Introduction
Today we mark a turning point in the Christian year. Today’s celebration marks the ending of the Christmas season and the beginning of our looking towards the keeping of Lent, the marking of Holy Week and the celebration of Easter. Today is the celebration of the presentation of Christ in the Temple, a celebration also known as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or Candlemass.
Exposition
So what is it that we celebrate today?
In the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament we are told that a Jewish woman who has given birth to a male child should remain separate from her everyday life for forty days after the child’s birth. After the forty days are over she is to come to the temple and make an offering to God before resuming her normal life. For those who can afford it the offering is to be a pigeon and a lamb, but for poorer people two pigeons will suffice. In our Gospel reading today we hear of how Joseph brings Mary to the temple to make that offering forty days after the birth of Jesus. We can imagine the couple nervously entering the great temple in Jerusalem; Joseph watching carefully over Mary as she carries her baby in her arms, just another young couple coming to fulfil the laws demands.
To the temple officials it would have been just another routine moment. And yet this was a moment which had been anticipated for generations. The child that Mary carried in her arms was not just another child but the long awaited Messiah whose coming had been predicted by the prophets. More than that, in this child the God to whom this temple complex was dedicated had come in flesh amongst his people. Isaiah had spoken of a child who would be Emmanuel, God-with-us, and now in Mary’s arms that God-with-us had come at last to his temple.
As I’ve said, it was a moment which had been long anticipated. When the temple had first been built, at the time of its dedication, God had come in power and glory and filled the temple with his presence. The temple history, written in the books of Chronicles in the Old Testament, tells us “the temple was filled with the cloud of the glory of the Lord” (2 Chron 5.13).
However, before that temple was destroyed about four hundred years later the prophet Ezekiel writes of way in which God’s glory leaves the temple so that the temple becomes simply an empty shell. When the temple had been rebuilt fifty years later God’s glory did not return to it. But prophets continued to promise that one day that glory would return. So in our Old Testament reading today Malachi states “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”.
And when that moment came it came unobserved by those who were charged with the care and maintenance of the great house of God. Yet it did not go completely unobserved. There were in the temple a number of elderly people who spent their days in the temple offering their lives to God in prayer and worship. One of those was a man named Simeon. He was so close to God that he heard God speaking to him, and God had promised him that he would not die before he had seen the Messiah. When he saw the baby Jesus he took him in his arms and praised God for him. There was a prophetess too, named Anna and she too recognized the glory of God in tiny child and spoke of him to others who were looking out for him. For those who made the time, whose eyes were open God’s glory had come among them, the words of the prophets had been fulfilled and a new era had dawned. But for most of the crowds in that Temple it was business as usual. They were too important, to busy or too distracted to recognize their God in this tiny unnoticed child.
Application
And what of us? We live in a franticly busy world where there is so much to do and so much to distract us. Even when we come into Church there are friends to talk to, meetings to arrange, and information to be exchanged. We just can’t spare the space and time to recognise that Christ is among us. Yet he is. Unnoticed and un-remarked he is present in our worship and present in our daily lives if only we will make the space and time to notice him.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Sun 23rd January Epiphany 3 AM
Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.
Isaiah 9.1-4
Psalm 27.1,4-12
1 Corinthians 1.10-18
Matthew 4.12-23
Introduction
I’m sure you will all have heard the story which tells of a motorist lost in some rural part of the country who asks directions of a local, only to be told, “If I were going there I wouldn’t start from here”. But of course the joke is that any journey that you make has to start from “here” wherever here happens to be. It might be wonderful to imagine that you were somewhere better or more convenient but imagining changes nothing. The journey begins when you set out, and the place where you are has to be the place you set out from.
Exposition
In our Gospel reading today we hear of Jesus setting out to begin his ministry. As he sets out he begins in a particular place, with a particular message and with a particular group of people with him.
1. The place were he begins his work is Galilee, the northern part of the old Promised Land. Galilee was a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles who more or less lived separate lives in separate communities. This area of the Promised Land had been the first lo loose its independence to conquerors from the north and for this reason was called Galilee of the nations. Isaiah had prophesied that this land which had been the first part of the holy land to loose its independence would also be the first part to see the liberation which God would send. So Jesus began his ministry, not in the great centre of the Jewish faith at Jerusalem but in the marginal country to the north. He starts of with the people on the edge.
So that’s the first lesson to learn from today’s readings Jesus starts off with the people on the edge – the unexpected people. And that is always the way God works. If you want to see God at work today then the place to look is at the people on the margins, the places you wouldn’t expect to see him at work. And if you experience yourself as being marginalised and shut out then know that you are in the place where God works and he may well be seeking to do some work through you.
2. Jesus begins his ministry with a particular message. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. It’s the same message we heard John the Baptist proclaiming just a few weeks ago.
What does that message mean? Well firstly, it is a message about God’s rule. What Matthew calls the kingdom of heaven and the other Gospel writers call the kingdom of God is not a geographical kingdom in the sense in which we speak of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It’s not an area of land but the rule of God exercised over people. When in the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God’s kingdom will come and ask that his will should be done we are actually asking for the same thing in two different ways, that God should rule over the people of the earth so that they think and act in the way he wants them too. So Jesus message is that the time is close at hand when the will of God will be done and people will affirm their loyalty to him.
In order to get ready for that day people need to Repent. The word ‘repent’ does not mean “feel guilty”. God does not want us to feel guilty. The word ‘repent’ means to “turn around” and stop doing the things that you shouldn’t be doing and start doing the things you should. Feeling guilty is life destroying. All too often people feel guilty about things they should not feel guilty about whilst feeling nothing at all about the things in their life that need to change. Repentance is life giving. It means taking a good long look at who you are and where you’ve gone wrong and asking God’s help to be different from this day forward.
So Jesus message is that the time is coming close when God will act decisively in human lives bringing them to acknowledge his rule; and that now is the time to get ready for that by changing your life with God’s help and seeking to think and do the things he wants you to think and do.
3. Finally Jesus sets out with a particular group of people. Matthew tells us how he calls Peter and Andrew, James and John. They don’t seem to have been particularly special people; just ordinary working men who Jesus comes across and calls. Of course later on they will do remarkable things. As Jesus tells them they will change from catching fish to catching people for God. But the reason they are able to do these marvellous things is not because there is anything intrinsically special about them but rather it is because Jesus has called them and they have responded to his call.
There is another lesson for us to learn here. You don’t have to be someone special to serve Jesus – you just have to respond to his call. Jesus calls every single one of us to follow him as his disciple. Jesus doesn’t just want us to be church goers for a couple of hours a week. He wants us to be his disciples 24hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Not giving him some of the time we can spare but all that we have and all that we are. Then he will do remarkable things with us and in us as he did in and with Peter and Andrew, James and John.
Application
Jesus started off his ministry in the marginal villages of Galilee amongst the people living on the edge. All too often the Christian Church has been primarily concerned with the people at the centre of things, the rich, the powerful and the comfortable. We need to look again at the people on the edge of our society and discern how God is working amongst them, and if we perceive ourselves as being marginalised and powerless then we need to ask how God is working amongst us.
Jesus began with a message “Turn around for God’s rule is about to begin”. We need to turn around from the things in our lives which are not right before God so that we are ready for the rule of God.
And lastly, Jesus called ordinary people to do extraordinary things and those people were able to do those things because they responded to Jesus call. Jesus calls each one of us, to do remarkable things through us so that others may come to accept his rule and know his love.
Isaiah 9.1-4
Psalm 27.1,4-12
1 Corinthians 1.10-18
Matthew 4.12-23
Introduction
I’m sure you will all have heard the story which tells of a motorist lost in some rural part of the country who asks directions of a local, only to be told, “If I were going there I wouldn’t start from here”. But of course the joke is that any journey that you make has to start from “here” wherever here happens to be. It might be wonderful to imagine that you were somewhere better or more convenient but imagining changes nothing. The journey begins when you set out, and the place where you are has to be the place you set out from.
Exposition
In our Gospel reading today we hear of Jesus setting out to begin his ministry. As he sets out he begins in a particular place, with a particular message and with a particular group of people with him.
1. The place were he begins his work is Galilee, the northern part of the old Promised Land. Galilee was a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles who more or less lived separate lives in separate communities. This area of the Promised Land had been the first lo loose its independence to conquerors from the north and for this reason was called Galilee of the nations. Isaiah had prophesied that this land which had been the first part of the holy land to loose its independence would also be the first part to see the liberation which God would send. So Jesus began his ministry, not in the great centre of the Jewish faith at Jerusalem but in the marginal country to the north. He starts of with the people on the edge.
So that’s the first lesson to learn from today’s readings Jesus starts off with the people on the edge – the unexpected people. And that is always the way God works. If you want to see God at work today then the place to look is at the people on the margins, the places you wouldn’t expect to see him at work. And if you experience yourself as being marginalised and shut out then know that you are in the place where God works and he may well be seeking to do some work through you.
2. Jesus begins his ministry with a particular message. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. It’s the same message we heard John the Baptist proclaiming just a few weeks ago.
What does that message mean? Well firstly, it is a message about God’s rule. What Matthew calls the kingdom of heaven and the other Gospel writers call the kingdom of God is not a geographical kingdom in the sense in which we speak of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It’s not an area of land but the rule of God exercised over people. When in the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God’s kingdom will come and ask that his will should be done we are actually asking for the same thing in two different ways, that God should rule over the people of the earth so that they think and act in the way he wants them too. So Jesus message is that the time is close at hand when the will of God will be done and people will affirm their loyalty to him.
In order to get ready for that day people need to Repent. The word ‘repent’ does not mean “feel guilty”. God does not want us to feel guilty. The word ‘repent’ means to “turn around” and stop doing the things that you shouldn’t be doing and start doing the things you should. Feeling guilty is life destroying. All too often people feel guilty about things they should not feel guilty about whilst feeling nothing at all about the things in their life that need to change. Repentance is life giving. It means taking a good long look at who you are and where you’ve gone wrong and asking God’s help to be different from this day forward.
So Jesus message is that the time is coming close when God will act decisively in human lives bringing them to acknowledge his rule; and that now is the time to get ready for that by changing your life with God’s help and seeking to think and do the things he wants you to think and do.
3. Finally Jesus sets out with a particular group of people. Matthew tells us how he calls Peter and Andrew, James and John. They don’t seem to have been particularly special people; just ordinary working men who Jesus comes across and calls. Of course later on they will do remarkable things. As Jesus tells them they will change from catching fish to catching people for God. But the reason they are able to do these marvellous things is not because there is anything intrinsically special about them but rather it is because Jesus has called them and they have responded to his call.
There is another lesson for us to learn here. You don’t have to be someone special to serve Jesus – you just have to respond to his call. Jesus calls every single one of us to follow him as his disciple. Jesus doesn’t just want us to be church goers for a couple of hours a week. He wants us to be his disciples 24hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Not giving him some of the time we can spare but all that we have and all that we are. Then he will do remarkable things with us and in us as he did in and with Peter and Andrew, James and John.
Application
Jesus started off his ministry in the marginal villages of Galilee amongst the people living on the edge. All too often the Christian Church has been primarily concerned with the people at the centre of things, the rich, the powerful and the comfortable. We need to look again at the people on the edge of our society and discern how God is working amongst them, and if we perceive ourselves as being marginalised and powerless then we need to ask how God is working amongst us.
Jesus began with a message “Turn around for God’s rule is about to begin”. We need to turn around from the things in our lives which are not right before God so that we are ready for the rule of God.
And lastly, Jesus called ordinary people to do extraordinary things and those people were able to do those things because they responded to Jesus call. Jesus calls each one of us, to do remarkable things through us so that others may come to accept his rule and know his love.
Friday, January 14, 2005
16-01-2005
Ardleigh Green Baptist Church
Psalm 96
Ezekiel 2.1-3.4
Galatians 1.11-24
The prophet Ezekiel lived at time when, for his people, the world must have seemed to be falling apart. Ezekiel was born somewhere around the year 632 BC. His family were hereditary priests in the great temple which had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem and from his early years Ezekiel would have been trained to take on the family responsibilities. When he was about twenty six years old the land of which he was a part lost its political independence and came under the rule of the regional superpower of that time, the land of Babylon and in the year 597 BC about ten thousand of the leading citizens of Jerusalem were deported to Babylon to live out their lives in exile. The idea was to remove the people who gave the nation its unique identity so that it would be absorbed into the single identity of the empire and give up any ideas of independence and rebellion.
Ezekiel seems to have been amongst the 10,000 who were deported. As his book opens we find him in Babylon, beside the river Chebar. The book opens with a vision of the power and majesty of God who then goes on to call Ezekiel to a new ministry. He has been trained to be a priest but God calls him to the ministry of a Prophet – someone who will proclaim God’s message to his people. It will not be an easy task for Ezekiel to undertake. The people to whom he is sent will be stubborn and defiant. They will not listen to the words Ezekiel proclaims to them. Nevertheless, says God, Ezekiel is be persistent in his proclaiming of what God has to say. “Tell them what I say”, says God, “whether they choose to listen or not”.
Ezekiel then has a vision of a scroll from God. It is not a very cheerful book, on both sides a written “lamentations, groanings and woes”. The scroll seems to represent the message from God that Ezekiel is given to deliver to the people and Ezekiel is told to eat it. By eating the scroll Ezekiel takes the message from God into himself. The message becomes a part of who he is. And despite the discouraging nature of the contents of the scroll Ezekiel finds that it tastes “as sweet as honey”.
For the next twenty years and more, Ezekiel carries out his prophetic ministry amongst the exiles. For much of that time the message that he proclaims is one of unremitting condemnation. It is truly a message of “lamentations, groanings and woes”. Whilst the people seemed to believe that “it would all come out right in the end” Ezekiel amongst the exiles proclaims the same message that Jeremiah is proclaiming at the same time in Jerusalem. The message that there is worse to come; the city will fall and it’s temple be laid waste. This will happen, says Ezekiel, because the people have failed to listen to God and act according to his will.
These messages and visions of judgement fill almost the whole of the first half of Ezekiel’s book. Then in Chapter 25 there is a change. A first the message continues to be one of judgement but now it is aimed, not at the people of Judah but at the nations around them. Seven nations which seem to have taken special delight in Judah’s destruction are themselves warned that is not just Judah that God will judge but them too.
And then, in the final part of the book of Ezekiel we get a different message. This is a message, not of judgement, but of hope and restoration. God’s judgement is not for the destruction of his people but for there cleansing and one that has been accomplished there will renewal and restoration. In this part of the book we have the well known vision of the valley of dry bones. The message is clear – the situation may appear to be hopeless but God’s power can restore even when all hope seems lost.
In these chapters, chapters 33 to 48, Ezekiel tells of God’s concerns in two areas. The first is the area of leadership. Up until now the nation has been lead by people who have put their own interests first but now, God says, he raise up new rulers who will rule after God’s heart. They will take care of the people and nurture them. Indeed, God says, he himself will be the shepherd of his people to seek out the lost, bind up the wounded and care for them. Christians have seen in this promise a prophecy of the coming of Christ.
Ezekiel’s second great concern towards the end of his book is for worship. In the early part of his book Ezekiel sees God’s glory abandon the temple and leave it an empty shell. In the latter part of the book Ezekiel foresees the rebuilding of the temple and the renewal of its worship.
Towards the end of the book of Ezekiel comes one of my favourite passages in the Bible. In a vision Ezekiel stands near the entrance of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and sees a stream of water flowing from it. As the stream flows away it becomes broader and deeper. Wherever the water flows it brings life and healing. On its banks grow trees whose fruit is good for food and whose leaves bring healing. Eventually the stream, now a broad river, empties itself into the stagnant waters of the Dead Sea. Those waters are transformed, made fresh and filled with life. It is a vision of the power of God to transform a stagnant and dying world and bring new life and hope.
The Book of Ezekiel is one of the more difficult books of the Bible but it is a book which is of great value to us. There are lessons for us to learn from Ezekiel’s life and we can prophet by them.
Firstly for example, Ezekiel was a man who had his life planned out. He was to be a priest in the temple. But God had a different plan for him. We need to be careful not to ask God to bless our plans but rather to seek to do what he wills, which may be very different from anything we would plan for ourselves.
Secondly, Ezekiel reminds us of the need to stubborn and hard-headed in pursuing God’s will. The message we have to proclaim will probably not be a popular one. We must proclaim it all the same.
Finally, Ezekiel speaks to us of the hope and life the God’s message means for stagnant and dying world.
Ardleigh Green Baptist Church
Psalm 96
Ezekiel 2.1-3.4
Galatians 1.11-24
The prophet Ezekiel lived at time when, for his people, the world must have seemed to be falling apart. Ezekiel was born somewhere around the year 632 BC. His family were hereditary priests in the great temple which had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem and from his early years Ezekiel would have been trained to take on the family responsibilities. When he was about twenty six years old the land of which he was a part lost its political independence and came under the rule of the regional superpower of that time, the land of Babylon and in the year 597 BC about ten thousand of the leading citizens of Jerusalem were deported to Babylon to live out their lives in exile. The idea was to remove the people who gave the nation its unique identity so that it would be absorbed into the single identity of the empire and give up any ideas of independence and rebellion.
Ezekiel seems to have been amongst the 10,000 who were deported. As his book opens we find him in Babylon, beside the river Chebar. The book opens with a vision of the power and majesty of God who then goes on to call Ezekiel to a new ministry. He has been trained to be a priest but God calls him to the ministry of a Prophet – someone who will proclaim God’s message to his people. It will not be an easy task for Ezekiel to undertake. The people to whom he is sent will be stubborn and defiant. They will not listen to the words Ezekiel proclaims to them. Nevertheless, says God, Ezekiel is be persistent in his proclaiming of what God has to say. “Tell them what I say”, says God, “whether they choose to listen or not”.
Ezekiel then has a vision of a scroll from God. It is not a very cheerful book, on both sides a written “lamentations, groanings and woes”. The scroll seems to represent the message from God that Ezekiel is given to deliver to the people and Ezekiel is told to eat it. By eating the scroll Ezekiel takes the message from God into himself. The message becomes a part of who he is. And despite the discouraging nature of the contents of the scroll Ezekiel finds that it tastes “as sweet as honey”.
For the next twenty years and more, Ezekiel carries out his prophetic ministry amongst the exiles. For much of that time the message that he proclaims is one of unremitting condemnation. It is truly a message of “lamentations, groanings and woes”. Whilst the people seemed to believe that “it would all come out right in the end” Ezekiel amongst the exiles proclaims the same message that Jeremiah is proclaiming at the same time in Jerusalem. The message that there is worse to come; the city will fall and it’s temple be laid waste. This will happen, says Ezekiel, because the people have failed to listen to God and act according to his will.
These messages and visions of judgement fill almost the whole of the first half of Ezekiel’s book. Then in Chapter 25 there is a change. A first the message continues to be one of judgement but now it is aimed, not at the people of Judah but at the nations around them. Seven nations which seem to have taken special delight in Judah’s destruction are themselves warned that is not just Judah that God will judge but them too.
And then, in the final part of the book of Ezekiel we get a different message. This is a message, not of judgement, but of hope and restoration. God’s judgement is not for the destruction of his people but for there cleansing and one that has been accomplished there will renewal and restoration. In this part of the book we have the well known vision of the valley of dry bones. The message is clear – the situation may appear to be hopeless but God’s power can restore even when all hope seems lost.
In these chapters, chapters 33 to 48, Ezekiel tells of God’s concerns in two areas. The first is the area of leadership. Up until now the nation has been lead by people who have put their own interests first but now, God says, he raise up new rulers who will rule after God’s heart. They will take care of the people and nurture them. Indeed, God says, he himself will be the shepherd of his people to seek out the lost, bind up the wounded and care for them. Christians have seen in this promise a prophecy of the coming of Christ.
Ezekiel’s second great concern towards the end of his book is for worship. In the early part of his book Ezekiel sees God’s glory abandon the temple and leave it an empty shell. In the latter part of the book Ezekiel foresees the rebuilding of the temple and the renewal of its worship.
Towards the end of the book of Ezekiel comes one of my favourite passages in the Bible. In a vision Ezekiel stands near the entrance of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and sees a stream of water flowing from it. As the stream flows away it becomes broader and deeper. Wherever the water flows it brings life and healing. On its banks grow trees whose fruit is good for food and whose leaves bring healing. Eventually the stream, now a broad river, empties itself into the stagnant waters of the Dead Sea. Those waters are transformed, made fresh and filled with life. It is a vision of the power of God to transform a stagnant and dying world and bring new life and hope.
The Book of Ezekiel is one of the more difficult books of the Bible but it is a book which is of great value to us. There are lessons for us to learn from Ezekiel’s life and we can prophet by them.
Firstly for example, Ezekiel was a man who had his life planned out. He was to be a priest in the temple. But God had a different plan for him. We need to be careful not to ask God to bless our plans but rather to seek to do what he wills, which may be very different from anything we would plan for ourselves.
Secondly, Ezekiel reminds us of the need to stubborn and hard-headed in pursuing God’s will. The message we have to proclaim will probably not be a popular one. We must proclaim it all the same.
Finally, Ezekiel speaks to us of the hope and life the God’s message means for stagnant and dying world.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Assembly at St Edwards School
Monday 10th January, 8:50am
Theme “Love”
I like films that make you feel good. One of my favourites is a film called Forest Gump which tells the story of a man with learning difficulties (in earlier years we would have said he was mentally handicapped). Forest grows up in America in the 1950’s & 1960’s and somehow seems to get himself involved in all the significant events of that time. We learn that it is was Forest that taught Elvis Presley his distinctive way of dancing and Forest who alerts the world to the fact that President Nixon is a crook.
Throughout the film Forest has an ongoing friendship with a girl named Jenny. Unlike Forest Jenny is of normal intelligence and it first it seems like it is she who is the one who is taking care of Forest but as the film progresses we find that more and more it is Forest who takes care of her. She is battered, exploited and used by everyone she meets with the sole exception of Forest. She spends most of her life searching for love without realising that she has it in Forest. He alone really cares about her and when she is discovers that she is dying of AIDS it to Forest she turns, and he is the one who cares for her through her last days.
Towards the end of the film, after Jenny has died, we hear Forest talking and he gives what seems to be a summery of what the film is really about. “I may not be a cleaver man”, he says, “but I know what love is”. And we who watch the film realize that this simple man somehow seems to have got things right where more complicated people miss the point.
---
I’ve been asked to talk to you today about love, and it’s a big subject. A man named C.S.Lewis wrote a book in which he outlined four different meanings for the word love. Love he said can mean sexual attraction, it can mean friendship, affection and finally the kind of love that God has for his people.
One of the problems that we have when we talk about love is that people mix up the different kinds of love. The think that love is something that happens to them, a feeling, but it’s not really like that.
One day a man came to Jesus and asked him what the most important rules were that we find written in the Bible. Jesus told him that the most important rules were that we should love God and love our fellow human beings. Now if love is just a feeling Jesus words make no sense at all. It is as ridiculous to command someone to feel love as it is to command them to feel hungry or happy or tired. You either are or are not hungry, or happy or tired and someone ordering you to be any of those things can make no difference to whether you actually feel them or not. The same would be true if love were just a feeling, no matter how emphatically you commanded it orders cannot change the way someone feels.
What orders can change is the way someone acts. And that makes sense of what Jesus is saying. He is not saying that we feel in particular way but that we should act in a particular way. If we are ordered that we should love God above all things it means that we should act as though God were the most important person in our lives and give him the first place in all that we do. If we are ordered to love our fellow human beings in the same way as love ourselves it means we need to act as though their needs were just as important as ours, to act towards them as we would like them to act towards us.
---
In the film, Forest seems to understand this despite the fact that he’s not a cleaver man. Poor Jenny spend most of her life missing this truth. And the sad thing is that in doing so it is herself that she hurts most of all.
So let me leave you with this thought. Love is not a feeling but an attitude. You can’t change your feelings but you can change the way you act. If you took seriously the command to love God and to love other people how would that change the way you acted?
Let us pray:
O Lord, who has taught us
That all our doings without love are nothing worth,
Send forth Your Holy Spirit
And pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
The very bond of peace and of all virtues
Without which, whoever lives is counted dead before You.
Grant this for the sake of Your only Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Monday 10th January, 8:50am
Theme “Love”
I like films that make you feel good. One of my favourites is a film called Forest Gump which tells the story of a man with learning difficulties (in earlier years we would have said he was mentally handicapped). Forest grows up in America in the 1950’s & 1960’s and somehow seems to get himself involved in all the significant events of that time. We learn that it is was Forest that taught Elvis Presley his distinctive way of dancing and Forest who alerts the world to the fact that President Nixon is a crook.
Throughout the film Forest has an ongoing friendship with a girl named Jenny. Unlike Forest Jenny is of normal intelligence and it first it seems like it is she who is the one who is taking care of Forest but as the film progresses we find that more and more it is Forest who takes care of her. She is battered, exploited and used by everyone she meets with the sole exception of Forest. She spends most of her life searching for love without realising that she has it in Forest. He alone really cares about her and when she is discovers that she is dying of AIDS it to Forest she turns, and he is the one who cares for her through her last days.
Towards the end of the film, after Jenny has died, we hear Forest talking and he gives what seems to be a summery of what the film is really about. “I may not be a cleaver man”, he says, “but I know what love is”. And we who watch the film realize that this simple man somehow seems to have got things right where more complicated people miss the point.
---
I’ve been asked to talk to you today about love, and it’s a big subject. A man named C.S.Lewis wrote a book in which he outlined four different meanings for the word love. Love he said can mean sexual attraction, it can mean friendship, affection and finally the kind of love that God has for his people.
One of the problems that we have when we talk about love is that people mix up the different kinds of love. The think that love is something that happens to them, a feeling, but it’s not really like that.
One day a man came to Jesus and asked him what the most important rules were that we find written in the Bible. Jesus told him that the most important rules were that we should love God and love our fellow human beings. Now if love is just a feeling Jesus words make no sense at all. It is as ridiculous to command someone to feel love as it is to command them to feel hungry or happy or tired. You either are or are not hungry, or happy or tired and someone ordering you to be any of those things can make no difference to whether you actually feel them or not. The same would be true if love were just a feeling, no matter how emphatically you commanded it orders cannot change the way someone feels.
What orders can change is the way someone acts. And that makes sense of what Jesus is saying. He is not saying that we feel in particular way but that we should act in a particular way. If we are ordered that we should love God above all things it means that we should act as though God were the most important person in our lives and give him the first place in all that we do. If we are ordered to love our fellow human beings in the same way as love ourselves it means we need to act as though their needs were just as important as ours, to act towards them as we would like them to act towards us.
---
In the film, Forest seems to understand this despite the fact that he’s not a cleaver man. Poor Jenny spend most of her life missing this truth. And the sad thing is that in doing so it is herself that she hurts most of all.
So let me leave you with this thought. Love is not a feeling but an attitude. You can’t change your feelings but you can change the way you act. If you took seriously the command to love God and to love other people how would that change the way you acted?
Let us pray:
O Lord, who has taught us
That all our doings without love are nothing worth,
Send forth Your Holy Spirit
And pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
The very bond of peace and of all virtues
Without which, whoever lives is counted dead before You.
Grant this for the sake of Your only Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
The Baptism of Christ
9th January 2005
Matthew 3.13-17
The Bible readings for second Sunday of the new year always tell the story of the baptism of Jesus by his relative John the Baptist.
John the Baptist has always been one of my favourite characters from the New Testament. Matthew tells us earlier on in his Gospel that
"John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."
When I was a young man I was one of nature’s scruffy people and John's wild clothing and wild life style had a very strong appeal for me. It seemed to exemplify a special sort of freedom and of course that is exactly what John was all about. John's message was a call to freedom.
----
In the Gospel according to St Mark we read that John proclaimed "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins". In other words that John was teaching people to come and be washed in the river Jordan as a sign that they would give up and turn away from the things in their lives which were not right. Josephus, who was a Jewish historian who was born around the time that Jesus died on the cross, tells us a little about John the Baptist. He makes it clear that the baptism John administered was symbolic. That what he was really calling for was a change of heart, and that the rite of baptism itself was an enacting by an outward washing of the washing of the heart which had already been achieved by repentance.
This means that baptism as practiced by John is different from Christian baptism. We know that the early Christians did not view baptism by John as being the same as being baptised as a Christian. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we find at least two occasions when followers of Jesus come across people who have been baptised by John and tell them that, although John’s baptism is good, it is not the same as Christian baptism and that they need to be baptised again in the name of Jesus.
The difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism seems to have been that John’s baptism was a sign of something that the person being baptised had done. They had repented, they had turned away from their sins and now they being washed outwardly to show that they were now inwardly clean.
Christian baptism, on the other hand, is nothing to do with what we have done. It is a sacrament, a sign of something God has done. There is a sense in which John had a much more optimistic view of human nature than Christianity does. John suggests that a human being can decide to turn around and can do it, can in effect save themselves. Christians would maintain that human beings can only turn around with God’s help. That they cannot save themselves but that they need a saviour.
This is why, as Christians, we baptise infants who are too young even to realise what is going on. If our view of baptism was that of John the Baptist then baptising a baby would make no sense at all. Firstly, the baby would not be able to come to a rational decision to turn around and change its life, and secondly, most of us would, I think, find it very hard to see what that baby would need to be turning away from – that at just a few weeks old it would not yet have had the opportunity to commit any sins to repent off.
But Christians don’t see baptism in the way that John did. For Christians baptism is about being incorporated into God’s people, becoming part of a community, the world wide community of God’s people which we call the Church.
So Christian baptism and John’s baptism are not the same things, and that leaves us then with one big question. Why was Jesus baptised by John? Christians maintain that Jesus alone lived a perfect life in which there was no sin or wrongdoing from which he needed to turn away. That Jesus alone had no need of repentance. So why did he seek John’s baptism? This seems to have been a question which was on Matthews mind when he wrote the passage we read as our gospel reading today. He tells us that John tries to stop Jesus from being baptised and says to him, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus reply is, ““Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
I don’t claim to understand exactly what that enigmatic reply means but I think it means that Jesus was doing it out of obedience to God. That it was God’s will for him to identify himself in this way with those who did need to repent. So it is that as Jesus submits himself to be baptized by John, as he identifies himself with human beings who need to turn back to God, God proclaims his delight in Jesus “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
----
I’ve said that John’s baptism and Christian baptism are not the same thing, and they are not but there is a connection between them. In being baptized by John Jesus was identifying with humanity, he was in a sense joining himself with us. In our baptism we are joined with Jesus. When we are baptized God says to each one of us “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.” Baptism is a sign of our acceptance by God. I believe in the practice of infant baptism but in many ways I count myself fortunate that I was baptized as an adult. I remember the service and it was a significant time for me. For those who have been baptized as infants it can seem a distant event rather disconnected from any present faith you might have, but it is not. Your baptism is sign that God has loved you accepted you from the moment of your conception and that he has been at work in your life from long before you knew. Value your baptism and celebrate it for by it God says to you, “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3.13-17
The Bible readings for second Sunday of the new year always tell the story of the baptism of Jesus by his relative John the Baptist.
John the Baptist has always been one of my favourite characters from the New Testament. Matthew tells us earlier on in his Gospel that
"John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."
When I was a young man I was one of nature’s scruffy people and John's wild clothing and wild life style had a very strong appeal for me. It seemed to exemplify a special sort of freedom and of course that is exactly what John was all about. John's message was a call to freedom.
----
In the Gospel according to St Mark we read that John proclaimed "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins". In other words that John was teaching people to come and be washed in the river Jordan as a sign that they would give up and turn away from the things in their lives which were not right. Josephus, who was a Jewish historian who was born around the time that Jesus died on the cross, tells us a little about John the Baptist. He makes it clear that the baptism John administered was symbolic. That what he was really calling for was a change of heart, and that the rite of baptism itself was an enacting by an outward washing of the washing of the heart which had already been achieved by repentance.
This means that baptism as practiced by John is different from Christian baptism. We know that the early Christians did not view baptism by John as being the same as being baptised as a Christian. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we find at least two occasions when followers of Jesus come across people who have been baptised by John and tell them that, although John’s baptism is good, it is not the same as Christian baptism and that they need to be baptised again in the name of Jesus.
The difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism seems to have been that John’s baptism was a sign of something that the person being baptised had done. They had repented, they had turned away from their sins and now they being washed outwardly to show that they were now inwardly clean.
Christian baptism, on the other hand, is nothing to do with what we have done. It is a sacrament, a sign of something God has done. There is a sense in which John had a much more optimistic view of human nature than Christianity does. John suggests that a human being can decide to turn around and can do it, can in effect save themselves. Christians would maintain that human beings can only turn around with God’s help. That they cannot save themselves but that they need a saviour.
This is why, as Christians, we baptise infants who are too young even to realise what is going on. If our view of baptism was that of John the Baptist then baptising a baby would make no sense at all. Firstly, the baby would not be able to come to a rational decision to turn around and change its life, and secondly, most of us would, I think, find it very hard to see what that baby would need to be turning away from – that at just a few weeks old it would not yet have had the opportunity to commit any sins to repent off.
But Christians don’t see baptism in the way that John did. For Christians baptism is about being incorporated into God’s people, becoming part of a community, the world wide community of God’s people which we call the Church.
So Christian baptism and John’s baptism are not the same things, and that leaves us then with one big question. Why was Jesus baptised by John? Christians maintain that Jesus alone lived a perfect life in which there was no sin or wrongdoing from which he needed to turn away. That Jesus alone had no need of repentance. So why did he seek John’s baptism? This seems to have been a question which was on Matthews mind when he wrote the passage we read as our gospel reading today. He tells us that John tries to stop Jesus from being baptised and says to him, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus reply is, ““Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
I don’t claim to understand exactly what that enigmatic reply means but I think it means that Jesus was doing it out of obedience to God. That it was God’s will for him to identify himself in this way with those who did need to repent. So it is that as Jesus submits himself to be baptized by John, as he identifies himself with human beings who need to turn back to God, God proclaims his delight in Jesus “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
----
I’ve said that John’s baptism and Christian baptism are not the same thing, and they are not but there is a connection between them. In being baptized by John Jesus was identifying with humanity, he was in a sense joining himself with us. In our baptism we are joined with Jesus. When we are baptized God says to each one of us “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.” Baptism is a sign of our acceptance by God. I believe in the practice of infant baptism but in many ways I count myself fortunate that I was baptized as an adult. I remember the service and it was a significant time for me. For those who have been baptized as infants it can seem a distant event rather disconnected from any present faith you might have, but it is not. Your baptism is sign that God has loved you accepted you from the moment of your conception and that he has been at work in your life from long before you knew. Value your baptism and celebrate it for by it God says to you, “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.”
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Epiphany Sunday
2nd January 2005
Evening Service
Psalm 98, 100
Baruch 4.36 - 5.9
John 2.1-11
Believe it or not the Church of England has rules about how to order its services. One of those rules states that "In any year where there is a second Sunday of Christmas, the Epiphany may, for pastoral reasons, be celebrated on that Sunday." I mention this in case any of you are wondering why we have used, in all our services today, the readings and theme set for the day after the 12th Day of Christmas when it's actually still only the ninth day of Christmas. For Pastoral reasons, whatever that means, we are celebrating the Epiphany today instead of next Thursday.
The word Epiphany means a revelation. A showing forth. A Manifestation. In the ancient world a monarch would, every so often, travel around his kingdom so that his subjects could see him in all his glory. He would wear his finest robes and his richest jewels and be surrounded by his most splendid courtiers and troops so that his subjects could behold his glory and be overwhelmed by it. Such viewings of the monarch were call "Epiphanies". In the Eastern Church that term came to be used for the feast which celebrated the birth of Jesus a feast which was kept on the 6th of January. In the west the birth of Jesus was celebrated, as you know, on the 25th of December so the Epiphany came to be celebrated as a feast of the way God had revealed himself to the world in Jesus. Over time three different incidents from the life of Jesus came to be associated with today because all of them grouped around this theme of God revealing himself through Jesus, showing his power and glory. An ancient prayer from the Divine Office, the daily prayer of the Church puts it this way:
"Three wonders mark this day we celebrate:
today the star led the Magi to the manger;
today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast;
today Christ desired to be baptised by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.”
This morning our readings concerned the Magi, the Wise Men. This evening our readings are about the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee where Jesus changed the water into wine in the first of the miracles recorded in the Gospels. The third of events associated with today, the Baptism of Jesus, we will be looking at in our services next week.
---
So this evening our focus is on a miracle. It's a familiar story to most regular Church goer's, and even those who don't regularly go to church will probably have heard mention of it during the wedding service when we are told that Christ is spiritually present with us at every wedding just as he was physically present at the Wedding at Cana.
I've actually been to a wedding which must have been similar in some ways to the Wedding the Jesus attended. It wasn't a Christian or Jewish wedding, it was a Sikh wedding but it had much the same form as wedding would have had in Jesus day. It started with a party at the bridegrooms house in the evening. The party went on late into the night and then Bridegroom and his friends went to the home of the bride to collect her from her parents and take her to the temple where the marriage service would take place. Then, after the marriage service, there was even more partying, dancing, eating and (this being a Sikh wedding and the consumption of alcohol not being forbidden by the Sikh faith) a great deal of drinking going on late into the night and indeed into the next morning.
Well, Jesus is at just such a wedding and the party is going roaringly well when disaster strikes. The wine runs out. Many commentators speak about the shame this would have brought on the families of the young couple. Some suggest that one of the families involved must have been in some way related to Jesus because Mary seems to take responsibility for the problem, and she seems to expect that Jesus will feel responsible too. And Jesus acts. There are six enormous jars for the water which the guests have used to wash themselves according to the Jewish rites of purification. Jesus orders them to be refilled and the water becomes wine. Wine which is better than the wine which was served before, so that the the steward in charge of the feast tells the bridegroom "you have kept the good wine until now."
---
It's a lovely story, but of course it's more than that. John records this story not just to entertain or interest us but because this story teaches us about Jesus. It is a story in which all the details are of significance.
Jesus is at a wedding. Throughout the gospels one of the pictures that is used for the kingdom of God is that of Wedding feast.Do you remember how I told you the bridegroom would come to the bride's house to fetch her. In the Gospels, and throughout the New Testament, that is a picture of Jesus coming to fetch his people. So, for example, we have the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids who are waiting with the bride for the arrival of the bridegroom. So by telling this story John is hinting to us that the in Jesus the bridegroom has arrived.
Then there are those six stone jars. Some people suggest that the number six indicates incompleteness. That the rites of purification for which they were to be used were not really able to purify. Later on in his ministry Jesus would argue with those who lived to keep things outwardly clean and pure whilst inwardly they were filled with corruption.
Then there is the New Wine which Jesus brings. Again, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks about his relationship with his disciples in terms of New Wine which cannot be put into old wine-skins. In other words you can't confine the relationship which Jesus has with his people within the strictures and rites of religion.
And the best wine is saved till last. With the coming of Jesus something better has arrived than there was before. So much so that the New Wine makes the old taste sour and unpalatable.
---
I'm certain that all those things are in John's mind as he records this story for our edification. But before I finish this evening I want to try to do something which is actually impossible to do, which is to go back beyond John's telling of the story to the actual event itself and ask what was going on when Jesus actually performed this miracle. I say that it is impossible to do this because we only have John's account of this event to base our thinking on and any other approach is pure speculation on my part. One possibility is, of course, that John made up the story and that it has no historical basis; that it is a teaching story from the early church intended to make the points I've already outlined without any historical basis. But I don't believe that that's the case. I believe that behind the story is a historical event which actually happened. And so I want to ask, "Why did Jesus do it?" Why did he intervene in this obscure domestic disaster at village wedding?
And it seems to me that the answer has to that he did so, not to make some spectacular teaching point but simply because he cared. Here were people in trouble, Jesus had the ability to do something about it, so he did.
---
And that gives me a problem, because we cannot worship God on this Sunday without coming to him with some big questions. On Boxing Day there was an earthquake of Indonesia which launched a tidal wave across the Indian Ocean. Early reports spoke of 11,000 dead and then, through the week, each time the news has been turned on the numbers have increased until now they stand at over 150,000 people dead with many, many thousands threatened by disease and by the destruction of their homes and livelihood. Unlike many of the evils which confront us in today's world there is no way that blame for this event can be laid at the door of human beings. It was what the insurance companies would call "an Act of God". And the question I have to ask myself is "where was the caring God that Jesus shows us in this story on Boxing Day?" And I have to say, I don't have an answer to that question except that I cannot believe that he was absent and I cannot believe that such suffering accords with his will. All week I have in my mind that question which Abraham asks of God in Genesis Chapter 18, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?"
And, as I say, I have no answer.
What I will do is to say that in the face of such suffering there are many, and I count myself among them, who will maintain that it is better to continue to assert that here is a God who loves and cares than to give way to despair and hopelessness. To continue to maintain that the picture of God we get through looking at Jesus, who revealed him in his Epiphany on earth, represents the truth about what God is like. And that it is better to maintain this, not because it is the easy option but because it is the hard one; the demanding one. You see if God cares then he calls on us to care too. The people of the world have responded with incredible generosity to the needs of those who have suffered in recent days but so much more is needed. Each of needs to do our part, to give how ever little or much we can afford to do our part.
The story of the Wedding at Cana speaks to us of Jesus ability to transform situations. I believe that he still does but that he calls on us to work with him in doing it.
Evening Service
Psalm 98, 100
Baruch 4.36 - 5.9
John 2.1-11
Believe it or not the Church of England has rules about how to order its services. One of those rules states that "In any year where there is a second Sunday of Christmas, the Epiphany may, for pastoral reasons, be celebrated on that Sunday." I mention this in case any of you are wondering why we have used, in all our services today, the readings and theme set for the day after the 12th Day of Christmas when it's actually still only the ninth day of Christmas. For Pastoral reasons, whatever that means, we are celebrating the Epiphany today instead of next Thursday.
The word Epiphany means a revelation. A showing forth. A Manifestation. In the ancient world a monarch would, every so often, travel around his kingdom so that his subjects could see him in all his glory. He would wear his finest robes and his richest jewels and be surrounded by his most splendid courtiers and troops so that his subjects could behold his glory and be overwhelmed by it. Such viewings of the monarch were call "Epiphanies". In the Eastern Church that term came to be used for the feast which celebrated the birth of Jesus a feast which was kept on the 6th of January. In the west the birth of Jesus was celebrated, as you know, on the 25th of December so the Epiphany came to be celebrated as a feast of the way God had revealed himself to the world in Jesus. Over time three different incidents from the life of Jesus came to be associated with today because all of them grouped around this theme of God revealing himself through Jesus, showing his power and glory. An ancient prayer from the Divine Office, the daily prayer of the Church puts it this way:
"Three wonders mark this day we celebrate:
today the star led the Magi to the manger;
today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast;
today Christ desired to be baptised by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.”
This morning our readings concerned the Magi, the Wise Men. This evening our readings are about the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee where Jesus changed the water into wine in the first of the miracles recorded in the Gospels. The third of events associated with today, the Baptism of Jesus, we will be looking at in our services next week.
---
So this evening our focus is on a miracle. It's a familiar story to most regular Church goer's, and even those who don't regularly go to church will probably have heard mention of it during the wedding service when we are told that Christ is spiritually present with us at every wedding just as he was physically present at the Wedding at Cana.
I've actually been to a wedding which must have been similar in some ways to the Wedding the Jesus attended. It wasn't a Christian or Jewish wedding, it was a Sikh wedding but it had much the same form as wedding would have had in Jesus day. It started with a party at the bridegrooms house in the evening. The party went on late into the night and then Bridegroom and his friends went to the home of the bride to collect her from her parents and take her to the temple where the marriage service would take place. Then, after the marriage service, there was even more partying, dancing, eating and (this being a Sikh wedding and the consumption of alcohol not being forbidden by the Sikh faith) a great deal of drinking going on late into the night and indeed into the next morning.
Well, Jesus is at just such a wedding and the party is going roaringly well when disaster strikes. The wine runs out. Many commentators speak about the shame this would have brought on the families of the young couple. Some suggest that one of the families involved must have been in some way related to Jesus because Mary seems to take responsibility for the problem, and she seems to expect that Jesus will feel responsible too. And Jesus acts. There are six enormous jars for the water which the guests have used to wash themselves according to the Jewish rites of purification. Jesus orders them to be refilled and the water becomes wine. Wine which is better than the wine which was served before, so that the the steward in charge of the feast tells the bridegroom "you have kept the good wine until now."
---
It's a lovely story, but of course it's more than that. John records this story not just to entertain or interest us but because this story teaches us about Jesus. It is a story in which all the details are of significance.
Jesus is at a wedding. Throughout the gospels one of the pictures that is used for the kingdom of God is that of Wedding feast.Do you remember how I told you the bridegroom would come to the bride's house to fetch her. In the Gospels, and throughout the New Testament, that is a picture of Jesus coming to fetch his people. So, for example, we have the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids who are waiting with the bride for the arrival of the bridegroom. So by telling this story John is hinting to us that the in Jesus the bridegroom has arrived.
Then there are those six stone jars. Some people suggest that the number six indicates incompleteness. That the rites of purification for which they were to be used were not really able to purify. Later on in his ministry Jesus would argue with those who lived to keep things outwardly clean and pure whilst inwardly they were filled with corruption.
Then there is the New Wine which Jesus brings. Again, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks about his relationship with his disciples in terms of New Wine which cannot be put into old wine-skins. In other words you can't confine the relationship which Jesus has with his people within the strictures and rites of religion.
And the best wine is saved till last. With the coming of Jesus something better has arrived than there was before. So much so that the New Wine makes the old taste sour and unpalatable.
---
I'm certain that all those things are in John's mind as he records this story for our edification. But before I finish this evening I want to try to do something which is actually impossible to do, which is to go back beyond John's telling of the story to the actual event itself and ask what was going on when Jesus actually performed this miracle. I say that it is impossible to do this because we only have John's account of this event to base our thinking on and any other approach is pure speculation on my part. One possibility is, of course, that John made up the story and that it has no historical basis; that it is a teaching story from the early church intended to make the points I've already outlined without any historical basis. But I don't believe that that's the case. I believe that behind the story is a historical event which actually happened. And so I want to ask, "Why did Jesus do it?" Why did he intervene in this obscure domestic disaster at village wedding?
And it seems to me that the answer has to that he did so, not to make some spectacular teaching point but simply because he cared. Here were people in trouble, Jesus had the ability to do something about it, so he did.
---
And that gives me a problem, because we cannot worship God on this Sunday without coming to him with some big questions. On Boxing Day there was an earthquake of Indonesia which launched a tidal wave across the Indian Ocean. Early reports spoke of 11,000 dead and then, through the week, each time the news has been turned on the numbers have increased until now they stand at over 150,000 people dead with many, many thousands threatened by disease and by the destruction of their homes and livelihood. Unlike many of the evils which confront us in today's world there is no way that blame for this event can be laid at the door of human beings. It was what the insurance companies would call "an Act of God". And the question I have to ask myself is "where was the caring God that Jesus shows us in this story on Boxing Day?" And I have to say, I don't have an answer to that question except that I cannot believe that he was absent and I cannot believe that such suffering accords with his will. All week I have in my mind that question which Abraham asks of God in Genesis Chapter 18, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?"
And, as I say, I have no answer.
What I will do is to say that in the face of such suffering there are many, and I count myself among them, who will maintain that it is better to continue to assert that here is a God who loves and cares than to give way to despair and hopelessness. To continue to maintain that the picture of God we get through looking at Jesus, who revealed him in his Epiphany on earth, represents the truth about what God is like. And that it is better to maintain this, not because it is the easy option but because it is the hard one; the demanding one. You see if God cares then he calls on us to care too. The people of the world have responded with incredible generosity to the needs of those who have suffered in recent days but so much more is needed. Each of needs to do our part, to give how ever little or much we can afford to do our part.
The story of the Wedding at Cana speaks to us of Jesus ability to transform situations. I believe that he still does but that he calls on us to work with him in doing it.
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