See that you fo not refuse Him.

I would like to tell you a story this morning about two ways of living.

One way of living is one in which people are bent over, infirm, bound up, afraid, under law, in fear of punishment, surrounded by darkness.

The other way of living is one in which there is freedom, release, healing, life, joy, assurance that we are loved.

I wonder which way you would prefer to live?

Our two readings this morning tell the story of these two ways of life and their relation to each other, and leave us with this choice: which way will you live?

The first reading that we heard was from the book of Hebrews, and the writer of that book begins this section of the book with a description of something that had happened many years ago to the people of God.

They had been led out of slavery in Egypt, had crossed the Red Sea and had travelled across the desert to a mountain, a mountain that was holy to them, a mountain called Mount Sinai. When they got there they discovered that it was a place of darkness and fire. God came and spoke to Moses in the clouds of the mountain, but the people were afraid that they would die, so they drew back from hearing God’s voice and instead kept at a distance.

It was at Sinai that God gave the law to the people, through Moses. This law was to be life giving and life enhancing. It was given to allow the people to live in harmony with each other and with God. However, it was powerless to do this because the people continued to keep their distance from God. At first this meant that they were disobedient and unfaithful. While Moses was on this very mountain, being given the law by God, only months after the rescue from slavery in Egypt, they make an idol to worship, a golden calf.

The remainder of the Old Testament tells the story of the people of God keeping their distance from God, of them being wooed back by God, and of them going off again and again. Eventually their land is over run and they are scattered into exile. They insisted on keeping their distance from God, and in the end God allowed them to have what they wanted.

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A Place of Prayer

I’d like to take you on a journey this morning. As we travel we will stop off at various places, meet different people and hear what is being said. As we travel, I’d like to encourage you to think about similar journeys that you have taken, or maybe that you are on at the moment.

As in Doctor Who, the first stage of the journey is the one that will take us the furthest through time and space, but it’s the one that I am going to spend the least time talking about. Will you come with me back about 2,000 years and 1,500 miles south east of here, to city called Philippi? We land in this Roman colony in Greece, in the street. It’s dusty and hot, there are people everywhere, going about their daily business.

We spot a little group of people, obviously walking somewhere together. Paul and Silas are part of the group, going to the place of prayer. The place of prayer wasn’t a Temple or a synagogue; it wasn’t a special building, but a spot on the riverbank, outside the city, where people gathered to talk together and to pray. They had gone there when they first arrived in Philippi, and had met Lydia, who had believed the message that they had bought, and decided to follow Jesus. Now they were staying at her house and had got into the practice of going back to that spot, to pray and to share the good news further.

But, there is opposition to them going to the place of prayer. Every time they head off to the place of prayer, they are harassed by this girl, shouting after them, trying to distract them.

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Yearning

Have you ever watched a dog on a lead? Of course, just like people, every dog is different but it seems to me that in the main they fall into four different categories. Firstly are those who you see going for a walk who just amble alongside their owners, maybe a bit lazy, maybe a bit on the elderly side, often a bit podgy, amble, amble, amble, not taking much interest in anything.

Then there are those who lull you into a false sense of security. They seem to be like the first type, but then they’ll catch a scent or see something that interests them, and suddenly they’ll pull at the lead, eager to be off after that squirrel. If the owner’s not particularly aware they’ll find the lead pulled from their hand and a dog disappearing into the bushes.

Then there are those who can’t go more than a step without their attention being caught by something new. They’re always pulling, straining, at the lead, but never in the same direction for more than 30 seconds. They have the attention span of a goldfish. They want to be off the lead and off exploring the world, but they’re not sure about where they’d go first if they were let off.

Then there are the fourth type. They are the ones that if you had roller skates, or a skateboard would probably pull you along the route. They pull and strain and yearn with every ounce of their being against the lead. But in one direction. They pull you on every step of the way. They have a fixed idea in their head and they are going to go for it. The blood hound is on the scent and will not relent until she has found the quarry.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in the city of Philippi we hear about how Paul is like our fourth type of dog. He is straining towards a goal. There is a prize, that he hasn’t fully got hold off, but he desires with all his being. He is pulling towards it, utterly focussed. And, it seems to me, that he encourages his readers to do the same.

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Obedience, worship, and faith

Have you ever seen one of those films in which some of the characters find their way into a treasure hoard? They run from side to side, not knowing where to start looking at things. They pick one thing up and then dash over to the other side of the room as another jewel catches their eye. Suddenly a gleaming nugget drags their attention away again. They are so overwhelmed with the enormity of the find that they dash round like headless chickens unable to focus properly on any single item.

I felt a bit like that this week, as I wrestled with the readings that we have heard. Three readings from three very different types of writing, yet all three are to be found, bound together in our Bibles. One from the very beginning of time, one from the very end of time and one from the turning point of time, the life of Jesus here on earth with us. Each reading is full of images and emotions and meaning. I could pick any verse from any of these readings and preach for an hour. If I did, we’d be here until this time on Tuesday. And we still wouldn’t have scratched the surface of the depth of richness that God has given us in these portions of the Bible.

So, I have picked a few things that I’d like us to look at this morning, if I can stay focused for a little while and not get distracted. But, there are many other things here to enjoy, so I’d encourage you to spend some time this week reading over these passages and seeing what catches your eye, and what else God might be saying to you through them.

But, for now, back to this morning. I’d like us to think about three responses to God that these passages provoke. Obedience, worship, and faith.

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Renewing

This morning we come to the third in our Advent mini-series on refining, reviving and renewing.

A couple of weeks ago Marg helped us to think about God’s refining work in our lives. We heard about the real live example of a silver refiner, and what that can show us about how God works in our lives. We looked at how God is waiting with us and watching with us in all the heat and fire, and that through the refining process we are made more able to reflect God’s image.

Then, last week, we thought about God’s reviving work in our lives. Using the real life example of the process of reviving someone who has got too cold, we discovered that God’s reviving wakes us up, moves us out of the place of death and gives us life in the Holy Spirit.

Now this week are going to think about God’s renewing work. Given the pattern so far, it might not surprise you to hear that I have a real life example of renewal to think about as well. And it won’t take much imagination to think what it might be either. You can’t wander more than about 50 yards in this city without seeing some kind of sign with the word “Renew” on it.

According to their website:

“RENEW North Staffordshire is helping to create better places to live across areas of Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire Moorlands.”

That sounds great, and I’m sure that there will be different views around the room as to how well Renew is doing, but what I’d like us to think about first is HOW they are going about renewing areas.

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What King do you see?

Today is the feast day of Christ the King. I wonder what kind of picture comes into our heads when we hear the word, “King”. I wonder how we react to the idea of someone being King over us? What does it mean to have a King? These questions are difficult enough when we’re thinking about a King here on earth, but I think that sometimes they seem even more difficult to answer when we are talking about Jesus as King. But that is what I’d like to do this morning. We’re going to have a look at the three readings, at the things that they show us about Jesus as King, and think about what that means for our lives now.

The first reading we heard is part of the book of Daniel. You probably know him best from the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den. Daniel was an Israelite, probably from one of the ruling families in Jerusalem, who had been carried off into exile in Babylon when Jerusalem had been defeated about 600 years before Jesus was born. He was a faithful worshipper of God, who, throughout his exile proved the practical wisdom of following God faithfully.

A few years before the incident with the lions, Daniel had a series of dreams or visions, in which he was shown things that were to come about in the future. The descriptions of the things that he was shown sound foreign and strange, even when they’ve been translated into English. What is it with all these beasts and horns, and wheels on a throne?

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Memories

I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week talking to people about what things used to be like. I’ve been with families preparing for the funerals of their loved ones, who remember what family life used to be like when they were growing up. I’ve had conversations with people living in Cavour Street in Etruria who have lived there through all the changes of the last fifty years. Through the closure of industries, the demolition of one lot of houses and the building of another lot. I heard about how close knit that community used to be. To be honest, I suspect that in these conversations there were, in some cases, rose tinted glasses being worn, but, mostly, the memories of the things being recalled were good memories, that make life today seem a bit flat, disjointed, with communities that aren’t as strong and more people that are lonely and lost.

Most of the people that I spoke to seemed to have lost something that they remember having, and they aren’t sure if they are ever going to find it again.

In contrast, our first reading this morning encourages those who hear it to remember in a different way. Rather than looking back, remembering that things were better then and worse now, they are told to look back and remember that things were worse then and are so much better now.

You see, this letter was aimed at Gentile Christians. It was written to those who knew that in the past they had been completely excluded from God’s people. They were without hope, they didn’t know God. They were in darkness. They had no promise from God for their earthly lives, or for what would happen when their earthly life ended. They were all at sea.

But not anymore. Something had changed. There was a shift from the way that they used to live, and now they lived in a different way.

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Bending the Knee

I was at the Potteries Museum on Saturday with the rest of the family. Tabitha has been learning about the Tudors in histroy at school, and they had a Tudor day at the museum, so we all headed along to see what was going on. Well, there were a dozen or so people in Tudor costume, talking with lots of thees and thous, and generally being Tudorish. Including, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

They had some Tudor musical instruments, they had a drum, and some pipes and they might even have had a trigon, but I'm not sure what one of those is, so I couldn't swear to it. Having played the gathered company a couple of tunes, they asked for volunteers to teach a Tudor dance to. As part of this, the victims / eager volunteers where taught the correct way to bow and curtsy. The dancing master insisted that gathered crowd ought to learn as well because we all needed to bow to the King. So he showed us all how to do this, and then instructed us to reverence the King. Which about half of us did, the rest being distracted or bored or just indifferent. At which point the King barked, “Those who do not bend to the King will break”. We had another go, and far more people made some attempt at the correct bow.

Nebuchadnezzar did more than bark a pointed comment, he threatened execution, and quickly to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. If they didn't get down on their knees, and pronto they would be toast.

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Disciplined Worship

I wonder if you have house rules? And if you do, I wonder how they came to be decided. Let me give you some examples. In our house it's my job to load the dishwasher and put it on before I go to bed. We didn't need this rule before we had a dishwasher, and after we got one it soon became clear that it was going to be my job, because when Liz did it, I get cross about it not being loaded correctly, and I was informed in no uncertain terms that if it mattered that much, then I could do it. So I do.

We also have house rules about bedtime for the kids, and I expect that as they get older, we will have to negotiate curfew times that we expect them to be home by. I guess the first set of house rules we ever had as a family were the ones that Liz and I agreed to when we got married. The love, honour, cherish, be faithful vows that underpin our marriage and which sum up the values that form the basis for our whole family life together.

The thing that all these house rules have in common is that they all, in some way, are in place to enable us to live together happily and in a way which allows our our relationships within the household to flourish. Not all of them were there to start with, and some of the ones that we will need in the future are not yet in place. As family life goes on, the details of our house rules might change, but the underlying principles of love, faithfulness, and integrity will remain.

In our reading from Exodus, God is laying out some house rules for the family of the people of God God has sent Moses to Egypt, to rescue the people of God from captivity, and they are now three months out from Egypt, and they have reached the base of the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. Previously God had spoken to the ancestors of the people of God, people like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and made promises that their children would become a nation.

Now God has bought those children to the place in which God will start to forge them into a nation. That nation needed some house rules to enable the people that were part of it to live together with flourishing relationships, with each other and with God.

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What do you see in the world around you?

Preached on August 13th 2008.

Almost one hundred years ago two women died. On this day, in 1910, Florence Nightingale's life ended. On this day, in 1912, Octavia Hill gave up the ghost.

Both of these women had looked at the world as it was in their day, found it lacking, and set about changing things.

Florence had seen suffering people, and had taken to nursing. As her career progressed she saw more and more people suffering and dying. Famously, she went to the Crimea and worked tirelessly in some real hell holes. She spent time and effort investigating why these people were dying. When she could show that over crowding and insanitary conditions were causing more soldiers to die in hospitals than wounds inflicted by enemy action, she invested her efforts into getting hospitals designed differently and introduced professional training for nurses.

Octavia saw poor people with inadequate housing and no green spaces to enjoy. She campaigned about these issues and set up schemes for leasing good quality housing to those who had been living in slums. She was one of the founder members of what became the National Trust, with the aim of securing green spaces for everybody to be able to enjoy, regardless of whether or not they could pay for the privilege.

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God is a Womble

Today is Trinity Sunday, when the church takes a deep breath and engages with one of its most exciting ideas, that of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This falls at a really good time for me, coming as it does at following the week when I have been studying the way in which the idea of the Trinity has developed over the years and centuries.

There is no hiding from the fact that this idea is one that is difficult to get our heads round, but I think that it's really exciting because it gives us language for talking about God that allows us to say things in ways that cannot be said otherwise.

My plan for the next quarter of an hour or so is for us to explore this idea together, and by together, I mean that I am going to ask some questions, and you guys are going to chip in with some answers. I want to start with a contribution that one of my fellow students made in class when we were discussing the Trinity.

God is Womble.

Can anybody think of any attributes of Wombles that might tell us something about God?

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Christmas 2 - Epiphany

Tonight, getting towards the end of the Christmas season, we’re thinking about Epiphany. On Christmas day we celebrated what is called the Incarnation, that is when God became human. But in some senses today’s celebration is more important . That’s because it’s only through Epiphany that we know what God is up to.

A baby in a manger is all very well, but so what? Now, with the benefit of hindsight we know something about the, “so what”, because of what Jesus did and said, because of what he showed us about himself. And this is what Epiphany means. It means a revelation of something, usually something spiritual, to someone. Celebrating Epiphany is about celebrating the fact that God is a God of revelation and about considering what our response to that revelation will be.

In the reading we’ve just had we had an example of an Epiphany. This was when the Magi, or Wise Ones, from the east came to worship Jesus.

From this story I’d like to concentrate on two things. Firstly how does God make revelations, that is, from where will epiphanies come to us? Secondly, what are possible reactions to these revelations?

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