SOUL SURMISE

STOCKMAN'S SERMON ON THE IMPACT OF BREXIT

I remember the day Lady Diana died, having to put together my radio show to respond. The same the day after the Omagh Bomb. Those were hard emotional shows. I felt that same strain on Sunday morning as I had to preach a few days after the Uk voted to leave the EU. I would love to have ignored it BUT Fitzroy never ignores it. The preacher's role is to bring the Biblical text to the context of the times and I had to somehow make sense of the events still unfolding as I preached.

My own emotions could not be kept unchecked but I had to try as hard as I could to rein them in. I was speaking to a divided UK, a divided Northern Ireland, a divided Fitzroy, divided families and even people divided within themselves. In the state of shock and with so much sadness it was time to be pastoral as well as attempting to be prophetic.

I had in the 24 hours beforehand spoke to members of the congregation whose jobs were now not the line, teens whose study dreams were not in tatters, twenty somethings talking about moving to Canada, many concerned that the EU funding that had built our peace might be lost before that peace is finished. 

The context was somber. I asked that we were sensitive with one another. 

The Lectionary text was Luke 9: 51-62. The first part if perfect. Damning those who do things against you was not Jesus way! The second part is about the challenge, commission and warnings to three people keen to follow Jesus. Jesus was at a pivotal moment in his ministry. We are in a pivotal moment in our history. How to bring this text and our context together was a tricky one...

If you follow this link Fitzroy Sermons and then press on "2016 06 26 am: Discipleship… Hand to the Plough… No Distractions."

BEING TEMPTED TO LOSE YOURSELF - Stocki 7" Single Sermon

The sermon was based on Jesus Temptations in Luke 4... you can hear it in full HERE

 

What do we do

With the space in between

Between the temptation

And the yield or resist.

 

In the space in between

Do we reach to be more than we are

And become less

Like Eve...

 

Or do we become more than we were

By the grace

Jesus became less

That we might be

 

Temptation is

An attack on who we are

With ambition that we might lose

Our identity

To self indulge

To self rely

To self serve

 

In the space in between

We remember who we are

And where we stand

In loving the Lord our God

With all our heart, soul, mind and strength

And our neighbours as ourselves.

 

As the devil teases 

To steal and kill and destroy

We hold firm

To life and life in all its fulness.

 

DO WE WANT WHAT WE WANT - Stocki Sermon Short Form

This morning's sermon in Fitzroy was based on LUKE 13: 31-35...

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." 32 He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

There are three wants in this passage...

 

Herod wanted to kill him

Jesus wanted to gather Jerusalem like a mother hen

And Jerusalem didn’t want.

 

What do we want

Do we want 

What we should want?

 

Do we want to relinquish power

Do we want someone else on our throne

Or do we want to kill him?

 

Do we want to mother the broken

Do we want to open our eyes to the need

Do we want to wrap arms of grace around the neighbourhood?

 

Do we want the default positions of our faith smashed

Do we want a paradigm shift in how we do worship

Or do we want to reject the love of a mother hen?

 

What do we want

Do we want

What we should want?

Full sermon will appear here later in the week...

 

LAUGHING WITH GOD IN FITZROY, WHILE PARIS WEEPS - Fitzroy Halls Opening Sermon

So, today has had the title Laughing With God for some time. It comes from that Psalm of Ascent 126 :

When the Lord restored the fortunes of[a] Zion,

    we were like those who dreamed.[b]

2 

Our mouths were filled with laughter,

    our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

    “The Lord has done great things for them.”

3 

The Lord has done great things for us,

    and we are filled with joy.

I think we have been feeling that in recent weeks. Renovated, extended halls feels like a restoration. Our mouths are filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Life here on a daily basis has been transformed, energised. Every day is vibrant with people and Fitzroy as a Church is alive. Laughing with God, indeed.

And then Friday night. What terror! What horror! What pain, hurt, heartache. Paris in panic and mourning. How can we laugh in our new buildings in Belfast while others weep in such devastation in Paris. It didn’t seem right.

And yet, the acts of evil in Paris shouldn’t prevent us from giving thanks to God for all the blessings we have been hearing about today. The Psalms are the hymns and prayers and laments of a people who dealt with all of the crisis and dilemmas of life in the context of worship and a worshipping community.

When I shifted my focus from a light morning of thanksgiving and laughter to ask how to bring in the Paris tragedy to this short sermon I came to see that actually those events are an urgent reminder of what this opening is all about.  

These buildings are a sanctuary in the midst of a dark world. This is a place where within the community of living stones we can find solace, healing, forgiveness, restoration and redemption.

These buildings are a sanctuary where we can come together and in find our place in the universe as people created in the image of God and redeemed by Jesus life, death and resurrection. In finding our vertical connection with God redeemed in Jesus we can then make some sense of the horizontal relationships with each other, with neighbours and even with enemies. We gather together after nights like Friday and in worship we somehow find in Psalm 46:

4There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

the holy place where the Most High dwells.

 

5God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

 

6Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;

he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

 

7The Lord Almighty is with us;

the God of Jacob is our fortress.

These buildings are a sanctuary but not a passive one. These are not halls to come into as some escape from the horrors of our world. Yes we can see them as a place for retreat, a soul space in the tragedy to breathe deep the breath of God but ultimately these buildings are a grace driven sanctuary that propel us out from them into the neighbourhood. It’s what the power of their new windows does, opening our connections with community. These halls are not an alternative to the world out there. They are a mission station to transform the world out there. 

May these buildings never be a place for our self indulgence or our self righteousness. May these buildings always be about God’s Spirit infusing us to feed the world’s needs… for food, water, shelter, well being, peace, justice and salvation.

May these buildings be the Word moving into the neighbourhood, as John described Jesus in the prologue of his Gospel.

May these buildings be the salt of the earth like Jesus called his followers to be in the sermon on the mount. Into a world that throws us Paris may we be what David Gray sang… “into lies, ruin, disease… into wounds like these… let the truth sting…” may we be salt in the city of Belfast to bring the salt of healing.

May these buildings be the light of the world that jesus called his followers to be in the Sermon On The Mount. May we shine light into this city. May we be particles of light in our vocations and neighbourhoods right across Belfast. May we be a cluster of light in a university area, a commercial thoroughfare, a residential area. 

John’s prologue also declare that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it…”

John reminds us about this overcoming a world of Parises later in his Gospel. he records how Jesus told the disciples, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Brent van Der Linde Facebooked yesterday those great words of Martin Luther King - Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that” 

May these halls be beacons of light and love driving out darkness and hate. 

In and from these halls may we hold this belief but carry it gently and without arrogance. May we shine and scatter grace with servant like humility.

As we thank God for his goodness to us I am reminded of Psalm 116

 

12 

What shall I return to the Lord

    for all his goodness to me?

13 

I will lift up the cup of salvation

    and call on the name of the Lord.

14 

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord

    in the presence of all his people.

So today we thank God for these new halls…

their artistic beauty…

their ambience of grace…

their near luxurious comfort…

their ability to boil two kettles at once…

the morale lift that it has given us as a community of Jesus followers.

For me the thanksgiving is not that we have new halls that gives me a lovely new office or a lovely new Welcome Area where we can chat and sip coffee and eat Blythman Bread or Trinder Traybakes.

These halls is our gift to offer back to God. So we ask…

What does this area need?

What artistic beauty?

What ambience of grace?

What deep comfort?

What is equivalent in the community around us to us needing to be able to boil two kettles?

What can we do in this community to lift morale of a city?

Another social media message yesterday said, “We need to have a life giving presence in our cities.”

May these halls… and Onialeku Primary School in my beloved West Nile… and us the living stones within them… and our pouring back out from them be that life giving presence… and we are back to John’s prologue… 

Through these new halls Lord… may we, Fitzroy, be… The Word becoming flesh and moving into this city and across the world…

Lord, Let It Be!

WHEN WILL I EVER LEARN TO LIVE IN GOD - Sermon From Van Morrison Sunday in Fitzroy

(This is a written version of my sermon in Fitzroy on August 30th when we built our morning service around the hymns and songs of Van Morrison...)

When will I ever learn to live in God?

When will I ever learn?

He gives me everything I need and more

When will I ever learn?

In his book Hymns Of Silence Peter Mills writes of Van Morrison’s When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God:

“This song is one of Morrison’s most directly Christian tunes, which would sit unproblematically in the repertoire of any of the acts that use the pop-rock-soul- model to construct modern songs of praise.” 

When it came to a Church service built around Van Morrison hymns and songs this song was the obvious choice to launch the sermon from.

And up on the hillside its quiet

Where the shepherd is tending his sheep

And over the mountains and the valleys

The countryside is so green

Standing on the highest hill with a sense of wonder

You can see everything is made in God

Head back down the roadside and give thanks for it all

There is indeed, as Mills points out, a praise feel to those last lines. Giving thanks for God’s creation is a recurring theme with the Old Testament Psalmist. For me the line, “He gives me everything I need and more,” echoes Psalm 23: - “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing”. When the Lord is our shepherd we will have “all that we need and more”. 

When that verse clicked then I caught more similarities. Compare Morrison’s 

“And up on the hillside its quiet

Where the shepherd is tending his sheep

And over the mountains and the valleys

The countryside is so green”

 

with King David’s 

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

    for his name’s sake.

It is not too contrived to see When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God as a Van Morrison Psalm. What I like about the song is that unlike a lot of the modern praise, that Peter Mills likens it to, When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God is not worship cul-de-sac. I often fear that modern worship goes up to God in some warm and almost feely weely vertical way but doesn’t come back down to make an impact on our horizontal lives. Worship should not be a cul-de-sac for Sunday but an energy that becomes a highway out into Monday and the week ahead. There is no point in singing to God if we are not going to learn to live in God. 

One of the Lectionary readings this week is from the New Testament letter of James (3:19-27). It seems to be all about learning to live in God. James tells us, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”The entire reading is potent but what an ending, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

For those of you who are visitors with us this morning, this is why we meet every Sunday morning to worship. We want to learn to live in God. That it would transfer us and also that we would be transformers of our society.If you are a visitor forgive me if I look for a moment at the Fitzroy flock and ask them a few questions.

Fitzroy we say that Jesus cried out on the cross that “it is finished”. We believe that that redeems us and somehow deals with sin. Yet, have we learned to live in that truth or do we still feel guilty and captive of our past?

We remember that Jesus told us to lay up treasure in heaven and not on earth where it lists away. Yet, have we learned to live in God and not be distracted by the momentary and material in order to invest our gifts and life in more lasting returns?

We remember that Jesus told us to love our enemies. Yet, have we learned to live in that and be those who are striving for peace and reconciliation in the Northern Ireland where we are called to live this out?

In the above passage James tells us that real religion is to “Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” Have we learned to live that out in how we respond to the refugee crisis on our news right now? We believe that Jesus himself was a refugee!

So, Fitzroy, this winter in my preaching let us see where we need to learn to live in God. As Van sings:

“Whatever it takes to fulfill his mission

That is the way we must go

But you've got to do it your own way

Tear down the old, bring up the new”

 

Amen!

 

LAND OF THE THOU SHALT NOTS - OR FREEDOM IN THE SPIRIT

This is the script of a talk given by Stocki at Queens University Christian Union on November 6th 2003. Those who know him will know it probably turned out very different and more energetic live but here it is anyway...They wanted him to speak about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5...

Thou shalt not wear 
Thou shalt not drink 
Thou shalt not joke 
Thou shalt not think 
Thou shalt not hear 
Thou shalt not see 
Thou shalt not say 
Thou shalt not be 
Thou shalt settle down in the trenches 
In the land of the thou shalt nots 
What on earth then can we do 
My goodness I've forgot. 

Thou shalt go to church on Sunday 
Thou shalt wear a plastic smile 
Thou shalt be content to be discontent 
Thou shalt be happy in a little while 
Thou shalt talk about the needy 
Thou shalt pray they make it through 
Thou shalt thank the Lord you're not like them
Though shalt be orange and blue 
Though shalt settle down in quarantine 
In the land of the thou shalt nots 
And everyone you ever meet 
Will long for what you've got. 

Thou shalt not even enter a public house 
Thou shalt not turn water into wine 
Thou shalt not question authority 
Thou shalt not put religion on the line 
Thou shalt not mix with sinners 
Thou shalt not talk to prostitutes 
Thou shalt not be in the world at all 
Thou shalt not be their substitute 
Thou shalt settle down in the trenches 
In the land of the thou shalt nots 
And all this talk of a radical Jesus 
Is just some Muslim, Buddhist, communist, humanist, socialist, ecumenical, new age, popish PLOT!

Many of us live in THE LAND OF THE THOU SHALT NOTS and it is not where God wants us to be. There is a bizarre little behavioural and theological quirk at play in evangelical Christianity. In evangelism there is an emphasis on how salvation is not about what we do but about what God does for us. Rooted in Paul’s words to the Ephesians, - “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2 v 8 & 9) – we find one of Christianity’s main differences with other religions. You do not find God by human or ritual endeavours. It is not what we do to get to God, it is what God does for us in Jesus death and resurrection. He has entered time and space history to be part of the act that redeemed or bought us back from our state of lostness. We do not find God. He finds us. Grace. It is Christianity in one unique concept and one amazing word.

Grace flies in the face of our intuition. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You cannot get something that easy never mind something of such enormous consequences. Our intuition finds it impossible to believe. That will always be a reminder to us of how incredible Christianity is but it has to also warn us that our natural inclination will be to not believe it. I believe that we who live with an evangelical mindset and hopefully lifestyle wrestle and struggle with this belief. We use the words and stand by it uncompromisingly theologically but I think that pragmatically there is no such belief at the engine room of our lives. Our human intuition needs to bring back systems of works. So we end up believing that you cannot be saved by works, only by grace but when you find your salvation you have to work like the clappers to maintain it. This reveals a misunderstanding of grace, a misunderstanding of our relationship with God and leads to a new evangelical legalism that is an antithesis of evangelical. 

This is not at all new and the book of Galatians is Paul correcting these three errors of thought and practice. It would seem that the people in Galatia heard the astounding truth of the Gospel of Christ’s grace and took off enthusiastically before the human intuition stalled them and through religious leaders who would seem to have had a genuine soundness they were led back into legalism and works. Paul lashes out in an anger that let us know in no uncertain terms how serious this regression is to the well being of the faith in proclamation and in outworking. The pages of Galatians are peppered with an agitation, worry and incredulous disbelief that what was going so well could take such a twist. He wants the perpetrators condemned even if it is an angel! It is the very core of Christianity that is at stake for Paul. It is what Christ died for. We were set free to live outside of the law which can only condemn us. We are cursed if we trust in legalistic religion and it is that very thing that Christ redeemed us from. 

For some of us we see grace as a ticket to heaven. Of course it is indeed that but it would be very wrong to confine it to that. Grace is the only key to unlock the gates of heaven but it has much more power and impact than that. Grace is also the engine room of Christian living. Paul said to the Church in Philippi that he was “confident that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Isaac Newton put it well in Amazing Grace, “Grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.” There seems to be a lot of teaching about how grace works in saving us from the penalty of sin and indeed the in the future from the very presence of sin but very little teaching about how grace continually saves us from the power of sin in the present. Grace is the means of our justification and also the only means of our sanctification. Justification is the theological word that describes our positional holiness. In other words Christ’s blood washes our sins clean and therefore we can stand before a holy God righteous. A righteousness as Paul called it that is not “of my own that comes from the law but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” Sanctification is the practical holiness that comes to grow and ripen in our lives as we walk in that new relationship. As Christ’s sacrifice was the means of grace that brings us justification so the Holy Spirit is the one who is the means of grace that brings the fruit of the Spirit into our lives. It is the fruit of the Spirit not our efforts to keep the law!

This is of course a radical departure from Old Testament discipleship. Similarly radical were Jesus words to his disciples – if you love me you will keep my commands. Our new relationship with God does not mean we do things because we have to. We do them because we want to. The drive within us comes from a very different source. Is this therefore a contradiction of the Old Testament? Not at all. Paul deals with this too in this letter to the Galatians. In chapter 4 he speaks of heirs who are children needing guardians and trustees but when their time comes they have full rights as adult sons and daughters.

As a father of small heirs myself I often see the difference between those who are children and have to be under the guardian and those who are mature and are set free. When I cross the road with Caitlin and Jasmine I will stand at the edge of the kerb and force them to go through the ritual. Look and listen…Look right, look left, look right again and if there is nothing walk straight across, looking both ways while you cross! There may then be a time when we are all walking down the Lisburn Road when I will say to Janice I am nipping over the road here to get a paper. I will then just head straight across. You do not see the Lisburn Road full of adults doing some sort of green cross code. Why? Are they reckless? Are they contradicting what they learned as children and tell their children? No they are a fulfilment of it.

As I walk across freely and outside of rituals and codes I am doing everything that I was taught to do but I do them with a freedom and here is the key an almost subconscious care that is driven from within my conditioning rather than from some outside system. Paul and the writers of the New Testament are always wanting us to grow up, to move on to deeper and maturer things. Rules are for the children who are just born. We need to grow up. I was struck particularly on Sunday morning in Church as we read, “Therefore let us leave behind the elementary teachings about Christ behind and go on to maturity.” The elementary things were repentance and baptism, resurrection and judgement. These things are not forgotten or dismissed but they become a part of the childish development so that we can move on to so much more.

What we need more than anything else is the fruit of the Spirit. This is what God wants to bring in our lives. Whose fruit? Not ours! These fruit are what allows us to become mature and not have to stop at the side of the road. People wills ay to me so does that mean you can do anything at all. Well if you are saying that the rule book is torn up yes but if you are saying that it is replaced by maturity and the fruit of the Spirit – no! I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it tells us not to drink so does that mean we can go out and get hammered. Of course not. The fruit of the Spirit is self control! And yes for some of us tonight we are childish in those things and we need to set down rules about our relationship with bars and alcohol BUT we must never ever stay in that same place. We need to go grow up in faith so that the fruit of the Spirit makes it absolutely impossible for us to come into any dangers from alcohol abuse. This is the aim. 

Let me take an aside here and look at Bible reading. We have rules and regulations about that too. If we don’t read our Bibles then we feel we have somehow annoyed God and broke down relationships. We are burdened by guilt and shame. This is a return to the law and we know already what Paul says about that. But let me spell something out to you. A friend of mine said to me once that they felt so bad because they had left the Bible on the washing machine in the Utility room when they came home from Church and had not looked at until about Thursday. Now I need to say that I find it impossible to leave the Bible on the washing machine. Sometimes I wish I could. My relationship with Scriptures is not when I open it in the morning and evening. I have a moment by moment relationship with it. It is so much a part of who I am that its pages flick and turn to words that caress and collide with every person and situation and song and film and magazine article that meet me in my day. How can this have happened? Well as a spiritual baby I was legalistic and read my Bible religiously so that when I grew up it would read me.

Back to the fruit of the Spirit. There are nine that none of us can ever remember. I would like to break them into three groups. There are LOVE, JOY & PEACE which are about our relationship with God, then there are PATIENCE, KINDNESS & GOODNESS which are about our relationship with each other. Finally there are FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS & SELF CONTROL which have to do with our relationship with ourselves. 

LOVE, JOY & PEACE come from God and are dispositions. Do we know that we are loved? Have we a deep seated joy even when our friends leave us for heaven? Is there a peace that dwells at the heart of us that empowers us to love and bring joy and peace into our world? If that grace we spoke about is what drives us then we will have these things. If we are still hanging out in the land of the Thou Shalt Nots then we will never find them. Knowing in the depths of your soul that you are loved as you are changes everything. If we find them in God we will have a security in them. If we are dependent on people and circumstances for these things we will never find them. Insecurity and inferiority will mar our existence and leave us without the ability to ripen the other fruit.

PATIENCE, KINDNESS & GOODNESS are about how we treat our fellow human beings. When we know love, joy and peace from God and know that they only come from his attitude towards us and what he has done for us we will begin to be compelled to treat others in the same way. We will be slow to anger at our friends behaviour or even that of our enemies. As God gives us time so we will give time. We will learn to be as kind as Jesus was and begin to do good things to those in the world around us. Again these are not acts we do because we have to but are things that will start to sprout through in our lives as we begin to become more and more consumed by the Spirit and more and more aware of the truth of the Gospel.

FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS & SELF CONTROL are things that grow within us that come out in some ways through our patience, kindness and goodness. How are we in holding friendships. Do we run from tricky scenarios? Are we gentle in standing for truth? Are we in control of our bodies etc?

Jesus said that loving God and our fellow humans would keep all of the law. If we see these fruit in our lives it a similar thing. God does not set us down things he wants us to do. He tells us how he wants us to be. In being this we will do all we need be doing but the drive will be inward and organic and alive instead of outward and religious and cold.

So do we just lie back and wait. Not a bit of it. We can plough and water and tend. As God’s word falls in your life Jesus warned us that some might fall on the road. Have no roads. Plough it up. Some might fall in the thorns. Weed it out. Some might fall in shallow ground. Dig deeper. Make it all fall into a life that is desiring to grow up.

U2 put it well. “You know I believe it…but I still haven’t found what I am looking for.” Seek to keep moving. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians “press on towards the prize.” “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.”

GIVING UP LIFE... TO BE ALIVE

“It’s a funny thing about humility
As soon as you know you're being humble
You're no longer humble
It's a funny thing about life
You've got to give up your life
To be alive”

Giving up your life to be alive. A strange saying in Trap Door, a song by T-Bone Burnett. Yet, it is an explosive little paraphrase of like so many subversive disconcerting phrases at the heart of Jesus message. 

As we in Fitzroy have been journeying through Luke’s Travel Narrative (Luke chapters 9-19 - unique to his Gospel account) we have been hearing about the cost of following Jesus. At the end of chapter 9 and again at the end of chapter 14 there are three short interactions where Jesus lays out what it will cost to follow him. 

Perhaps the harshest of all is:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

Goodness me! This is difficult and challenging stuff! Yet, we shouldn’t be surprised. Jesus is heading towards the cross. These travel narratives begin with him setting his face towards Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). As he heads towards his cross, to give up his life that we might live, the cost for Jesus himself is in the forefront of his mind. 

In that frame of mind and soul he is warning those who would dare follow him what it will cost. 

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. (Luke 9: 23-24) Surely, the verse that T-Bone Burnett has in mind when he wrote, “You gotta give up your life to be alive.”

As I preached this on Sunday morning I at one stage was looking at the text and the looking at a very intelligent, articulate, passionate, committed community of believers and myself and was so disconcerted by how far we are from this profoundly alternative way to live life. 

I started asking where in MY life am I paying any cost? Where am I denying myself? Where am I in any shape or form carrying a cross? Where is my life in any remote way looking like being a disciple of Christ? Where? The chasm between the Biblical text that we gather round and on a Sunday and the gatherers seemed so very wide at that moment of the sermon.

So where do we need to pay the cost, deny our rights and sacrifice ourselves for others. In the sermon I love at prejudice, wealth and self righteousness. A few days on and I am still very disconcerted.

to listen to the entire sermon click here Fitzroy Media Player and then click The Cost sermon

MESSY FRIENDSHIPS - ZACCHEUS, SINN FEIN ARD FHEIS and THE LOST IN LUKE'S GOSPEL

When I preach about that incident when Jesus met the tax collector Zaccheus and asked him to come down out of the tree he was perched in in order to eat with him, I used to ask, “who is our Zaccheus?” At the height of the Northern Irish Troubles I always answered Gerry Adams. Adams was the leader of the IRA whose voice the BBC banned from airwaves and television screens. He was the kind of social pariah that a first century tax collector was. If Jesus walked into Belfast in the 1980s most of us would have been aghast if he’d walked past all the good Presbyterians and decided to dine with Gerry Adams. Of course few, if any, Presbyterians followed the example of Jesus and went to have a meal with Adams! Certainly not me!

At the 2015 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis I finally met Gerry Adams. I had known it was the Jesus thing for decades but even when the opportunity arose there were concerns. What would people think? Would it be misunderstood? These are all fears that get in the way of doing the subversive and often disconcerting thing of following Jesus.

When Máirtín Ó Muilleoir gave Van Morrison the Freedom of the City of Belfast he said that Van the Man had helped us from “the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road.” Between the darkness of Northern Ireland bloody and violent past and the hoped for bright side of a peaceful future we will find ourselves, indeed we need to find ourselves, in messy disconcerting relationships. Our conflict is only twenty years ago. The pain is raw. Wounds are deep. If we are to move on, there will be difficult moments when wounded will have to engage with the wounder.  

Jesus was involved in such relationships. People were shocked that he was eating with a tax collector, or fraternising with prostitutes, chatting to Samaritan women and commending a Roman centurion’s faith. Between the fall and redemption, the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road, people will be suspicious of our reconciliatory relationships and we might even be surprised about how we feel about the people we must shake hands with. 

Grace is the key to all of this. As I said at that Ard Fheis our example in Christian peace making is that God moved first. Jesus comes to seek us, to die for us. Even with Zaccheus, Jesus approaches him first. This grace concept is the hope for forgiveness, redemption and healing.. It will reach out across all enmities. 

A few summers ago I was walking the sea front above a Spanish beach. Carved into the sand was Jesus on the cross. Whatever they had used for his eyes just laminated the dusk. I wrote: - 

I came across Jesus on a cross

Carved into a Spanish beach

His luminous eyes pierced through the night

Like nothing was out of his reach.

I believe this verse and have to therefore find every Zaccheus out there who needs God to move first. The question is still to be asked. Who is up your tree? Who is your Zaccheus?

to hear entire sermon go to Fitzroy Media Player here... and then press  "From the Dark End Of The Street To The Bright Side Of The Road"...

 

 

3 SONGS, 3 STEPS TO 10:10 LIVING in 2015 - Part 1: LET IT FALL

(This is part 1 of a 3 part series that is based on my New Year sermon on January 4, 2015... The sermon was inspired by 3 songs and then rooted in Philippians 3...)

Have you been trying too hard

Have you been holding too tight

Have you been worrying too much lately

All night

Whatever we've lost

I think we're gonna let it go

Let it fall

Like snow

‘Cause rain and leaves

And snow and tears and stars

And that's not all my friend

They all fall with confidence and grace

So let it fall, let it fall

This Over The Rhine song has been lingering on my ear and in my soul for weeks. I am not one who listens to music just for the sound. I am always listening for the spiritual, the transformative and, as a pastor, the pastoral. 

As a pastor this song is a tender balm. It stings the wound but is important in the healing. As I read it, and I might be wrong, this is Over the Rhine’s take on Jesus’ Sermon on The Mount illustration that the lilies of the field and the birds of the air don’t worry the way we humans do but look at how beautiful and cared for they are. They trust their Creator. And so, in this  song, the rain, leaves, snow, tears and stars all in trust that all will be well.  

As a new year begins we need to let the failings, disappointments, hurts, grief and pain of 2014 fall. We need to trust God. Now I do not expect that falling to happen by the time this blog is read but I gently suggest that it is what we should be aiming for. Trust. Letting go. Grace for the healing.

Our motto/logo in Fitzroy, where I am minister, is 10:10 from John 10:10, “life in all its fulness.” We believe that it is what God wants for us and why Jesus was born, lived, died and was raised to life. Pastorally, as a community, we are all about helping the each other overcome those things that would prevent 10:10. 

In Philippians 3 the apostle Paul lets it fall. Yes, for Paul in this particular passage, it is his self righteous attempts to reach God that he is letting go of. He lets go of his legalism for grace and trust and confidence in God’s grace in Jesus. Yet, I don’t think it is a wrong reading of the passage to bring it together with Over The Rhine’s Let It Fall. Paul says of himself, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on…”

When we hold on to failings, disappointments, hurts, grief and pain, they can become our identity. They can hold us back. The first step to fulfilling the potential of 2015 is to let it fall.

SOUL WIPE OR MULTI LAYERED SALVATION?

It has been a recurring theme for me to dangle myself over the firey pit of heresy. For many there will be no surprise there! So…I begin tonight’s end of year address by stating that I am disillusioned by our evangelical theology of salvation! To immediately redress such a shocking confession I am actually more disillusioned that the great theology of salvation that we have is so poorly worked out in our lives, Church and society. Indeed I believe that the problem has been that we have concentrated all our efforts on salvation on the theology rather than its implications. Tonight as some of you leave us to enter another chapter of your lives, another step up in your development, the rough and tumble of the real world I want to look at where our belief about Christ’s salvation will affect the lives you are going to live.

But first let me untangle my disappointment with salvation; or our outworking of it. I read the biography of a rock star this past month; a member of the Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Fame who is now a Christian. It was a fascinating book that I enjoyed immensely but the outworking of his salvation in Christ left me feeling a little short changed. It didn’t seem a robust enough transformation. He did have an awareness of the emptiness of his fame and fortune and his need for Jesus and the salvation he came to bring. He prayed the prayer and turned his life around, leaving the music scene to become a pastor. It held his life together, gave him a new sense of morality and led him towards Bible Study, prayer and witnessing to his friends. It was in so many ways the salvation that I found, and that so many experienced, in the seventies but it left me feeling disappointed. There was nothing in his biography about the challenges Jesus would throw at an American living through war and globalisation and consumerism and an encroaching environmental apocalypse. He admitted that he never wrote political songs or songs of social concern or cultural critique but even if they are not issues to write songs about surely they are crisis that our faith should be engaging with. Salvation, in the age of modernist definition, seems to have become a liturgical procedure and a nice clean life.

The Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggeman has said that “The gospel is thus a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized and rendered inane.” I believe he is right. Let me use an illustration of what I think I mean. At communion I am always pondering on the power of the blood of Christ. It seems that in this inane nice clean life the wine of communion is merely used to wipe our faces. It is a cleansing but quite a superficial cleansing like a wipe by a diluted substance. The same with the Church. It is like a nice gloss top coat of paint. Look at us, we are good. And we try to do the same to our society. Less smoking and swearing and drinking and society will be more Christian. It is all a watery soul wipe.

When I am in the communion zone, seeking the transforming power of the bread and the wine I often pray to be marinated by the intoxicating, dangerous sin killing power of Christ’s body and blood. And for society I pray that it drips then soaks and seeps through the pavement cracks and the grouting in the walls to reinvigorate, redeem and renew our society and culture. Christ did not live and die and be resurrected to fix our petty habits. He came to utterly turn around and make upside down and transform our entire world. As the world heads in a direction driven by the devil and evil of a deeply rooted fall so salvation is about a repentant revolution that will see God’s kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

At the end of those hippy Christian seventies when slogans were all the rage there was a phrase that went “Jesus is the answer… now what is the question?” I used to ridicule this by asking why the world is evil. Oh Jesus is the answer! Yes, it is a naive cliché but I want to use it tonight to get to my question. What I want to ask is “what is the main question of your generation and how does Jesus help us answer that question. Where is your generation lost and how does salvation look as the power of Christ’s cross impacts it.

In the Gospels, Jesus spoke of someone building a tower or a king going to war. Before they began the task they considered the task. As you guys head out to follow Jesus it is important to sit down and ask what the obstacles are. What the dangers are? What you are going to have to overcome. I guess there are various crises but the one I think is over riding, the one that is going to grow up like thorns alongside the seeds of the Gospel to choke the potential transformation. On a trip to Cape Town I once asked my students what they were not looking forward to back at home one answered “the relentlessness.”

Consumerism is the relentless god of the age. Many who are keen to make us a secular society, religion free seem blinded to the fact that it is not a religion free world they are creating. It is a new religion – consumerism is a religion. Let’s face it, it is what drives our culture, the engine of all our decisions and values. It is the bottom line… it is God… full allegiance… our identity… our worship… our consolation… our trust. The delusion for you is that the effectiveness of your life will be measured by the wage you earn. Houses, cars, exotic holidays and gadgets become a reason, the main reason for your life and work.

This is the context of our salvation; the habitation that we attempt to follow Jesus in. I don’t think the diluted liturgical proceedured nice clean life needs to care what the context is. Soul wipe Christianity is cosmetic and can ignore the multilayered salvation that Jesus was really about. Some even think that having a soul wiped Christianity running alongside consumerism negates the seduction of it. But alas no… and the Bible warns against the corrosive power of money. In the Old Testament there were times when there was the same sense of luxurious living as we enjoy now. It always led to exploitation and a prophetic battering from God. Their big houses, expensive fittings and their lush vineyards will be destroyed in God’s judgement.

Jesus spoke about it in the Sermon On the Mount. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Paul prophesied against it in 2 Timothy 3 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

This is what as a follower of Jesus we wrestle with. Is the pay check more important than time with your children? Is the next promotion what fires your vocation? Is your post code worth the stress? Is your comforts and luxuries worth causing a vast part of the world to be living in unforgiveable poverty, pain and death? Or is there another way to live? Is there an upside down kingdom where dirty straw, a homeless mentor and a wooden cross are the revolutionary symbols?

So what does this mean? Well in the soul wipe version of salvation I would tell you to tithe and that would salve your conscience on the surface. If only Christianity was so formulaic? It is what I would call a dynamic of dilemma? It is taking care not to get sucked in. It is making sure that your treasure is not on earth. It is making sure your investment is in eternal things. It is making sure that the subtlety of the advertisers does not suck your soul dry of the transforming power of Christ’s blood. It is decisions in your home. Decisions in your business. Decisions in your vocation.

In the Old Testament there was a choice to be made by God’s people. Were they going to follow the one true God or give in to the worship of idols instead? It is best described in Elijah’s battle with the prophets of Baal on the top of Mount Carmel. “If the Lord is God follow him; but if Baal is God then follow him.” In the New Testament the gods give way to the Empire and the same question is needed. The God we face. The Empire we face is consumerism. We need to ask who we will follow.

Salvation is not a soul wipe, not a surface clean. It is multilayered… impacting deep within our culture. We need to go to be salt and light… As David Gray puts it we need you guys to make the truth sting against the consumerist lies. Into the lies ruin and disease of our society I pray God that you will let the truth sting deep.