Category: Lectionary Ramblings

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 6th 2016: Colossians 4:2-18

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

‘Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.’

It’s hard to keep going, isn’t it? New years very often don’t mean a new you, or a new start (unless you work in, or have fallen prey to a marketing tactic). I remember several late Decembers in recent years where I’ve thought something along the lines of ‘it’ll be great when this year’s over, I can leave it all behind me as I move on to the new.’ Except that doesn’t work. January begins and, most likely, what your life looked and felt like in December will be what it looks like in January. It can be discouraging to tread on through January and find that the exalted hopes we sang about and resolutions we made have already faded into distant memory. Is it worth it all?

Well, yes it is. We’re hidden with Christ in God. We’re clothed in love because he has dressed us that way, and now we can live with him day by day, devoting ourselves to prayer. God wants to talk to us. He wants us to listen for his voice around us, but also, he wants to listen to us. What a strange thought, that God would want to listen to me. Especially when I feel like I struggle to get people around me to listen sometimes! But God wants me to bring myself to him every day, not necessarily in a set series of forms of words (although those help many people) but as myself. Are you talking to God, today? Not just bringing him your cares and concerns, the things you’d like to see fixed or redeemed, but in a relational way. Are you honest with God? There’s no point pretending when we pray. We’re searched and known anyway. But in praying we are acknowledging God, bringing ourselves to him, making life about more than us. In some small way we are doing part of the work of ushering in the kingdom. Prayer ‘works’ because it causes us to look to God beyond ourselves and acknowledge our need of him. Sometime today, at least once, spend some time making yourself think of things for which you can ‘render thanks for the great benefits we have received at his hands’. It’ll make the world about more than you and, ultimately, bring the glory of God once again back in to focus as the centre of your day.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 5th 2016: Colossians 3:12-4:1

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

Over the last few days we’ve been thinking in different ways about being ‘in God’, and here’s another perspective on it. We are to ‘clothe ourselves in love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.’ We, hidden with Christ in God as we are, can only clothe ourselves in love because God, who is love, enables us to love as we live in him. Again, reading this passage, it is feasible that I should decide that clothing myself in love is something that I must do, a decision, or series of decisions, resulting in actions which show that I am clothed in love. It may be that this is what writer of Colossians was getting at, but as is my wont, I want to argue for a slightly different reading. I think, following from yesterday’s passage, the writer is exhorting those who heard and read the letter to return again to a place of submission to God, that our gentleness, patience, humility and other positive relational characteristics would flow from a renewed sense of who God is, who we are, and what we are called to be and do for him.

Again, this isn’t a free pass for us not to bother with behaving in a way that imitates the character of Christ. We do have a role to play in living life as Christians, but the single most important thing I think most of us have to do is also the hardest thing for most of us: we have to accept that God, rather than ourselves, or other people, is who we really need. If God really is my strength, my refuge, my deliverer, my shield, then I am not my strength, my refuge, my deliverer, my shield. I can be strong. I can be purposeful. I can be of use to God in the building of his kingdom perhaps, but these are as nothing compared to the strength and purpose of God, his overwhelming desire for relationship with me, his pursuit of reconciliation, not just with me, but with the whole of the world, which has already been successful. I am important to God. My life is his. He has clothed me with love. Now I have the opportunity to live for him today.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 4th 2016: Colossians 3:1-11

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

This is a rich reading full of imagery. It would be easy to focus on the latter part of the reading’s insistence on the response to the goodness of God being a transformed ethical and moral life. The experience of being saved may well, indeed perhaps could be expected to, result in our day to day lives looking different. Some people think that the whole point of the Christian life is this developing conformity to Christ.But discipleship has to be about more than a changed outlook or set of standards. We are not all the same, nor are Christians designed to be robots.

In actual fact, I think discipleship is primarily about becoming ever more aware of the sufficiency of Jesus, and what it means to have died and been hidden with Christ in God. Most of us haven’t physically died, so this can be a hard concept to grasp. Even after we are raised to new life in Christ, in actual fact, much of our previous lives continue as they did before. It can result in a loss of hope, if we were expecting everything we previously disliked about ourselves and our lives to disappear when we come to know Jesus.

To be ‘in God’, though is to be in a place of safety and security, We have been welcomed in to God, because of his love for us, his invitation to us and because he did what was needed to make the way open. We’re there because of him. I might live in a way which shows that God is real and Jesus is who he said he is and did what he said he would do. However, the saving work wasn’t, isn’t and can’t be done by me. I want to be confident and content that my life is hidden with Christ in God. I want to let go of the guilt and shame of not living for God ‘properly’ or ‘well enough’, to stop looking at the lives of others and seeing their followings of Jesus as better than mine, and instead to thank God that I have been welcomed in to fellowship and unity with him. It’s this fellowship, this hope of glory within me that makes me able to love God, love others and love myself. This is the only way I can follow. The only way I can be a disciple.

I am hidden with Christ in God. I am safe, secure and free. Now let’s see how I can follow his example today.

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 2nd 2016: Colossians 2:8-23

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

‘See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority’

These verses have so much power to them it’s almost unfair.

Where does the power lie in your life, in mine? We can think we need to find ways to assert ourselves, our independence. Our society demands that we submit to leaders for the common good (a common good which not many of us have often agreed to and seems to shape-shift to fulfil the demands of political expediency), as Jesus does of course, in telling us to ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (but what might that be?). Here though, the writer of Colossians reminds us of a key point with which to begin our year: all of God is in Jesus, and we have everything we need and were made to be in him. He is where our focus is to be. He is the source of our life, our breath, every need or lack we had is met by him and in him. It may well not feel like it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I’ve always found the concept of being ‘in Christ’ a challenge. I think in part it’s because everyday life feels so immediate, so pressing, that I’m so ‘in the world’, that the idea of being ‘not of it’ doesn’t get much of a chance to take root and develop.  There’s so much injustice that we’ve been asked to partner with God in seeking to fight and overcome. There’s so much of society which sorely lacks hope, that needs to hear the Good News of joy, peace, possibility and freedom in Christ. As an activist-y kind of person, I’m always wanting to get stuck in, bring about as much change as I can, make a better world, make the world I live in today more like the new world that Jesus promises us is coming in the future.

But here’s a question: when I’m working hard to bring about the world that I think is the one that God is building, when I’m going forth and making disciples, baptising them in Jesus’s name, am I letting God begin the building of that world with me, in me? Am I content to be in Christ, or am I seeking to grow something that looks like what he lived and died for, but is actually my own version of it, inadvertently leaving him out? To my understanding, if we have been brought to fulness in Christ, then we have. If we’re brought to fulness, we’re already at fulness. We’re already ‘in’ Christ. There’s not a further way for us to be ‘in’ Christ. We don’t need to work harder, become more tired, sacrifice more and more, seek new ways to suffer, or find ways to impose our doctrines and our way of life on others. Jesus has done what needs to be done to bring us life, hope and a future already. My worry and stress will not make me any more alive. More to the point they may well cause me to lose sight or focus on the simple glorious truth of just how fully I am alive.

I have the choice to live my life directed God’s way, but that does not bring me more life, more fulness. Those are God’s to give to me.

To be in Christ is the safest, most secure place to be. Let’s enjoy resting there today.

 

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January 2016 Lectionary Ramblings

January 1st 2016: Luke 2:15-21

You can read the text of today’s reading by clicking on this sentence

There’s a certain matter-of-fact-ness about this account of the visit of the Shepherds to the newborn Jesus. I find it intriguing that, having had what must have been something of a life-altering experience, they accepted the explanation of the Angels without a second thought and went to Bethlehem. Is that what we do? Is that what I do? Often when something happens in my life, whether I’ve got as far as recognising God at work in it or not, my first thought is to try and think it through, to rationalise it, make sense of it, plot a sensible course of action, based on scripture, tradition and reason and so to work out what the best thing to do next might be. It sounds sensible doesn’t it, but this isn’t what the Shepherds did. Beyond being terrified a few moments earlier, the writer of Luke doesn’t allow for a moment’s doubt. They’re told to go, and they go. And as they go, they find things just as they were told they would be. No small wonder they told everyone they could find about what they’d seen.

The story of the birth of Jesus is not rational. It does not make sense. Many people make careers out of trying to crowbar some logic in to the Incarnation. What it shows most clearly is that God requires straightforward, but not often simple, faith and trust from us. Each character in this story had to in some way or other suspend rationality in order to go where God invited. As we start 2016, are we willing to let go of our supposed wisdom, our cynicism, our higher logic, and simply commit to spending this year trusting God first? Not to say that we should suspend the use of our understanding, but that they should not become idols elevated above the one whose story we live to share and who has invited us to share in the writing of new chapters this coming year.As the song goes, ‘God is with us, round the earth the message bring’.

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Lectionary Ramblings

The Return of Lectionary Ramblings

Hello everyone, Happy Christmas. I hope you’ve had a great holiday season so far.

As 2016 rolls inexorably into view, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and discipline myself (call it a New Year’s Resolution if you like) to blog on the New Testament Morning Prayer reading from the Church of England every day. I did this for a period in 2014 and found it very helpful. I was more surprised to find that other people did too.

I’ve been in full time Church ministry for a year and a half now. I find I’m consistently excited, occasionally exhilarated and spend more of my life enthused than I thought it possible for a job (or even a vocation) to make me.  Conversely, I am consistently busy, stretched, often tired (in the right kind of way) and in order to fulfil the multiple demands I place on myself (as my own harshest critic) it feels necessary to cut some corners periodically. One of the first to go, in a thoroughly cliched fashion, can be a diligent engagement with scripture as a means for my own devotion, rather than simply because it is a tool that I use on a day to day basis in preaching and teaching. I’m not feeling guilty, though. I actually simply want to ensure that I find the 20-30 minutes a day that I have found in the past to do this. It is important to keep relating to scripture, and to the one who the scripture is about and I hope that by doing this, I can get to know God, myself and others better.

So, why don’t you join me from January 1st? Journeys are better, mostly, when they’re made in the company of others. Let’s see where this one takes us. You’ll be able to find the readings I’ll be using on this page every day. I expect my interpretations of them will please some people, enthuse a smaller number, potentially upset some (especially the theologically educated, no doubt) but as long as we’re engaging, thinking together and inviting the spark of the divine into our daily existence it’ll probably be worth it. Let’s find out.

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Faith Lectionary Ramblings

My Grace is Sufficient – Talk Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Just in case you think I don’t post about faith or my work at Emmanuel here anymore, I thought I’d post my notes for the talk I’m giving at Church this morning. Be interesting to see how this one goes…

———

I feel like I’ve been telling you the same story for about a year now. Honestly, sometimes it seems really frustrating to me that you still don’t get it, that you keep going off after other, shiny, more exciting sounding stuff. In case you’ve forgotten the message that you’ve been given, it goes a little something like this:

  • ‘No matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ’ (2 Corinthians 1). Spirit is the deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
  • ‘Struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.’ (2 Corinthians 4)
  • ‘If the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven’ (2 Corinthians 5).
  • God fashions us for this purpose. Spirit guarantees deposit. We live by faith, not by sight. We make it our goal to please God.
  • Don’t receive God’s grace in vain. Now is the time of God’s favour (2 Corinthians 6)
  • 2 Corinthians 7 – the justification continues (we have wronged no one; my joy knows no bounds. Paul is confident because of the deposit of the Spirit).
  • 2 Corinthians 8 Joy and generosity in the midst of extreme trials. “See that you excel in this grace of giving’
  • 2 Corinthians 9 – whoever sows generously will also reap generously. God loves a cheerful giver
  • 2 Corinthians 10 – I appeal to you, don’t make me be bold. We don’t live by the standards of this world. Our weapons have divine power to demolish strongholds against the knowledge of God, to make every thought obedient to Christ. You are judging by appearances.
  • 2 Corinthians 11 – Justification reaches fever pitch. Paul has put himself in danger in virtually every area of life for the sake of the gospel, and yet the Corinthian church are moving away from the gospel in Paul’s eyes. “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness”

Obviously, this is for effect. How could I ever be frustrated with you lovely people?! I did this to try and build up to the message Paul gives about the grace of God in our reading from 2 Corinthians 12 today. Sometimes the lectionary can do us great favours in giving us snapshots of scripture to get our teeth into. The trouble with that is that, often, as in this case, Paul has been building his case for eleven chapters before he gets to the reading we have today. As they say, context is everything. I’d really encourage you to take some time this week to read 2 Corinthians from the start and see what you make of it. I listened to an audio bible version read by David Suchet. I’d recommend that version if you feel like you’re too busy to sit still for 12 chapters!

It’s easy to think, when we get to the famous ‘thorn in the flesh, messenger from Satan’ part of this passage that we’re to be very British about it. You know the sort of thing, ‘stiff upper lip me old bean’. This isn’t what Paul’s saying. He’s prayed to God many times for it to be removed (the three is probably figurative) and, finding that it hasn’t been, he has instead had this powerful word from God

‘My Grace is sufficient for you’.

Stop and let that wash over you a little bit. It’s a huge sentence. First of all, whose grace are we talking about? It’s not Haydon’s grace, or yours, which is enough for us. It’s God’s. God who is the maker, giver, and provider of an unending, never running out, well of grace. It’s his grace.

Next, we have ‘is’. This is a firm statement. God does not say that he might do enough for us, sometimes, if we say the right words in the right order, or if we know the secret handshake. With the word ‘is’, we can have confidence that it does not change, it will not fail.

And what about sufficient? Sufficient means enough. It doesn’t just mean enough by the skin of its teeth, the tips of its fingers or even its fingernails, it means comfortably enough. This grace is plenty. It is more than enough. We have no more need. Everything is taken care of and supplied.

Now, I’m very aware that many of us live in situations day by day where it feels like we do not have sufficient. Whether it’s through issues of health, finance, food or drink, companionship, or if it’s through looking at the world around us and head-shakingly wondering ‘what the hell is going on?’ (this is allowed) it can quite often seem like the thorn in the flesh has more power than the God I’m talking about. It can seem like all our attention goes in to dealing with the issues the thorn gives to us, or supporting others who are affected by troubles in their own lives, or even just to watch the world continuing along and feeling powerless to help, but Paul had to learn, just as we do, that thorns, difficulties, suffering, are part of life, but still, perhaps even all the more, when we come to the end of ourselves, we are forced to look to God, to rely on God, to trust God. This doesn’t magic our problems away. Most of us in the room this morning can testify that it often seems that to put your trust in God seems to lead to an increase in pressure, difficulty, pain and suffering. This faith life is not for the faint of heart! But here it is: Jesus suffered for us, that we might have hope, freedom and life to the full. Earlier in 2 Corinthians, we heard that we carry round in our bodies the death of Jesus, but that if the tent (the body) we currently live in dies, we have an eternal building which God is preparing for us. This is fancy spiritual language, and no-one knows the complete answer to what this means but here is my best attempt:

Our bodies, our earthly lives, can fail, they can be tough. This is something of an understatement. Recently I gave Margaret a book called My Donkey Body (I think she’s just about forgiven me) by a minister, Michael Wenham, who is journeying with God through terminal illness.

As his body continues to let him down, he has to learn and relearn what it means to follow and honour Jesus, day by day. One thing that becomes clear from writing Michael’s fantastic writing is that bitterness can completely destroy any possibility for hope. We’re about to lift up our prayers of intercession. As we pray, we’ll be praying for the Church, for the world, praying for those we know who are sick and struggling in body, mind and spirit. We’ll also be praying for ourselves. Sometimes God does miraculous healings, situations change just like that. At others, the greater miracle is that he removes the burden of bitterness from us, sometimes when it has been there for a very long time. Are you holding onto bitterness against God, another person, or against yourself?

Later on, we’ll come to Communion.

As I retell the story of the night before Jesus died, as we enter into it together, I’d encourage you to think about what he went through. We know he died on a cross, an excruciating death. We also know that he was a man, who was betrayed by his friends. He had set his face towards Jerusalem. He knew that his time was coming. It would have been easy, understandable even, that as he broke bread and blessed wine, told us to do the same to remember him, he might have been bitter, afraid, confused. We do God a disservice when we make him too serene, too zen. This was a painful, deeply serious thing Jesus was doing. He asked God to take what was coming from him, but finished with ‘yet not my will but yours’. Paul did the same, but came to the conclusion that the grace of God was enough for him, rather than his own strength. Will we have the courage to let go of ourselves, our own resources, our own need to be ‘enough’ and truly let God take his place again on the throne of our lives?

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

September 27th 2014: Acts 15:36-16:5

Read Acts 15:36-16:5 here

One of the things that many of us misunderstand at times about the issue of unity is that we equate unity with always agreeing with each other and reaching a consensus. Paul and Barnabas disagree here in a way which is so “sharp” that they (temporarily) sever ties with each other and go their separate ways. What is interesting here is that, according to Luke, our narrator, the good news of Jesus Christ continued to be spread. Both Paul and Barnabas had good intentions of telling people about Jesus, disagreeing about how they should progress with their projects. How often does this happen to us? We can be so worried about not agreeing with each other or supporting one another that we don’t do anything.

I am not suggesting hot-headed ministry. Nor am I suggesting that we all go off in our own directions, silos as it were, doing whatever we think is best. What I am suggesting is that, whatever our ideas of ministry might be, whether we have a clever strategy or not, the love of God cannot and will not be stopped. Ever since the beginning of the Church, Christians have been doing their best (not deliberately) to make it difficult for the message of God to come across. We make mistakes. We hurt one another. We damage those who disagree with us. And yet the love of God continues to spread. And so I’m left to wonder, would it make more sense for us to worry less about how we do things and make a commitment instead to enjoy the freedom and license to bless and serve people that we have been charged with?

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

September 26th 2014: Acts 15:22-35

Read Acts 15:22-35 here

After the tumult for the disciples of coming to terms with the extension and inclusivity of their new faith and way of life, today’s reading shows the beauty of unity. Power and the disunity have been themes of readings in recent days,  but today, the strength and obedience of stepping towards unity is laid bare.

When we work for unity, for the love of God and for the love of the gospel, many of the things that we have held tightly on to, issues which we think are crucial and of central importance, fall away. If we’re not willing for them to fall away, then the problem is with us, not with the issues or questions that we face. What are some of the issues that you hold on to so tightly, in terms of Church, belief, practice, that were they to fall away, your faith would fall away with them?

 

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

September 25th 2014: Acts 15:1-21

Read Acts 15:1-21 here

Wasn’t Church great when it was an exclusive club of people just like us; people who had no problems, people who behaved themselves, people who didn’t disagree, who only ever did what we all agreed we saw the Father doing, who understood everything there was to understand about the faith, who were careful to only allow in those who passed all our tests of intellect and understanding? Does this sound like your Church? Does this sound like anything in your heart or mind? Do you long for the days of purity? Do you wish that the people with alcohol problems, or body odour problems, or drug problems, or relational problems would leave your Church and not come back? Do you wish that we could all talk in an erudite fashion about mono-theistic religion and orate with panache on why we’ve found the answer to the question of the Trinity?

If yes, then you must have a different vision of Church, life, and hope than me. Perhaps yours is the right one (I’m usually wrong). I pretty strongly agree, though, with the disciples here, who at the end of a fierce debate about the entry requirements for Gentiles in to the faith (which is carried out for very legitimate reasons of tradition and practice) it is decided to not make it difficult for the Gentiles to enter. It’s a good job for us that this decision was taken. Especially for those of us who are men.

We’re not in the journey of faith to build an exclusive, elitist social club full of educated, well-to-do people. The disciples were far from this themselves. They got in to trouble in passages like today’s because they wanted to honour God, and their vision of what it was to honour God was being forcibly enlarged, almost by the minute. Is our vision of what it is to honour God open to the same enlargement? Personally I crave a Church where the only entry qualification is an interest in building a relationship with Jesus, going on with Him, and getting to know some of His people. I really do believe all the rest will follow, and that it isn’t ours to worry about.

I know, I’m naive.