I have been thinking lately about that quality that we call ‘a sense of humour’.
For some it is thought of in terms of being a national characteristic. Something shared amongst people of a similar outlook.
A friend told me before I came to New Zealand that I would be OK here, for folk would ‘get’ my sense of humour. He went on to say that I wouldn’t go down quite so well in the USA. Indeed when I visited those shores 15 years ago or so, I was alerted to that. Things that I saw as being funny weren’t perceived so as my hosts. Sharing a meal, a place where in my life laughter has found a home, was a very different experience for me.
This isn’t to say that American’s don’t have a sense of humour!!!! [doing my level best to avoid unintentional offence!! 🙂 ] Like most folk in the Western world, I grew up with US humour streamed into my living room via the TV. I ‘got’ ‘I love Lucy’, ‘Happy Days’, Frasier, and ‘The Simpsons’. I came to appreciate American humour because in some regards I was immersed in it over a period of many years (as you will have realised from the list of programmes (sic! 🙂 ), and learned over a long period to appreciate its particular characteristics and nuances.
Humour to ‘work’ requires relationship. It took me time to learn US humour – my long suffering congregation are gradually learning mine (not ALL humour is shared between Northern England and Southern New Zealand 🙂 ) – and my VERY long suffering family have learned to smile weakly . . .
But what is it for humour to work? It is surely when the joke is Shared – when there is sufficient commonality at how we look at life to see the humourous, for we both stand in a similar position. In other words it requires Love.
Thus the bully uses humour to hurt. As a school teacher I regularly heard the defence, ‘I was only joking, Sir’. Much stand up comedy it seems to me is laced with such a distant approach to its subject. So, recently, many laughs have been harvested in the UK over the death of Margaret Thatcher. In a sense one may well argue, that this is precisely what I have been suggesting is healthy. It was the common experience of those who lived through the years of her premiership that enabled the humour of the various comedians to work. Except of course it was still out of relationship – Mrs T wasn’t there to share in the laughter . . .
The best Comedy, and my favourite comics are those who observe the absurdities of our lives, in other words, those who teach us to laugh at ourselves 🙂
Which brings me to my point – before we learn to laugh with others, we need to know them, and above all we need to be honest with ourselves
Life giving humour comes from the place where we are able to laugh at ourselves, gently and kindly. Like all things that are truly life giving, humour requires us to be at peace with ourselves, which is perhaps the first step to living in peace with others.
This is a lesson I am still learning. The more God reveals to me of myself, the more I have to make a choice, either to despise myself, or to laugh at the absurdity of myself 🙂 If I choose the former path, I will still use humour to wound – but if the latter then I might learn a greater sensitivity to others – and thus discover more occasions where we can laugh together.
One of the interesting thing about scriptures is that laughter is almost entirely portrayed negatively. [Indeed if you put laugh into Oremus Bible browser there is a salutary lesson to be learned from the word in which the letters ‘laugh’ are most commonly found]. And yet this should not surprise us – so much of the Scriptures find people at war with one another and with God (literally or metaphorically). Which can only occasion harsh and derisive laughter.
Laughter is perhaps one of those things which more than most belongs to the End, one of those things which we need a lifetime’s schooling in that it might be life giving. We must Know each other and be utterly safe together, before we can laugh. I know that in my own experience, those with whom I laugh most freely are those whom I have known for many years, and yet it is Still a learning experience.
This experience is renewed each day as we look in the mirror, appreciate God’s humour – and the staggering fact that we are unreservedly loved.
Put another way – learning to be funny is at once uneccessary (look in the mirror 🙂 ), AND a lifelong task.
I grew up in a church tradition which looked down on ‘mindless repetition’
It seems to me many years later that this was foolish on more than one count
Firstly it was INCREDIBLY judgmental in more ways than one – it presumed that people were just saying things without thinking, it presumed that repetition was in itself a poor substitute for what transpired eventually to be mere novelty (who can honestly remember all those NEW songs that were SO with it :), it assumed that if the mind was not engaged nothing was, which so privleleges the mind [and thus a sophisticated ‘intelligent’ elite] in a way that Scripture never does.
Secondly, following on from the last of those examples, it showed a complete lack of understanding of how we learn deep truth – learn things so that they become second nature. We do this all around us all the time without thinking about it. I drive a car. My conscious mind cannot be engaged all the time on every aspect, indeed most (95%) of driving is ‘unthinking’ – and I could multiply examples many times over. Oh that we so deep learned the things of faith that they passed into our unconscious and were JUST LIVED! 🙂
Thirdly it completely overlooked the value of what was being repeated. Repetition in itself was seen as a bad thing (see note above about novelty). Actually as human beings we seem to be hard wired for novelty – it sets off our chemical responses in the brain – with terrible effect in more ways than I can even begin to recount. God’s ‘new thing’ (behold I am doing a new thing) is the death and resurrection of Jesus!! There is not a long list of new things to keep uas entertained and away from boredom – no rather we go into the DEPTHS of this ONE new thing.
So our Psalm today . . . of course in Joshua and Titus we may find many things to be distracted, angry, disturbed, confounded by . . . whereas in the Psalm we repeat over and over ‘for his steadfast love endures for ever’. Without this lesson anchored deep within our hearts we cannot begin to cope with the other scriptures before us today. Let it sink from mind to heart – that we might KNOW it. For in the end the only Knowledge that counts is that which resides in the very depths of our being, where Christ dwells if we did but know it. Why seek for anything new, when Everything is to be found there??
In a week when parliament passed legislation to make marriage open to people of the same gender, there will no doubt be many who will be standing up today in pulpits across this country, and indeed across the world – I see the BBC give it a very high rating on their news site – There will be many who will either be declaring words to the effect of – ‘this is the end of the world as we know it – the collapse of the moral order!’ – or declaring this a huge triumph. Whichever way it is thus received, I have to say it is either straining at or rejoicing over a gnat, whilst swallowing a train load of camels. It is almost utterly insignificant, and I believe that to be the case even with respect of the church.
What will happen here in the long run in the church, is that there will be those congregations that accommodate themselves to it, and those that do not – and I use the word ‘accommodate’ advisedly. For we have a church which in common with most western Christian expressions of church is all but indistinguishable from the world in which we live. Thus if we accept this change it is a tiny accommodation struggling to get in to a church already full of accommodation, or if we don’t it is a tiny accommodation kept out by churches that don’t realise how accommodated they already are. If we think keeping pure is the game, we’ve missed it – we’re with the Pharisees 🙂
We do not to recognise how hugely the Spirit of the Age controls almost all our understanding of Christian faith. It controls how we read the Scriptures, it controls our church attendance, it controls how or if we pray, it controls what we do with our money, it controls how churches are governed, it even controls our relationships between clergy and laity and bishops and clergy . . . the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the age is in charge and by and large we kid ourselves if we pretend that we are led by the Spirit of God.
There are many aspects to the Spirit of the Age which capture us. In a sense this obsession with sexuality – for or against is such a captivation, but that will pass. The old demons are still pretty much in charge. As always Money has a huge effect on us consciously and unconsciously. Our supposed need for financial security drowning out the voice of the Good Shepherd ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’ . . . ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’ Why do we fret about money? Of course for those of us who are well off, it is All to easy to say that we know that we don’t, that it is not our financial security that holds us – not realising that our own security is in what we have, we kid ourselves that we are living by the Spirit, rather than the Spirit of the age. We may hear the words of Jesus and sense that we are secure, but our security has another source. It is only when it is taken away that we realise that it was that that we were resting on. It is only the wealthy who by and large come up with elegant dodges around Jesus’ confrontational teaching on money and possessions. ‘Do not store up . . .’
We are in a panic about the finances of the diocese, insofar as we panic about anything in New Zealand 🙂 But the strange irony is that we are very wealthy – put aside a moment the uncomfortable fact that the church has all the money that is in our own personal bank accounts, we are the body of Christ after all, so our money is his – The Diocesan trust board is looking after $25M! Where is this money? By and large it is the money of individual congregations – we are all securing ourselves by ‘our’ money – so we are not releasing it and thus the future of the diocese is called into question. It is like a family where each brother is wealthy, but none is prepared to go to the shops, so all starve. Can we really be hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd, ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’
Very related to this deceitful sense of security money brings – for the Spirit of the age connects and touches everything – the Spirit of the age shows itself in terms of how we are taught to relate to God. Herein we see laid bare, the Spirit of Individualism, rife in our society and our churches. We see it in many ways, not least in this question of hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd. ‘My sheep hear my voice’ Says Jesus – and someone may well say – I never hear Jesus speaking to me . . . ‘ I never hear him speak to me’
Now I wonder how many of us feel that way, that ‘I have never heard Jesus speak to me’ I do not at all criticise anyone for feeling like this, a bit excluded by those who make much of ‘their personal relationship with Jesus’. We have not been well taught if we think this way – and we pretty much all have. I know that my own experience was for a very very long time, that the principle significance of faith was ‘my personal relationship with Jesus’ THAT was THE thing.
But listen – ‘my (Individual – possessive – something belonging to me) personal (read private – hotline) relationship with Jesus’. This is Consumerism, isn’t it?? ‘You can have your own house, you can have your own car, you can have your own . . . you can have your own relationship with Jesus, as well . . . I want to come at this ‘personal relationship’ in a roundabout way, through this false god of consumption (a disease of old – TB), in part, because I want to allay your fears if you think you have not heard the voice of Jesus
The language of consumerism is deliberately targetted to keep us away from God and each other. All the worlds economic systems are without exception part of the world which is not hearing the voice of the good shepherd – the Spirit of the Age has no interest in the Life of Christ – ‘You can have your own . . .’ ‘You can have your own . . .’
I have on a couple of occasions over the last 30 years seen the Kingdom of God in incredible clarity – once amongst a group of recovering drug addicts [I may have spoken to you about them,if not I will one day] and once on a trip to Fiji. I remember sitting with a village elder, who was also the Methodist minister as he spoke to a group of wealthy western tourists about how they were very wrong to criticise the Western missionaries who had brought the good news to Fiji. He said, ‘Before we knew Jesus, we used to eat each other . . .’ 🙂 Note his language though, before WE used to know Jesus. Here was a man, a poor man without doubt – he could not afford a simple pair of sunglasses to protect his obviously diseased eyes – not witnessing to ‘his personal relationship with Jesus, but to the faith of his people – when WE came to know Jesus . . . our relationships with each other, were transformed –
and then without meaning to, for there was nothing proselytising in his manner, he said -’ ‘as Christians, we share everything we have’. As if this was OBVIOUS, As Christians, OF COURSE we share everything we have with one another. ‘So if I have no sugar and I need some sugar, i go to my brother and ask him and he gives me some sugar, and if he needs something I have, he asks me and I give it to him. We have no doors on our houses, we come and go – our doors are open to one another . . .’
It was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my life and to this day I realise that I was closer to the Kingdom of God there in that very simple hut, sat on the floor drinking kava (and no, not the ‘champagne’ 🙂 )
Life – Shared. Listen to the voice of the economic machine, that we are told must be fed, or the world will fall apart – ‘you can have your own . . .’ We will know that the Kingdom of God is breaking in when Mitre 10 says ‘Buy a lawnmower and everyone on your street will benefit’. ‘you can have your own . . .’ cuts us off from one another. I remember as a young man going to my first ever church conference and being absolutely thrilled to hear about a church where they had a communal store for gardening things – everything was shared -as a result they had far more money to give away and their communal life blossomed.
‘You can have your own personal relationship with Jesus . . .’ A few months ago I was teaching on the nature of the church, BTW if you can have your own personal relationship with Jesus, why do you need the church? (more anon) and I spoke about a book – ‘Hearing from God’ by Dallas Willard. I picked on this book because I had recently been involved in a conversation about it with a friend and had gone back to look at it, but I could have picked almost any contemporary book on Spirituality and prayer from my shelves, and I have my own huge collection of such books. The Church is absent from the book. This is all stuff you CAN do on your own, and indeed there is no expectation than that is entirely HOW you should be ‘Hearing from God’, certainly there is NO sense that we Hear from Jesus ‘as the people of Jesus’ . . . That God Primary address, is always and has always been to a people, to His people, to His flock. That we are addressed AS the church, not primarily as individuals.
Of course one of the reasons we imagine that we can have a relationship with Jesus apart from the church is because as Christian booksellers know all too well . . . yes consumer capitalism operates even here – ‘You can have your own Bible!!’ That that is entirely unremarkable to us is one sign of how difficult it is to recognise the Spirit of the Age. Indeed not only can we have ‘our own BIble’ we can have one in a translation WE enjoy and Easily understand, one which perhaps is full of notes for people ‘just like me!’ So we have Youth Bibles, Bibles for Men, Bibles for women, Bibles for mothers, Bibles for recovering addicts, BIbles for . . . fill in the list, I am sure you can find the Bible which perfectly suits me in my personal relationship with Jesus . . .
We forget that for the first 1800 years of the churches history we couldn’t. Before the advent of the printing press in the C14 all Bibles were hand written and there were very few – if you’d even seen one you’d be unusual. Even after that there were but few and for the next 400 years we would only see a copy in our local church. In my study I have a very old family bible – dated 1804 – it is what a pretty wealthy family could buy (in this case yeoman farmers) – a family bible – note again that it is money that makes this possible. Now in my house we have 30 bibles??? One for every mood of the day 🙂 So we think that reading our own bible is normal, whereas it is very abnormal. No, for most of church hiustory and indeed still for most Chrisitans throughout the word, the Word is shared. People sit togather to hear the Word, to Hear from the Good shepherd. the Word is first and foremost adressed to a people, Christ’s body which by baptism we are all part. We are included in Christ – apart from the body I am cut off from his life. We cannot hear the Word apart from our beothers and sisters – for apart from them we are apart from Christ? The Life of Jesus is our COmmon Life – it is the Life that we share – we cannot know it apart from one another.
Do I hear the voice of the good shepherd? Yes, you do – We do – when we come together to listen to his word in the Gospel – we stand and Hear Jesus – we feed on Jesus – we share in Jesus together. The Life that we have is only Life in that it is the Life that we share – there is only one risen Lord – we haven’t all got our own 🙂
Firstly in the destruction of Jericho – as will be seen over and over, it is not the people who are to prosecute the Lord’s work. So often we forget this – we try to ‘bring in His Kingdom’ – we are certainly co-operate with the Holy Spirit, but the work is not ours. We do not decide what to do and ask God to honour our plans, rather at all times we must realise we are followers – we do not know, we cannot see ahead what God has in store, we only ever get in on a work in progress.
For those of us in the Western church, this is perhaps one of the most important and also difficult lessons to learn. In all dimensions of our work, we plan and strategise, we decide what is going to happen, if we are at least modestly wealthy and if you are reading this, then you are probably in that category. Yes things happen to us, Reality breaks in from time to time to tell us that we are not in charge, but we are well trained in pretending that is not so, even Rationalising our action from Scripture if we are of a religious bent.
So our churches ‘know the score’ ‘we know what has to be done’ – there is little or no sense of following this strange God. Rather it is Obvious to us what we should do.
So faced with our Jerichos, would we walk round and round them blowing trumpets but otherwise in silence??? No, we have much better plans than that . . .
Then once more, having been obedient, we still think, ultimately this is about us. We ‘take the city’, but then take also the spoil. Achan’s sin in the end was about securing himself – why else do we seek riches? Having had powerfully demonstrated over and over again that this is God’s business, that God will provide, still the incurvatus life seeks to wrestle control from God.
Of course, the two are related – why do we have the sort of wealthy churches where we can deceive ourselves that what we call ‘The Lord’s work’ is actually our own? We are warned over and over against hoarding for it inevitably leads to a life we run on our own terms
This story is Not about us, but we are called to live in the generosity of God, to give all we have. To Follow
These are just the brief notes – I hope to include some audio – but for now I hope this gives you a flavour
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 5 – Church as Community of Formation – Lessons from the past
A prayer of St Thomas More (1478-1535)
‘Give us Lord, A humble, quiet, peaceable, tender and charitable mind
And in all our thoughts, words, and deeds a taste of The Holy Spirit
Give us Lord, A lively faith, a firm hop, a fervent charity, a love of you
Take from us all lukewarmness in meditation, all dullness in prayer
Give us fervour and delight in thinking of you, and your grace and tender compassion towards us
The things which we pray for, give us grace to labour for
Amen’
Speaking the truth in Love
Confession and forgiveness – the way to growth
The challenge to unconditional love – Love one another, as I have loved you
Shared Life – not just ‘sharing’ our lives
Koinonia = Communion cf. ‘Fellowship’
Christ Is our Koinonia – 2 or 3 are gathered
Is it possible to come together and NOT pray??
‘Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart
Humility as the touchstone
Church reimagined – in the light of Christ and the announcement of the Imminent Kingdom of God
Jesus is LORD – all of life must be re-oriented around him
Church as the foretaste – Church as Eschatological community – expressing in itself the age to come as made known to us in the Risen Christ – Community of the Resurrection
Ephesians 1:15-22
Church – Community of re-orientation – disciples following Jesus. Growing more and more in his likeness and thus more and more distinctive in the world. I.e. Growing in faith
Embodied in relationship. (John 13:34-5 – ‘as I have loved you’ – Losing our life for the sake of one another)
Church decerebrates Faith
The uniquely toxic nature of modern society and its impact on Church – the shattering of connection – the loss of Common Life
The most poignant of questions in all of Scripture – ‘Where are you?’
From Garden to City? The move from Rurality to the Urban
From Common Lives to Virtual ‘Space’ – ‘Family mealtime’
The end of History and the end of geography
From mutual accountability – to radical individualism
From a faith of Growth, to Faith as as set of fixed ideas
From Stability to radical mobility
The Age of Entertainment and Novelty
Some questions
What resonances do I find with the story of the church here?
When was the last time I changed how I was living because of something I read in Scripture or heard in a sermon, or someone said to me?
To whom have we been accountable in our life?
To whom ARE we accountable?
St Paul says ‘submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. How might mutual submission benefit our faith?
A story from the deep history of the Church
A bleak picture, BUT – There is nothing new under the sun – We have been here before
A history lesson – the loss of church as communities of mutual accountability – ‘Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ’ – The Genius of Benedict (RB 1.3-5) Community forms faith
Monasticism as a renewal movement – a place of formation, from the beginning
If you wanted to be ‘a Christian’ you went to the monastery
A contentious suggestion . . .
Life needs a vessel – the neo-pentecostal dilemma, life without structure
Treasure in clay jars
Shared life requires shaping – Vows (Commitment) and Regula (Shaping)
Obedience
‘Conversatio moralis’
‘Poverty’ – Common ownership
Stability
‘Chastity’ – Faithfulness
Stability as ESSENTIAL (Yet we move from church to church, driven by more important things like career . . .)
Staying put – the garden as the place of growth
Pruning – when church gets uncomfortable its quite possibly doing its work 🙂
Place and people
‘God places us in a community of people with whom we would not have chosen to live, had it been up to us’ – cf Marriage also 🙂
Human – humus – of the soil – Adam – Admah – Mud creature 🙂
Neo- monasticism – exciting but costly – like following Jesus 🙂
NEXT TIME!!! Exploring Vows and Rule in the Life of a church
‘Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly digest’
For those who are following the scheme to read through the Scriptures in a year, here are the readings for May and June
Of course if you missed the beginning, there no reason why you can’t join in at any point. The earlier parts of the scheme are found HERE (Jan-Feb) and HERE (Mar-Apr)
Just a couple of tips – if you miss a day, do not worry, or try to catch up, this will just turn it into a chore! Start again with the reading set for the day. And if something grabs your attention, then stop, turn to God in prayer or praise or lament or in whatever way seems appropriate.
This scheme will take you through the whole Bible in a year and twice through some parts. It is adapted from a scheme supplied by the Christian Medical Fellowship and includes a reading from the Old and New Testament everyday as well as a reading from the Psalms, the prayer book of God’s people down through the ages.
Of course you do not have to read All of the readings, you could perhaps just follow the Old Testament track, or the new – or just read a Psalm a day as set – all of it is a profitable discipline
A meditation on the readings for the day is published each morning on this site
May God bless us all in our studies
Eric
May 1 Jdg 5-6; Mark 7; Psalm 1-2
May 2 Jdg 7-8; Mark 8; Psalm 3-4
May 3 Jdg 9; Mark 9:1-29; Psalm 5-6
May 4 Jdg 10-12; Mark 9:30-50; Psalm 7
May 5 Jdg 13-14; Mark 10:1-31; Psalm 8
May 6 Jdg 15-17; Mark 10: 32-52; Psalm 9
May 7 Jdg 18-19; Mark 11; Psalm 10
May 8 Jdg 20-21; Mark 12; Psalm 11-12
May 9 Ruth 1-2; Mark 13; Psalm 13-14
May 10 Rut 3-4; Mark 14:1-31; Psalm 15-16
May 11 1 Ch 1; Mark 14:32-72; Psalm 17
May 12 1 Ch 2-3; Mark 15; Psalm 18:1-30
May 13 1 Ch 4-5; Mark 16; Psalm 18:31-50
May 14 1 Ch 6; Heb 1-2; Psalm 19
May 15 1 Ch 7-8; Heb 3-4; Psalm 20-21
May 16 1 Ch 9; Heb 5-6: Psalm 22
May 17 1 Sa 1-2; Heb 7-8; Psalm 23-24
May 18 1 Sa 3-5; Heb 9; Psalm 25
May 19 1 Sa 6-8; Heb 10; Psalm 26-27
May 20 1 Sa 9-11; Heb 11; Psalm 28-29
May 21 1 Sa 12-13; Heb 12-13; Psalm 30
May 22 1 Sa 14; Jas 1; Psalm 31
May 23 1 Sa 15-16; Jas 2-3; Psalm 32
May 24 1 Sa 17-18; Jas 4-5; Psalm 33
May 25 1 Sa 19-20; 1 Pet 1; Psalm 34
May 26 1 Sa 21-23; 1 Pet 2-3; Psalm 35
May 27 1 Sa 24-25; 1 Pet 4-5; Psalm 36
May 28 1 Sa 26-28; 2 Pet 1; Psalm 37:1-19
May 29 1 Sa 29-31; 2 Pet 2-3; Psalm 37:20-40
May 30 2 Sa 1-2; 1 Jn 1; Psalm 38
May 31 2 Sa 3-4; 1 Jn 2; Psalm 39
Jun 1 2 Sa 5-7; 1 Jn 3; Psalm 40
Jun 2 2 Sa 8-10; 1 Jn 4-5; Psalm 41
Jun 3 2 Sa 11-12; 2&3 Jn; Psalm 42
Jun 4 2 Sa 13-4; Jude; Psalm 43-44
Jun 5 2 Sa 15-16; Rev 1-2; Psalm 45
Jun 6 2 Sa 17-18; Rev 3-4; Psalm 46-47
Jun 7 2 Sa 19-20; Rev 5-6; Psalm 48
Jun 8 2 Sa 21-22; Rev 7-8; Psalm 49
Jun 9 2 Sa 23-24; Rev 9-10; Psalm 50
Jun 10 1 Ch 10-11; Rev 11-12; Psalm 51
Jun 11 1 Ch 12-13; Rev 13-14; Psalm 52
Jun 12 1 Ch 14-15; Rev 15-16; Psalm 53-54
Jun 13 1 Ch 16-17; Rev 17-18; Psalm 55
Jun 14 1 Ch 18-20; Rev 19-20; Psalm 56-57
Jun 15 1 Ch 21-22; Rev 21; Psalm 58-59
Jun 16 1 Ch 23-24; Rev 22; Psalm 60-61
Jun 17 1 Ch 25-26; Mat 1; Psalm 62-63
Jun 18 1 Ch 27-29; Mat 2; Psalm 64-65
Jun 19 1 Ki 1; Mat 3; Psalm 66
Jun 20 1 Ki 2; Mat 4; Psalm 67
Jun 21 1 Ki 3-4; Mat 5; Psalm 68
Jun 22 1 Ki 5-6; Mat 6; Psalm 69
Jun 23 1 Ki 7; Mat 7; Psalm 70-71
Jun 24 1 Ki 8; Mat 8; Psalm 72
Jun 25 1 Ki 9-11; Mat 9 Psalm 73
Jun 26 Pr 1-2; Mat 10; Psalm 74
Jun 27 Pr 3-4; Mat 11; Psalm 75
Jun 28 Pr 5-6; Mat 12; Psalm 76
Jun 29 Pr 7-9; Mat 13:1-35; Psalm 77
Jun 30 Pr 10-11; Mat 13:36-end; Psalm 78:1-31
Whenever we read the Scriptures, we need to read carefully – attentively. Scripture is littered with hints to those who read with care that there is a much bigger story behind all of this. That things are not as they seem.
In Joshua 5 we read such a hint – it is but a single word, but it dramatically re-orders our understanding of vast swathes of the Scriptures, if not the entirety of them. It is the word ‘neither’.
Joshua has come to Jericho with the children of Israel, and whilst he stands and ponders this mighty city, he sees an angel – the ‘Commander of the army of the LORD’. Perhaps the one who will become revealed as The Archangel Michael. [Note :- The phrase we commonly translate ‘Almighty God’, is a little obscure in Hebrew, but is perhaps best rendered God of the heavenly host. It is in this light that we might understand Jesus’ command to Peter to put away his sword in Gethsemane] It is significant that he announces himself in such terms – for he is being explicit – he is the Commander of the army of Yahweh – the God of Israel – Israel’s God – but This God is unlike Any of the gods of the nations. He is Radically Free from the agendas of Israel. God does not exist for Israel – Israel exists for God.
Joshua asks the angel – ‘Are you one of us, or one of your adversaries?’ Whose side are you on??
In the First World War, the German troops wore on their helmets, ‘Gott mit uns’ ‘God with us’. Of course, the opposing forces were taught just the same. Sobering film of troops from the era shows Army chaplains leading the soldiers in rousing choruses of Onward Christian Soldiers.
‘Whose side are you on, God?’
The third commandment which the Israelites were given was – ‘you shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain’. In popular parlance ‘Don’t use God’ or ‘Don’t attach the Name to your projects’ However Righteous they seem to you. ‘My ways are not your ways, My thoughts are not your thoughts, says the God of Israel.’ How slow we are to learn this – how quick to forget that ‘The LORD will not acquit anyone who attaches His name to their project’ This is Holy Ground.
‘Are you one of us, or one of them?’ Neither.
God is working HIS purpose out, and as we shall see, when Israel tries as it were to take the law into its own hands, it pays a heavy price for standing shod on Holy Ground.
That word ‘Neither’ is just one word – hidden in an obscure text in the Old Testament. But it reminds us, this is not about us, our schemes, our plans, our wars. It is about God.
Thus Jesus calls us from preoccupation with our lives – God does not exist as an agent of our personal happiness. We pray YOUR Kingdom come, Your will be done. We need to avoid the presumption we know what that is. Passing from death to Life is no less than acknowledging Him as God and serving Him only
The Cross of Jesus is the End of all presumption that our stories about our lives are the centre of things – they are all judged and found wanting. The Risen Lord commands us follow – this is God’s work, not ours.
The question is not ‘Is God with us?’ – The question is ‘Are we with Him – following Him wherever he leads’
Following the Resurrection, there is only one way of life.
PS It is interesting to note that there is little if any older artwork concerning Holy Things. It is only this present age that presumes to represent the Archangel
‘Those who want to be rich fall into a trap . . .’
The desire to be wealthy is almost universal and yet it is deceitful, for it is founded upon a deceit from the Father of lies – that we can secure a life for ourself. The life we secure for ourself is no life at all, for it is the rejection of the life that is given. It leads to ultimate loneliness. Thus Jesus when he meets the Rich man counsels him to give up the life he has made for himself. To share in Life with the company of disciples
However much we may wish to ‘spiritualise’ Jesus’ words and plain teaching on worldly wealth, and we have all tried one way or another – it comes back to us over and over. Woe to you who are rich now – for you have received your reward. This is the material counterpoint to Jesus’ counsel over our spiritual practices. If we do them publicly then we get our reward. We get what we seek. So if we seek security in this life we will find it.
But the life we make for ourselves ends with the death of our body, and then we discover it is all we have.
Of course this isn’t to say that there are wonderful riches to be had in this life having given our self construction project up in favour of the Life that comes fom above, that is Gift. Peter tells Jesus – look what we have given up – and Jesus’ reply to him is ‘Open your eyes – behold the riches of life shared with so many who have heard my voice’
As so often it comes back to what does it mean to be the people of God – that is the Church. That is Shared Life – Life in abundance – a life we discover when we come together, not as individuals but as Christ’s body – as great a challenge as that of letting go of our wealth.
Reading here in Timothy the qualifications for Bishops and Deacons, it is not at all difficult to read that the early church must have been a very mixed bag of believers. Given that these are probably by the standards of the times very exacting standards, they suggest to us a church which is rife with all sorts of goings on. Which of course it was, as we know if we take but a moment to read any of Paul’s letters to the churches. Notoriously of course, the church in Corinth was accepting of incest amongst its members – and we may well say, ‘We thank you O Lord that we are not like that!’
Certainly, on the whole the moral standards of the church as we know it is ‘higher’. Certainly we wouldn’t have too much trouble finding a good number amongst us who might fill the qualification for Bishop or Deacon. But that is to miss the point. For whilst there was much amiss in terms of ‘good living’, the early church as we know was full of Good Life.
We may consider the early church in some sense morally dissolute – but it had a spiritually vibrant in a way that few churches are today, certainly in the West. We may well have an enticing, culturally acceptable, morally clean shop front, but is there any Life to be had?
Is it perhaps the case that we have confused middle class mores for Christian Life? So often I hear from those outside the church, ‘I am not good enough to be part of the church’. However much we might say that isn’t the point, few of our churches reveal in their common life the truth of that. It may seem rather perverse to suggest this, but is there any chance that those who come amongst us find that their culturally unacceptable lives are welcome?
The room has been swept clean, but have we allowed the Living One to come amongst us. Indeed we may well ask if we’d let the one who had nothing in his appearance that we might desire him in . . .
The reading from Deuteronomy is a song of Moses – its basic theme is that we have forgotten whose children we are.
God is ‘without deceit’ – ‘yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him’
In other words, we do not reflect the image of the one who created us.
But . . . that said, God in Christ has renewed that image in humankind. Thus in Him we once more reflect the Image of God. This is the meaning of St John’s words ‘to all who believe in his name he gave the right to become children born of God.
All too often we hear of the work of the cross in terms of a mechanism for dealing with sin – which at a very basic level it is. But the reason for the Cross is not primarly sin, but the renewal of the divine image. That is the goal of the cross and that is why John in his gospel will speak of the cross in terms of Glory – a term associated with the Life of God, a Life which is restored in those who abide in Christ, those in whom Christ abides.
the elves are heading west 