Tag: Bible

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2020 Bible Reflections

The Return of Daily Bible Reflections

Periodically I discipline myself to write a short piece about the readings that are offered for each day by the Church of England, the Church I work for. As we are in the midst of Coronavirus and all that it has brought so far and will bring in the future, it feels like a good time to start writing them again, particularly as I’m largely going to be at home for a good while.

I hope you enjoy the posts which will follow and that you find them helpful. I know that a lot of people I know and who follow me aren’t Christians and will probably sigh and move on when the posts come up on your social media feeds, but you never know, some of my jokes might be funny. Unlikely, I know, but still, a possibility which makes reading the posts probably worthwhile.

Haydon

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Faith

Talk Text: September 11th 2016: James 1

This past Sunday I preached on James 1 at the evening service at our Church. Our housegroups are studying the book this term. Here are my notes from that sermon.

Themes in James

  • Key Points for this evening – James 1.
  1. God wants to gift us wisdom, insight and knowledge. All we have to do is ask him and trust. We will receive it.
  2. God blesses those who patiently endure, who persist, who make worshipping him and telling people about him the main thing.
  3. If we call ourselves people who are religious, who have faith, we have to prioritise serving the poor, those who are sick, the widow and the orphan.
  • James is the brother of Jesus (probably). Think about how it was for him to grow up in the family. A simple family of lay people – the story of the birth of his brother etc, then one day Jesus gets up in the temple and preaches on Isaiah 61:1-4’today this is fulfilled in your hearing’. But it’s your brother. Remember later in the gospel accounts, the family of Jesus try and silence him. They think he will get himself killed. But by the time of the controversy in Acts 15 about whether the Church should accept non-Jewish believers, James sides with Paul and says that no-one should be excluded (19). That’s a miracle! James’s letter is a careful one, making it pretty clear that it is trust in God that is central to faith and life. We’re not to rely on ourselves, our own wisdom, our own strength, our own wealth, we are to trust solely on God.
  • He’s writing to a Church under pressure. Dispersed by persecution etc. Similar to us today, not all Christians in one place. 

Themes in James 

  • 2 Dear brothers and sisters,[a] when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
  • The purpose of testing – ‘the testing of your faith produces perseverance’. Testing/trials have a purpose. It’s hard to get excited about them (just being honest), but we’re told to ‘consider it pure joy’ when trials of many kinds come. Because of the perseverance that they produce. I find it interesting then that perseverance is seen as something which is at work in us, enabling us to keep going, almost like it should have a capital P. We become mature and complete when we allow it to finish its work. This is quite interesting I think. If we strive too hard, if we push on ahead, trying to make things happen in our own strength, in our own way, then we actually run the risk of not allowing maturity and completeness to come in the way that it is supposed to.
  • 5-8. 5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6 But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7 Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.
  • We can’t be who we are designed to be without wisdom.  What James is talking about here is  sofia (insight, skill,intelligence). What I think James is getting at here is not that we all end up needing to be part of MENSA or that only people with brains the size of planets can understand God. Far from it. He is saying that the knowledge, the insight, the know-how we need for how to live for God, to love him, to serve him, in a world which can make it seem very difficult to be a Christian, that’s something that we need to ask God for, not to seek within ourselves. Wisdom is a gift from God. The word used for the way God gives it to people is haploce (generously, bountifully without reproach). All we have to do is ask for it, and trust God. And we will receive it. Our culture can make it seem like if you’ve had a great education (perhaps a Grammar School education, but we shouldn’t go there! you are of a higher worth than someone who hasn’t. If you got 74 A Levels and 5 degrees, you’re worth more to society than someone who left school at 14 and worked hard their whole life. This.Is.Not.True. I’ll say it again. This.Is.Not.True. I’ve been fortunate enough to be trained in Church leadership stuff for 5 years, with a lot of what I have done having been quite academically heavy, but if I don’t ask God for his wisdom, trust him and let him gift it to me, then I am lost. When you’re under pressure, it’s not your degree that saves you, it’s the power of God,
  • The trusting is important though! Without trust, we’re like people blowing in the wind or rolling on the sea, we’re double minded, or confused in all we do. If we can learn to trust God, to seek him first, to acknowledge him in all our ways and lean on him, not our own understanding, we are able to see something of the kind of life of faith, the life of abundant generosity, that can be ours. We miss it sometimes, trying to understand without seeking God’s wisdom.
  • 9-11 – 9 Believers who are[b] poor have something to boast about, for God has honored them. 10 And those who are rich should boast that God has humbled them. They will fade away like a little flower in the field. 11 The hot sun rises and the grass withers; the little flower droops and falls, and its beauty fades away. In the same way, the rich will fade away with all of their achievements.
  • Don’t chase wealth. Only the poor, the humble, can boast. Wealth brings more problems than it solves. Don’t you just wish sometimes that we all had more money? Or that the Church had more money? Or that we didn’t need to worry so much about all the stuff to do with money that seems to dominate so much of our lives these days? We’re conditioned to want more. We’re not conditioned to commit to contentment. Some of us in the room tonight are poor, we do lack, but as a whole body, as a whole Church, we have enough. Sometimes we just need to share our resources, our energy, our gifts, our talents, our food, more amongst ourselves. I say this to myself. I like comfort, I like stuff. I like not worrying about money. James says God has blessed the poor. Jesus says the poor will always be with us, that the poor in spirit, the meek, have the kingdom, that they will inherit the earth. God has a preference for the poor. What we do, how we think, it needs to reflect that.
  • 12-18. – 12 God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. 13 And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong,[c] and he never tempts anyone else. 14 Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. 15 These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. 
16 So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.[d] He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.[e] 18 He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.[f]

  • Are we willing to endure patiently – hoop-om-eno, to persevere? To bear up against? It’s not so glamorous is it, but persistence and consistency are key themes in the Christian life. We have to keep going. Together. We have to keep the main thing the main thing, to keep our eyes fixed on worshipping Jesus and introducing people to him. That’s what God blesses. He blesses those who aren’t distracted into seeing shiny new things and ways of dong things round every corner. He blesses those who come to him for wisdom, who trust him with their lives, and then who keep on doing it, and keep on doing it, and keep on doing it, whatever comes, whatever trials, whatever opportunities. It might sound boring to those of us, like me, who are attracted by shiny, by new, but it’s the thing that gets you that, ‘welcome home, good and faithful servant’ at the end of it all. It’s what this life is all about.
  • Don’t be misled, God is never tempted to do wrong, or to ask us to. If we feel tempted to do wrong, it comes from us, from our own desires and leads to sin. We can’t get out of it easily by blaming God when we find ourselves having done the wrong things. God is not at fault, we are, but there is hope. Good, perfect gifts are given to us from God. I’m not talking about that new car we want, or a nice new job, even though those things can be very important to us at times. I’m talking about the things that last, the things that endure, life, breath, hope, we are the prized possessions of God. He gave us his true word, the word of life, Jesus. That’s a pretty big deal. God never changes. Never
  • V19- 
  • 19 Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. 20 Human anger[g] does not produce the righteousness[h] God desires. 21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.
  • 22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.
  • 26 If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. 27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
  • I like to talk, most of you know this. A lot of you have been on the end of one of my rants. Sorry about that. I’m wanting to learn to be quicker to listen, slower to speak. Not just to each of you, but to God too. We’re in a period where we especially need to be listening to God. Are we on his path, doing things his way? I think so. I think our priorities are right and good. Love God with everything we have, love our neighbours, our communities, and love ourselves. We are actually doing pretty well. The end of our passage tonight says that true religions which pleases God cares for orphans and widows in their distress. it puts the poor, the struggling, the sick, those in need, those who don’t have a place, or who society doesn’t value, it puts them first. 
  • We control our tongues, we speak well of one another, we bless with what we say, we don’t put people down, or insult, or attack.
  • We don’t let the world corrupt us…This is about priorities again, about money, about where we put our trust, our confidence. Is it anywhere but in God? Then it’s in the wrong place. Are we trusting God? Then we’re on the right track.
  • We need each other. We, Phil and I, the great people we have who lead services, preach, play music, people who serve our congregations in a whole variety of ways, we need God, we need each other, and we need to accept that we’re loved and precious too. As Phil said last week, we’re all in this together. All of us in this room, we are prized possessions of God’s. 
  • So, as we close, some questions and challenges….What’s your favourite thing? To God, you’re more important than even the most important possession that you just thought of, that thing, or person that you cherish. You might not be able to believe that, or think that that’s a key part of this passage tonight, but as I’ve prepared, I’ve felt God say to me that there are people here tonight who need to receive the gift of wisdom, wisdom to know that they are his prized possession, that he will not let go of you. 
  • Secondly, are we willing to put our trust, our confidence in God? It’s a hard one. Voices in our heads say we need to worry, to focus on other things, but God is where there is life, hope, a future, possibility. Let’s put our trust in him, together, as we move forward in to the future, wherever that may lead, remembering his faithfulness to us in the (very recent) past, and expecting it in the future.
  • Thirdly and lastly, let’s work together to find ways to serve those who are struggling this week. If you are, receive prayer before you go tonight. If you know someone who is, pray for them this week, with them if you can. If people are short of food, share some of yours. If people are short of money,or clothes, share some of yours. If someone lacks confidence, but you know that they are precious, valuable, tell them. Give generously, as God as been so generous to us. He’s given us his wisdom to see how great he is, how valuable the people he has made his prized possessions are. Let’s worship him now, and with our lives this week.

Amen

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April 2016

April 5th and 6th 2016: Colossians 1:15-2:15

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

So much of what makes knowing and following Jesus so exhilarating, so crucial, so necessary to human flourishing is encapsulated in the readings which we are looking at here. Continuing on from our jaunt in to Romans a couple of days ago, Paul is at pains to emphasise the sheer majesty and wonder of Jesus, and his total sufficiency. Not just in terms of what he has done, but in who he is. It isn’t just his action that makes him acceptable to God and able to present us holy and blameless to him. It is who he is. Similarly, the work of salvation Jesus has done for us doesn’t just render freedom where captivity once resided, it changes us at the very core of who we are. We are new people. We wear the skins we have always worn, but everything ultimately consequential about us has been made new because of this god-man, this second Adam who has won the victory and brought us to fullness of life. He is only able to do this because the fullness of God dwells in him, or to put it another way, because he is God.

We are full of life because God has made us full of life. Nothing we can do can make us more full of life. We are full as full can be already. Don’t be deceived by claims that you can have more, better, a closer relationship with God through a certain way of living, speaking, singing or anything else. You have fullness, closeness, full intimacy already. Accept no weak substitutions for intimacy with God. Instead, rejoice that you have the freedom that was meant for you. Freedom to know the Lord, to trust him, to give your life to him. That’s all this life is for. Everything else is a pale imitation of life, joy and the hope Jesus died and rose to make real.

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April 2016

April 4th 2016: Romans 5:12-21

With apologies to those who have been waiting, and probably given up, for these posts to return after a two-week break. I decided to pare down what I worked on in the week before Easter, and have then been on holiday this past week. Normal service will now, I hope, be resumed.

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

 ‘Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.’

Do we believe what Paul says about the saving work of Jesus Christ (his death and resurrection) here? People have spent whole lifetimes trying to work out the salvific value of the cross, to whom it applies and what must be done in order to benefit from its consequence (or, to be crude, to be saved). Who’s in? Who’s out? What do we do to get ‘in’?

There are things that Christians are expected to do. We are to love others at least as much, if not more, than we love ourselves. We are to love the poor. We are to partner with God in building his new way of life here, because has given us that privilege. We are, primarily, to love God with everything we have, worshipping him, but not just with Rend Collective songs, or Charles Wesley hymns, with who we are and how we live. We’re to prioritise service, with everything we have, including our money. We’re to pray for those in authority, speaking the truth in love to power.

But none of that, in and of itself, gives life to anyone. Jesus Christ gives life and justification, purpose and all that goes with it, to everyone. Not just some people, his one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all, Paul says. All. Not just some. There’s no contraction or contingency here based on us behaving rightly in order to receive the undeserved consequences of the act of righteousness. We don’t even have to say a special prayer at a particularly emotive moment in our lives. Jesus has brought justification and life to all.

If this is true, and I can see already the sharpening of keyboards everywhere quoting various scriptures that might argue against it, doesn’t this have a monumental impact on everything? Perhaps Paul misunderstood salvation. Well, wouldn’t that be interesting. Some of us would struggle with that even being possible. Perhaps he’s journeying with his thinking on the issue. Perhaps what he really meant isn’t what has been communicated to us by the translation here. I wonder what Jesus would have to say about what he is asserting here.

But what about this: what if the greatest lie the devil uses in this age to confuse and concern people, aside from the one about not existing at all, is that Jesus did not know what he meant when he said ‘it is finished’ on the Cross? Wouldn’t that be a neat and powerful trick? See, I believe Jesus did know what he meant. Exactly what he meant. He meant that we have life and justification. Not so that we could build edifices, power structures, empires, whole industries, around his name and following him. We have life and justification so we can share it with everyone, those who know the life Jesus has won for them and those who do not.

A time is coming when evil’s complete annihilation and the total, final victory of love will become plain to all. This is the promise of the Cross and the wonder of the grace and mercy of God. So, lots of fine and fancy words, but what difference will they make to how we live today?

 

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March 2016

March 22nd 2016: Luke 22: 39-53

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

Have you ever prayed so earnestly that it was as if you were sweating blood? In our comfortable Western context, prayer can easily lack intensity. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place where someone sweated like great drops of blood blood in anguished prayer. If they did, we’d probably try and calm them down, make them sit down so as not to distress other people. Jesus, as he does this, is entering the most intense moment, not just of his life, but arguably of all of human history. Still, it’s a detail that can sometimes get brushed over in our cultural of appropriateness.

Jesus finds his disciples sleeping ‘because of grief’ and demands that they pray ‘earnestly that you might not come into the time of trial’. If we do pray like this, it’s easy for us to slip into feeling selfish or to descend into self-absorption. Recently, the concept of the enemy ‘prowling like a lion that he might devour some’ has been much on my mind. As I write this in front of the backdrop of the unfolding event of the terror attacks in Brussels this morning, I find myself thinking again of how accepting I have become of ‘times of trial’, moments when evil rears its head and wreaks as much havoc as it possibly can, seeking not just to devour individuals, but whole communities, cultures and ideologies. Evil is part of our world, our lives, but it is never acceptable. We should do all we can to stand against it, recognising, especially this week of all weeks, that we have one who is for us and who went to the Cross to defeat evil. In our own lives, in our thoughts and actions, in our words, in our politics, in the choices we make with money, let us not be people who repay evil for evil. Let’s instead be people who pray earnestly for those who find themselves in a time of trial, that the merciful love of God would enfold them. Let’s be people who, when faced with evil, repay it with good. Where there is hatred, let’s bring love. Easy in theory, but all so very hard in practice.

Let’s be people who hold true to the one we believe in and love, the Prince of Peace.

 

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March 2016

March 21st 2016: Luke 22:1-23

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

As we enter Holy Week once again, the challenge for the reader is not to understand and explain what and why things happened, but working out which elements of the story we should particularly focus on this particular year’s journey to the cross. The scale and scope of the narrative and its consequences are too great for us to comprehend its entire breadth at all times, or at least they are for me. Reading the story of Judas deciding to betray Jesus this morning, the eye is drawn to the question at the passage’s end. These people had lived with and followed Jesus for three years. How could any of them betray him?

All of us have experience of committing to a person, group or institution and ending up disappointed. As those who welcomed Jesus in to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday felt let down by the lack of a strong and mighty saviour and disavowed him on Good Friday under pressure from the Jewish authorities, so it can be easy for us to decide that, as we haven’t got what we wanted from those we put our trust in, what we were promised, even, then we’re well within our rights, our entitlement, to go and find what we deserve elsewhere.

I often wonder about the emotional life of Jesus, about his feelings. We’re given small glimpses into it in the Gospels, but not on this particular occasion. Here’s one who has come to bring about a new covenant between God and his people, betrayed by those he loved, who he has taught, related to, lived his life with and for.

And yet for all our deal making and seeking to better ourselves without reference to him, or even perhaps whilst attempting to use him as a bargaining chip, Jesus went to the cross anyway. He chose to die, to lay down his life for his friends. That’s the call of the Christian life, to accept the gifts God gives us, and then to live in such a generous way that those gifts are shared as widely as possible. We are to lay down our lives, not seeking to protect ourselves or feather our own nests.

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March 2016

March 10th 2016: Hebrews 10:19-25

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

One of the primary points of this series of blogs is encapsulated in this passage. As we live the life of faith, as we wonder and question, as we doubt, let’s be people who are provoked to, and provokers of, love and good deeds. Love and good deeds are not the exclusive preserve of those who have a Christian faith, but as Christians, it seems logical that they should be something that flow from us as the joyful obedience of our relationship with Jesus Christ, and the value we place on one another and ourselves as we are able to see people from the Spirit’s point of view.

And then, look at verse 25! Even in the days of the preparation of the New Testament, it seems that there were people who had designed that meeting together as Church wasn’t for them, for whatever reason. Some things never change. I’m increasingly convinced of the importance of gathering together as the family of faith, to eat, to worship, to pray, to have fellowship. We can’t be one as Jesus and the Father are one and not be together. People get hurt by Churches (usually people within Churches who take on the visage of representing the whole organisation). Churches are not perfect. They never will be. Recently I watched the film Spotlight. It’s a harrowing portrayal of an institution which failed in every conceivable way. The Church, with a big C, failed. It is no surprise that people want to have nothing to do with a Church that behaves this way, nor with the God that they purport to represent. Spotlight is an extreme example, but many of us have had things happen to us that might well justify us never darkening the doors of a Church again. There are days when the last place I would choose to be is in Church, honestly. While each person’s experience is their own, I do get why Church is a very difficult place for a lot of people to be in.

The closest I’ve come to seeing perfection enacted in a Church is watching people from virtually all walks of life and experiences gathered together around the table at Communion. It’s here that we remember that Jesus has broken every barrier down. Churches will fail. We will find reasons to leave. Sometimes they will be good, entirely understandable. And yet, ‘all are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place’, as the song (repetititively) goes. We who are the Church have a huge job to do to make our families welcoming and accessible to all. Particularly so because any barriers that exist now are those which we have erected ourselves. God took them all away. Nothing should stand in the way of people coming together to worship him.

Don’t exclude yourself from one of the most important, and best, elements of being a follower of Jesus. Changing things from the inside is always more satisfying in the end anyway.

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March 2016

March 9th 2016: Hebrews 10:1-18

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

‘I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more’

Today’s is one of the most amazing passages in the whole of Scripture (in my opinion). Jesus gave a single offering for all sin, which was sufficient to satisfy the demands of justice. The law of love wins! All the offering and sacrificing we can do will not ever lead us to freedom, Jesus’s gift to us is the only thing that can do that.

And not only that, as the quote at the top of this post says, God promises that he will put sins and lawless deeds out of his mind. He will not remember them. This seems entirely contrary. I keep a record of my own wrongs, even though I shouldn’t. More than this, I am bad at keeping a record of the wrongs of others. Am I loving them? When we find ourselves living in times when injustice is meted out to the poor on an institutional scale and every reading of a news article’s ‘under the line’ comments section indicates a national hardening of heart towards those who are in need, there is a rising within me of a desire for justice (which I think is good) as well as a desire for the restoration for balance (still good, I think) and finally a desire for some kind of redress (this is where it gets bad, I think). We are to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. If, at any point I find myself claiming that I am less in need of the grace and mercy of God than those who vote for or implement unjust laws, those whose opinions I disagree with, however strongly, claiming that those things are more sinful and in need of mercy than I am, then I deceive myself.

We live in times when it is all too easy to be fearful. Just look at the political leadership situations in most of the most powerful nations of the world. But God is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear? We have a God who could remember our sins and lawless deeds, who could count them against us, who could do anything he likes at any moment. He chooses grace and mercy. Let’s do the same today.

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March 2016

March 8th 2016: Hebrews 9:15-28

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

There’s something about knowing people are praying for you. Whatever you think prayer is, or whatever you think prayer does, it’s impossible, it seems to me, not to at least be touched by knowing that someone is praying for you. It does us some good to realise that we’re being remembered and thought of by others, that they consider us worth lifting before God, whatever we’re going through. I have real trouble fathoming the mechanics of prayer, beyond the idea that it’s an ongoing conversation between God and the person that is praying to him. On that basis, I try hard not to present a shopping list of demands, and instead to get to a place where I don’t hide from God (what a waste of time that is anyway), and, if I am to understand what he is saying to me, that I’ve given myself the best chanceSo, how astonishing is it that, when he entered into heaven after his ascension, Jesus took as one of his primary tasks continuing exactly this conversation with God on behalf of people, on behalf of you and me. We’re so valuable to him that he keeps bringing us to God’s attention, day and night, night and day. We are never forgotten.

So, how astonishing is it that, when he entered into heaven after his ascension, Jesus took as one of his primary tasks continuing exactly this conversation with God on behalf of people, on behalf of you and me. We’re so valuable to him that he keeps bringing us to God’s attention, day and night, night and day. We are never forgotten, never alone.

It’s seemingly bonkers. But then isn’t most of the gospel of Jesus Christ? We, us humans, are all of irreplaceable value to God. Think about that when you’re down on yourself, or other people today. The good news of Jesus is that he brought glory to God in how he lived, died, resurrected and ascended, and he did it all so that we could be with God.

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March 2016

March 7th 2016: Hebrews 9:1-14

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

There’s only one sacrifice that works, or is worth giving, and it’s already been given. Jesus did all that was needed, all that could possibly be done, to give us every kind of freedom with which to worship God and live lives with him as the cornerstone. That’s all there is to it. Any other kind of sacrifice, to any other kind of god, be it a deity, or a human institution, will not achieve what the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus did at a stroke. We are new creations, reconciled to God so that we can be people who exercise a ministry of reconciliation. This ministry is to show people that God has done the work of bringing us back together with him. We’re to be openers of hearts and minds to the glorious truth of freedom, of hope, of possibility.

Sounds alright, doesn’t it.