Courage to trust

Readings for Pentecost 4 (Proper 13) Today; Sunday 28th June include: 2 Samuel 1:1,17-27;Psalm 130;2 Corinthians 8:7-15; & Mark 5:21-43 (This week's reflection was also discussed during Lent)

The Gospel passage is not without its difficulties

Two accounts of people being healed. We often get sidetracked by the fact that the woman with "the issue of blood" as the KJV euphemistically put it is ritually unclean .

I think this was probably the least of her worries!

In different ways people come to Jesus seeking healing. Jairus comes as a man of prestige and religious standing seeking help from someone who is not socially acceptable 

Jesus! 

The woman, I think,is a destroyed person whose sense of personal worth is so low that she cannot even come and front Jesus face on. 

Part of the message that Mark is communicating here is that it doesn't matter who you are 

that Jesus is open to all. More than this, because he is inviting people to respond out of faith 

we recognise that faith requires risk 

Jairus risks his reputation the woman risks being knocked back again. 

What do we risk to be challenged by the Gospel, 

or have we so controlled our experience that we have taken all the risk and challenge out of it.  

Faith will inevitably invite us to move out of the zone where we control everything 

(because we recognise in reality that nothing is actually ours to control) THIS WEEK 

Where does God invite me to trust him and him alone? 

Do I have the courage to do it? 

To risk my reputation/failure or what ever? 

Pray to trust God alone

Finding our deepest identity

[During Lent we will be following a local series of lections.If you are looking for the Common Lectionary References try here Revised Common Lectionary]

This Sunday 1st March 2009 the focus reading is Mark 1:9-15. Mark's account of the baptism of Jesus

A lot happens in the first chapter of Mark. In the space of these few (only 7) verses...Jesus is baptised, he hears the voice of God, he goes into the wilderness and is tempted by Satan. John is arrested, Jesus goes back to Galilee and he makes a public declaration of what his ministry is about.

"The time is fulfilled 

and the kingdom of God has come near

therefore I call you to repent and believe in the good news"

It's a lot!

The Spirit affirms Jesus in the profoundest way possible

What ever it means, Jesus hears the voice of God saying

"You are my Son, and I love you, and I am well-pleased with you"

What does God say to you? What is God saying to me?

At our deepest level?

In Lent we are being invited to pay attention to God.

The idea of God speaking to us

is not without problem.

What do we mean by it?

It is not clear, for example, in this passage

whether Mark wants us to understand this as an external, audible voice.

Whether others might have heard it,

or whether this is just fanciful stuff.

I suspect if we allow ourselves to accept this passage,

not worrying too much about the mechanics of what is being addressed

that many of us would allow that God might be speaking to us

(heart-to- heart someone suggested to me during the week).

The wilderness

What unlocks some of this for us is that the same Spirit

who speaks this deep affirmation of Jesus's personhood

drives (a very strong word) Jesus into the wilderness.

This wilderness as we know, is an ambivalent place,

at once threatening (beasts)

but also where we are thrown back on total reliance on God.

It is as though Jesus not only has to hear the affirmation

but also then to go and appropriate it.

This needs the confrontation and threat of the wilderness.

It is not just nice words.

What might God be saying to you at this time of your life?

Can you take time this week to struggle with that a bit?

What don't I like about what God is saying to me?

Where do I resist? Where am I vulnerable?

Where do I deceive myself...about myself/about God?

It is out of this struggle

that Jesus comes to some realization

of what is happening!

The time is now, God is close

Things must change...I need to repent, to behave differently

(what will this mean for me today)

The time is NOW!

This Good News, if we are to believe it,

is for now

and will affirm us at our deeepest  level.

It will require some change,

and that we trust God for all that is necessary to effect it.

It is not without beasts,

but also with angels!

Do we trust God enough to enter into this?

THIS WEEK

• What is God saying to me at my deepest level (heart to heart)?
• Can I strip back everything and allow the wilderness to speak this to me?
• Will I decide to embrace the freedom that is being offered? To be free of sin? To live as one who tries to accept others? To embrace the possibility of failure? To trust only God?
• What is to stop me doing this now?

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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