SOUL SURMISE

BEING CONDUITS OF GOD'S LOVE

The Lectionary led us, in Fitzroy, into John chapter 12. It is in the first verses of this chapter that we find Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s sister, showing extravagant love to Jesus. She poured a year’s wages worth of perfume over Jesus feet.

As I surmised the story I suddenly realised that we talk about Jesus loving others but we don't see much need for Jesus to be loved. We often rightly believe Jesus to be fully divine but forget that he was also fully human. As that full human being, we should understand Jesus need to be loved. His mother loved him and others too. Here is an act of love that might have helped see the fully human Jesus through the ordeal about to descend.

None of the Gospel writers record BUT as he prayed in Gethsemane, as he was taken away by the soldiers, as he was falsely witnessed against, as he faced injustice, as he was beaten and had to carry his own cross. As he was laid out and nailed to that cross. As he hung on the cross to the derision of the crowds gathered around him. As he breathed his last. Did Jesus remember this act of love. Did the strong waft of that perfume remind him he was loved. Did that love see him through!

Am I contriving the story? Maybe. However, I know that humans need love and our futures are shaped by love. Whether that is a young person setting out on a new vocation and is encouraged in their decision or whether it is sitting with a dying parent. The young person starting out in life or the older person coming to life’s end can have their future shaped by love. 

I have known this in my own life. In the early 90s colleagues in my denomination, in the name of a committee that I was a member, a letter was sent questioning my beliefs and personal faith. Long term I probably still deal with the damage of the incident and another that come a few years later. I have a social anxiety issue that I never had before. Anyhow, during the first incident, I remember a letter from my then girlfriend, now wife, all the way from South Africa that loved me into resilience and staying true to who I was. She loved me as I was and gave me the strength to follow Jesus and not peer pressure. 

Janice's hand in my hand at the time my mother died was the only thing that made any sense of my grief.

A few weeks into my ministry at Fitzroy I got up one Sunday and panicked that I wasn’t good enough to preach to such an able congregation. Janice realising my lack of confidence got out of bed to come round and assure me that it would be ok.

On all three occasions love shaped my future, I would describe Janice’s love here as much more than romantic. I would see her as conduit of God’s love.

You do not need to have a spouse or be a spouse to be a conduit of God’s love. We are called to be conduits of God’s love. 

It could be as simple as a on pat on the back, an ear to listen, a text or a card, a meal. It is incredible what small loving acts of love do for people in finding their belonging, their self worth, their resilience through tough times. 

Let us ask where we can love, simply or even extravagantly. Where can we be conduits of God’s love. Where can help God shape the future. 

PARTICLES OF LIGHT ACROSS THE CITY

“Let me be a little of your breath
Moving over the face of the deep
I want to be a particle of your light
Flowing over the hills of morning”

From Hills Of Morning by Bruce Cockburn

I have used this as prayer for thirty years since Alan McIlroy converted me to Bruce Cockburn’s awesome album Dancing In the Dragons Jaw in a house less than fifty yards from the Church where I am now minister. It is a spiritually potent album, vivid in literary images, influenced by the Charles Williams books that Cockburn was reading at the time.

This chorus conjures with the mystery of us humans somehow merging with the God in God’s tangible presence in the world. It is a prayer to be involved in God’s breath, in God’s light, in God’s mission to make the world better than the world is. Fitzroy might be unaware of the specific song but they will be familiar with these ideas. I use them often in prayers and sermons.

I often describe the congregation as vocationally scattered across the city of Belfast, working in very influential places, effecting social change and caring for many people who are not finding themselves cared for elsewhere.

In the summer a friend now working in a Christian development organisation spoke about how when he was a probation officer no one asked him how he was bringing the Kingdom and now that he is working for a “Christian” organisation lots of people ask him. The Northern Irish secular and sacred divide heresy. 

My belief is that all of my congregation are every day in every way Kingdom bringers. They are all “particles of light” scattered across the city, bringing the thinking, voice, touch, attitude and ultimately love of God wherever they are and whoever they are with. Those particles of light are somehow partners with God making up the bigger light.

I guess that is why Jesus called himself the Light of the world and then at another time told the disciples they were the Light of the world. This is a huge prayer; it is asking to be part of the force that transforms the world.

RECONCILIATION AT THE HEART OF GOD

(Fr Martin and I are writing for the Youthscape Website this month... here's my contribution.)

READING: LUKE 6: 27-36

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

Growing up during the Northern Ireland Troubles, I decided to follow Jesus as a 17 year old. When I read “Love your enemies” I did not need to think too hard about what that meant and who they were. Yet, for maybe thirty years I was what I would call a passive peacemaker. I was against the violence. I wished for peace. Prayed for it, even. Yet, I wasn’t doing very much about it. 

These words of Jesus are a radical challenge, an other worldly attitude towards your enemies. This is not just passive non retaliation, this is actively living in a way that benefits the conditions of your enemy. It is serving your enemy. It is loving your enemy. It is doing for others what God has done for us, in Jesus. 

The Amish community live this out in their everyday lives. Their idea of forgiveness is to reconcile with the enemy to the point where you make them a friend! 

In 2006 Charles Roberts entered an Amish Schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and shot ten young Amish girls, killing five of them dead.

Within hours of the shootings, the Amish had visited the killer’s wife and family. They not only told them that they forgave them but they actually set up a charitable fund for the killer’s children.

Love for the family of the killer of your children. This is loving your enemies and doing good to those who hate and mistreat you. Forgiveness for the Amish is not about wiping some objective slate clean. Forgiving is a loving act that seeks to build friendship with those that they should be at enmity with. Every Thursday night Charles Roberts’ mother now reads and prays with a severely brain damaged little girl her son shot.

This kind of mercy and love is at the heart of the Christian faith. God doesn’t only forgive us… he reaches out to build relationships with us. When we find ourselves in spaces where there is need of reconciliation we find ourselves in places where we can get closest to the heart of God and with opportunities to follow our call to follow Jesus.

God’s love led him to action. He didn’t just talk about his love. He didn’t just believe it as an idea. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). There was nothing passive about that. We don’t follow Jesus into ideas… but to action. Revolutionary action.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God (Matt 5:9)

 

PRAYER: Lord, lead us close to your heart, to be about what is closest to your heart that you might make our hearts like yours. 

WHEN CHRISTIANITY ROBS US OF THE WONDER OF OUR HUMANITY - IT'S A SIN!

“My Christian journey almost robbed me of the wonder of my humanity.”

The words of artist Colin Davidson to a class of Calvin College students meeting in Fitzroy, recently. 

Sadly, the words rang true, for me. I grew up in a Christian faith influenced by a narrow legalistic puritanism. It was judgemental. Indeed, the theological belief that you are saved by grace was almost nullified by the fact that you had to then work like the clappers to keep that salvation. There were hundreds of dos and don’ts, very like the spiritual oppression that Jesus fought the Pharisees over.

The heresy of dualism, rife across a large swathe of Christian spiritualities, also played its part. The things of the spirit were good. The things of the material world were bad. There was a demarcation between scared things and secular ones. 

In such a world a friend gave up sport after his conversion. It was secular. He was gifted but God, he was told, wouldn’t want him in those secular places that came with it. A little of the wonder of his humanity was robbed. 

Bono, Edge and Larry from the rock band U2 were told by their Church to give up music. It tormented them for a time before, thank God, they made the right decision to keep on following their musical vocation. The  wonder of their humanity was almost robbed from them.

I had friends who were banned from listening to certain music, going to certain places and following certain vocations because they were judged to be worldly. Sadly, I know many many people whose wonder of their humanity was stolen by faulty theology and Christian practice.

I was fortunate in that I never understood such thinking as I read the Gospels and attempted to follow Jesus. Yes, I was curtailed for many years but eventually I broke free to live in the fulness of our humanity that Jesus came to bring.

Recently, I preached on John chapter 2. It is Jesus first miracle. John calls them signs. Jesus turns water into wine. That is immediately a problem for many wonder of humanity stealers. Wine has often been described as the devil’s vomit. Alcohol is of the world. 

Wherever such an idea came from, it was not the Bible. Jesus wine was the best wine. Grape juice doesn’t quite compete with real fermented wine. Believe me. I enjoy a glass. If this was not fermented wine then it was no miracle. Blasphemy. Hersey actually. My mother turned water into grape juice every Sunday lunchtime! 

Don’t get me started on grape juice in communion. Not anywhere near a symbol of potent sin killing blood Christ. When Jesus used wine he knew what he was using and why. 

John’s account of the miracle of the water turned into wine follows on from John’s great theological prologue in chapter 1. We are given that poetic description of incarnation - “the word became flesh.” We are then told “and moved in amongst us.” 

Jesus did not separate himself from the world. He set up residence right in the heart of it. In chapter 2 in Cana of Galilee, he is doing just that. A wedding was a drink fest for a few days. Jesus didn’t remove himself . He was right there at the heart of it. He broke down any sacred spaces verse secular places debates right here. 

Whatever “come ye out from among them” means it is not to negate the entire message of Jesus incarnation. As Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

The sign of water turned into wine is one of fulness. It was the best wine. It is also sign of abundance. 

Grace is only mentioned four times in the Gospel According To John. All four mentions are in the first 17 verses of the book. Then, for the rest of John’s account of Jesus life, people get to see it, taste it, smell it, touch it, feel it. 

Jesus did not come to rob us of the wonder of our humanity. God becoming human was about exactly the opposite. Jesus came to give us the fullest possible wonder of that humanity and give it to us abundantly. My mantra of John 10:10 - “I have come that you might have life and have it in all its fulness.”

Some might be concerned about this freedom I am advocating. They might accuse me of leading us all into sinful living. Absolutely not. Sin’s end is to rob us from the wonder of our humanity. Jesus end is to lavish that wonder upon us. It would be a sin, maybe the greatest sin, to in any way curtail the fulness of life that Jesus was born, died, resurrected and ascended to give us.

That Colin Davidson experienced a Christian journey that almost robbed him of the wonder his humanity is a terrible sin. God forgive us!

Discipleship, spiritual formation, following Jesus - whatever we wish to call it - should never be about robbing the wonder of our humanity from us but should instead have an end goal that sees us experience this human life in its most abundant wonder.

A THIN LINE - PRAYERS OR BLASPHEMY

(in 1998 I had the honour of contributing to Jimmy Abegg's book Ragamuffin Prayers along with others like Brennan Manning, Amy Grant and Mike Yaconelli. I looked at the influence of the Irish language on the use of God and Jesus in Ireland today. I have edited it only slightly.)

It is a thin line between superstition and useful spiritual discipline. Between spontaneous connection with the Divine and using of the name of the Lord our God in vain. Between the prayer of a Ragamuffin and the blasphemy of careless souls. However, something makes me think that the cry of the divine expletive may in some instances, maybe the minority of instances but instances none the less, be the most fragile of Ragamuffin prayers.

I grew up in Ballymena, Co Antrim in the northern part of the island of Ireland. The northern counties are to Ireland what the southern states are to America – Bible belt. There is a puritanical backdrop to life. Regulations once brought in to help towards holiness have drifted recklessly towards a legalism that the Pharisees would have liked Jesus to bring to earth with him. The use of the Lord’s name is very much protected and rightly so, I reckon.. When I hear someone utter “Jesus Christ” or “Oh my God” there is a shudder that races up my evangelical spine. My sin radar sends bright sulphurous flashes across my soul. 

Thirty years into my life and thirteen into my Christian pilgrimage I moved to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. From a predominantly Protestant and saturated evangelical culture I found myself in a country where a merely 4% of the population was Protestant. It was 1991 and Ireland was still very much Roman Catholicism that I was often told was the one great enemy to my Christian faith. It was a massive learning curve and many things were reassessed in the three years I lived there. One of them was this use of Divine expletives. Particularly with older folk I found a different attitude behind the use of “God” and “Jesus” in their daily shouts of wonder and cries of struggle.

So even now over twenty years after my Dublin sojourn I’m wondering could these shouts and cries be Ragamuffin prayers. Genuine calls to God in praise and pleading. Sincere attempts at connecting with the Divine in the every day moments of life. A daily connection which harks back to the Celtic Christianity of Ireland’s past where blessings and prayers were threaded into every chore, every meeting, every part of the daily routine.

So I have been talking to my good friend Timothy Flaherty an Irish speaker (very rare among Protestants) with a degree in the Language (almost unheard of among Protestants) about Gaelic greetings. His feedback has been very interesting. If you meet someone one on the roads of the Gaeltacht instead of saying “hello” you would say “Dia duit” (God save you). The reply would be “Dia is Muire duit” (God and Mary save you) and though it rarely goes there, there would be a listing of saints from Pádraig to Brid to Colmcille and beyond. Blessings are an important part of the everyday greetings and sayings in the old Irish. Entering a house you would say “Dia sa teach” (God in the house) or leaving someone instead of “goodbye” you would say “Beannacht leat” (blessings with you) or possibly “Go dtuga Dia slán abhaile tú” (May God give you a safe homeward journey). 

This is in keeping with all that we know of the Celtic tradition where all of life lies under God’s watchful eye and in every minute of every tiny daily chore God is waiting for communion. There was no setting to the side moments or hours of prayer and worship and reflection and the rest of the time being lived in a different mode than those holy moments. There were prayers and blessings for the lighting of the fire, the milking of the cows and the making of the bed. Every opportunity was taken to use the seemingly mundane to reflect and be reminded of God’s presence. Today as Irish Catholics pass a Chapel they will cross themselves. Perhaps like our helpful evangelical regulations have drifted into reckless legalism, some of their rituals have become empty superstition but for some it is a very real chance to be reminded of God on their journey to work or the shops.

So maybe it is from this heritage that I have heard reverence in the cry for God. Maybe the difference between blasphemy and reverence is whether the searching soul of a Ragamuffin mutters the God word or it is the careless empty heartedness of the cynic or the cold blooded disparager. It is becoming my belief that some expletives are the reaching for the transcendent in the best of the Psalmist tradition. The Psalms are dominated with the awe inspired worship or the confused cry for some sense in the midst of tragedy. And so I remember feeling guilty as a seventeen year old when on my first trip to Canada I was so overwhelmed by downtown skyscrapers that I was speechless, apart from a God word. Today I feel freer to see it as a Ragamuffin in the jaws of wonder. 

When the news came across the radio on Saturday August 15, 1998 that a bomb had exploded in Omagh during the busiest part of the afternoon, much of my island let out that seemingly careless shriek of pain and despair. The “Oh my God no!” as the day and week progressed was the most honest and vulnerable response to a situation where no other words could articulate our loss. We were all Ragamuffins screeching with our minds in tatters. We were left scratching our souls for meaning. In what some might have seen as our blaspheming, and it’s a thin line, we were heard by a God who is “the Comforter” not “the explainer”. I reckon He was angry too. 

My nearly articulate first responses to the tragedy eventually gave way to more carefully considered words. Here is the prayer I prayed on Radio Ulster the following Friday.

IN A WEEK LIKE THIS 

Lord, we come to the end of another week
Except it hasn't been just another week
It has been the worst week of our lives
And even worse for some
Lord help us to be honest, vulnerable and somehow hopeful in the reflection of our feelings

Lord we have been shocked
Shocked by how one tiny second can tear our lives apart
Shocked by how far humanity can fall
Shocked by how callous and painful mankind's actions can stoop

Lord, we are grieving
Grieving for the loss of lives with so much love and energy still to give
Grieving for the man and woman and child who we will never be able to hold again
Grieving for our history that is as sad and twisted as this

Lord we are confused
Confused at why this should happen
Confused about how this should happen to the innocent
Confused about where you and faith enter into these events

Lord we have been angry
Angry at why we allowed our family and friends to go shopping
Angry at how evil people could rip our world asunder
Angry that you allowed it to happen

Lord we are seeking
Seeking some kind of feeble consolation in the midst of our deluge of tears
Seeking some kind of hope that good might come from this evil
Seeking your Spirit whom Jesus called a Comforter to whisper into our maddening silence

Lord we are squinting for faith
Faith that the majority might have some kind of a say in the future
Faith that love will end our hate, good will end our evil and grace will touch our broken hearts
Faith in a God who is as angry as we are and who is reaching out his hand to us. 

Lord we are remembering
Remembering those who today can no longer be shocked, grieve, be angry, be confused, seek or squint for faith
Remembering that you watched as your son covered in blood, died at the futile whim of injustice
Remembering that that very death is the only thing that we can grope in the dark for in a week like this. 

Lord we have planted our loved ones deep in the bloody earth of Ireland this week
We have watered them with our tears
Lord may you allow them to be seeds of a love that will grow into our peace. 

Lord remember us.

MISSION... AND RETREAT... DIFFERENT BUT MINGLED

It has almost become a catch phrase. As I was leaving Belfast, so many people shouted at me to “kiss the African sun.” It is a poem I wrote a couple of summers ago for my friend Alain Emerson. I had just returned from Uganda as he was leaving to go. “I’ll kiss the African sun for you,” he texted.

It made me think of mission and what we do here. It reminded me of the school he founded here, for his late wife, who features in those first lines. 

The key, though, is the last line, “let that African sun kiss you.” Go and give but take in what’s given back to you.

The Sunday before I left Fitzroy I preached from Philippians 4. I find that here is where Paul begins to touch on, what I call, mutual partnership in mission.

As I see it, when our Fitzroy team arrives here on July 3rd, they will be on mission. We will be sharing the good news of Jesus in words and deeds, helping to bring a little more of the kingdom of God to a little community on the edge off Arua, on the edge of north west Uganda. Mission!

But running alongside that will be Retreat. Some go on retreat to a monastery or quiet places set up for contemplation or teaching. Retreats are for finding a different space to be inspired and refilled by the Holy Spirit. For our team Arua will be that kind of space. I always come away refreshed in my soul. Retreat!

So… mission… kissing the African sun.

So … retreat… allowing the African sun to kiss you.

So… mission and retreat on the one trip, different but mingling together. 

 

Her last seed fell so hard

The cruelest smite of all

Then bursting through the pain

A harvest of light for all

Go help make an eternal difference

Turn around every fallen inference

Give the children back their innocence

And kiss the African sun.

 

Throw and scatter and sow

Find more seeds in the cup

Watch harvest yield a harvest

Curse all the weeds ripped up

Love until we all know grace has won

Burn until hopelessness is over and done

Leave nothing out there after the run

And kiss the African sun

Oh kiss that African sun

 

They say that we are rich

But we are only rich in shillings

Oh the wealth of their resilience

Innovation and being willing

They say that they are poor

But they are only poor in shillings.

 

Go and share our mutual poverty

Learn what mutual wealth can do

Bring back home the blessings of God

And let the Africa sun kiss you

Let that African sun kiss you!

GRACE - OXYGEN OF ANOTHER WORLD BUT...

“Grace is the oxygen of another world and we like breathing our own.” I used this phrase as an illustration in a sermon a few years back. I think there is something in it. I thought it it was worth writing down and surmising a little further. 

Jesus truth was grace. God was interrupting the way the world was with the way the world could be, God’s way. It was a scandalous truth that ultimately got Jesus crucified. The world couldn’t handle anything so subversively ridiculous. 

Jesus illustrated it well in his parable of the Prodigal Son. As the religious leaders of his day listened in, Jesus painted a vivid picture of a rascal who took his father’s inheritance and squandered it on sex and drugs and rock n roll, to give it a modern twist. Finding himself destitute he heads for home. As the story moves towards climax you can almost hear the Holywood soundtrack building the tension. 

Jesus says that the father sees the rogue from afar and the religious leaders are getting all excited about what judgement is going to come down... and... the father wraps his arms around him, puts a ring on his finger and throws a party. 

Jesus mentions the loyal, good living, brother as a comparison to the wild hedonist which makes even more acute the sense of the injustice. 

Grace. It seems madness but it is our only hope. It is God’s way of love; loved as we are without merit. Did I say ridiculous?

The follower of Jesus is more than aware of the amazing grace that embraces the wretch and brings the wholeness of salvation. As Paul put it so well in Ephesians, “It is by grace you are saved through faith...” In Philippians he spoke of this in his own life, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” 

For Paul this was a whole different oxygen. From attempting by his own efforts at holiness to relying on God’s interruption of grace what Jesus achieved for him in his life, death and resurrection.

Down though the history of Christianity it has been a struggle for those who, like Paul, get this theological eureka moment. Falling into the arms of God’s grace like Jacob, Moses, David, Zaccheus and Paul before us we then go back to preferring the oxygen that we grew up on. 

We start to set little legalist systems and then pummel ourselves under the guilt of failing to live up to them. No matter how much we believe in the doctrine of grace we look in the mirror in the morning and would rather be better looking, thinner, more successful and more holy. We never allow ourselves to be loved as we are, as grace informs us we are. Then as we go back to breathing that old oxygen we cut off the supply of the new oxygen that not only loves us as we are but has the transformative power to love us into who God can make us be.

BAD RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BIBLE - YOU CAN'T LEAVE IT ON THE WASHING MACHINE

I have been concerned in recent days about our relationship with the Bible. Three real life scenarios will open up my fears. I was on a social media discussion and someone shared how she was ashamed of herself as she had come in from Church on Sunday, left her Bible on the washing machine in the utility room and had not lifted it for almost a week. My immediate reaction was, “I wish!” 

Wouldn’t it be great if the Bible was the kind of thing that could be set down? It was certainly never God’s intention that it could be left anywhere. It was his idea that it would become apart of us. Paul told the Colossians that they should let the “word of God dwell in you richly”. I find it pouring into my mind and heart and soul in all kinds of daily scenarios while the hard copy is back on my desk! It is not to be contained in lines on pages and bound by leather and gold edge. This is a book that is not so much about you reading it but it reading you. 

The next scenario comes from a sermon that was all about the dangers of the junk that modern culture fills our minds with. I have no argument with that! The preacher, however, suggested that we maybe watch as much as five hours television a night and then only give ten minutes to reading the Bible. Again this is a shocking understanding of the Bible and its relationship to us and our living. It seems that we have compartmentalised the Bible and entertainment. They live in separate rooms and there is no door between. The Bible was never meant to have its own place. It was meant to seep through every pore of our lives. As I am watching the news, film drama, music and even sport that the Bible, even without it open on my lap, is helping me think about all I am watching in a Biblical way. 

The last story is about someone who was worried about their relationship with God. When asked in what ways, it all came down to the amount she was reading the Bible. Though my friend should rightfully have sought some help in re-igniting her Bible reading the fact that she was not reading it has little to do with her relationship with God. Yet she has been taught that it was. Indeed she has been taught that it was the be all and end all of her faith. Of course it is not. For centuries after Christ’s ascension nobody had a Bible to read. Did they have no relationship with God? Of course not! Bible reading notes are a phenomenon of the last fifty years so were the Christians who never heard the words “quiet time” for 1900 years, all living in a dodgy relationship with God. Of course not!

All three of the above stories reveal a fatally faulty mindset when it comes to our relationship with The Bible. And before anybody sees my motives as diminishing the importance of the Bible to our Christian tradition let me state that my concerns are quite the opposite. The above stories are the effects of our containing and confining the Scriptures, of making them too small in their impact. It could well be one of the devil’s crucial distractions that realising we are committed so much to Scripture he abuses that commitment to distort its place. In the end the Bible becomes an end in itself instead of a means to transform our lives and the world!

Bible reading is not so much discipleship as a resource for discipleship. Doing a quiet time is not following Jesus, he never did one! Jesus hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. That is what we should be doing. The Bible is the wisdom to resource our discernment and give us courage in our decisions as we try to do what Jesus would have done! So on a night where we watch five hours of television and do a ten minute quiet time the entire evening should be a resource for Bible study because as we watch we should be wrestling with its truth and how it applies to every scenario on the screen. And if it comes alive in your dealing with the issues that culture raises then your thinking will be released into every conversation in every area of your life and therefore society and the Bible will suddenly be alive all around us instead of lying like some dead book on the washing machine!

Now something that needs said as we draw this thought to a conclusion. Before it can read you, you have to have read it. So if it is not dwelling in you richly don’t leave it on the washing machine. Get into it. Read it until its coming out of your ears (heart, soul and mind!) but do so not in order to make yourself feel smugly in touch with God today but so that eventually you will not be able to leave it down because it will go absolutely everywhere with you, pages flicking up to teach us, rebuke us, correct us and train us in righteousness so that we are thoroughly equipped for every good work as Paul told Timothy it would do!

So where is your Bible?

ASCENSION - ITS VITAL THEOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE

I never remember much fuss about Ascension Day in any Church I have worshipped in. My friend Dani tells me that in Germany they have a school holiday. Here in Northern Ireland, Protestant Churches probably think that celebrating the Church year is a bit Catholic! We need to realise that the wars of Reformation and Counter Reformation are over and we can ringback some babies thrown out with he bath water back then.

Jesus’ Ascension is of vital theological importance. In Luke 9 when Jesus sets his eyes on the culmination of his ministry Luke doesn’t suggest that that is his cross or resurrection but - “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem”.

A look at Paul’s salvation theology from Ephesians 1:19-23 reveals the consequences of the ascension - “That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

It is time for us in Protestant Northern Ireland to recognise the ascension as a major Jesus moment, alongside the nativity, the cross and the resurrection. This cosmic rule of Christ is how we find resilience, hope and imagination... the power to live the faith and redeem the world.  

My sermon on ascension in Fitzroy was built around a poem by Malcolm Guite. Malcolm is an Anglican priest, poet, songwriter and educator. Check out his website - https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com

Ascension - Malcolm Guite

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.

Let us look…

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place

Luke records Jesus ascension in both Luke 24 or Acts 1. I wonder what they were feeling…

As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.

Here is the Cosmic zig zag. In the nativity God becomes human. In the ascension, God as a human, flesh on, returns to heaven.

We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,

Before his ascension, indeed before his cross, Jesus spoke to the disciples about the oneness between them as he and his Father were one. He spoke of the vine and the branches. Mysterious he brings us with him and rules over the cosmos for the Church.

Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed

I love Malcolm’s images here. He is the songwriter and the idea of Jesus singing his intercession for us in heaven and us left to “sing the waning darkness into light.”

The ascension… Jesus now as ruler of the Cosmos… holds the power… for us to be witnesses… The disciples who watched Jesus disappear are those who were called to be witnesses. For us that is to be in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and to the ends of the earth.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY - THE TUNNEL BETWEEN BROKENNESS AND HEALING

 

Sunday is Remembrance Sunday and I am always a little uneasy as I prepare for it. It is good to remember but remembering is a very sensitive thing. For most of us we are thinking about wars from 70 and 100 years ago. In recent years I have had Italians and Germans in the congregations where we have been remembering. That can be tricky.

 

My favourite song quote on Remembrance weekend is from Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It sets the tone for our remembering:

 

 “I see your flags on the marble arch

But love is not a victory march

It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”  

 

In the Bible we read that the aim of God’s redemption for the world has nothing to do with war. The Bible is about shalom, swords turned into ploughshares, in a day that’s coming when we shall be free from war. 

 

As I prepare for our act of Remembrance in Fitzroy this Sunday I see my job as filling the tunnel between; between the war that we remember and our hoped for God’s Kingdom come when war will be finished with. 

 

Luke 6: 27-36 is a challenging a passage of Scripture for such tunnels, even more for those who dare claim to follow Jesus in Northern Ireland:

 

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you.” 

 

Loving enemies – insane. Doing good to those who hate you – come on! This is radical stuff and tough to live out. Yet it is what we are called to do in the tunnel between the brokenness and the healing. It is simply following Jesus who did exactly what he said by seeking out those who were alienated from him and reaching out in grace to them by being incarnated, living, dying and being raised to life for them.

 

A few years ago in the tunnel of a Remembrance service I used an illustration of Jim Wallis from his book On God’s Side. Wallis tells the story of a pastor in Memphis who welcomed the local Muslim community into his area, got the story on CNN and then had phone calls from a group of Muslims in Kashmir, Pakistan saying how they had watched the CNN report and were now going to care for the little Christian community in their community. 

 

Surprising your enemies in the way Jesus taught us to in Luke 6 works! We are called to break the cycle of hatred that causes war. We are called to be the grace interrupters calling on God’s eternal shalom. As I after wrote 9/11:

 

“And in vengeances vicious circle

In the perpetual cycle of hate

Someone has to stop the spinning wheel

Or everything is going to be too late

Jesus said do unto others

As you would have them do to you

That grace can blow holes in our waging of war

So that peace can squeeze through.”

 

 

The call on Remembrance Sunday is to remember and then learn from our remembering to begin to bring that peace to all creation that is the intention of our God.