupt other conversations?' Of course one may well respond that in conversing with my fellow Christians I was engaged in some form of corporate prayer, that I am encountering Christ in them - except that to my mind that that smacks ever so slightly of a theology of 'praxis after the fact' - "we have to act this way, so let us find a theological sounding argument to make it Right". It is The Way of the World.

Because we rarely now pray together, because "there are so many things in life that are so pressing that we cannot any longer allow ourselves the luxury of shared fixed hours of prayer", have we made prayer all but impossible - that even 'a modern Angelus' is No Thing, an ephemerality, a twig on a wide and easy river, to be ignored at will.

In pondering this I come back to the First Thing - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength", that it is ONLY in seeking to fulfill that command that we can begin to know what is the Love wherewith we might Love our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus himself seemed to have little compunction in withdrawing from the clamour of need

I don't answer my phone when in conversation because I think it rude, but perhaps there is a certain rudeness called for, rudeness towards the concept that 'Prayer just isn't a possibility in the modern world' - perhaps that is one call I should be answering without exception?

After all, it is an Alarm, a 'Wake Up!' call?

Sermon for Advent Sunday

 ADVENT SUNDAY 2011

ISAIAH 64:1-9

-

MK 13:24-37

What are you looking for? John 1:38

One of the most intriguing, perplexing, at times Wonderful but usually downright exasperating things about human beings is that for all we are meant to be set apart from other creatures by the size of our brains and our power of rational thought – we are precisely not.

For example – I KNOW that a healthy diet and exercise will make me feel better – I KNOW not only that fatty and sugary foods are bad for me, that excess carbohydrate makes me feel bloated and uncomfortable. Not only do I know these things are true, with my background in life sciences as well as Physics, I know precisely why they are  true, BUT do I ever say ‘NO!’ to a piece of home baked chocolate cake or manage to avoid that late night bread and honey treat? No, I don’t. If I ever drop dead from a heart attack, my last thought may well be, ‘I can’t say I didn’t see that one coming!’

Or take my love affair with my Kindle. Now I know that it is cleverly designed to interact with my deep seated book buying compulsion and thus progressively empty my bank account. I know that – ‘in under a minute’ - from the comfort of my own chair I can be reading a book carefully suggested to me by a computer programme devoted entirely to finding books I am likely to buy. The Calorie free alternative to Chocolate fudge cake!! But does this knowledge stop me compulsively buying books? NO! Does it reveal a Life not controlled by rational impulses? You bet!

Well after that insight about myself what follows may just be a simple case of projection, but I see the same irrational behaviour all around me. From the economy to the environment – we live in an age where we are better informed than ever about precisely why what we are doing is No Good! The World’s Economic order based on the ludicrous suggestion of infinite Credit has finally come to its logical conclusion and No one could really say ‘Well we didn’t see that one coming!’ – The Worlds leaders meet again very soon once more to say ‘Something must be done!’ about the rapidly advancing global climate catastrophe – but forgive me if I sound more than a little hopeless regarding the outcome, especially when we are caught by our need to further expand our economies . . .

You see, for all our rationality ( and I think we must admit that animals behave far more rationally than humans ) we fail to understand the human condition if we ignore the fact that it is not our rationality which controls us. As my daughter put it on her recent facebook status “Reason is in slavery to the desires of our hearts”.

Put another way, our Desires or our Longings are what guide and direct our lives – our restless hearts are much more evident in the lives we leads than our supposed rationality.

Of course this can be neatly covered up. We may lead what to the outsider look incredibly orderly rational lives. I know for years I did in many respects – until I was ordained!! Now I know that in some people’s eye’s seeking ordination is in itself a sign of a kind of madness – but what completely threw me was how ‘out of control’ my life became when I started my life as a Priest. And it came to me that this was for a very obvious reason, that by and large from the age of 5, first as a school pupil, then a university student, then as a school teacher – my life was ordered by bells, by timetables. I wasn’t free to do what I wanted and I believed that I was highly Rational and organized in my being, but actually it was my Bine that was being organized, by timetables and bells. And this showed itself especially in my struggle to pray. When I’d been a school teacher, I had to leave home each morning at 6.30 so I got up at 5 to pray. It was the only time I could, so I did. And then once ordained, well I had all the time in the day to pray – and it became a real struggle. I knew I Should be praying, but I discovered that in my heart of hearts I didn’t really want to, other things seemed ot be more important.

I remember talking with my spiritual director about this and how I just wanted to go and live in a monastery and so have my prayer directed by bells – and she fairly firmly reminded me that as I was married with children that that wasn’t an option!!  - and indeed, that  it was better for me to face the desire of my heart, my lack of desire for God rather than kid myself as I had been all along to that point.

When Jesus started his ministry and folk started to follow him, he asked them the most pertinent question of all – What are you looking for? What is the desire of your heart? What are you looking for? What in your heart of hearts do you Really want??

            So on this Advent Sunday I think it is worth asking that question. Confronted as we are with this Shockingly Powerful image from the Gospel ‘But in those days, . . . , the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Is this what we are looking for, what in our heart of hearts we really want?? Because Advent is about looking precisely for this – the consummation of all things – crying with the Prophet Isaiah – Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! Waiting for this – as the prophet goes on - From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

Advent is a time of Waiting – of waiting on God, of waiting for God – and at first like the prophet we all say – Yes – Of course I want this Life of God to break out into the world – but Advent is a Long time to wait – longer than ever this year – four whole weeks – and we are offered disciplines for these special times – disciplines which help us to wait, but which also Test the reality of our desire for Him. Everyone has a leaflet suggesting ways in which we might Wait on God this Advent – particularly Waiting on God as we begin to discern together where God may wish to take us as a church. And it is worth taking up a discipline with which we are not comfortable. We may spend much time in prayer – good – then perhaps a little fasting might be in order, or one of the other suggestions. Why? Because it is God’s desire we are seeking, not our own and we all too easily confuse the two. That is why I suggest meeting with someone you do not know very well and sharing together about what you think God may wish for our church, because then you may well discover that what you thought was God was really YOU – as Another voice is given space.

You see what happens? This is a Reality Check. After affirming confidently that God works for those who wait for him, it becomes clear that he waiting reveals a different reality. The prophet goes on - You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We waited for you – but our waiting revealed we didn’t want to wait – we didn’t desire your heart above all  - our waiting revealed the state of our hearts, we didn’t Wait, we sinned – the prophet goes on We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. The Waiting reveals the true longing of our heart and it is Not for God – He goes on There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

The prophet realizes that that cry of his heart ‘Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence’ was untrue. The reality is ‘there is no one who calls on your name’.  These next four weeks I am asking the church to join me in the work I have been doing since I arrived, to seek God’s heart for the future of the church here. Might I suggest that at the beginning you take a few minutes as I have done, to write down what you think that is. And then through Advent, use one or more of the exercises I have suggested to Wait on God. Take time. So often churches do exercises like this and everyone writes down what They would like to see – but as God’s children, it’s not about Us – its about what He desires for us – and if at the end of Advent, All we have achieved is to come to the realization that we don’t want what God wants, whatever it may be, but that in reality we want what we want and we honestly face up to that, then we will have made a GREAT stride forward. If we follow the prophet through this passage in Isaiah 64 as far as Verse 7 and declare ‘There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you’, at least we will be living in reality and not deceiving ourselves – we will have seen the reality of our own hearts, and that is a Good Thing – BUT . . . HOW do we respond to this apprehension that in our heart of hearts we do not want what God wants but what we want???

There are two possible responses – despair – look at the state of my heart, what hope is there?? Or the Great theme of Advent – Yes There is Hope – in God alone. The prophet realizing that his own hearts desires have led him Far Far astray puts himself into God’s hands Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever. Now consider, we are all your people.

We are all the work of your hand, We are the clay, you are the potter – You are the potter – we are clay in your hands.

I very recently put myself in the hands of another – I’d been having trouble right up high in my neck and my head – so I went to see Chris Soul – I had a massage as he went to work on what can only be described as the Dry and lumpy clay of my muscles – but the fascinating thing for me was how he focused on my feet – that getting my legs and my back and my neck straightened out  - he had to start with my feet – he had to go to work on the root of the problem – start from the base up.

            Christ the coming one goes to work on us from the root of our problems – if we wait on Him, wait For Him. It may well be that like the massage it is pretty painful – but I put myself in Chris’s hands because I knew there was a problem that needed sorting out and I trusted him.

In the end – the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. When I was being interviewed for this post I asked the nominators – what do you think God wants to do amongst you –and received some encouraging replies – what I didn’t ask was the most important follow up – because I couldn’t ask this without taking time to listen carefully to my own response – which is  - If that Is what God wants, Is it what You want?? What are we looking for?

This Advent, let us wait on Him, allow Him to speak to our hearts and so work on them and transform them that when He Comes to dwell among us our hearts may not be afraid, but full of Heavenly Joy at his appearing. So that we may declare in truth with the prophet – Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence!!

Amen

"The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed"

I am graced with several friends who are in there own ways truly saintly. Some in ways about which I can freely talk, like my good friend 'The Shepherd of the Moss' - a priest in a tough parish, doing work only he could do - quietly, and unassumingly. The sort of person the church should make bishop, but lacks the Wisdom so to do. Others whom carry at times intolerable burdens known to very few, yet whose lives are pure gift. All of whom get on with that hidden work that really makes a difference.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus he repeatedly speaks in veiled [sic] terms. From the parables which are hidden messages, heard yet not understood, to his reuqests oft ignored to tell no-one, to his counsel on piety that is in secret.

This doesn't please his hearers and often doesn't impress itself upon our consciousness either. We want the visible, the earthshaking, the dramatic, the spectacular, the successful, the powerful - and yet we follow one who eschewed all of this. 

I wonder if we really get it?

Thomas Merton suggested that there were probably only two people in the world who really prayed and that all of creation was held together by their work. I think he got it.

First things First

One of the Jarring differences I've noticed between England and New Zealand in the few weeks I've been here, has been the far greater advance of Secularism as a universal understanding of the ordering of Society over here.

'God' it seems, has been all but wiped from the Horizon of public life. 

Folk I talked to ahead of flying out will know I was already alert to this. [But then Encounter is always different from 'knowing the facts' as theologically alert people should know.]
        This difference has Encountered Me firstly, in the context of schools. Whilst in England I was part of a very helpful programme for teaching Bible stories called 'Open the Book'. The demand from local schools for this was overwhelming at times and those I worked with, neither of them church schools, had nothing but praise for the scheme and the church members who freely gave of their time to participate - indeed one school came to church each term  for an 'OtB Special'. Contrast that with the situation here where I am told that the few remaining doors to school are being progressively and rapidly closed to any form of explicit Christian faith.

This was brought home in the starkest terms when I heard of the proposed appointment of a school 'chaplain', who is not allowed to take assemblies, teach RE or speak of God. Whilst I see that the appointment of a school chaplain in such a secular context is not to be sniffed at, it is still an example of the eradication of 'God'.

I do not for a moment think that this will not happen back in the UK,  there have been lots of signs of this for a long while, but it has happened far more rapidly here. Not least because Christendom really Happened in Britain rather than being imported on its last legs. Like a flower inadvertently carried across the tropics in a shipping container, it was never going to take root in the soil of Aotearoa and so as Modernism's grip has closed vice-like on our souls - Christendom is compost - or 'Custard' as I believe we say over here.

[Indeed Roots and History are topics  well worth reflecting further on in this regard, especially in a society where at times the History Curriculum is dominated, as I learnt today, by the 80's and 90's and goes back only a little over a hundred years in total. (And Yes, I do mean the 1980's and 1990's. . . - more of that another time perhaps)]

So whither the churches in this Saeculum - or should that be wither?
How Have we been responding?

Perhaps the central element of the churches response to these changes in the Old Country has been to try and adapt to the changing circumstances by being Relevant. But rather bluntly, this puts me in mind of the story of the French 'Revolutionary' sat at a sidewalk cafe - who sees the Mob rush by and declares 'there go my people, I am their leader - I must follow them!!' There is much talk about the Revolutionary message we bear as Christians but our action as the church often seems to mimic our deluded ami.

This 'Quest for Relevance' seems to go back to the 1960's, at least in England -   [those who argue there are elements of it before the Reformation are not to be dismissed, but time doesn't allow] - and two images sum it up for me.
       One is the search for a new, more Accessible prayer book [For folk who think Contemporary liturgy and services is The Answer, a look at the timeline for church attendance and the beginning of the moves away from 1662 might perhaps call this into question, along with progressive changes to liturgy which have accompanied the accelerating decline]
        The second a Black and White photo I remember seeing, of an elderly cleric in a cassock and collar 'getting down' at a disco amongst a group of clearly half bemused and half disinterested 'young people'. OUCH - brief pause to recover my composure . . .

This quest for Relevance has had one underlying and oft unexamined guiding theme throughout - that as Christians 'we're all about people - people is what we are about - we're people centered' . So people centered that our Contemporary songs are 'All about Me, Jesus' For a Very Painful reminder of this - Click Here.
        In other words in our search for relevance in an age where God is wiped from wider consciousness our response  has been to do the same, to put the Human at the centre of all things and effectively removing Him from the centre, keeping 'God' out of it.

The great Message of Christianity in This age contrary to those that have gone before is  'You're OK and indeed you can be even Better!' [This came home to me Very sharply listening to someone trying to sum up the Distinctive Ethos of a church school. I've been associated with several over the years and have heard this tune replayed over and over again these past years - 'we as Christians have a unique understanding of the amazing potential of human beings' ]

A Key element of the Christian message is 'Actually we are Not OK!' and this whole bloody Dying on a Cross thing is a sign that God cares enough to do something about it - The Love of God is not a warm acceptance blanket - but a fiery determination not to let our self centredness have the last world in a World he is literally Passionate about.

The horrible irony is this - we as Christians are often accused by our noisy detractors of being deluded, that this whole God business is nonsense, in an age when We have largely given up on this whole God business!
What is more in doing so, we are Truly deluded, for a moment's attention to the news, to our neighbourhoods and indeed to our hearts tell us we are Not OK, that we need Saving from and for the Sake of the World.

In a world where people look around and ask, 'who on Earth can get us out of this?'  We seem to have forgotten who we are, the people of God. We have forgotten the deepest stories of our faith - our roots, that our Life is a Gift of God and Only makes any sense at all when understood in His light. That Human only has any meaning at all Precisely because God says so - our lives only have Dignity because of God, and we Know this because he deigns to come to us and address us and tells us to stand up and face him.

Without God we have no sense of what it is to be human, without the trascendent, the imminent collapses in on itself and All is reduced to Nothing.

At the beginning of most services in the historic denominations we are reminded of this week by week - we hear the words 'Our Lord, Jesus Christ said, the First Commandment is this, the Lord our God is the only Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. . . .' Yes, I know there is a second part, but as in all orders the second follows the first, without the first there is no second. And having reminded ourselves that our focus should be on God we turn to Him in confession - to agree that we are not OK.

In the wonderful words of Hosea (6:4) we acknowledge our love for God is like the morning dew, that goes away early - but as the prophet goes on later, when our love for God Is like the morning mist - it is We who disappear like the morning dew (13:3). God doesn't disappear - we do and that is the story of our age that when the human is centre the human disappears - witness the C20.

Week by week we hear that our Life comes only from God - we acknowledge we have forgotten that. It is Only in this turn to God and Not in the turn to the World that the Church can become a beacon of Light.

This is why I feel privileged to come and serve under a Bishop, Kelvin Wright who recognises that without Prayer we are without Hope - that only in returning  to God does the church have a future and through the future of the Church, the World has Hope.

In this Age - Prayer is a counter cultural activity as much as anything - it speaks of a people whose lives are Other directed, rather than self centered - however self centered our praying may be at times - when we pray we acknowledge that we are not God and our hope is in Him, not ourselves.
         Looking out at the Church and the World, we have a crying need for this Other direction. For it is only when we are Other directed that we can truly begin the hard business of obeying the second command and Loving our Neighbour as ourselves, for the sake of the World and the greater Glory of God..