Being faithful now

We try to explain God, but in reality part of the fundamental nature of God (and indeed our delight in God) is that God is inexplicable
We can't really 'define' God at all!
Readings for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (proper 33)...Sunday 15th November 2009 1 Sam 1:4-20; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-11

...If we want to say anything about God
then we want to say that there is never a time when God was not,
there is never a time when God is not,
and there will never be a time God will not be
This is fine language, reassuring and affirming
and the Bible readings this week help us to appreciate it more fully.
Samuel
The story of Samuel's birth,
how every thing is seen to be in God's care right from the word "go"
so that Samuel is in the right place at the right time
and is able to do what God has set out for him to do
reminds us of a profound characteristic about God.
He has already prepared the place for us.
There is never a time when he was not.
And he draws us into this
From the very wombs into which we were born
to the moments in time and history
that we encounter
there is never a time when God's presence is not felt
and not available to those who yearn for God

Hebrews reminds us, too,
that God is a God of destiny
who has things prepared for those who love God.
There is a goal, an end, a vision.
That vision for us is realised in Christ
who we are called to emulate
and who calls us to be like him.
God calls us to share the future with him.
Our destiny is to be drawn into the fulness of ligfe with God

So whether we look to the past or whether we look to the future
we find God already there.
God's hand already active in our life
even though we maybe don't recognise it.
God's hand already preparing a way for us.
So that we may become what God wants us to be

God of now
But as we embrace this powerful sense of destiny, even predestination
we are pointed by the apocalyptic sense of the gospel
to realise that where God's kingdom is to be focussed for you and for me
is not by looking back to see where we came from.
It is not by looking forward and trying to predict when the end of al things will come.
It is by living out our lifein the present.

The God who rules history and whose mighty care and love for us
is recognised in how we have been brought to this place.
The God who will bring all things to perfection
and who is our ultimate resting place.

Calls us to live in the here and now.

We may be tempted to retreat
We may be tempted to worry about the future

But the invitation of God's Holy Spirit is
Live NOW
Preach the Gospel now
Trust God now

Practically
we are to understand not how to do things as they were once done
not to try and do it as it should be done in the future
but to live out our faith NOW
The reality of what we are called to be and do iis to be lived out in the present.
What else do we have!

This week

Where is God calling me to live out love, forgiveness and hope in what I am going to do this week?

Where am I tempted to escape form my responsibilities by looking to the past, or predicting the future?

Is there some way that I can be more genuinely present to those who God calls me to serve?

Is there a way of being Christian that invites me to be faithful now?

How can I do it? Do it!!

Taking our godliness seriously

Ruth and Boaz (the stylistic work of Polish-Iraeli artist Shlomo Katz see here for more)

Reading for Pentecost 23, Sunday 8th November 2009 (Proper 32) Ruth 3:1-5, 4:3-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:19-28; Mark 12:38-44

There is certain profound gentleness about this week's readings.

The story of a woman who finds a genuine life partner. And who against all odds becomes the mother of a great man.

And the gentle reassurance of the woman whose generosity is seen by God; even though she gives little in "real terms" she gives everything she has in hers

and God see this

and we recognise it and so we are heartened.

In the middle of this there is something of a sterner reminder

that God abhors hypocrisy

and that there is about life the mystery of sacrifice

which tests us to the very core of who we are.

The writer to the Hebrews spells out in great detail

that sacrifice is at the core of what our relationship with God is all about.

Getting it straight

Now we need to understand that there is a common misconception about sacrifice

and that is that it is essentially about the taking away of life.

This is not necessarily or particularly so. ]

In fact if we look at the detailed instructions about sacrifice in the Hebrew scriptures ]

we see that a lot of it is not about animal slaughter at all

There are all sorts of sacrifices of grain and produce which do not involve bloodshed.

In fact if we look at the word sacri-fice

we can see that it is about making (the fice part of the word) things

sacred or holy (the sacri part of the word)

Christ died that we might be made holy

In fact the writer of Hebrews uses the idea of Christ entering into God's presence

(going into the most holy place)

so that we too might enter into that presence

Simple reflection

The story of Ruth is an interesting but gentle tale.

It seems a simple love story

yet it needs also to be read in the context of the sort of ethnic tensions

that still exist in those lands we call HOLY today.

Ruth was not a Jew she was what today we would call a Lebanese, or Syrian, perhaps even an Iraqi.

Yet her faithfulness to her Jewish mother-in-law

and her willingness to do what needed to be done

saw a simple little tale become an object lesson in the all accepting love of God.

The Jews were racked by ethnic division then as now.

And yet we read of one the greatest heroes (in backwards order)...his father was Jesse, his grandfather was Obed, who was the child not of a Jew but of a Moabitess.

David was the great grandson of an outcast.

Be careful about what you hear.

There is more than meets the eyes.

Likewise in the letter to the Hebrews

it is the call for us to be holy

and the permission to enter the closest presence of God that we need to hear.

Not just the bloody sacrifice of Christ.

So obsessed are we about guilt and sin that we fail to hear that there is cause for rejoicing.

Christ died, so that we could be close to God.

God is close, not far.

Don't push him away

Finally

A simple tale that we all know to be true .. the rich can afford to be generous

But do we also pay attention to the great warning

God is not looking for who gives the most either in real dollar terms or even proportionately.

God looks at the heart and despises hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy that judges others and fails to critique oneself.

THIS WEEK Where is God inviting me to be tolerant?

To step outside my prejudices and to be more accepting?

Where do I hold back from drawing close to God?

Is there a time and place to be quiet and listen?

Is there an opportunity to serve God through care for others?

Where in my life am I most hypocritical? Where can I change and be more honest?

Hoping

Readings for Sunday December 7th, 2008: Advent 2 Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85, 2 Pet 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

Advent, as we journey towards Christmas is filled with hope
as we look forward to the presence of Jesus in our lives.
We have thought in the last few weeks
about some of these big words, hope, faith, trust and belief
what is it that we hope for
It seems important to get this right
as the language of faith
is about what we hope
Faith, the writer to the Hebrews tells us,
is the assurance of things hoped for
...and
So it is not unreasonable just to try and think about what we hope for.
We confuse, I suspect, the words 'hoping' and 'wishing'
Something that is not hard to grasp as we are very wish list focussed at Christmas.
But even the dimmest of us realises that our hopes are deeper than our wishes.
The new car that we wish for pales into insignificance
beside the hope that we may live a meaningful life, or that we might have trust in our relationships.
To help us understand this,
God has given us in the Christmas revelation a profound insight into the difference between wishing and hoping
Our hope is not founded on 'stuff', not even on that much bandied about phrase 'infrastructure' (or what we might have called in the past...institutions),
our hope is not even in the Bible or the Church
Hope is founded on Jesus.
So getting in touch with hope in advent is about getting in touch with Jesus
one of the great Anglican Archbishops, St Anselm wrote this (here)
Little man, rise up! Flee your preoccupations for a little while. Hide yourself for a time from your turbulent thoughts. Cast aside, now, your heavy responsibilities and put off your burdensome business. Make a little space free for God; and rest for a little time in God.
Enter the inner chamber of your mind; shut out all thoughts. Keep only thought of God, and thoughts that can aid you in seeking him. Close your door and seek God. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, I seek your face; your face, Lord, will I seek.
And come you now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek you, where and how it may find you.......
Reveal yourself to me when I seek you, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor find you unless you reveal yourself.
Let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking; let me find you by loving you and love you in the act of finding you.

1. Let Advent be a season when we take the time to be in touch with God. If we do not take time to combat the busy-ness then it will take over.

Where else might be in touch with Jesus? A couple of weeks ago we were reminded that we find Jesus not in some high mountain shrine, or even in heaven...but in the lives and service of the humblest and the weakest (see Matthew 25).
Our hope will be discovered as we care for the sick, help the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless
Far from being an exercise in despair we discover as we touch the lives of others
that we too are touched and filled with hope

2. Let Advent be a season when we find Christ in the needy

And lastly we all know that this frenzied season is about Giving and Generosity, not harding and selfishness.
It celebrates that our God is a Giver.
Giving his Son, in human form shows us that
being in touch with our own hope
is also about an invitation to us to be generous.
We sometimes lose the focus of this
it is not about getting the biggest pile of presents
(how often we teach this to our children!!)
It is about being challenged to become givers ourselves.
Is there not hope in the idea that we can do better than just lock ourselves in our tiny world

3. Let Advent be a time when we are challenged to be givers

1. Advent: the season when we take the time to be in touch with God.
2. Advent :the season when we find Christ in the needy
3. Advent: the season when we are challenged to be givers

Certainty and Hope

Readings for Proper 14 -Year C - 12th August 2007

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 and Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

YOUTUBE LINK

Will we get to a point when we don't have to rely on faith any more?

Yes, but it is not now!
St Paul tells us that there are three great things(1)-Faith Hope and Love
and the greatest of these is love
And the hymn writer (2) reminds us
Faith will vanish into sight;
hope be emptied in delight;
love in heaven will shine more bight;
therefore give us love.

When all things are brought to completion, as God intends
there will be no need to have faith
because we will know
We will see what we have always hoped for
and we will no longer have to have faith
because we will know.

But we are not at that point
so the way we operate is as a person of faith
and we get a definition of that today in Hebrews 11

To illustrate that the writer tells us the story of Abraham
and Sarah
who received the promise of God
That they would be the ancestors of a great people…
they had no evidence of this
indeed rather the contrary, they were both old
and it seemed unlikely.
So the challenge of faith for them

was to believe
rather than to know or to prove
Faith, is assurance without fact
Being convinced of what we are promised even though we don’t have the evidence.
In fact it is the way that the life of God operates.
The criticism that faith is ‘unscientific’ is true
--it is not meant to be
we have faith where we cannot prove.
If we can prove, or see
then why do we need to have faith.
This is not to say that because we do not have evidence
then we are talking nonsense
or we are lying
we are saying we are not in the scientific realm at all
we are in the life of faith.
And we assert that the life of God
is about faith
not of proof.

Love
This should not be a surprise to us
there are a lot of things that are about faith
rather than fact
and most of them are pretty important.
Chief amongst these is love
Love is not about evidence, facts and measurements

---we don’t say if there are three out of five characteristics (faithfulness, children, laughter, sharing pain, cooperation) and/or
--if a relationship has lasted longer than 15 months and/or
--if after three break ups the couple are still together
then they are in love

that would be absurd
The substance is actually not measurable
and is at least as much about what we can’t count
as what we can count.
Our life in God falls in this same sort of area.
Character
More than this, we would say
this is what makes this relationship so powerful;
So the example of Abraham tells us about keywords:
Like trust, promise, hope, vision and aspiration.
The journey of faith is about implementing
these realities.
Indeed these realities cannot be manufactured
(we can’t go to the shop and buy them!)
it is only by a journey of faith
that they can be realised in our lives.

Jesus
We see this journey chiefly in Jesus
It is the journey that will confront everything that destroys us
and will give us the power to be born anew and to come through the experience of death
not just at life’s end
but in every aspect of our life.
So faith is a pretty important journey!!

Is it a journey you are prepared to make?
Where is God inviting you to step out beyond the bounds of certainty
and walk in faith?
It is not an easy decision
but it is the decision that is set before us.
Will we walk by faith and live?
Or will we stumble by our own limited sight
and die?
Where is God inviting you to step out beyond the bounds of certainty
and walk in faith?

YOUTUBE LINK

1. 1 Corinthians 13
2. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth 1862 - Gracious Spirit Holy Ghost

The beginning of the end and the future of the beginning

Reading for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (proper 33)...Sunday 19th November 2006 1 Sam 1:4-20; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-11

...If we want to say anything about God
then we want to say that there is never a time when God was not,
there is never a time when God is not,
and there will never be a time God will not be
This is fine language, reassuring and affirming
and the Bible readings this week help us to appreciate it more fully.
Samuel
The story of Samuel's birth,
how every thing is seen to be in God's care right from the word "go"
so that Samuel is in the right place at the right time
and is able to do what God has set out for him to do
reminds us of a profound characteristic about God.
He has already prepared the place for us.
There is never a time when he was not.
And he draws us into this
From the very wombs into which we were born
to the moments in time and history
that we encounter
there is never a time when God's presence is not felt
and not available to those who yearn for God

Hebrews reminds us, too,
that God is a God of destiny
who has things prepared for those who love God.
There is a goal, an end, a vision.
That vision for us is realised in Christ
who we are called to emulate
and who calls us to be like him.
God calls us to share the future with him.
Our destiny is to be drawn into the fulness of ligfe with God

So whether we look to the past or whether we look to the future
we find God already there.
God's hand already active in our life
even though we maybe don't recognise it.
God's hand already preparing a way for us.
So that we may become what God wants us to be

God of now
But as we embrace this powerful sense of destiny, even predestination
we are pointed by the apocalyptic sense of the gospel
to realise that where God's kingdom is to be focussed for you and for me
is not by looking back to see where we came from.
It is not by looking forward and trying to predict when the end of al things will come.
It is by living out our lifein the present.

The God who rules history and whose mighty care and love for us
is recognised in how we have been brought to this place.
The God who will bring all things to perfection
and who is our ultimate resting place.

Calls us to live in the here and now.

We may be tempted to retreat
We may be tempted to worry about the future

But the invitation of God's Holy Spirit is
Live NOW
Preach the Gospel now
Trust God now

Practically
we are to understand not how to do things as they were once done
not to try and do it as it should be done in the future
but to live out our faith NOW
The reality of what we are called to be and do iis to be lived out in the present.
What else do we have!

This week

Where is God calling me to live out love, forgiveness and hope in what I am going to do this week?

Where am I tempted to escape form my responsibilities by looking to the past, or predicting the future?

Is there some way that I can be more genuinely present to those who God calls me to serve?

Is there a way of being Christian that invites me to be faithful now?

How can I do it? Do it!!