Thought for the Month October 2021

“God doesn’t do fairness”

I don’t often shout at our TV set, but hearing this, I could barely restrain my anger. It came in a programme about the murder of Rachel Nickell – her son, who at the age of 2 witnessed the attack and was also injured in it, was returning to the UK and speaking for the first time to people involved in the investigation. When he confronted a reporter about the appalling behaviour of the press towards his father, that’s what the man said.

The word “evil” was only used once in the programme, and it referred not to the murder, which self-evidently was evil, but to the way the media covered it at the time – reporters chanting racist abuse at the father, for example, for refusing to pose for a photo. To me, it felt as if the reporter who spoke on the programme was abdicating all moral responsibility for what happened – for the behaviour of the group, and his own part in it. Even looking back and seeing the pain this had caused, there was no expression of remorse. If there was pain, to him it was God’s fault.

We live in a world where dreadful things happen. But is this a sign of God’s unfairness?

When an aeroplane crashes, was it because God failed to intervene? Or was it because if you go up into the skies in a tin can loaded with volatile fuel, statistically an accident will eventually happen?

How many of what some people still call “acts of God” – flood, famine, drought – are actually caused in essence by human behaviour?

How many of the ignorant bigots who claimed that the AIDS epidemic was God punishing homosexuals have postulated that he has it in for the victims of COVID as well?

But of course, there are still so many examples of needless suffering in the world, or events where a slight change might have led to a hugely different and, presumably better, outcome. Do we lay the blame for these at God’s door? It’s a huge question and better minds than mine (there are a few!) have grappled with it, sometimes in vain; I can only offer my own view, for what it’s worth. I think we have first to go back to the beginning, and in our case, this means the story of Adam and Eve. It is capable of several interpretations, but all of them confront the question of why the world is like it is, why something that could have been perfect manifestly isn’t. To me, it is about Man seizing the chance to choose, to make moral choices, and God’s response that Man then accepts the moral responsibility for those choices and also their consequences. And in seeking power and pursuing self-interest, inevitably there will be suffering and inequality; there will be change and impermanence; and these are the terms on which we have the world, with mutability and ageing and death built into what it is to be human.

This may be the deal, but look at the small print, and the big print too.

The world also has grace, and this seems to be part of the equation too. People given terminal diagnoses recover. You just miss the Underground train that had the bomb on it. You give birth to a child and experience joy – after pain – that you didn’t dream was possible.

If God is unfair, he errs (if that is possible!) on the side of generosity. We come into this world with a huge credit balance of grace. For us to get here, our ancestors survived the Black Death, wars, plague, pestilence; if they fought in the First World War they survived it; and the Second. My mum survived diphtheria and scarlet fever, so I made it here. The line of descent that links her back through the centuries to Adam and Eve was not broken.  Hurrah! (Some might say.)

What happened to Jesus wasn’t fair. It was a fixed trial. The wrong man got free. But through that came redemption and reconciliation of God and man. It was so great an offering of himself that my humble mind can’t fully grasp it, but can only be amazedly grateful for the mystery of such grace.

It seems to me that what we have to do is to make grace more possible, to provide openings in this world for grace to operate. Just as the doctor’s skill provides the possibility of healing when all hope seemed gone, so too we can bring cure and comfort to our fallen world. When King Lear goes out into a pitiless storm, he prays that all those with wealth and power will show compassion to those without it, “shake the superflux to them / And show the heavens more just”. We can through our actions, with what we do with who we are, and what we have, be agents for the stupendous, undeserved yet freely given, love of God.

DAVID

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men. We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ: for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end.  Amen.

Thought for the Month – September 2021

It would be hard I’m sure, not to have had some thoughts or point of view over the recent events surrounding the complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, in particular the humanitarian tragedy that continues to unfold with it. You can debate in earnest as to the political perspective of why it happened, but what you cannot argue over is that there have been catastrophic consequences for the Afghan people, consequences that require both a shared and unequivocal response to aid them with their devastating plight. Reports state that over 100,000 have been evacuated, relocated globally to escape persecution or worse, though an estimated 250,000 remain who also have rights to be relocated due to their assistance given to the occupying forces, but who now cannot escape as routes are closed and so are making for the awaiting people traffickers at the various borders. The one thing they all have in common is their label ‘refugee’ and if we are honest, that word conjures up all variety of connotations for any country that steps up to offer them assistance, especially where words such as ‘Immigrants’ and ‘refugees’ hotly fuel the divide of the political spectrum.

Setting aside the political context of their displacement, there remains the fundamental need to stop seeing our fellow human beings as statistics, as a mere consequence of foreign policy or yet another stereotypical social burden as they land upon our shores, because like it or not, the reality is that they are essentially you and me, only a lot less fortunate in circumstance. However, that reality will probably not shield them from still being treated differently, either because of an uncommon culture or a perceived (media generated) beneficial advantage, obtained without being earned, which serves to create the divisive ‘them and us’ scenario. Whatever private views we may hold as individuals, we are all very much called to be unified through our Christian faith in ‘loving our neighbour’, which is why I could see God’s timely message of what is required of us, right there within the lectionary readings for this week. (James Ch.2 v1-v17, Mark Ch.7 v24-v30)

There is a tangible reflective comparison between the church that James was writing to and that of more modern times. The people of his church are seemingly convinced enough of the truth of the Gospel, enough to declare they have a faith, and they also like to meet regularly to display their Christian credentials, albeit it through words alone, along with the proviso that it doesn’t affect or change everyday life too much. They also apparently still choose who they wish to regard as one of their own, they prefer rich people to poor, clean people to dirty ones and those of status over those who have none, after all who doesn’t? They declare that through being people of faith, this is all that is required to be called a Christian and from which they will receive due favour from God, a kind of insurance policy for when times are hard or when the final judgement arrives, and so I thought “would it really be so unfair of me if I were to recognise similar contemporary comparisons, echoing around us today?”

The church that James writes to has adopted a ‘justification through faith alone’ theology, which also means “I believe therefore I am saved, and I really don’t have to do much more than that”. James categorically points out to them that this is not the case and faith without works has no substance, no life, in his own words it is ‘dead’. Now some might think that they would prefer Paul’s approach to the importance of faith and to our justification without works, after all it sounds a lot easier, but that would be taking his words out of context and would need a sermon of its own to explain why. In essence though, whether you prefer the thinking of James or of Paul, they both advocate that boasting about faith without works or vice versa, is not a path to salvation on its own, it requires a balance of demonstrating the depth of your faith by being ‘Christ active’ in the world around us. James writes in order to encourage his readers to live consistently with what they have learned in Christ, he wants his readers to mature in their faith in Christ by living what they say they believe, or as he so eloquently puts it, “fulfil the royal law according to scripture” but just how should we go about it?

There are so many things wrong in the world that it would be easy to become overwhelmed as to what we can actually and realistically achieve in changing it. The more you give and do, the more it seems will be asked of you, and if not careful, leaves you at risk of charitable burn out, it’s a human condition and not a measure of your faith. I sensed this in Jesus himself when reading today’s Gospel account, where He takes himself off to Tyre to get away from it all and to not be recognised, but as we all know, there is no escaping the needs of others and soon finds himself being asked of yet one more miracle, one more on top of the countless He has already performed. This time it’s the pleading of a Gentile, not for herself but that of her sick daughter, and it invokes a surprising response from Jesus, one not mentioned elsewhere in His ministry. He uses a derogatory description of both her and her daughter as ‘dogs’ and I wondered as to why He was being so provocative? Was it a test? Did He perceive her as just one more person wanting something from Him with nothing in return? Did she ask because she had a faith in what He could do or just because of the rumours that said He was able to? Was He simply just having a bad day, perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed, tired and fed up, just like we experience? Whatever it was I do think He was surprised at her unassuming response, so full of humility and yet a potent claim to be recognised, not as a dog, not as a Gentile but one that is rightfully deserving of His love, just like the other ‘children’ He referred to.

It serves as a wonderful reminder that when you remove the tags that society give people, the ones that they fear, such as refugee, asylum seeker, immigrant and so on, that underneath we find ourselves simply looking at our own reflection, for we are all children of God and He has no favourites, so nor should we when it comes to helping others. It’s because of this that we have some amazing people out there doing just that, there are so many different people and organisations rallying to the desperate needs of the Afghan people, being Christ active with charitable donations of all description, all given over in the name of love for a fellow human being, it is so incredibly uplifting to witness that it begs the question, how good would it feel to actually take part?

Have you ever had that moment when someone laughs and it is so infectious that you find yourself laughing too, without really knowing why? Well, I believe being kind has the exact same effect, when someone does you the smallest act of kindness, the positivity of the experience causes a chain reaction within our spirit, one that perhaps without realising, causes us to do likewise to another, which makes them feel good, and so on. Maybe that is how we begin to change the world, one small deed at a time, using the multiplicity of one small act of kindness, so powerful and yet not overwhelming, available to all and always available to give.    Amen.   Danny

God, no one is a stranger to you

and no one is ever far from your loving care.

In your kindness watch over migrants, refugees and asylum seekers,

Ease the heartache of those separated from their loved ones,

Give hope to those who are lost,

and fortitude to those who have been exiled from their homes.

Bring them all safely to the place where they long to be,

somewhere safe and welcoming,

Heavenly Father, help us always to be Christ Active,

 to show your kindness to strangers as well as loved ones

and especially to those in need.

We ask this through Christ our Lord,

who was also a refugee and migrant,

who travelled to another land,

searching for a place to call home,

a reminder to us all.

Amen

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I missed most about having church services delivered by Zoom was the music. For all Tony’s sterling efforts for Roxwell, things just did not seem the same without it; it was similar at Cooksmill Green, where some lovely tracks were posted online, but with the sheer physical oomph of singing, the sweat and the tears, (mercifully in my case!) edited out. Singing is a physical activity, and like all athletics, if you stop doing it, things start seizing up. When we began again, the high notes had got lower and the low notes higher and if you leave it too long, like hairline and waistline, they disappear altogether. It was cruelly ironic then to watch the crowds chanting during the Euro finals – but instructive too. They had no formal training, no choirmaster to bring them in, but singing flat out as a group, they coped with a difficult song like It’s coming home – nearly a dirge with very little melody, but somehow they found it. Conversely, one of the best things about restarting has been the singing outside – almost everyone joins in, there seems little self-consciousness and the results are surprisingly – like the football fans – accurate. We should have the same feeling of unity, of pride, that the Church in Cooksmill and Roxwell is coming home, it’s coming home.  

You might well ask why bother to do the singing in church – why not go to a football match instead? Well, apart from the obvious that if you go to any of the clubs within a hundred mile radius, you aren’t going to win a title in your lifetime – it comes down to what you sing. Hymns are poetry – sometimes, perhaps most of the time, they are not very good poetry – and poetry does things to you. The first, and most telling thing it does to you is to put you in a position that may not have been yours, may never be yours, so that you empathise with the poet and identify with the experience. It takes you into new places. Take, for example, perhaps the greatest poem you will find in your hymn book – Jerusalem. It begins with a series of questions to which the answer is an emphatic no at every point.  Did the feet of Jesus walk upon England’s mountains green – unlikely, to say the least. But Blake asks us to imagine, just imagine that Christ had looked upon England – when he was alive, or when Blake was alive, or when we are alive. What would he have thought of it – and if we don’t like the answer “not much” then what are we going to do about it? The second verse similarly doesn’t make sense in any literal sense, but as a commitment to “mental fight”, to struggle to make things better in our country, a quest in which through singing the hymn we are joined, it is unequalled. It does of course help that the music matches the magnificence of the language. Or take another great hymn, Be still for the presence of the Lord. The first two verses take us into the story of the Transfiguration: it as if we were there with the disciples. But the third verse brings us back again to here and now. We are told to be still and to sense the power of God here, in this place, but more – that power is moving and we have to move with it. And the wonderfully simple music will sweep us up into that movement. If we let it. If we let ourselves go with it.

Another aspect of hymns is their theology or doctrine. We still sing hymns from the Middle Ages so it’s not surprising that in doing so you tap into ideas about God that have markedly changed. Some of the changes are for the better – I suspect, for example, a hymn I sang at primary school, Over the seas there are little brown children is not poised for a comeback! But when many modern hymns are pretty empty of content, it is instructive to hear, instead of Trust and obey – there is no other way the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice explored in Praise to the holiest in the height:  

“O wisest love, that flesh and blood

Which did in Adam fail

Should strive afresh against the foe

Should strive and should prevail”

The image of an ongoing  battle with the Devil, that in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection God showed “wisest love”, these are not ideas that figure in bland “Yes, Jesus loves me” theology; but they take us to a deeper and possibly more challenging understanding of a God who can be angry with human beings and their failings, yet never willing to give up on them: that Jesus’s death represented a “satisfaction”, a making good, a restoration of the relationship between God and Man.

Finally, I would stress that music is a mystery. We don’t know why it works – you can analyse it to the last crotchet without being able to say why it has such an effect on us. It is a unique gift of God to mankind. No other creature has it in anything other than a rudimentary form. Interestingly, it is manifestly imperfect. If you divide the eight note scale, the basis of most Western music, equally by mathematical frequency, harmony and melody disintegrate. They need to be wrong to be right. It is as if God takes human imperfection and turns it into divine praise. It is not for nothing that one of our abiding images of heaven is of singing, of an angelic choir. And I can tell you that every person in our local choirs will have had the experience – probably not often, but every now and again – when something happens when you sing – the music, the words, the physical act of singing combine together to turn into something that transcends our daily ordinariness and raises us closer to God. So, it is a cliché but it is deeply true: when you sing out you let yourself go, you lose yourself in it, you are taken out of yourself. It can, it should be a heightened religious experience. And God will, I promise, bless you for it. And forgive the occasional wrong note!

David.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of music.

For the many beautiful hymns written over the centuries

And for the artistry of those who have written them.

Open our ears and eyes to the words that teach us of You.

Thank you for the composers of the music,

Which help us to lift those words to You

In thanksgiving and praise.

Take our voices, and let them sing

Always, only, for our King.

Amen

Thought for the Week 18^th July 2021

 How Does Faith Help Me Cope?

I cannot imagine that there is anybody reading this today who has not been affected in some way by the event that we now commonly call the Covid Pandemic. The last 15 months have challenged and altered all that we might regard as ‘normal’, especially in the way we might choose to live our daily lives. There has been a constant dialogue concerning the statistics that have steered the global response to control the spread of the virus and we are now very used to daily updates on how many have been infected, hospitalised and sadly died in order to determine the risk to both our public and personal health. It is only recently though that the Covid dialogue is now introducing the next risk to consider, that of the psychological impact upon our mental health. Prolonged periods of imposed social control measures have seen us endure a domestic confinement that has caused isolation, anxiety, stress, loneliness, even perhaps an apathy towards a life that we feel we no longer control and of course who knew how much the value of a loved one’s hug could mean, until it was denied to us. This lengthy exposure to such negative emotional stimuli exacts a price upon what we call our ‘wellbeing’, and that term is creeping into daily conversations more and more in a good way as people begin to realise that they not only need to talk about it, but want too as well, which is something we generally are not very good at if we are being honest.

It was for this reason that I was recently asked to deliver a local sermon on ‘wellbeing’ and how our faith might help us to deal with all those negative emotions of Covid. I did some research and found that psychologists make much of what they call ‘coping mechanisms’ which is something we all possess (even if we cannot always recognise them) in order to survive the psychological pressure found in the life that we lead. These coping mechanisms take many forms and are tailored to our individual perceptions of how we fit into the world, which is an important fact to bear in mind, as what is good for you may not necessarily work for the person beside you and vice versa, so trying to impose your idea of how to cope onto someone else often doesn’t work and can actually do more harm than good, basically it means that sometimes just simply listening is better than telling.

My approach to the given topic of how faith helps us deal with life, was to ask myself what life would be like if I didn’t have a faith, if I woke up tomorrow and simply decided that God no longer existed for me. I would recommend this as a deeply introspective method of both reflecting on and evaluating, your own relationship with God by simply asking yourself “what sort of person would I be or who would be my guiding light, if God didn’t exist?”. The results can give sobering insight into what perhaps you may take for granted in believing that He does.

After deeply pondering on the matter, I came up with five coping mechanisms that faith provides me and tried to imagine a life without them. You may find they are the same ones for you too or you may discover others, either way they are something to think about in the week ahead.

Forgiveness – In the forgiving of others we release ourselves from the cold chains of all those negative feelings we may harbour, feelings that seek only to harm us, entrap us, whereas forgiveness is a release that gives room for a spiritual peace of mind and the healing balm of love. Anyone who truly repents before God surely feels the weight of guilty wrongdoing wiped clean from heart, mind and soul and therefore should recognise that we possess the same power to unburden others, to heal through the act of forgiveness. The next time you say the Lord’s prayer give some thought and emphasis to the lines ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others who trespass against us’ and recognise why they are there, why He gave them to us, not just to say but also to do.

Prayer – Talking is an amazing pressure release valve, getting all our deepest darkest thoughts and feelings out into the light, however, a key enabler of this cathartic process is trust. Giving over the most vulnerable part of our inner self, exposing ourselves to potential judgement or ridicule is really challenging and for some an impossible task. Talking to God through prayer, offers us the most secure, confidential and trustworthy way of expressing all that burdens our sense of wellbeing, and He is an amazing listener! Read again the words of Psalm 77 and picture the person lying in bed at night, unable to sleep due to their constant worrying about life and how they ask where God is at this time of need, sounds familiar maybe? In talking to God our worrying Psalmist suddenly recalls what God has already done for them and is forever capable of doing and so finds much needed solace in a renewed hope for a better future. Talking to God is good for us.

Scripture – God has a message to give to us through everything you read in His Word. The smallest of things we browse upon might not always look so important or relevant at the time, but God has a truth for us hidden in every single story and in every sentence, especially when our hearts feel what our eyes deliver. If you go to the Bible looking for a guiding reference to ‘wellbeing’, then you are going to be disappointed of course, different time, different language, but that does not mean its essence is not to be found, you just unlock it with a different key. When you read Paul’s letter to the Phillipians, read it as though it was sent to you personally and then the expanse of time becomes irrelevant. Paul’s message remains the same, talk to God through prayer and concentrate on the positive things you have in life, continue to live them and in doing so you will find the peace you desire, it really can be that simple whilst remaining incredibly liberating to the soul.

Hope- I once heard hope described as the ‘fuel of motivation’ which is so true, for when hope has seemingly left us, the will to prevail so often goes with it. It is a potent emotion that feeds our wellbeing with a resilience to endure all hardships, simply because the outcome is not inevitable, even when all seems lost. This week On the Church of England Twitter feed someone wrote the following, ‘It is never so dark that the radiance of Christ cannot illuminate the way, though sometimes the light seems very faint indeed’. There is both truth and honesty in that statement, as it is the long shadows of our emotional and spiritual despair that can reduce this radiance of hope that Christ brings, but it will never be extinguished, not if we hold onto our faith to the last.

Love – Jesus was asked what is the greatest of the commandments and His answer was clear ‘Love’. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, the sum parts of what we call ‘wellbeing’, and so, if we immerse everything that we are in love, that is all our thoughts words and deeds, we begin to live a life in God and through God we can endure all things. We are also commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves, called to love, care and nurture in the world around us but importantly to love ourselves too. If we do not take care of our own wellbeing by making time to heal ourselves, by actively keeping our emotional and spiritual resolve strong, what good can we be to others?

In the words of The Beatles……All you need is Love, Love is all you need…

So, there are my five elements of Faith as a coping mechanism for life and as I already said you may possibly recognise them as your own ‘tools in the box’ for maintenance of your wellbeing or indeed have others, but certainly do have a think about what coping mechanisms you already have in life generally and to what degree is faith one of them.

In writing this thought for the week I have concluded that I really do not want to imagine a world in which God does not exist, no guardian of my life, no beacon of eternal hope, no refuge from life’s storms, that’s like standing in the darkest of rooms and the light bulb has just blown, darkness, nothing but darkness, no thanks, not for me. Amen.

Danny

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
    He restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil.
For you are with me,
    your rod and your staff
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies,
You anoint my head with oil,
    my cup overflows.
Surelygoodness and mercyshall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.

Amen.

Thought for the Week 11^th July 2021

On Monday, in all the Old Vicarages and Rectories that haven’t already been sold off by the C of E, you will have heard nervous tinkling of teaspoon in saucer and barely suppressed groans as clergy in their parishes (how much longer will we be able to use that phrase?) start to prepare their sermons for this Sunday and see that the set Gospel (Mark 6: 14-29) is the story of how John the Baptist was executed after Herod’s stepdaughter (identified elsewhere as Salome) danced for the king and demanded the prophet’s  head as the price. It’s obviously important to Mark, whose gospel is the shortest and includes nothing of the Nativity but who begins by focusing on John and later takes care to include the circumstances of his death. It is a strange, gruesome story – one you might sooner expect to find in the ancient Old Testament or in Aesop’s fables, yet one rooted in modern recorded history and its personages. But it isn’t easy to work out what it is saying to us.  I imagine that many a priest will turn with relief to the Epistle and preach on that instead.

Not me.

I began by looking on Google to see how the message of the story has been interpreted elsewhere, and I was quite shocked to come across this:

• Divorce is always wrong.
• Women should always be ruled by men.
• Dancing should not include any erotic element. (You can do the okey-cokey as long as you don’t shake it all about.)

I thought initially that this must be a spoof, but had to conclude that it isn’t. You might agree with this interpretation, in which case go back to your cave and read no further. To me it is a wilful travesty.

I think you get closer to the meaning if you turn to the play on the subject, written (in French) by that well known expert on female sexuality, Oscar Wilde, which became the basis of the libretto of the famous – indeed, scandalous – opera by Richard Strauss. Wilde overall follows and builds upon the Biblical narrative, but makes one crucial change to the story – Salome does not dance for Herod because her mother Herodias wanted her to, and in fact overtly repudiated her mother’s guidance. She is completely amoral, indifferent to others, devoid of any principle beyond her own needs and pleasures. Fixated on John the Baptist, she never relates to him as a human being. She is doomed from the start.

John the Baptist is the other side of the same coin. Mark makes it clear that he is imprisoned not because of what he says about Christ: the bee in his bonnet is that Herodias divorced her husband Philip and married his brother Herod. He attacks her incessantly in misogynistic terms for contravening Jewish law. He could be said to choose imprisonment, to court death, to crave martyrdom. He too is doomed from the outset.

Between these two mirror extremes, the Herods show what happens when you compromise too far with the world. Herod’s policy is to appease the Roman Emperor in order to preserve the Jewish state (with himself as its ruler, of course). The world though extracts its price; Herod is in a state of moral limbo where every good principle he might have had has been betrayed, as the aphrodisiac of power, its exercise and its many perks, take their toll. He is enough of a Jew to be fascinated by what John says, but not enough of one to move outside his (pretty lavish) comfort zone.

They are each in their own way unattractive people in a death-haunted world.  And this is the point then: we are challenged to act differently from them. Firstly, although we can revere John as the forerunner of Jesus, this story shows how different the two are. If John had been the Messiah, there would have been no Christianity.  We though have the joy to follow a Saviour who was not obsessed with Jewish law, not anti-women, not viciously personal in his attacks on the political state, not deliberately provocative because he sought to die. Secondly, we must seek to avoid the trap into which the Herods have fallen – we are called to be a people who do what is right rather than what is expedient, to have some principles that we are not prepared to compromise. Thirdly, the story shows lost souls, each imprisoned in its own psyche, at sea in a cruel, pagan empire. But we can take to heart Christ’s message of deliverance from the cell of self, that he is come that we may have life, and that in its full abundance.

It’s enough to make you dance for delight – regardless of what Craig Revel Horwood might say about your footwork.

David

Heavenly Father

Forgive us for the times

We have acted to suit our own agenda,

And when we have simply followed the crowd.

Fill our hearts with wisdom, compassion and love.

Give us the courage and strength

To speak and act according your word.

Fill us with the joy of knowing you.

And may we spread that joy to others

In Jesus name.

Amen.

Thought for the Week 4^th July 2021

Reading Mark 6: 1-13

This week’s lectionary reading has two very distinct parts each of which is a big subject in its own right. Today I’d like to take a look at the second part ‘The mission of the twelve’ (verses 6b -13).

This instruction from Jesus to His disciples to go on a mission journey with no purse, no food no spare clothes…. appears in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke even say no staff. It’s a passage I’ve often worried about, as someone involved in Scouting, it flies in the face of the motto we espouse ‘Be Prepared’. I also wonder if it could lead to the philosophy of ‘live and let God’ a philosophy which could easily turn into an attitude that, because God is in control, we can abdicate all responsibility! That may seem a little harsh but how often do we hear God getting the blame – and how often do we hear God getting the thanks!

Some may say but surely Steve, as a Christian you must believe God is in control? Well yes, ultimately I do, but in the meantime God has given us the stewardship of this beautiful world, with enough resources for everyone (if some of us weren’t so greedy) and responsibility for each other, not just the ones we love. What He asks in return is that we acknowledge him as God and Creator, follow His codes as laid out by the prophets and Jesus, and finally to acknowledge what He did for us on the cross. We have choices and, on the whole, have responsibility for our own actions and responses.

Back to our reading. Many of you will know that in recent years I’ve become focussed on context and very cautious of passages, worse still sentences, taken from the bible and used out of context. So what’s going on in this passage? What is its context? Bearing in mind we can all gain different insights, I’d like to share a few thoughts.

I hope this doesn’t sound too trite, but I’ve come to think of the disciples during this particular episode as learner drivers, with Jesus the instructor in a dual control car. At this time Jesus is physically present, he may have sent them to other villages, but he’s still around, physically present and able to put His foot on the brake. It’s also only one episode in a period of around three years – Jesus’s ministry on earth. So what does it teach us and what is its relevance in 2021.

If we jump forward in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, there’s another occasion where Jesus talks about sending his disciples out. It happens during the period where Jesus is preparing his followers for what will happen at Calvary…

³⁵ And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” ³⁶ He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one… (Luke 22 35-36)

The instructor was no longer going to be with them, there would be no dual control. They, and we, must be ready and prepared. Yes it’s true, we have a highway code to refer to – the bible – and yes we have prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit which Jesus said would come. But in both these cases it requires action on our part for those to become fully effective in our lives.

If, following excellent instruction, we pass our driving test, then decide to ignore what we’ve learnt and start driving through the streets at break-neck speed and crash into a lamp post we can’t blame the instructor.

The teachings about our responsibilities for God’s creation are clear. ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small’ he made them every one – and we need to look after them, and each other. Sometimes that can be hard, for various reasons. But one thing that will help is to remember what Jeffery Hayward talked about last week at our anniversary service, the need to stay connected to the vine which is Jesus. To stretch the analogy, a vine fed from the root which is God, and watered by the Holy Spirit….. who knows what fruit might be harvested?

STEVE.

Heavenly Father

As we go out into the world this week,

Help us to be inspired by your word,

To feel your presence within us;

Guide us in our thoughts and actions

And make us ready to be the people

You would have us be.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen.

 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)