Author: theelvesareheadingwest

An Anglican Priest of Northern English extraction Discovering Home Learning to be a Friend, father and husband - but above all, and indeed radically redfining all of this, a Disciple of the Risen One

Through the Bible in a Year – April 8

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Deut 10-11; Phil 4; Psalm 119:49-64

Be of the same mind . . .

Of course you may think that I have skipped back to Philipians 2 here – ‘be of the same mind . . .’, ‘let the same mind be in you . . .’ – but here we see that this is a common thread through Paul’s letter as he urges Euodia and Syntyche to ‘be of the same mind’

Sadly in an age where Rene Descartes has come to define our humanity, this is reduced to ‘agree with one another over  doctrine . . .’ yet it is clear from the context that Paul sees the human in a much more integrated fashion. When back in Chapter two he calls us to the imiatio Christi, it is no mere ‘thinking the same’ – rather ‘the same mind’ is embodied in unity of Being. In this case in Unity of Self emptying. Indeed if we were so self emptying, it may well be asked would we find ourselves at daggers drawn over doctrine – in humility thinking of others as better than ourselves, and wiser.

In order to receive life we need empty hands – we need to let go of Our Right.

Paul goes on to say something which is oft overlooked. Let your gentleness be known to all. It is interesting to ask if in our dealings with our brothers and sisters ‘Gentleness’ is our cardinal virtue.

Finally he bids us consider where the eye of our heart is directed. When we come into conflict with one another, our focus is on the other ‘the wrong they have done to me . .  ‘ ‘Their character faults . . .’ ‘Their false doctrine . . .’ In other words we end up judging one another. Our minds are set on earthly things, as he puts it in his letter to the Colossians. Paul it seems would have nothing of this. Rather our hearts and minds are to be given over in their entirety to ‘the things that are above ‘that which is pure and true and beautiful’. If we so do, we will undoubtedly see those around us in a far far more generous light than looking directly at them would ever produce.

For they too are children of God, bearing the Imago Dei

Through the Bible in a year – April 7

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Deut 7-9; Phil 3; Psalm 119:33-48

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

But how often we do.

The plain fact of the matter is this, that most of us who read, and indeed I who write, these words are affluent, and over and over the Scriptures warn us of the perils of wealth. And the primary warning is found here in Deuteronomy – that we begin to believe that we are the creators of our own life. Wealth gives us ‘power’ to build the lives we want – to avoid community and the necessity that that brings. It gives us the ‘power’ to choose- and as our deep story tells us, as humans we do not choose well.

The question is this, though, if we have not gained what we have by our efforts – how have we gained it? If we did not get it ourselves, then to whom does it really belong.

Yesterday we read that most beautiful Christological hymn, that God is Kenotic, self emptying – the riches of the Life of God are poured out – he becomes nothing. If we have wealth, then perhaps if we are made in his image, truly we best reveal this to be true in not calling anything our own, not ‘grasping’ or holding on to it, but allowing it to flow freely for the good of all. As St John says, ‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.’

The Word of the Primal Sin is ‘Mine!’ – to live by the Spirit is to say ‘Yours and yours and yours and yours’ For NOTHING we have by right have we except by God’s Grace – we are all invited to live in that Grace, in deed.

Through the Bible in a year – April 6

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Deut 5-6; Phil 2; Psalm 119:17-32

In St Paul’s letter to the Philippians we come to one of the great mysteries of faith. That God in Christ steps down into the fulness of the human condition, apart from Sin, becomes obedient, even to the point of death, death on a Cross.

A few days ago we considered Paul’s injunction to be subject to one another, out of reverence to Christ. Here we read how Christ becomes subject even to the point of death. The injunction in Ephesians that we moderns choke at, not wishing to be subject to anyone or anything, is not merely revealed as a rule or way, but The Way, the Fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.

So Paul in Ephesians is in effect calling on us to walk in the way of Christ. This of course is not a surprise when we recall that Paul understands the Church as the Body of Christ – thus of course the Church must walk in Christ’s humility and subjection, which is counter intuitively the Victorious Life, the Life of the one who Overcomes.

Thus once more we are enjoined to this way – ‘let the same mind be amongst you as was in Christ Jesus’- this Way is something we share in. So it is our common life, the Life of Christ.

There are several things we might say about this. Firstly we must remember that God never does Anything because he has to. Nothing coerces God. Rather that God is Pure Act. That which he Does, He Is. So God in Christ does not become obedient unto death because we in our sinfulness have forced his hand. Jesus death and Resurrection is not plan B, rather it is the revelation of the Very nature of God. That God is in and of himself humble love, he is the foot washing God, he is the one who dies for his friends, he will go to the utter depths – for that is what he does.

Secondly we are made in his image. Often the imagery of our growth in Christian life is one of ascent, but this is not always helpful. Christian Life is revelaed when with our Lord we too go down into the depths, following joyfully the one who has overcome sin and death.

Of course to many, the depths are frightening places, but our Lord speaks to us, do not be afraid, I have overcome the World. Thus there is nowhere so low that we might anymore fear it, for he now fills all in all, having been exalted to the highest place.

Every knee shall bow, to the one who comes amongst us as a Servant. The Last shall in truth be First.

Through the Bible in a Year – April 5

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Deut 3-4; Phil 1; Psalm 119:1-16

Today we embark upon readings through Psalm 119. Famous for being the longest of the Psalms, it is also an extended meditation upon the Word of God.

Sadly for most of us, part of the beauty of these words is lost. In Hebrew it is an acrostic, that is each section begins with the successive letters of the alphabet, from Aleph to Taw.

This of course is no mere poetic device, rather it is a meas by which those who ‘read’ the Psalms come to memorize and thus interiorise these prayers.

Whilst a good number of us no doubt have memorised one or two Psalms, we live in an age which is already impoverished by the ready availability of print, and soon to be further impoverished no doubt as reading also is surpassed for other even more individualistic and ephemeral ways of ‘learning’.

Until the invention of printing, most had only one way to learn the Psalms and that was by listening and recitation. Thus the Psalms would go deep down into the interior, where they would feed our prayer lives and thus our ‘everyday lives’. They were the Daily bread on which we fed.

Indeed postulants of monastic orders would usually have to have learnt all the Psalms in such a way before admittance.

Although these posts are written to encourage us to get to know the whole of Scripture – in our highly pressurised modern lives it is rather like trying to eat an elephant. If you are finding keeping up difficult, perhaps just a diet of a slower meditative reading of Psalm 119 for the next few days would suffice. After all in this one Psalm we meditate on all of Scripture in a unique way.

Through the Bible in a Year – April 4

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Deut 1-2; Eph 6; Psalm 118

Both our OT and NT readings have a common theme – that of remembering – coming to our senses.

In Deuteronomy, the context is the preparation to enter the Promised Land. To do this we must needs remember. It is in forgetting from whence we have come, what a great Salvation the Lord has worked for his people, that our faith goes to sleep. This if nothing else is why weekly Eucharistic worship is so central to the working out of our salvation. Week by week the people of god assemble to recall God’s mighty acts – to feats with Christ, and thus to go out into the world, fed with the bread of heaven, strong in the Lord and the strength of his power.

What is more, in this apparently ‘other worldly’ activity which we call worship – we remember that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, rather that we are caught up in something of Cosmic dimensions.

Worship which seeks to be relevant to ‘our everyday lives’ does us Grave disservice. It keeps us asleep. It is no act of remembering.

Through the Bible in a Year – April 3

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Num 34-36; Eph 5; Psalm 116-117

It would be very helpful, if you have not done so already, to read the previous post in this series , for Context is everything here.

As so often is the case in reading the Scriptures, chapter and section divisions can obscure significant truth. So Paul concludes his arguments in Chapter 4 with the opening words of Chapter 5, ‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ It takes just a moments reflection to hear once more the words of Christ, ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ – that in the mutual love of the Body of Christ we are imitating the very heart of the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the mutual indwelling in Love.

It is very important that we carry this image with us into what is for many one of the most difficlt passages in scripture. For some Ephesians 5:21 et seq. is a ‘text of terror’, for others a means to cast in stone a way of life, ‘which was from the beginning’. But for St Paul it is neither of these things.

Again the section heading does us a huge disservice – Paul is talking here about the mutual submission of members of the body of Christ. First it needs to be said over and over and oever again that in the body of Christ, the age to come is being manifest, thus the PRIMARY relationship of ANY Christian to ANY other Christian is that of brother and sister – kin, dearly loved children of the Father.

So Paul works out his theology of mutual love in terms of mutual submission, or in the NRSV translation which I am using here, ‘Be subject to one another out of Reverence for Christ’

Firstly, we must consider, what does it mean, ‘out of reverence for Christ’ – at a simple surface level, we might say that simply put, this is what Jesus commands, thus we must so do. But the command of Christ can Never be disassociated from the Life of Christ. In other words in obedience to the command of Christ, we enter into the Life of the one who became subject even to death, death on a cross. The One who is first, who takes the Last place, and who is thus in the Kingdom exalted to the highest place.

So to follow Christ is to humble oneself and become the willing slave of all.

Next we must come back to Paul’s larger argument. This Way of being, that is the very Life of Christ manifest, is the Way of Life of the Church. In other word this is NOT primarily about the specific relationships Paul later speaks of, rather Primarily this is about Every relationship within the Body of Christ.

This said, Paul recognises that there are those within the church who are relate to one another in ways which are not of the eschatological kingdom. Temporal relationships which in the End will be no more.

Thus the words of Paul to husbands and wives, owners and slaves, parents and children are as it were footnotes to the Primary command of All believers as Kindred in Christ to ‘be subject one to another’

What Paul has in view here is the HOW of mutual submission. In these extra-ecclesial and thus secondary relationships, HOW is this worked through.

So wives be subject to your husbands ‘as to the Lord’ – husbands be subject to your wives by loving them as Christ loves the church, giving himself up for her – the husband gives himself up for the sake of his wife. The wife looks in love towards her husband as she does towards Christ himself. Indeed it may well be argued that here what is asked of wives is no more than is asked of Every member of Christ’s body one to the other – be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Treat your husband as you would any of your kindred. The Husband is given the culturally mind boggling command that in Christian households he is to be as Christ to the Church to his wife – he must lay down his life for her. He is not Lord in the heirerarchical sense. Our Language breaks down here as we can only understand Lord in temrs of earthly Lords and masters who Lord is over their subjects . . .

And so we could go on through the other categories of relationships

The point is that these cases are in face Secondary – they are not the primary relationships within the church – husband and wife are brother and sister, Mother and son are sister and brother, ‘owner’ and slave are brother and brother.

Paul in effect, in his call to all to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ recognises the ephemeral nature of these other passing relationships.

Through the Bible in a Year – April 2

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Num 33; Eph 4; Psalm 114-115

Paul here is leading us in what is for most if not all of us, foreign territory. that is that the Primary arena for the working out of the Christian life is within the community of faith. The Risen Christ says ‘By this shall they know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another’.

I have written and spoken elsewhere on the marginalization of the church in almost all Western traditions – read almost any contemporary book on ‘spirituality’ and abracadabra, the Body of Christ disappears . . . We have by and large reduced the Church at ‘best’ ‘to a man-made society for promoting and developing ideas’  and at worse to a social club for the religiously inclined, or organising place for ‘social justice issues’ We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten our Calling, to ‘grow [as a body of people] into the full stature of Christ’ that the Wisdom of God may be made known to the rulers of this dark age, as we are built up in love. THIS is what the church must give herself to. Yes we must teach, but the goal of the teaching is te building up of the whole body. Why, Why, Why is much if not all of our teaching directed at our individual lives, when in truth these are something of which the Scriptures know little if anything?

Paul has not lost sight of this vocation – have we?

Sermon Easter 2013

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Easter 2013

EASTER 2013 [RECORDING OF SERMON]

So we come to Easter, and I wonder by what path we have come. How have we prepared ourselves to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus? For this is the purpose of Lent and Holy Week – by prayer and fasting together, by study and sharing in worship together all the last  seven and a half weeks have been leading up to today. Our celebration today is the Culmination of all of that.

Week by week through Lent we have looked back to Ash Wednesday – to those words spoken over us all at the Imposition of Ashes – Dust you are and to Dust you shall return – Repent of your sin – Believe the Good News. We were confronted with our mortality, the reality of our lives and called to re-orient ourselves. As I said a few weeks ago, re-orient is a very pertinent way of putting it – we turn to face East, more specifically we turn to face Jerusalem and the Resurrection of Christ. In terms of Ash Wednesday, we prepare for today by Repenting and Believing the Good News. Thus we are ready for Easter. But . . . even the most diligent of us is only ever partly ready – how can we be ready for something which is so outside of our experience of anything we have ever known?

This winter, as many of you know, one of our daughters will be married back in England – there is a lot to do in order to get ready, but it’s not the same. We know what happens at weddings, and so we know what has to be arranged. No one is saying ‘What is a wedding?’. Thinking of Hannah’s wedding made me think of my own. Actually for one young man there, it was something unknown. It was only on the morning of the wedding that I realised that my best man had never been to a wedding! He was a little nervous, I had to eat his breakfast as well as my own 🙂 But at least my friend Mike had lots of folks around him to point him in the right direction and tell him what to do – we all know what weddings are about. But the Resurrection of Jesus? How do you get ready for something which everything around you tells you cannot happen??

Part of our preparation for today is to enter as fully as we can into the experience of Holy Week – in particular Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We accompany Jesus to his death. In an hour at the cross we confront our own complicity in his death – we face the fact that We called out crucify, We abandoned him, We betrayed him, We killed him. And we have to face that to begin to in any meaningful way celebrate Easter. We have to Know that Jesus is Dead in order for Easter to do its work. For we are not speaking resuscitation – our annual cycle of lent and Holy Week, if we do not take the medicine it offers, if we only partly enter in, leaves us in effect waiting for Jesus to come round from a nasty accident. If we have not faced our mortality, and seen it plain as day in Christ crucified, if we have not entered into the utter blackness of Good Friday, then we cannot see the light. For we are not talking shades of Grey here, we are talking Light and Dark, Black and White, Life and Death. No, without the preparation of Lent, the Catastrophe of the Resurrection cannot do its work. Yes, the Catastrophe of Resurrection.

Why Catastrophe?? Surely it is the very opposite of a catastrophe? Believe the Good News? No? Yes! The Good News, but the Good News is catastrophic. The Resurrection of Jesus calls Everything else into question. If Christ was not raised from the dead then our lives can go on pretty much as before – indeed as St Paul reminds us, If Christ is not raised from the dead, then we are wasting our time. But if he is . . . then we are called to a life like no other, for there is nothing in all Creation as we know it that is Like the Resurrection of Jesus.

As I said in an article I had to write for the Star, the gift of Easter here in New Zealand is that it goes completely against the flow of life in the created world. Here there are no spring flowers – here we are headed towards winter – here everything around us proclaims death. So here we are confronted with the Fact that the Resurrection of Jesus goes completely against the grain. We cannot make it fit into our lives, it either completely changes the course of our lives, or we must needs let it go by – there is no middle way. The resurrection of Jesus is not something which we assimilate, a fact we either believe or do not – we do not ‘take is on board’ the ship of our lives, Rather the Resurrection is that Ship which sails in completely the opposite direction to the World’s story about itself, and we must choose, whether or not to jump ship. To live out our lives as best we can, or to give up on them and to live out of the Resurrection.

To make of the Resurrection of Jesus some mere metaphor for the cycle of life, even something on which we pin our faint hopes for life after the death of our mortal bodies, is actually to choose to deny it, for it requires nothing of us. The world hasn’t changed. the flowers will still come up next spring, life will go on as usual. There is no middle way.

Funnily enough, I call in my defence Bishop David Jenkins who some years ago caused quite a stir in the Church of England by declaring that ‘The Resurrection of Jesus is no mere conjouring trick with bones’. Now Bp David did not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, so he might seem an odd ally here, but his words were right on the money, so to speak. For the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, was not something which happened in a vacuum. It was a Unique happening, but it was not Isolated. In other words, when God raised Jesus from the dead he opened the door to a totally New way of living and a transformed Cosmos. What we call Real, Real Life, The Real World, everything about our lives and indeed all of Creation is challenged by the Resurrection of Jesus.

And we see that Catastrophic nature of the Resurrection Very clearly in the gospel accounts – especially in the synoptics, that is Matthew, Mark and Luke. These three gospels in particular reveal how the Resurrection of Jesus shatters everything.

For up to that point in the story, each of the evangelists has told pretty much the same story – up to this point the narrative follows the same path – parables, healings, challenging sayings – in many many places word for word the same . . . until the Resurrection – and then it is as if Everything has fallen apart – all four accounts are to all intents and purposes completely different, all four struggling to make sense of what has happened – the Old Story has come crashing to a halt and from nowhere, without Any prior warning a New Story has broken forth, A New Reality. And like those first disciples we are left groping around, afraid, dismayed, perplexed, doubting, yes even terrified . . . the World is Not as we thought

‘Why are you looking for the Living amongst the Dead?’ asks the angel in the tomb. You have followed the narrative of the story of Jesus to what everything in you tells you Must be its logical conclusion – you Know he died, you have come to the tomb. And you are completely wrong!! Wrong about Sin and righteousness and Judgement. Wrong about everything.

The Resurrection of Jesus proclaims we have got everything Wrong. We cannot make it neatly fit into our lives – and that is why it is so hard to prepare for it – that is why despite our best efforts we keep skimming over Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday, because the message of Easter is too shattering to our understanding of the world to face so square on. in a sense, to Celebrate Easter – and We must Celebrate Easter – is almost impossible, for it is to celebrate the end of our world.

At Easter we Celebrate that our world has come to an end. All to often we focus on the end of the disciples hopes and dreams on Good Friday, as if their world has come to an end. No it hasn’t, we know it hasn’t – where does the Risen Jesus find them but fishing – their world has carried on. No it is the Resurrection of Jesus that announces the end of the world as we know it – all nations will see him whom they have pierced, and mourn. He is Risen, the End of the world has come upon us – as one of the early Christians, Hippolytus of Rome expresses it –

Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate
Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen. Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing
Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty. Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,the first of the sleepers,

 Glory and power are his forever and ever.

If we are ready for Easter, we are ready for the end of the world as we know it. We prepare for Easter as we would prepare for our death, to say with Paul, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Perhaps that is the best metaphor for how we prepare for Easter. Indeed it is what Lent is given us for – You are Dead in Sin – New Life is available. Lent teaches us to say no to our life – that we might say Yes to the Life of the Risen One
The Resurrection of Jesus proclaims we have got everything Wrong. We cannot make it neatly fit into our lives – no – We have to conform our Lives to the New Reality – The Life of the Risen one who fills everything in Every way.

Behold, the End of the World has come – Believe the Good News
Christ is Risen – He is Risen indeed. Alleluia

Through the Bible in a Year – March 31

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The Scheme for March – April can be found here

Num 29-30; Eph 1; Psalm 110-111

Psalm 110 is THE Royal Psalm – the one which Jesus himself quotes in effect to sign his own death warrant as he speaks with the Crowds in Mark 12.

This wonderful Psalm we read today in association with Ephesians 1. Where Paul is enraptured in his exaltation of Christ. All his grammar falls to pieces in vs 3-14 as he is caught up in praise of Christ in perhaps the single longest sentance of all of Scripture. I wonder, how long is it since we were so enraptured in our worship of Christ?

Those of us, including myself, who revel in the mind, who love nothing more than to ponder ‘truths’, need perhaps more than most to ‘Learn Christ’ – to Know deep within ourselves that the person who may have little or no grasp of any doctrine, may worship Christ in truth far more than we ever will.

Oh for that liberated heart