One of the loveliest stories to appear in the press recently has concerned Alex Renton, an agnostic who sends his daughter to a church school in Scotland. Recently he caught his daughter Lulu writing a letter to God which went "To God. How did you get invented?"
All credit to the Renton family. Rather than burning the letter up the chimney as his daughter asked or giving her some sort of pat answer. Instead, he e-mailed the letter to various church bodies. The Scottish Episcopal Church didn't get around to replying, nor did the Presbyterians and the Scottish Catholics did reply but gave quite a complex answer. Alex also sent the letter to “the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace” – and this was the wonderful response:
"Dear Lulu,
Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –
‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected.
Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I’m really like.
But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!’
And then he’d send you lots of love and sign off.
I know he doesn’t usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lors of love from me too.
+Archbishop Rowan"
Isn't that brilliant? I think its one of the best explanations of God's "invention" that I've seen anywhere, to people of any age, never mind aged 6!
Anyway the Renton family were so impressed that they contacted the Times about it. And I'm very glad they did as the story deserves a wider readership.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Judgement
Here I am, reposting my sermon from 28th November, and its all about judgement! Why on Earth would I want to preach a sermon about judgement you may ask? Well, I thought it was about time we had a rethink about it, as we either get hopelessly negative and scared or we pooh pooh the fact that it might exist at all. Hopefully this redresses the balance and starts us thinking more positively!
Here is the address for the bible readings...
-------
We have now come into the season of Advent, when we look forward to the coming of Christ in three ways. Christ who came at Bethlehem 2000 years ago, Christ who comes to us and meets us at the altar each week and Christ who will come in glory to judge the earth.
As our reading from Isaiah chapter 2 put it “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; “
We often see Judgement as bad. Talking about judgement makes us nervous because we are scared of being found fault with or rejected. It does not help that many of the times we hear the word in everyday life, it is used negatively. "Don't be so judgemental. The judge gave him ten years hard labour" . The rise of shows like X factor and Strictly Come Dancing and judges like Simon Cowell have made things even worse. Or as Bruno said of Ann Widdecombe's salsa " It was unique and compelling, somewhere between horror and comedy. " Jesus, is not like any of these judges and we need to learn to flip those ideas on their heads.
If we look up judgement in a thesaurus, and then remove the suggestions with those more negative connotations we are left with this little list of suggestions of words with similar meanings.
astuteness, discernment, ingenuity, intuition, penetration, perception, savvy, sharpness and wisdom. Perhaps we should see the judge not as the one who wishes to jail us, but more like the penetrating perception of a body scanner in the hands of a skilled doctor, delving deep inside and trying to see what is going wrong in order to fix it.
One of the desert Fathers in the early church was asked by a certain soldier if God received a penitent man. And after heartening him with many words, the monk said to him at the last, "Tell me, beloved, if your cloak were torn, would you throw it away?" he said, "No, but I would patch it and wear it." The old man said to him, "If you would spare your garment, shall not God have mercy on His own image?"
We are made in the image of God, and God loves us, and does not want to reject us or throw us away. God wants to fix us. Or as Coldplay put it
" Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"
See the video of the whole song here .
We are broken people living in a broken world, and the judgement of God is not one that throws away. It is one that fixes whenever it can.
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks"
The swords we heard about in that Isaiah reading did not end up in landfill. They were not burned or buried. They were moulded into something better. They were turned into ploughshares, a tool for growing crops and feeding the hungry. A weapon of death was turned into a means of saving life. A sharp edge is useful somewhere else!
Yet of course the problem in this day and age is that many people do simply throw away torn clothes and old swords, and many things end up in landfill that do not need to be there.We write off people too. Society finds it hard to accept that people can change, and is not often willing to give them second chances. But God not only gives people second chances, he gives them 70 times 7 chances, that is the extent of his love.
Henri Nouwen wrote these challenging words about how we deal with other people who have made mistakes "Some of us tend to do away with things that are slightly damaged. Instead of repairing them we say: "Well, I don't have time to fix it, I might as well throw it in the garbage can and buy a new one." Often we also treat people this way. We say: "Well, he has a problem with drinking; well, she is quite depressed; well, they have mismanaged their business...we'd better not take the risk of working with them." When we dismiss people out of hand because of their apparent woundedness, we stunt their lives by ignoring their gifts, which are often buried in their wounds."
One of the most challenging things about that Henri Nouwen quote is his insight that people’s gifts are often buried in their wounds. And it is true that when we allow God to work within us, He transforms our very woundedness into something that can help and heal other people, but in order to allow that to happen we have to open ourselves up to God working within us and learn to accept ,and love, and forgive ourselves.
One of the absolutions in the New Zealand prayerbook goes. “God forgives you, forgive others, forgive youself, through Christ God has put away your sin. Approach your God in peace.” I love that prayer and was sad that it didn’t make it into our current prayer book as an authorised text, because it underlines the fact that often the hardest task we have when we have done something we are ashamed of, is to forgive ourselves.
So if we look at judgement more as a body scanner than a high court judge we can see God's judgement as more of a weeding-out of what makes us, our lives and our world unhappy. Or as psalm 72 puts it. “May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.”
Those on the top of the pile may be afraid of anything changing. But for those on the bottom of the pile, the outcasts on the margins, and those who have suffered grave injustice the thought that someone is going to root out what makes life unfair for them becomes a good thing that they long for. For justice involves "fairness", and if all your life you have suffered from un-fairness and in-justice then the thought that someone will come and make things right and give you a fair chance is something amazing.
Some people would prefer not to think of God as judging at all. But, as someone pointed out to me recently, what would we call a judge who simply let a murderer walk away free?
The answer is "Corrupt".
Yet God is not corrupt. He longs to make things right.
...and we can help God in that task. Not by standing in the middle of town and shouting about God’s judgement like some Christians have done in the past, but rather by opening ourselves up to God’s body-scanning judgement here and now. By asking God to reveal what is wrong in our lives, and inviting in his healing love to fix it. Many people find it helpful to have a confessor or soul friend to do this with them. Others simply do it in a quiet place on their own - and if we mess up and find ourselves feeling guilty, saying sorry to God sooner rather than later can help - not letting our wounds fester. Then when the end comes and Christ returns in glory, we will have nothing to fear at all but much to look forward to, when justice finally comes to our world.
Here is the address for the bible readings...
-------
We have now come into the season of Advent, when we look forward to the coming of Christ in three ways. Christ who came at Bethlehem 2000 years ago, Christ who comes to us and meets us at the altar each week and Christ who will come in glory to judge the earth.
As our reading from Isaiah chapter 2 put it “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; “
We often see Judgement as bad. Talking about judgement makes us nervous because we are scared of being found fault with or rejected. It does not help that many of the times we hear the word in everyday life, it is used negatively. "Don't be so judgemental. The judge gave him ten years hard labour" . The rise of shows like X factor and Strictly Come Dancing and judges like Simon Cowell have made things even worse. Or as Bruno said of Ann Widdecombe's salsa " It was unique and compelling, somewhere between horror and comedy. " Jesus, is not like any of these judges and we need to learn to flip those ideas on their heads.
If we look up judgement in a thesaurus, and then remove the suggestions with those more negative connotations we are left with this little list of suggestions of words with similar meanings.
astuteness, discernment, ingenuity, intuition, penetration, perception, savvy, sharpness and wisdom. Perhaps we should see the judge not as the one who wishes to jail us, but more like the penetrating perception of a body scanner in the hands of a skilled doctor, delving deep inside and trying to see what is going wrong in order to fix it.
One of the desert Fathers in the early church was asked by a certain soldier if God received a penitent man. And after heartening him with many words, the monk said to him at the last, "Tell me, beloved, if your cloak were torn, would you throw it away?" he said, "No, but I would patch it and wear it." The old man said to him, "If you would spare your garment, shall not God have mercy on His own image?"
We are made in the image of God, and God loves us, and does not want to reject us or throw us away. God wants to fix us. Or as Coldplay put it
" Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"
See the video of the whole song here .
We are broken people living in a broken world, and the judgement of God is not one that throws away. It is one that fixes whenever it can.
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks"
The swords we heard about in that Isaiah reading did not end up in landfill. They were not burned or buried. They were moulded into something better. They were turned into ploughshares, a tool for growing crops and feeding the hungry. A weapon of death was turned into a means of saving life. A sharp edge is useful somewhere else!
Yet of course the problem in this day and age is that many people do simply throw away torn clothes and old swords, and many things end up in landfill that do not need to be there.We write off people too. Society finds it hard to accept that people can change, and is not often willing to give them second chances. But God not only gives people second chances, he gives them 70 times 7 chances, that is the extent of his love.
Henri Nouwen wrote these challenging words about how we deal with other people who have made mistakes "Some of us tend to do away with things that are slightly damaged. Instead of repairing them we say: "Well, I don't have time to fix it, I might as well throw it in the garbage can and buy a new one." Often we also treat people this way. We say: "Well, he has a problem with drinking; well, she is quite depressed; well, they have mismanaged their business...we'd better not take the risk of working with them." When we dismiss people out of hand because of their apparent woundedness, we stunt their lives by ignoring their gifts, which are often buried in their wounds."
One of the most challenging things about that Henri Nouwen quote is his insight that people’s gifts are often buried in their wounds. And it is true that when we allow God to work within us, He transforms our very woundedness into something that can help and heal other people, but in order to allow that to happen we have to open ourselves up to God working within us and learn to accept ,and love, and forgive ourselves.
One of the absolutions in the New Zealand prayerbook goes. “God forgives you, forgive others, forgive youself, through Christ God has put away your sin. Approach your God in peace.” I love that prayer and was sad that it didn’t make it into our current prayer book as an authorised text, because it underlines the fact that often the hardest task we have when we have done something we are ashamed of, is to forgive ourselves.
So if we look at judgement more as a body scanner than a high court judge we can see God's judgement as more of a weeding-out of what makes us, our lives and our world unhappy. Or as psalm 72 puts it. “May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.”
Those on the top of the pile may be afraid of anything changing. But for those on the bottom of the pile, the outcasts on the margins, and those who have suffered grave injustice the thought that someone is going to root out what makes life unfair for them becomes a good thing that they long for. For justice involves "fairness", and if all your life you have suffered from un-fairness and in-justice then the thought that someone will come and make things right and give you a fair chance is something amazing.
Some people would prefer not to think of God as judging at all. But, as someone pointed out to me recently, what would we call a judge who simply let a murderer walk away free?
The answer is "Corrupt".
Yet God is not corrupt. He longs to make things right.
...and we can help God in that task. Not by standing in the middle of town and shouting about God’s judgement like some Christians have done in the past, but rather by opening ourselves up to God’s body-scanning judgement here and now. By asking God to reveal what is wrong in our lives, and inviting in his healing love to fix it. Many people find it helpful to have a confessor or soul friend to do this with them. Others simply do it in a quiet place on their own - and if we mess up and find ourselves feeling guilty, saying sorry to God sooner rather than later can help - not letting our wounds fester. Then when the end comes and Christ returns in glory, we will have nothing to fear at all but much to look forward to, when justice finally comes to our world.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Christmas 2A - Looking for the lost.
Here is my sermon from last Sunday. If you're interested in what the bible readings were that day follow this link. . We used the Jeremiah, Ephesians and John readings in the service. I seem to have had a bit of a song theme running through my sermons for the past couple of months. It has been largely accidental, and I wouldn't force it, but there are a lot of songs around that are saying some very deep things, and its good to connect our Sunday life with what is going on in the rest of the world. Of course, one of the problems in posting a sermon is that the writing style is different to a written article. So I offer the text with apologies to those of you that hate sentences starting with conjunctions!
Today, once again we come across part of God's plan. - we've seen over the last few weeks that it works over a vast timescale, that it is often surprising and that it turns the existing world power structures upside down.
I must admit I was a little wary of speaking yet again about God's master plan, and yet the readings steer us so clearly in that direction that its hard to avoid it really.
For today more of that plan is revealed. Jeremiah speaks of bringing us back from lost places. "I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here." The thing that strikes me most about what the prophet says here is this "I am going to bring them...."
Not "I’ll give them a map and see if they find their own way back" not " I am going to send someone else to do the hard work of going and get them." but "I am going to go and get them MYSELF". And that is what he did in Bethlehem, being born amongst us as a human being.
That is the unique thing about Christianity really. People often ask, what is the difference between Christianity and other religions, and there are a number of answers. but the one that I like most is the one which says "many other religions are about how we can try to find God. Through prayer fasting and other religious practices, and obeying laws and commandments. But Christianity is about how, in Christ, God came and found us. God came in Jesus to bring the lost human race back home, because the whole human race was drifting badly from the path that leads to life.
We were drifting and God offered us a baby’s hand to lead us back.
As Katy Perry sang.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you?
You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
'Cause baby, you're a firework
(Here's the link to the whole song and lyrics)
God sees that firework spark in us. The one that can light up the sky like the ones we saw shooting upwards as the new year began the other night.
And how does God know just what that spark can do?
He knows because He put it there!
But a firework is just a grey cardboard tube with some powder inside it unless someone lights the fuse, someone ignites the light. And that's what Christ came to do.
So Christ came. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood, to bring us back from those lost places where we were drifting like plastic bags in the wind - And we could be very far away from home indeed - but He would still come and get us.
Jesus told us that that was his job description himself, just after he’d transformed the life of Zaccheus, the corrupt tax collector so radically that he offered to give half his posessions to the poor
“The son of man came to seek and to save the lost” .
We concentrate mostly on the save the lost bit of that job description. But the seek bit is important too.
And sometimes when he is seeking those far away from home, he uses us to help him in his work. Some of you may know that I have been involved in the work of Fresh Expressions for a while, which aims to go and bring church to birth in places far away from the church culture. Not to replace existing churches, but to work alongside them, to reach more people. to adopt a “go to them” agenda. The inspiration for that has always been from the Christ who became incarnate in Jewish first century culture and spent 30 years eating, drinking, and living with them, in order to find them and bring them home.
"Go to them" was also the kind of thing the choir did recently when we went to the market, and to Leeds General Infirmary just before Christmas to sing carols and bring the good news of the birth of Christ to ordinary people just where they were, even the couple that were very literally lost in a hospital corridor trying to find a ward that wasn’t listed on the map. And whenever we step out like that incredible things happen.
I don’t know whether the choir members noticed the effect they had on the people around them - but there were tears in many people’s eyes, and draws dropping and gasps of amazement. - “Don't worry- they’re happy tears!” one lady said to me.
The last time I stepped out in that sort of way was at Ash Wednesday last year. The Archbishop of York appealed for local clergy to go and help him by collecting prayer requests in town which he then prayed for in ten minute vigils once an hour in St Helens church in York city centre. It was called “Say One For Me”. People were amazed that we weren’t asking for anything from them, other than what they might want prayer for, and some tears flowed then too, as people who were simply having a bad time had a chance to talk about it as they filled in their prayer request card. I randomly met one of these people a couple of months later in town. She had asked for prayer for her agonisingly painful wrist and was thrilled to tell me that it had got better that same day and hasn’t been any trouble ever since. God came and met her by the fountain in the town and brought her what she needed at that moment in time. There is a definition of salvation which goes “simply allowing ourselves to be found” and that's what that lady did. The one who searches is the one who does the work.
Yet there is more to come once we are found. St Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians that God’s aim is to
To gather up all things in him.
To adopt us so that we might become children of God
To fix us, through his healing blood, where sin has broken us
and to give us an inheritance - so as God’s children we get God's good gifts.
Paul reminds us that God started planning this before the very start of time. Our very famous gospel reading today reminds us of exactly the same thing too.
"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."
This is God’s amazing plan for us all. And we don’t have to screw up our foreheads and by sheer force of will make it happen, we don’t have to accomplish lots of difficult tasks, go on massive retreats, fast for years on end or climb a very high mountain. We don’t even have to be fit and healthy. Jeremiah tells us the fragile, the blind the lame are all being gathered too. We simply have to allow ourselves to be found and carried home on Christ’s shoulders.
So may the saving searching Christ work in us and through us, to seek and save the lost and bring us all safely home Amen.
Today, once again we come across part of God's plan. - we've seen over the last few weeks that it works over a vast timescale, that it is often surprising and that it turns the existing world power structures upside down.
I must admit I was a little wary of speaking yet again about God's master plan, and yet the readings steer us so clearly in that direction that its hard to avoid it really.
For today more of that plan is revealed. Jeremiah speaks of bringing us back from lost places. "I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here." The thing that strikes me most about what the prophet says here is this "I am going to bring them...."
Not "I’ll give them a map and see if they find their own way back" not " I am going to send someone else to do the hard work of going and get them." but "I am going to go and get them MYSELF". And that is what he did in Bethlehem, being born amongst us as a human being.
That is the unique thing about Christianity really. People often ask, what is the difference between Christianity and other religions, and there are a number of answers. but the one that I like most is the one which says "many other religions are about how we can try to find God. Through prayer fasting and other religious practices, and obeying laws and commandments. But Christianity is about how, in Christ, God came and found us. God came in Jesus to bring the lost human race back home, because the whole human race was drifting badly from the path that leads to life.
We were drifting and God offered us a baby’s hand to lead us back.
As Katy Perry sang.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you?
You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
'Cause baby, you're a firework
(Here's the link to the whole song and lyrics)
God sees that firework spark in us. The one that can light up the sky like the ones we saw shooting upwards as the new year began the other night.
And how does God know just what that spark can do?
He knows because He put it there!
But a firework is just a grey cardboard tube with some powder inside it unless someone lights the fuse, someone ignites the light. And that's what Christ came to do.
So Christ came. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood, to bring us back from those lost places where we were drifting like plastic bags in the wind - And we could be very far away from home indeed - but He would still come and get us.
Jesus told us that that was his job description himself, just after he’d transformed the life of Zaccheus, the corrupt tax collector so radically that he offered to give half his posessions to the poor
“The son of man came to seek and to save the lost” .
We concentrate mostly on the save the lost bit of that job description. But the seek bit is important too.
And sometimes when he is seeking those far away from home, he uses us to help him in his work. Some of you may know that I have been involved in the work of Fresh Expressions for a while, which aims to go and bring church to birth in places far away from the church culture. Not to replace existing churches, but to work alongside them, to reach more people. to adopt a “go to them” agenda. The inspiration for that has always been from the Christ who became incarnate in Jewish first century culture and spent 30 years eating, drinking, and living with them, in order to find them and bring them home.
"Go to them" was also the kind of thing the choir did recently when we went to the market, and to Leeds General Infirmary just before Christmas to sing carols and bring the good news of the birth of Christ to ordinary people just where they were, even the couple that were very literally lost in a hospital corridor trying to find a ward that wasn’t listed on the map. And whenever we step out like that incredible things happen.
I don’t know whether the choir members noticed the effect they had on the people around them - but there were tears in many people’s eyes, and draws dropping and gasps of amazement. - “Don't worry- they’re happy tears!” one lady said to me.
The last time I stepped out in that sort of way was at Ash Wednesday last year. The Archbishop of York appealed for local clergy to go and help him by collecting prayer requests in town which he then prayed for in ten minute vigils once an hour in St Helens church in York city centre. It was called “Say One For Me”. People were amazed that we weren’t asking for anything from them, other than what they might want prayer for, and some tears flowed then too, as people who were simply having a bad time had a chance to talk about it as they filled in their prayer request card. I randomly met one of these people a couple of months later in town. She had asked for prayer for her agonisingly painful wrist and was thrilled to tell me that it had got better that same day and hasn’t been any trouble ever since. God came and met her by the fountain in the town and brought her what she needed at that moment in time. There is a definition of salvation which goes “simply allowing ourselves to be found” and that's what that lady did. The one who searches is the one who does the work.
Yet there is more to come once we are found. St Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians that God’s aim is to
To gather up all things in him.
To adopt us so that we might become children of God
To fix us, through his healing blood, where sin has broken us
and to give us an inheritance - so as God’s children we get God's good gifts.
Paul reminds us that God started planning this before the very start of time. Our very famous gospel reading today reminds us of exactly the same thing too.
"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."
This is God’s amazing plan for us all. And we don’t have to screw up our foreheads and by sheer force of will make it happen, we don’t have to accomplish lots of difficult tasks, go on massive retreats, fast for years on end or climb a very high mountain. We don’t even have to be fit and healthy. Jeremiah tells us the fragile, the blind the lame are all being gathered too. We simply have to allow ourselves to be found and carried home on Christ’s shoulders.
So may the saving searching Christ work in us and through us, to seek and save the lost and bring us all safely home Amen.
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