Yesterday, unusually, I didn’t preach – but listened to a very fine sermon on The Prodigal Son
Unfortunately I don’t have the text of it, but hope to post a recording at some stage
Month: March 2013
Through the Bible in a Year – March 11
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 21-22; 1 Cor 7; Psalm 89:1-18
In the current war over marriage, something is missing from the debate in the church, and that is the recognition that we have come to make an ‘absolute’ of marriage. For some it is an institution of the Essence of life which must be defended, to others it is a Right which must not be withheld from any. However Paul does not make it the zenith of human relating – and speaks of marriage within the community of faith as much as a remedy for sexual urges as anything, expressing the desire that all would be as he, unmarried (we assume). What is more he sees it as an obstacle to the fullness of obedient life – for the married are concerned with pleasing each other rather than the Lord. (Paul we note has little place for living towards God through our relationships – rather we might say his position is that better relationships are the fruit of our life towards God)
Jesus similarly relativises marriage in the Kingdom of God – in the age to come which by his death and resurrection he has inaugurated ‘they are neither married nor given in marriage’
Another point of some note however relates to Paul’s understanding of what it means to be Christian, that it is a change in Being, and radically so. As we know Paul tells us that the Christian is the New Creation, thus he says that the children of Christians, even if one partner is not a Christian, is holy – they do belong to God. In the occasionally rumbling arguments for or against infant baptism, this revolutionary perspective should perhaps be brought to bear?
Through the Bible in a Year – March 10
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 19-20; 1 Cor 6; Psalm 87-8
As we have made our way through the scriptures thus far, no doubt we shall be gradually coming to the realisation that we cannot master them. Much leaves us confused, or from our perspective seems alien. We may wonder if it can be reconciled with Christian life – do we have to reject parts of it? Yet what we miss is that the Scriptures, and uniquely perhaps in ‘religious writings’ we encounter a life giving encounter between the word of man and the Word of God.
The Scriptures are not handed down on tablets of stone – and in reading them we are drawn into that strange participation with the life of God. For our lives are here in their manifest ambiguity as the Life of God in its manifest holiness. All of it.
The Scriptures are not a set of rules rather they are a dialogue – in which at one side the Holiness of God is displayed, as our goal, and on the other our place as learners of Life. For this Life is to be learned.
In this regard I make three points from todays readings. Firstly we often forget things which previous generations knew and those things are light and life to us, so we read in Leviticus ‘You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.’. Profound respect for elders is all but lost in the age of Youth which we inhabit, and manifested in the poverty of what are labelled ‘Care homes’, or worse, ‘end of life facilities’. The Elderly along with small children should be the heart of our focus as communities, and the church needs to learn this as much as anyone else. In both the elder and the child we see our future . . .
Secondly we see the teaching aspect of scripture in play in 1 Cor 6 – the goal of the Scriptures is not the killing word, but the Word of Life and so lives need to be redirected – ‘do you not know that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?’ asks St Paul – speaking to those who have known the very apostolic ministry amongst them still need to be taught – indeed without that we would not have any of his epistles. Thus we are constantly reminded by the scriptures that we are all learners.
Finally we come to Psalm 88. Here, in the Psalms above all we see how clearly the Scriptures are the words of humans and at the same time the Word of God. Psalm 88 is the only Psalm in which there is no hope. It ends in darkness. It expresses the deadly sin of despair, in effect the sin against the Holy Spirit. We may well ask, ‘how can we, indeed should we pray such a Psalm??’ Something I heard recently from a Benedictine monk was most helpful in terms of the difficult Psalms – that a we pray these Psalms (including the so called imprecatory Psalms) we stand with those for whom these are THEIR prayers. Those whose situation seems to them beyond Hope. Those who have suffered so much from others that they cry out in desperation that the heads of their children should be smashed against stones. The church does humanity a dis-service in removing such Psalms from the Word. Ironically to do so is to deny that the scriptures Are the Word of God revealed in the words of men, and reduce them purely to human centered words.
God in his infinite Mercy and Love knows All of the human condition in Christ, and thus his Word accommodates every one of us, however low we have fallen. Thanks be to God
Loving the hated
It strikes me that there is a tension within the scriptures, indeed evident within the words and actions of Jesus, a tension not well navigated in the life of the church.
And that is between ‘holiness’, for want of a better word, and mercy. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount preaches what many treat as an impossible ethic, to live out the life of God, to be the light of the world. Yet also he associates with those who manifestly – externally at least – do not reveal that life, notorious sinners. Furthermore amongst his disciples we see little of this Life manifest, and Peter must be restored after denying Christ.
This restoration in particular is most significant, for Peter is restored to his position as the lead disciple, the one called to feed the sheep. Jesus does not say to him, ‘of course you are forgiven, but having failed so appallingly, you can no longer feed my sheep’, which is the almost uniform response of the church to those who fall from Grace, sometimes quite horribly.
Of course the one to be restored needs ‘a penitent, lowly and obedient heart’, but then so do we all, and perhaps here is the true challenge for us all.
Peter would not have been restored in the church in these days, it seems to me.
James, the brother of Jesus, whose voice often sounds to me closest to that of The Lord, tells us that ‘Mercy triumphs over judgment’. It strikes me that this aspect of the Life of God we would do well to ponder in our shared life.
Through the Bible in a Year – March 9
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 16-18; 1 Cor 4-5; Psalm 86
Our texts from the Old and New Testament coincide to some degree today – certainly with regard to what for some is a ‘red line issue’ – that of sexual immorality within the church.
Firstly however we note that our first chapter from Leviticus speaks of the significant sacrifice of the atonement – ‘a shadow of the things that are to come’, in the one who offers himself as the atoning sacrifice for sin. This must always contextualise any conversation which begins to dare to call itself Christian – and what it means to be Christian is at stake here in more ways than one.
For many in the church, one’s proclamations about sexual relations (or to be more precise Some sexual relations) have become a Shibboleth – a signifier of The True Church. Where do you stand? Are you ‘one of us’? It is interesting for a moment to consider the story of the Shibboleth, that if it was mis-pronounced, one killed the person as being ‘an outsider’ – except the ‘outsider’ was in reality another member of the household of God. This ‘judgement’ was actually an outward revelation of the depth of the divisions amongst the tribes of Israel. That they would kill one another over this, revealed that they had lost sense of who they were as brothers and sisters.
Without doubt, the issue of sexual ethics has become such an issue – one over which the schismatising tendency of Protestants who have little or no what the holiness of the church means, comes to the fore.
Now at this point it may well be argued that Paul himself is arguing for something along these lines in 1 Corinthians 5 – the thorny issue of church discipline – but herein lies the most profound reason why we should step back from judgement – in that church discipline is all but absent from our churches – indeed as we do not primarily base our life on the knowledge of Christ and him crucified, we are hardly in the position to even call ourselves the church, and thus be communities of discipline.
In particular we should note that we are not communities of mutual accountability for our lives – that, in the protestant churches in particular, we have made a comfortable arrangement where we would never expect for a moment to confess our sins one to another. Thus in the profoundest sense we are not communities of grace. For those that sin necessarily do so privately – there shame is hidden – for we do not expect that as Christians we might confess and find forgiveness within the church.
The absence of discipline is not a lack in the church, it is a key sign that we are not church. We must first re-learn what it means to be a community based on the knowledge of Christ crucified, an apprehension of what it is to bear one another’s burdens – then and only then might we begin to be able to consider what it might be to consider such issues, without killing one another or taking the easy and sinful path of schism.
You need to lose your mind
‘When Jesus bids us come, he bids is come and die’ Bonhoeffer
In our world where faith has been reduced to no more than a set of ideas, and ‘The Truth’ to a rational, usually Scientific, understanding of the world, this means that Christianity in almost all forms, Conservative and Liberal alike, equates to changing our mind, or dying to old ways of thinking.
Never for a moment does it seem that Jesus actually meant saying no to our life and our plans, and following him.
Of course ‘a change of mind’ is needed, but only the realisation that we don’t know anything, and they only in laying down our lives, and following ‘The Truth’, will we find it.
Through the Bible in a Year – March 8
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 14-15; 1 Cor 2-3; Psalm 84-5
Yesterday, we pondered this gospel which is ‘foolishness to the Greeks’ – and our inability to express it in words.
When Paul comes to Corinth, he does not proclaim ‘the mystery of God in lofty words or wisdom’ – rather he decided to know nothing coming among them than Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Of course, schooled as we are in being taught truths, it may well seem that Paul is undoing his prior determination – but in truth he is reinforcing it. He does not come amongst them primarily knowing ABOUT Christ crucified, but importantly by knowing Christ crucified. This is just one word, yet it is the most profound difference. Paul’s ministry as he continues to reveal is nothing more nor less than the living out of a profoud identification with Christ crucified. Paul in his ministry cannot stand at some distance, as if he were explaining even the most beautiful of works of art to people. The Gospel can only be proclaimed in and through this radical identification with Christ and him crucified, the embodiment of divine love.
Christ cannot be ‘known about’ as a substitute for the Life of Faith – in the end all attempts at apologetic are doomed to failure and those that apparently bear fruit do not. Thus Lesslie Newbiggin’s assertion that the church when it is being truthful to itself is the only hermeneutic of the gospel available to us. This is precisely the point that Paul is making. He has to reveal the gospel in himself and that is only possible in the radical identification with the crucified and risen one.
At the heart of all the problems in the Corinthian church as we shall see is precisely this shying away from such identification.
‘if you would be my disciple, take up your cross and follow me’
Through the Bible in a Year – March 7
THE TRUTH
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 12-13; 1 Cor 1; Psalm 83
For we Gentiles, the gospel is foolishness. Power revealed in weakness. In a culture where ‘might is right’ is implied at every turn – ‘he prevailed by the force of his argument’ – the gospel with its message of The Truth revealed in a crucifed man is of course utterly ridiculous.
Sadly the church, feeling the utter vulnerability of a naked faith, one which hangs on the one hanging from the cross, seeks to find more secure ground. So we become more or less skilled in apologetics – we fear having no answers to the questions people put to us. We fear being scorned for such a ridiculous message. And we resort to forms of power, denying the cross. (As of course was going on in Corinth with thinly disguised attempts to grasp power being veiled in partisan cries of being ‘bearers of truth’.)
One form that power takes is to try and have better arguments. We begin from the assumption that faith is utterly rational – it must be, surely??? We might understand this as the Conservative or Evangelical approach – the power of persuasion – of course that is fine ’til someone comes along with yet better arguments. It is in itself a form of ‘nuclear proliferation’. And in some respects we see this played out in the current debates with ‘the new atheists’ (although I am not sure that those debates are not actually dying out as the world as a whole has got bored and moved on.)
The other form of power is similar but subtly different – that is also to see human reason as the way to reveal the truth – and to change the message – to try and conform it to the thought and patterns of our the ‘cultured despisers’ of this age – to fashion a reasonable faith. The Liberal approach, for want of a signifier. In this respect also, the world is not interested, after all the person we are most invisible to is our self.
In both regards we play the world at it’s own game, ‘winning the argument’. We face the world with itself – and ignore the path we are called to – to face the World with Christ – that is to live as a community of people shaped by this message of vulnerable love. Not trying to ‘make sense’ of it for others, but rather to live the sense of it amongst ourselves.
Jesus is in Himself the Wisdom of God, the Truth of God. When Pilate demands to know ‘What is Truth?’ – there is no response, Jesus does not answer with finely honed arguments – he does not need to. Truth is staring Pilate in the face. Christians assert that this dead Jew, broken on an instrument of cruel torture, two thousand years ago, is in fact the central meaning of the entire universe. No wonder we like to come up with something different – to deny the power of the Cross.
In our inability to express this Truth in words, we are facing up to the Truth. We can either live by it, or avoid it. By and large in the West, in churches which at least historically rich and powerful, in which we have thousands of books to back up our arguments, we have done the latter. It is hardly any surprise that the life is flowing out of us, and that the church is vibrant and healthy where our brothers and sisters have no rags to cover up the shameful reality of the poverty of the message of Life revealed to us at the Cross – the poverty which makes many rich.
Through the Bible in a Year – March 6
The Scheme for March and April can be found here
Lev 10-11; Romans 15-16; Psalm 81-2
Paul, physician of the soul that he is, goes on in Chapter 15 to expose the underlying desire that prompts members of the community of faith to judge one another. ‘To please themselves’ Rather than judging the neighbour, as the pharisee did the tax collector, and thus justify or please ourselves, our aim should be to please our neighbour – to build him or her up in faith.
The walk of faith is hard enough without our judging one another, and anyone who does not realise this has not yet perceived the truth of what it is to be a disciple of Christ. Hard and narrow is the way – as believers we should not have the energy spare to judge one another, and knowing our own weakness and difficulty in following in obedience, every encounter with a brother and sister should be similar to that of the Samaritan and the man who fell amongst thieves – that of pity and helping them.
The root of the difficulty of following Christ in obedience is in a sense exposed in the strange incidents involving Aaron’s sons. Nadab and Abihu ‘play with fire’ – whether in ignorance or not we are not told – and they are consumed by fire. Later Moses, clearly struggling to see how he can lead this people in the way of a God, whose holiness seems so utterly Other that it is impossible to respond to faithfully, berates Aaron for allowing his sons to burn an offering which they should have consumed. Aaron however points out that the ways of God are so strange to him, that he acted as it were out of weakness. The parallels with the situation in the church in Rome are I think striking here.
Moses is confronted with Aaron’s struggle to walk in faith, to get it right. ‘Given all that has befallen me today’ Aaron says, ‘If I had eaten the sin offering today, would it have been acceptable to the LORD?’ And when Moses heard that he agreed.
Aaron is struggling, it is very early days in the walk of Israel with the LORD.
Here we see the principle of not judging the weaker brethren in action. Moses realises that it is not his role as the leader of the community to make what already seems an incredibly difficult path, even more so – that he should not lay heavy burdens on his brother.
If it is so hard – as it was for the disciples (Peter and the rest leap to mind) in the immediate presence of God and his Holy presence – do we not realise how difficult our walk is? And thus learn to be merciful? TO imitate the one who does not put out a smouldering wick, or break a bruised reed.
In the End, it is perfection in Love that will drive out Fear.
The ‘Jesus prayer’ is always the most appropriate for us – ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner . . . ‘, and on all my brothers and sisters in faith’
Lent Course 2 – ‘Christ Centered Community’ – AUDIO and Notes
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Lent Course 2-1 Lent Course 2-2
NOTES
St John the Evangelist, Roslyn
LENT COURSE 2013
Called to be Saints –
The Extraordinary Nature of
‘the Church Militant here in Earth’
‘It is probably the case that only a vibrant fullness of the Christian Church,
that is itself sufficiently mature to be the bearer of a Christian ethos,
is capable of surviving the onslaught of modern secularism.’
Fr Stephen Freeman
Session 2 – ‘Christ Centered Community’
Psalm 133
How very good and pleasant it is:
when kindred live together in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard:
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion:
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be for ever
Amen
Love me – Love my church
•The Battered Bride of Christ – Ephesians 5:25-32
The Invisible Church revisited – further into the story
•Church – ‘Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis!’
•Church ‘as an aid to my faith’
•It is where I am fed
•It is where I am encouraged
•It is where I meet with fellow Christians
•Church as ancillary to our ‘personal relationship with Jesus’
•Church as Support – not heart
•The heresy of pietism [more anon]
The Radical Shift (Part 2)
•Last week, The Radical individualism of our age – rooted in late medieval society – our way of thinking about ourselves and our lives increasingly individualistic. And this is the lens through which we understand our faith
•Personal / Unmediated – relationship with Jesus – PRIMARY
•‘Social’ gospel (service to wider world) vs ‘Evangelistic’ Gospel (making people Christians – The Church???
•Evangelism – ‘The gospel was mutated into a Churchless Christianity, devoid of sacrament and structure. This minimized gospel was easily and quickly adaptable to various cultural needs, but for the same reason, completely vulnerable to cultural forces. Evangelism is a gospel imperative, but the “making of disciples” entails their full enculturation into the Christian faith and not a single experience.‘Fr Stephen Freeman
http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/02/11/america-and-the-perversion-of-christianity/
•Huge Fall off – from ‘Crusade’ type evangelism – 90%+ of people making ‘a decision’
•Impact of Christendom
•Religion as ‘a part of life’
•Weekly worship
•Prayer to ‘God(s)’
•Perhaps even part of a sect of some sort or other
•Other ‘Lord’s’ – State – Tribe – Work
•‘Everyday Life’ vs ‘Life in the Church’
•Competing Arenas of Life
•Irrelevance of Scripture to ‘Everyday Life’ – Except in personal piety, as the Church is not the Arena of faith
•‘We are not all called to be disciples’
•Monasticism [To be revisited]
•Going ‘Into the Church’ – i.e. not everyone went into the church
•The religious ‘professional’ – the loss of understanding of ‘The Priesthood of all believers’
Bible Study – the call of the disciples
1.What does it mean ‘to become a Christian?’
2.How might we expect our lives to change after ‘becoming a Christian’?
3.Read Mark 1:16-20 – Put yourself in the position of Simon, James and John – Compare and contrast your answers to 1. and 2. with their experience of ‘becoming a Christian’
4. Who and What have they left behind?
5. How is that ‘Gap’ filled
A ‘Jesus Centered Life’
•Again we need to realise how we are shaped by our surrounding culture – especially the religious culture – Especially in regard to ‘Pietism’. The problem we face is that we are largely ignorant of how cultural shifts have distorted our understanding of the Truth
•Pietism is rife in contemporary church
•My personal relationship with Jesus = ‘Jesus centered Life’ ergo ‘Christ Centered Community’ = ‘Association of people with that personal relationship’
•Come back to the disciples . . .
•Post Ascension???
•Where is Jesus?
•Pietistic response – ‘he lives within my heart . . .’
•[Note this is also Individualistic]
•Acts – Proclamation of the New Life in Christ – his Resurrection Life – coterminous with the Life of the Church – He Lives within the Church!!
•The PROMISE of Christ – ‘where two or three are gathered . . .’
•Love as THE expression of the Life of God
•God is Love and those who live in Love live in God and God lives in them
•Christ is manifested in the Love that is revealed in the Church
•How is the gap filled?? [Q 5 above] Luke 18:28-30
A final study – Ephesians 2:13-22
1.In the light of this passage and our study today – how would you define ‘Christ Centered Community’
2.In the week to come – meditate upon Colossians 3:1-4 – Remember ‘You’ is in the Plural – Your life is hidden with Christ in God – When Christ who is your life appears
In the coming weeks through Lent – Kingdom Community – Community of Formation – Charismatic Community of Witness
the elves are heading west 