Category: January 2016

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January 2016

January 18th 2016: Matthew 24:1-14

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

I might be wrong, but I don’t think it’s fashionable to endure these days. I wonder if it ever has been. We’re a society which wants answers now, things need to be fixed immediately, changes must be beneficial overnight, otherwise they are worse than useless. In my own life, if I try something and it doesn’t work, I’m prone to dismiss it immediately. There are several items in my kitchen, for instance, which have been bought for me to try and make my life easier (and to make my wife’s life a lot easier too) which I’ve not really endured, or persevered enough with, which lie underused, dormant, forgotten about.

This isn’t how we’re to be with faith. If we accept God’s invitation to a life of faith, walking with him, then we’re saying that we want to be in it for the long haul. Do things go wrong in your life? Endure. Does God seem distant, or even to have disappeared from view? Endure. Are you hated because you believe in Jesus? Endure. That’s what Jesus is saying here. It goes against the grain of our modern way of doing things. If an element of our life doesn’t work, a lot of us are free to find an alternative solution. There is no alternative to Jesus, his coming to earth, his living as one of us, his dying for us, his rising and his offer of forgiveness and opening of the way of relationship with God to us. We can cast around for a better option, an easier one, but we won’t find it. We’re alive for the glory of God. If you feel like your faith isn’t strong enough to endure, you’re God isn’t worth enduring for, pray. Pray and ask God to make your vision of him larger, wider, deeper. Ask him to show you where he’s at work, so you can join in with the building of his kingdom. Don’t worry too much if it doesn’t all make sense. Not many of the best or most important things in life do.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 16th 2016: Matthew 22:34-46

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

Jesus’ exhortation to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as we love ourselves must be one of the most well-known of his commands. This summation of the Law that he came to fulfil is so all-encompassing, so deep, so unavoidable as to be wonderful.

I remember the experienced minister who pulled me up short upon hearing me say that I was happy with saying I loved God, and I did my utmost to love others, but that I could never get myself to the point of loving myself. This, he said, was impossible, and a disobedient response to what Jesus was asking of me.As my feeling, doing and thinking have developed over the years, I’ve accepted that sometimes I need to allow for myself to be loved as somebody else’s neighbour. I’ve asked God to help me to love myself and others in the light of seeing them as he does, as cherished precious jewels, beloved by him. This goes for people I like, people I don’t like, people I more than don’t like, people I radically disagree with, people who have done things I find detestable. I am called to love them all, with the love of God, that is within me, as my life is hidden with Christ within it.

In the light of all that, the very least I can do is to love people to the same standard as I would want to be loved myself. Love can bring both acceptance, on the one hand, and challenge on the other, but perfect love always does, always will drive out all fear. It’s a grievous mistake for me to think that my God needs protecting. That heart that beats with a fierce love which cannot be overcome simply does not need me to ‘protect’ him, keep him safe or anything else. The kingdom of God is always progressing forwards, towards final fruition. In the meantime, let’s not get bogged down.

As a Celtic invitation to confession we use at Church invites, ‘whoever is on the Lord’s side, let them join with me, that [together] we may come to the visions of God.’ We were made and meant to be together, bound with a bond of love that cannot be broken. Nothing we do, think, say or believe can break the bond of love that God has decided to make with us. We are brothers and sisters, drawn together around one table. Let’s remember that today.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 15th 2016: Matthew 22:15-33

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

What do we have that is God’s? That is the question which most clearly exercises my brain (and, I hope, my heart) as I read this passage.  In the reading, Jesus manages to disarm first the Pharisees, and then the Sadducees, with answers which surprised them and challenged them to the core. It’s easy for us, as most of us reading this would be on Jesus’ ‘side’ to see what he says here and the way he says it as being clever ways of putting wrong thinking right. It might well be. At the same time, though, it’s important for us to remember that in both cases, Jesus was challenging deeply and passionately held beliefs. Many of us struggle when the firm foundations of our faith, what we have been told is true and right and good and pleasing to God, are shaken. It’s important we allow others to think, ponder and pray as they are challenged and don’t prod or poke people into our way of thinking. Being open to learning from others is very important.

So, what do we have that is God’s? I suppose the simple, pithy answer might be all we have and all we are, but I think Jesus here is saying that people of faith have a responsibility, being in the world but not of it, not to abdicate responsibility. We pay our taxes, we are law-abiding, kind, generous, joyful, showing mercy to all. Stand against injustice, of course, by all means do, we must. Work out, in each circumstance and situation what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. For some of us that won’t mean being put under pressure at all. For others it could be life-threatening. Wherever we find ourselves though, it is good for us to remember that it is God who can be relied upon, it is God who is bringing about life, hope, and the possibility of a future with him for all. The hope of the world is not threatened, it is sure and certain. God will have his way. His kingdom cannot be shaken. Let’s be confident and loving people today.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 14th 2016: Matthew 22:1-14

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

The point of this series of blogs is for me to take just a few short minutes every day, engage with a passage, see what jumps off the page at me, write a quick post about it and leave it at that. It’s not meant to show off any kind of prowess in understanding, or biblical studies which I might have. I’m not trying to prove any points, I just want to be disciplined in engaging with the Bible and find this a helpful method by which to do it. The hope is that something comes to light or mind fairly quickly, and I present the outline of an idea, perhaps to cause myself, or others, to think further during the following day.

And then on certain days readings like this come along. I’ve always struggled with this passage. There’s something quite unsettling about the scene Jesus sets and the way the story develops, whilst the final point that is made, that those without a robe for the wedding banquet (a robe of righteousness) will be cast out into darkness has, at various points in my Christian life, been deeply frightening to me. I speculated about how one gained such a robe, whether one could lose it once it had been given. I marvelled at the eyesight of the king. Nothing gets past him! I’ve envisaged myself numerous times being the odd one out at such a feast – counted unworthy and clapped in irons because I came improperly prepared. The majority of my faith life could barely be called a ‘faith’ life at all. I worked for God’s favour. I weighed and measured good deeds against bad. I judged myself unworthy. All on the basis of passages like this, and my lack of comprehension of them.

But here’s the thing, I think, that I take from this passage: we are prepared for the banquet by responding to the invitation to participate, by responding to the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ. Doctrine doesn’t prepare us. Good services (whatever those are) don’t prepare us. Even social action, or a love of scripture doesn’t give us the actual preparation we need (even if those things are helpful, and part of what it means to be a Christian and follow The Way). It is the love of God expressed in the life and death, the person, of Jesus Christ which prepares the way for us. We can respond, as far as we are able, but even our response isn’t the sealing element of the deal. It is Jesus who says from the cross ‘it is finished’. As far as you are able, say yes to Jesus, get to know him, allow his spirit to transform the pattern of your life according to his way of doing things.

Doubtless there’s loads more to it than that. Take some time today to delve in to this passage and see where it takes you.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 13th 2016: Matthew 21:33-46

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

The kingdom of God is given to those who produce the fruits of the kingdom. As usual, Jesus is somewhat enigmatic here. What are these fruits? From whom will the kingdom be taken away? What is the tipping point of the decision?

It can be a worry sometimes, as an ordained minister – have I become like the Scribes and Pharisees? I can be concerned with good order in religious observance. I can claim that I know how things should go in Church. I can claim that I have the answers to the questions of life and faith. Only on Monday we were discussing in that day’s post how beneficial it is for us to have simple faith. Conversely, at certain points, the desire to ‘do things properly’ has been known to cause me to downplay or diminish the simple expressions of faith of others. Often, these expressions have, in hindsight, seemed to be of a much more alive and holy sort than my own, however closely I have stuck to the rubrics, the tradition, however well-established, well-meaning and sometimes-helpful as these can be. And so the terrible question arises: have I quenched faith? Have I even perhaps caused others to stumble?

I have no idea if this is the actual thrust of Jesus’s words in the parables we read today. Whereas at times it is easy for us reading the stories of the Pharisees to look down our noses and think ourselves far more enlightened than they in how we look at Jesus, the words of Scripture this morning cause me to examine my heart again. What is my aim? If it is to give worship to Jesus, to thank him, to encourage others to do the same, to see other people come to know and love him, to see justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit abound, then good. If it is not, it’s time for another trip back to the drawing board.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 12th 2016: Matthew 21:18-32

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

‘Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”

This stark verse is quite a challenge. I’ve prayed for lots of things in my time. I’ve thought that I’ve had faith for the vast majority of them. Of these prayers that i have prayed with what I consider to be faith, only a small portion have been answered in the way that I was praying, or hoping for. So what’s going on here?

It could be that I don’t have enough faith. I’ve always wondered who the arbiter is in deciding how much faith is enough, and of what sort. It must be God, but I’ve had an awful lot of people in the course of my life tell me that they’re sure I don’t have the enough faith, can’t have, otherwise this or that would have happened, or wouldn’t have done. I would be able to walk, I’d be in less physical pain, I might not have depression, my band might have been more successful and so on and so forth. So what role does God have in all this? Is it right for us to see the prayer of others go unanswered (as far as we can see) and draw our conclusions and judgements about them and their faith accordingly. It seems to me that seemingly unanswered prayer offers us a dangerous opportunity to assume a role that was never ours.

I’m never totally convinced that if I believe hard enough, with enough force, or with the kind of intensity which runs the risk of bursting a blood vessel, that this is what results in the answer to prayer that I may have been seeking.

Prayer is a relationship, a developing conversation. What I’ve been most struck by about it recently is that as well as speaking, both parties in it can choose to listen to. It does us good to listen to the voice and the heart of God, but the idea that he might want to listen to me too has been somewhat baffling, humbling and exciting to me recently. What a concept! God thinks I’m worth listening to.

Some of us see miracles, seemingly on a daily basis. At what point do these cease to be miraculous? Some can be physical healings, or cures. Others can be seeing a hardened heart softened by the glorious, gentle embrace of the Spirit. Prayers can be answered immediately. Prayers can take a lifetime to answer. Many will, it seems to me, only be answered in the light of a new world, in eternity.

So, what are we to take from Jesus’s statement? It’s bald and bold. There aren’t too many ways of getting around it or taking it out of context to fit our circumstances. The closest I can come to an answer is to encourage each one of us, including myself, to persist and persevere in prayer. If we see our prayer relationship with God merely as a means of spiritual oneupmanship, or as a way of getting ahead of others who choose not to pray, so that we, rather than they, come to fullness of joy, then I think we are missing the point. We saw last week, did we not, that God’s design for us and our relationship with him is contentment and trust, that we please him because we were made for his joy and glory. I don’t please God more than you because I happen to be in full time ministry. We have an invitation to a lifelong, life-giving transformation through the work of the Spirit. Similarly, I wonder, are we designed to be content with who we are, and our circumstances, hard and sometimes terrifying and seemingly unfair as this is? If I am to rejoice in the Lord always, theoretically, this has to happen when I am in pain, or suffering, and when I am not. I have not been good at this during my life!

What if God’s desire is for my heart’s desire to simply be him, his praise and his glory? What impact does this have on what I ask for in prayer with faith then?

You’ll see this post is almost entirely speculative. I think in the end it’s because there isn’t a single one of us, or any who have gone before, who truly understand the depth, privilege or potential of prayer. I certainly don’t. I simply offer my speculations and hope and indeed pray that they are somehow helpful to you as you go about your day today.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 11th 2016: Matthew 21:1-17

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

Yesterday, I led a service at our Church called iPraise. iPraise is designed to be a family time. I suppose it could be called all-age, although phrases like that carry connotations and expectations with them which I find deeply unhelpful. Wouldn’t it be better if all of our life together as Church counted as a whole? Some times would specifically help younger, some older, but we live and learn best when we’re together, and when the older are willing to learn from the younger, and vice versa. All of which to say, around half way through the service, whilst people were sharing prayer requests in groups, one of the younger members of the congregation came to me and asked if he could help to lead the congregation through the Lord’s Prayer, which we were shortly to say. I was keen. Our Church is the kind where unexpected things like this can happen often. It’s good to encourage them. It keeps us from sterility. He asked me to test him to make sure he remembered it correctly and then, as he and I spoke it out together he delivered it faultlessly, not even noticing, I don’t think, that the words were on the screen behind him, should he have needed them. He didn’t. I found it very powerful as, for a brief moment, this young man led the whole of our Church family in worship.

As I read the latter part of today’s reading, this fresh memory returned to my mind. It would have been easy, perhaps even ‘right’ in certain circumstances, for me to dismiss this request out of hand. I’m the leader of the worship. I’m trained. I know things. I’m called and equipped to lead worship, to lead in prayer and to teach (although, before you get too concerned about my humility, I have a lifetime’s worth of learning to do about all of those things). But to assert my authority wrongly in this moment would have been to miss the prophetic voice of the child singing, in effect ‘hosanna to the Son of David’ in our temple.

It’s easy for us to get sophisticated in our faith and our expression of worship. Technology helps with this. Screens, video, new songs and forms of worship being presented all the time as ‘the fresh way to worship God’ can all aid us. So can traditional expressions, established prayer books, scripture in beautifully prosaic language which seeps in to the bones and takes a lifetime to build to fruition. What we need most of all, though, are lives fixated on Jesus, so trusting and confident in him that what we really want is to pray and praise without ceasing, wherever we are and whatever that looks like. Simple faith is not simplistic faith. Simple faith is a faith which is just as real as one honed at the academic coal-face, or hewn from the rocks thrown at us by the trials of life. But if, somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the simplicity which causes us to want to speak out praise, unreserved and unashamed, simply for the sake of it, then it’s us, like the temple priests in our reading today, who are ultimately the poorer for it.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 9th 2016: Matthew 20:29-34

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

When you’ve said, as Jesus did yesterday, that you’ve come to serve, not to be served, it’s amazing how quickly opportunities to prove whether or not you were telling the truth come along. How would Jesus respond when he was recognised as Son of David, and begged to ‘have mercy on us.’ It strikes me that the compiling of the narratives of the gospels was no accident. That is definitely the case here. Here Jesus, having made quite a grand statement of humility, claiming to turn the power structures of the world on their heads, given an opportunity to show what he’s made of. Will he serve the blind beggars? How will he serve them? His answer, ‘What would you like me to do for you?’. If you’ve read the gospel accounts of Jesus, you’ll see that this is a familiar refrain of his, but particularly in this context this is staggering I think. Jesus is not a king who thinks ‘how best can you serve my aims?’ or ‘how can I bend you to my will?’, ‘what will feather my own nest?, or even ‘how will this best reflect on me?’. He is a servant. Having heard their reply, we’re told he is ‘moved by compassion’ as he restores their sight.

Wouldn’t it be great if our metaphorical eyes could be opened to this model of living, this model of leadership? We don’t need to do more, do better, be more powerful or successful. Knowing who we are, as friends of Jesus, in God with him, so much of what we worry about could fall away. If only we would let go of it. If only our cares were actually cast upon him and not tightly maintained and developed by us.

So many people I meet, seeing me in the uniform of a Church minister, are convinced I only want to talk to them to convert them. Almost as soon as I say ‘hello’ they’re on the back foot, in a headlong rush to tell me why they don’t go to Church, don’t believe in God, don’t think the Bible’s any good and that sort of thing. The idea that I might just want to get to know them, to serve them seems almost impossible to them. I have to do all I can to make it plain that my role is one of service, first. It is not for me to go around demanding people show me, or my creed, their allegiance. Jesus had a way of getting people to see that he wanted to serve them, that he would do what they asked of him, because he loved them. How can we live, love and work in such a way that our lives can bless people in similar ways today? After all, that is one of the callings those of us who follow Jesus have been given. One way, I think, is to keep on going back to God in prayer, asking him to renew our compassion for those around us, those we meet who may be struggling in any kind of way, and those who do not yet have any knowledge of or relationship with Jesus. Compassion has the consequence of action, however and as we are stirred to action, as our compassion is increased, so likewise pray that God would increase our faith that we might go in to each situation confident that he will help with us do and say what is necessary to serve others, glorify God and bring the joy of his kingdom into our lives and communities.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 8th 2016: Matthew 20:17-28

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

It can be confusing sometimes, the way the lectionary dots about. One minute we’re in Colossians, the next in Luke, and today we find ourselves in Matthew. Can you keep up? As I opened the reading for today I was initially a little nonplussed. How does this follow? Is there a link? After a while, I think I found one. Bear with me. You might find it tenuous or non-existent, but hopefully you’ll find it helpful too.

In this often-quoted story, Jesus makes the kind of statement that, were it to be uttered by a politician today, would have us stampeding to the polling stations. The son of man, he says, came not be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Now, we’ve been talking all week, one way or another, about the ways in which it is easy for us to set up the Christian life as a constant series of measuring sticks to gauge success or failure and have, in each case instead found that the impetus for action, the power for action and the glory as the result of that action come from an belong to God. And now we, who through being welcomed into kinship with Jesus, are called to follow in his way, are now invited to seek not to be served but to serve. Perhaps, too, you might be asked by God to give your life as a ransom for many, not in the way that Jesus did, but in putting the needs of others before your own, in seeking to find ways of introducing people to the Way at every opportunity, by acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God.

As a leader, as I am growing to be, it can be particularly challenging to remember that my first call is to be a servant. It’s my role to model service to such an extent that others might serve too, and this culture of humility and service might spread far and wide. Whether a person has the tiniest particle of influence or wields huge authority and responsibility, we would all do well to remember that Jesus’s pattern for a life well lived was for it to be a life given over to the needs and interests of others, for the glory of God.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 7th 2016: Luke 4:14-22

You can read today’s passage by clicking on this sentence.

The sheer audacity of Jesus. ‘Today, this is fulfilled in your hearing’. As so often when we read the Bible far removed from its original context and audience, we can miss the shattering importance of a single sentence. As he stood delivering these words from Isaiah 61, Jesus knew who he was, and his hearers were shocked at the claims he made for himself. Later in the chapter, we read of Jesus’s having enraged them to such an extent that he was driven out of town so as to be hurled off a cliff. He’d pushed them over the edge. They could not, would not, refused to, recognise that Joseph’s son could be the one sent to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah. For him to do so was not just audacious, it was most likely frightening, if not blasphemous too.

And so, what can seem like a wonderful story of another revelation of the truth of the identity of Jesus runs the risk of losing its human element. When Jesus said what he said, and did what he did, it had consequences for people, consequences that they very often were not ready for.

Those of us who follow Jesus have been called to do as he did, to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom to the captives, sight to those living in darkness, release for the prisoners and the year of the Lord’s favour. We can do it because Jesus was obedient, persistent, purposeful and successful in completing the mission, living the life, that God had given him. We can’t be Jesus, but where we are, as the people God has made us and is making us, we can follow his lead. As our life is hidden with him in God and as we are clothed in the love of God, it’s our privilege to never tire in taking opportunities to speak love in to our culture. We don’t need everyone to end up looking like us. We don’t need to protect God. He can do that perfectly well for himself. Freedom, release, good news, those are the gifts God has given us. Do we live like we’re free and released? Does my life look as if I’ve heard good news and I’m excited to share it? Does yours?