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January 2016

January 30th 2016: Matthew 27:1-10

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

Sadness is at the core of today’s reading. Matthew tells us that Judas repented when he saw what his betrayal had wrought, but it seems he did not trust that his turning away would lead to the possibility of reconciliation and restoration. Having been derided by the Chief Priests, in Matthew’s telling, he did not feel able to return to his community of fellow followers of Jesus and seek to continue walking with them.

How trusting are we that the promise of forgiveness and continuing relationship with God, which comes as a consequence of repentance, actually does come? Do we ‘repent’, seek to turn away, but actually instead hold on to the words of those around us, or the culture around us, many of which would find it difficult to extend the hand of forgiveness, acceptance and restoration to one who has strayed? Are our Church families places where coming back together is actively encouraged? My own experience is that I hold on to things long, long after I have thought I’d repented, sought forgiveness and been absolved. As someone who has the privilege of pronouncing absolution now, I often wonder what consequences this has in way members of the congregations I serve think and act in the days following.

Do all you can to trust in the promises of God to forgive, make broken things whole and to give new mercies every morning, that you no longer live burdened by the guilt and shame of the past. It’s something that our society seems to find unacceptable. Once mistakes have been made, it seems like they have to follow us around for life (just look at someone in public office who steps out of line), but God sees and knows hearts and motives. Trust him. Don’t listen to the voices of judgement that spring up all too readily all around. Forgiveness is possible. Grace and mercy are real, actual, alive and powerful things. Don’t despair.

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January 2016

January 29th 2016: Matthew 26:57-75

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

Following from our previous discussion on Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, the end of today’s reading finds Peter weeping bitterly, as he becomes aware that he has done the one thing he promised Jesus he would never do, in exactly the way that Jesus foretold he would. If you know the story, you know that restoration comes for Peter, in pretty short order too, but the sheer emotional weight of this moment dictates that we as readers owe it to Peter to stay with him in this moment of desolation.

Isn’t this the flip side of betrayal? I can do things my own way for a remarkably long time, but in the end, for me at least, there’s always a moment of being pulled up short. I have a tendency at such times to feel crushed. That isn’t too strong a word for it. I’m an emotional, feeling person. Often to my detriment. There have been several times I can distinctly remember where the realisation that something I was doing to protect myself, keep myself safe, or even make myself feel better has hurt others. I’d like to think I don’t deliberately set out to hurt people often, if at all, but still, the unintended consequence for me of self-serving or self-absorbed action is quite often that others suffer. I hate this. It renders any benefit I might have felt I received from the action which caused the hurt not just null and void, but in fact reverses it. Now everyone is hurt. I have let everyone down. I don’t deserve love. I’m a disappointment.

I hope you don’t feel like this too often, but I think it is a pretty common, honest human experience, if we are open to our emotions. I don’t know how Peter was feeling on this fateful day, but I have a sense that it was something like this. All that he had built the last years of his life upon was going up in flames, and rather than stand firm, he sought to save himself. What kind of a man did that make him.

And yet, he was to find later that the loving heart of God beat strongest for him in that very moment. I imagine his betrayal still hurt, but love would win in Peter’s life, and win him back again for God.

For now, though, all was darkness and despair. If you’re in that place today, do all you can to take courage. Don’t be defeated. Reach out to people around you. Don’t suffer alone or in silence. God is with you. He hears your cries, even if, right now, the idea that you might hear his feels extremely far-fetched.

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January 2016

January 28th 2016: Matthew 26:47-56

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How many times have any of us kissed, drawn close to, or sought intimacy with Jesus, only to turn tail and betray him immediately? I don’t ask this question from any place of judgement apart from, perhaps, against myself. I find it all too easy to become mechanistic in my faith. ‘If I do this, in this way, God will do that in that way. He must, that’s what happened in Scripture/in the past/to someone I know’. ‘I need this from God, so I’ll say all the things I know he wants me to say, I’ll sing the right songs, and then I’ll get what I need or want.’ For Judas, it was money that he wanted, but for any of us it could be anything else, even things which, in and of themselves are worthy things, such as wellbeing for ourselves or a family member, the end to a conflict, or reconciliation. The challenge which comes to me as I read this passage this morning however is that my faith, my relationship with Jesus, is not something that I ought to enter in to on the basis that it will get me what I need or want. Those things might be by-products, but actually, when I play a transactional game with God with how I relate to him, am I not betraying him too? When I worship with piety on a Sunday and then turn round on a Monday and there is no evidence of transformation in my life, am I not betraying God, and making a liar of myself?

And yet, through it all, God loves me still. That is the heart of the gospel, for me, and it is stupefying.

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January 2016

January 27th 2016: Matthew 26:36-46

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Have you ever felt guilty for asking God to stop something terrible happening to you or someone you love, believing that not only should you persevere, but you should somehow enjoy it and seek it too? Perhaps it’s just me, but I have a bad habit of telling myself off for wishing that things might be easier, less painful, less serious, even while I know that a certain course of events is the right one. Jesus had a pretty good idea of what was coming as he prayed in the Garden, and as he asked 3 times for the cup to be taken away from him, I have no doubt that he meant it. ‘Yet not my will but yours’ is, naturally crucial here, but even so, this passage indicates to me that it is ok for us to be honest with God in prayer. It’s better than pretending with false humility or piety. I’m pretty sure God sees right through that. Ultimately, if our primary aim is to live lives which point people to Jesus, sometimes we have to do things which do not seem to be in our own self-interest, but are instead kingdom building (or as was the case here, kingdom-inaugurating). Jesus was willing to do this, for God and for his fellow humans, but his emotions and suffering were real, showing that our prayer lives can be places of open, honest dialogue, whilst remaining worshipful and humble.

Are we awake to hear the voice of the spirit as we pray? Are we alert, or are we counting down the minutes (or seconds) until we can get done with our prayer time and get on with the real business of the day? Prayer is the real business of the Christian life. Actions are important, but they are by-products of our individual and corporate times of intimacy with God. Have you got so busy, so cerebral, so active that you don’t have time to pray? Do something about it.

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January 2016

January 26th 2016: Matthew 26:17-35

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If you are in the practice of celebrating Communion with any kind of regularity, the words Jesus says in today’s passage will be pretty familiar to you. I’ve often wondered what the friends of Jesus, gathered round a meal, having heard him pretty darkly and cryptically talk about the future over the preceding days, would have made of what he said here. After all, anyone holding bread and wine, saying ‘this is my body’, ‘this is my blood’ might well be thought of as, what, strange? Frightening? Confusing? For us, for whom Communion is a part of life and culture, whether we’re regular churchgoers or not, we know what we’ve decided it means, or might mean. But what of those people who knew nothing really of what was to come? What about those people who are uncertain? It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? To say that bread is your body and wine is your blood?

I’m not going to spend ages here writing about what I think happens in Communion. What is spectacular for me though is that Jesus invites his friends, and us who follow after them to make him part of us as we eat and drink in remembrance of him. We’re invited in to union with him, fellowship, family, intimacy even, through this simple yet life-altering meal. If Jesus says ‘this is my body’ and I eat the bread, then somehow Jesus’s body becomes part of me. You could spend a lifetime trying to work that out no doubt, but as a starter for thinking things through it’s pretty potent.

And not just that, Jesus looks with confidence into the future. ‘after I am raised up’ he says. This isn’t something that has really jumped out at me until today’s reading of this story. The eye naturally goes to the prediction of Peter’s three-time denial of Jesus, but Jesus says here, as he does elsewhere, that he is sure of what is going to happen to him. He knows the outcome, even if  the actual human circumstances of his death eventually seem to overwhelm him. We as Christians follow a God who suffered, but did so with such certainty as to the end of the story. He would be raised. It’s very matter-of-fact in the telling here. I’m prone to saying ‘this might work’ or even ‘this prayer might be answered’, but Jesus sets the tone for our confidence in faith. He was in step with God. So we can be too. Just how much trust are willing to place in God today?

 

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January 2016

January 25th 2016: Galatians 1:11-16a

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Today the Church of England remembers the conversion of the Apostle Paul. It’s a pretty momentous day in the history of the Church. Here was a fierce opponent of the fledgling Christian Church, transformed by a revelation from God in to one of its most strident early missionaries. He developed a strategy for mission, evangelism and church growth which worked and has been the pattern for a large majority of efforts made by Christians to grow the Church since his lifetime. He got it done. Something in the revelation he claims to have had of and from Jesus Christ truly transformed this man, filling him with the power of the spirit, and with grace, grace enough to last a lifetime, and to change the world.

I’ll admit that at various times in my Christian life, I’ve thought Paul a little arrogant*. He often seems to make statements about his closeness with God, the rightness of his doctrine, his way of doing things that give the sense that he thought highly of himself. I know there’s a lot more to it than that, before readers tear their hair out, but to me at least, he doesn’t come across as a likeable chap, one who would be easy to get along with. At points I’ve wished that a good portion of what he wrote wasn’t in the Bible at all.

And yet, and yet, there’s a key phrase in one of the readings we use to remember him today which speaks so powerfully to me today. He writes that the gospel, the good news which he received, which he passes on to the Galatian Church here, is not of human origin. Indeed not! It is divine. It is from God. Good news, from God, for all.

The good news of Jesus Christ, that relationship with God is available for all people, is divine. Those of us who talk or write about God might have the occasional insight worth exploring, or route of thinking worth following, but the good news itself is about more than just a series of strong arguments or propositional statements. The good news is Jesus. What changed Paul’s life wasn’t a heightened or further enlightened understanding, it was a meeting, a transforming relationship with Jesus.

I spend a lot of time worrying about whether I’m right or wrong. I like to be right. I think most of the writers and actors in scripture were the same. For each person, each family, each community, each nation, it is the revelation of and relationship with God that makes the difference, though. By all means seek a greater understanding of doctrine, a deeper relationship with God, if need be, but don’t lose the wonder of relationship in the process.

*Isn’t that arrogant of me?

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January 2016

January 22nd 2016: Matthew 25:14-30

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Another day, another dark and confrontational parable from Jesus. This time, it seems that the object of his ire is the servant who does not use the deposit he has been given as an investment, and instead lives in fear. How much of a challenge that is. Perhaps it’s because of where my brain finds itself at the start of this new year, but I keep coming back to the idea that neither God (the Master), nor his doctrine need protecting. Doctrine exists merely to give us some kind of lens through which to approach the divine. There’ll never be a lens with a wide enough angle, or a deep enough perspective for us to grasp the true depths of meaning and beauty in God. Rather than conserving with all our might procedures and processes which lead us to a mere fragment, let’s be brave, step out in faith and see what we can find.

Similarly as God will bring the good work he has begun in us to completion, let’s live with confident excitement and expectation that we are supposed to try and make the most of the faith that we have for the sake of growing the kingdom. It’s better to try than not to. Our worth and identity, security in God, do not change if we don’t succeed. Ultimately God will have his way in the end.

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January 2016

January 21st 2016: Matthew 25:1-13

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My personality is quite a mixture. On the one hand I love to be prepared, and can find it quite uncomfortable if I don’t know that I have everything I’ll need for where I’m going, or know the way, or how long it’ll take me to get there, or even an alternative route should things go wrong. I like to be organised, structured, know what’s coming next. I enjoy knowing how a task is going and how much more I will have to do before I complete it.

On the other hand, some of my favourite memories are of times when things happened on the spur of the moment, when I was caught out and yet things still turned out well. There’s something deeply satisfying about those kind of experiences for me. Usually they work out well because, at some point in the past, I’ve gained the knowledge or experience I need to deal with what arises. There are very few times when, faced with a brand new set of circumstances or a problem, I get it right first time, and certainly not on my own.

I’ve always found today’s parable difficult. It’s another story of Jesus at his bluntest and starkest. Reading it again today, I’m left thinking that the five wise virgins were prepared. They didn’t quite know what was to come when they met their bridegroom, but they had been making ready. They’d been given oil and had kept it stocked up, so it didn’t run out. The foolish virgins on the other hand, so the story goes, had let their lamps go out, and they found that they could not rely on the light of the lamps of others to help them find their way.

We need a life, a faith of our own. We can learn from others. We can gain a lot from one another. Life is done better together, in community, as part of a Church, but God has oil that he wants to give to you, and for your ongoing relationship with him, personally to top up. Don’t leave it to others to have all the oil. There is some for you too.

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January 2016

January 20th 2016: Matthew 24:29-51

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‘Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.’

We’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about watching and waiting, about making ready, about being prepared. Now today we are reminded and invited again to be about our Father’s business. Have you learnt something of what the Kingdom of God is about? Do you now have the opportunity to live following his way and pattern of doing things? Make the most of that opportunity. Embrace the joy and possibility of the invitation to follow the Master and be a participant in bringing it about. We are forgiven and freed for joyful obedience. This life we have is a gift. Let’s accept the gift, enjoy it the way it was hoped we would, and find as many ways as we can to share that gift with others around us. Let’s not be people who horde the gifts we are given for ourselves, or refuse to use them for fear of their loss or tarnishing. Where we are able to, our life of faith is to be an active response, a deliberate shining of the light that is within us in to the world and to those around us. What a sad waste it would be to have love and life left unshared that had been entrusted to us for that purpose.

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January 2016

January 19th 2016: Matthew 24:15-28

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As I read today’s passage, the single thought that came to my mind, apart from ‘blimey’, which is not the best thing to base a post around,was ‘I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the second coming of Christ.’ Do you, I wonder? It’s easy to get bogged down in the here and now (there’s enough going on in my part of the world, certainly!) to not really think about the future, barring invoking Revelation 21’s promise that one day all will be different and finally well. Conversely, it’s entirely possible to spend most of life wishing for it to be over and for the next life to come, whatever that will look like.

As with most things, there’s a balance to strike between these two extremes, but even if we manage that, it’s easy for us to gloss over one of the most crucial and central tenets of the Christian faith, that Jesus is coming again. He, the Son of Man, is coming again, to finish the job once and for all of uniting God and man, physically. I have no insight whatsoever into what this will be like, or when it will be. Anyone who claims to know for sure is probably lying, or enjoying something strong and medicinal. The power of Jesus’s claim, for me, is that he is the one setting the agenda. He is coming, in his time. He has the authority, the integrity and the power to make good on his promise.

As we wait, are we brave enough to be willing to trust in that promise?