Monday, February 28, 2011

Rob Bell raises a Big Issue

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.



Try to watch this video - and read the book if you can - with an open mind. I've been thinking and praying long and hard about these issues over the last few years and I'm very happy to respond to questions anyone may have. See also the discussion forum at theevangelicaluniversalist.

God is love and love wins. Alleluia!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Sermon Matt 5.38-end: Love your Enemies

Matthew 5.38-end - Love your Enemies

• ¬Last week we were struggling to come to terms with Jesus’s very demanding teaching about the importance of forgiveness. We acknowledged how tough it can be to forgive or to ask forgiveness of people we have wronged.

• In today’s passage Jesus goes further and gets even more demanding as he speaks about the question of retaliation and then about attitudes to enemies.

• In fact the words of Jesus at this point get so demanding that we may assume he was exaggerating; that we are not really required to do what he said.

• Let’s take a fresh look at the two sections of the reading and ask God to help us interpret them.

An Eye for an Eye? Verses 38-42

• Look at verses 38-39. In Jesus’ day, people would use the OT saying (Leviticus 24.20) to justify taking revenge on anyone who had wronged them. But, as you may know, the reason for that OT law was to LIMIT the amount of retaliation which, from the beginning of time had tended to be way over the top (see Lamech’s statement in Genesis 4.24).

• This is a good example of how a lot of OT laws are not God’s ideal, not the last word on the subject, but were the best people could cope with at the time. History shows all too clearly where retaliation leads, but also raises the question: “is there any realistic alternative?”

• Now Jesus, speaking with his own authority as God, makes an extreme correction to the old law. He calls his disciples to take no revenge at all. In fact to invite a further attack. He’s certainly offering an alternative, but it doesn’t seem realistic or doable, does it?

• Put it this way; have YOU ever responded to a personal attack in the way Jesus suggests? Actually I was speaking to someone the other day who had their face slapped unfairly and who then handed their attacker a stick and invited them to continue the beating with the stick. This was a gamble, but it actually stopped the attacker in their tracks and led to a heartfelt apology and later to a big improvement in the relationship between the two people. A rare/surprising case?

• Someone who famously put this teaching of Jesus into practice was the Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu who was a great admirer of Jesus. When he entered Noakili after the mass slaughter of Hindus by Muslims, most of the hatred just melted away. However, in his biography of Gandhi the Christian missionary E. Stanley Jones records that “One Muslim came and was unaffected by the Mahatma. He grabbed the Mahatma by the throat and choked him till he was blue in the face. In the midst of it the Mahatma kept on smiling and even laughing. The absence of resistance and even of resentment so unnerved the attacker that he desisted. Later he came and fell at the Mahatma’s feet and begged forgiveness for what he had done. The Mahatma carried on as though nothing had happened.” (Jones p133).

• Millions of Indians followed Gandhi’s example, resulting in the non-violent achievement of independence from the British Empire. You can probably think of some more recent examples…

• An important point to note is that neither Gandhi nor Jesus called people to be doormats. It is not a question of being completely passive in the face of evil.

• Stanley Jones explains it like this: “It was really not a passive resistance – it was an active resistance from a higher level. The opponent strikes you on the cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically and you hit him spiritually.” (Jones p33).

• This is all very challenging - and we are only halfway through Jesus’ teaching…

Love your Enemies? Verses 43-48

• Now Jesus makes it even tougher by correcting the traditional teaching that we should love our neighbours and hate our enemies. Interestingly, the OT verse quoted says nothing about hating enemies. It says “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself.” (Leviticus 19.18). Of course in practice many of the people of Israel and its leaders did believe it was God’s will that they should hate their enemies, and some OT passages can be cited which support that view.

• But now Jesus comes along and turns it on its head. Speaking with his own authority, as God, he says “ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

• Now this is radical teaching and there aren’t many people who could say this and have any credibility at all. Aren’t enemies almost by definition the people we don’t love and who don’t love us?

• I wonder how the disciples and the rest of the crowd on the Mount heard this? Did they think Jesus was exagerating or perhaps speaking about some ideal future society where everybody would get along? Was he just casting a dream of perfection and encouraging people to aim high even though they were bound to fall short?

• Certainly there is evidence in the gospels that the disciples did not really think he meant it, as for instance when they offered to call down fire from heaven on a village which had not provided hospitality.

• We’d better have some strategy for taking the sting out of this verse, because if we do take it seriously it is massively challenging. Maybe it is meant to be massively challenging. Look at the reason Jesus gives for commanding his followers to love their enemies: “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

• Jesus explains further that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God pours out his blessings freely on those who deserve them and on those who don’t. This is so unlike us!

• Anne Lamott puts it like this: “I know the world is loved by God, as are all of its people, but it is much easier to believe that God hates or disapproves of or punishes the same people I do, because these thoughts are what is going on inside me much of the time.” (Lamott p220-221).

• Well of course that would be easier. But if we seriously want to be followers of Jesus, and children of our Father in heaven, we know that love must reign and that it isn’t an easy option.

So how can we progress?

• First, we can ask God to help us. God has a lot of experience in this whole area of loving enemies. We could go right back to the story of Adam and Eve, who made themselves enemies of God by eating the forbidden fruit. Yet, even as God expels them from the garden, God makes Adam and Eve little suits of clothes to keep them warm.

• Or look at Cain who made himself an enemy of God by committing the first murder. Notice how God marks Cain to protect him from vengeance.

• We can pray for God to help us and by the working of the Holy Spirit to transform us into people who are growing more capable of loving our enemies. This is the kind of prayer that God loves to answer.

• We should also pray for those who persecute us and this I think is a very achievable step. Whether it is just for our own relief or for the more worthy desire of wanting God’s absolute best for every other person, we should pray for those who are our enemies, in whatever sense, to encounter God’s transforming love. This is another prayer that God loves to answer.

• As well as praying, we can also discover in the Bible and in the lives of the saints many great examples of loving enemies. The parables of Jesus contain some great examples – eg the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan – but above all it is the personal example of the life of Jesus which shows us how to love our enemies.

• Surely you are exagerating, we say. “Watch me.” He replies…

• It was while we were God’s enemies that Jesus died for us (Romans 5.10) and ultimately it is at the cross that we can receive understanding of God’s love and learn to share that love even for those who hate us.

• 2 exercises I suggest to help us experience this healing power of the cross. 1 is to use the many images of Jesus on the cross which are everywhere in this country – paintings, sculptures, carvings, perhaps the passion facade of the Sagrada Familia – and allow God to minister to you through the artist’s interpretation. This is not a very protestant or evangelical suggestion! Our focus is rightly on the empty cross which signifies the resurrection, but I think we skip too quickly past the cros son which Jesus hangs in agony and in perfect love.

• The second exercise is to ask God to draw you more deeply into the meaning of the sacrament of Holy Communion, in which we relive the drama of God in Christ loving us to the limit.

Conclusion
The cross of Jesus Christ is the perfect example of non-retaliation and of love of enemies. Jesus ends this part of his sermón on the mount with a call for his followers to “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”, which can also be translated “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”
As we learn to love even those we had thought to be our enemies, may we discover that they are no such thing.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Forgiveness video




Here's the youtube video we showed in this morning's service...

Forgiveness Matthew 5.21-26 All Age Talk

Matthew 5.21-26 All Age Talk

Hands up…

• If anyone has hooted their car horn at you in the last week
• If anyone has hung up their phone on you, or vice versa
• If you have had an argument (and still been fuming at the end)
• If you have shouted at anyone in anger or been shouted at in anger
• If you have spread gossip about someone

So, all of us who have put our hands up, presumably we have been to the person we had the problem with to sort it out before coming to Church. No? Then my question is…

What are you doing here?

In Matt 5.23 Jesus says this:-

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother or sister; then come and offer your gift.”

There are many things we do which are ways of “offering our gift at the altar”. The children have got some examples on yellow cards… Prayer, Praise, Giving, Helping, Serving, Welcoming, Teaching.

We bring these and other gifts to church and offer them in God’s service. But because we are human beings and are not perfect, we usually bring other kinds of thoughts and feelings, which are written on these blue cards…
Angry, Jealous, Hurt, Bitter, Suspicious, Uncaring.

These could be fresh feelings on the surface of our minds, or deep down below the surface. Jesus teaches that if any of these feelings are between you and your brother or sister you need to delay offering your gift to God until you have put this right.

The point Jesus is making seems to be that these negative thoughts or feelings actually make our offerings to God hollow and empty, kind of cancelling them out (the children cover the yellow cards with the blue ones). So we need to deal with any problems between us and our brothers and sisters, or else there will be barriers between us and God.

This is not too hard for me because I have no brothers and only one sister, called Janet, and she lives in England so we don’t see each other that often. As far as I know, there are no bad feelings between me and Janet, so that’s all I need to worry about, right?

Let me ask the children, did Jesus just mean we need to be cool with our actual sisters and brothers – the people who share the same parents as us?

So who did he mean? (Members of our church? Our race or country? Our school or our neighbourhood? Or EVERYBODY?)

That’s right! Like when Jesus said “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25.40)?

Isn’t it clear throughout the gospels that J saw all people as his brothers and sisters and that he came to lay down his life for us all? So that everybody could be adopted as God’s sons and daughters, as Jesus’s brothers and sisters.

SO, when Jesus says these blue cards and these yellow cards don’t go together, that you can’t approach God with a gift and a grudge, there are big implications for us all.

Rethinking what we are called to be

A danger for all people but especially for members of religions, is that we see ourselves as better than other people. As if my church is God’s way of separating the good people (like me) from the bad people (others). So I’d be free to love and belong to God and hate or not care about others. But the Bible says:-

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother and sister.” (1John 4.20-21)

Surely God’s intention through Jesus is to form a new kind of community, open to everybody, in which everybody can experience mercy, love, forgiveness and healing. So we need to see ourselves as forgiven people and to be forgiving people.

I think that’s why we’re here, but don’t let me or anyone else tell you it is easy to forgive. Even as a follower of Jesus. But there have been some amazing examples of forgiveness . Let’s look at 2 of them on the Powerpoint now…
1. Thi Kim Phuk (famous photo of her as 9yo victim of napalm bombing in Vietnam. Now a mother of two and a campaigner for peace and care of war victims, lives in Canada) www.kimfoundation.com
2. Harvey Thomas and Jo Berry (victims, in different ways, of IRA terrorist bombing at a Brighton hotel. Now campaigners for peace and reconciliation, along with Pat McGee, the bomber responsible for their pain) www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN3A7iZYISM

In both these cases the difficulty of forgiving and being reconciled was very great, but the benefit has been beyond measure, bringing healing on all sides and a true flavour of heaven on earth.

Who thinks God was involved in these two cases?... So if God did this for them and through their pain, what can God do for us?

Practical – refiner’s fire

You and I might never be required to forgive in such a dramatic way as those people, but perhaps there are people or situations or memories which are upsetting or harming us, restricting our relationship with God, and for which we desperately need God’s grace and healing.

We know that the Church is meant to be a family in which we can all experience grace and healing and forgiveness. But we also know that for this to happen, some painful changes may need to take place in us.

So let’s ask God to help us forgive others AND to give us the courage to admit our own faults and ask others to forgive us.

As paper and pens are handed out, let me make it clear that I don’t want to trivialize your particular pain, or pretend that it can be resolved in an instant. And if the kind of questions we are raising today mean that you need individual prayer or counseling support, do come and have a word with me afterwards.

If you want to join in with this activity, you can write a word or a name, draw a picture or just keep hold of the blank paper as we pray. Then bring it forward to be burned. We’re not saying burning the paper solves anything, just making a commitment to let God help us. Within the healing community of the Church.

May God give each of us the healing we need and set us free to love all people as God loves. Through Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Isaiah 58.1-10 (and Matt 5.13-20)

Synod lift anecdote – Sometimes “the button only works for her” and we often “follow the leader down the wrong corridor”

“Growing together” – the primary experience most of us have of this is in families. What does it mean to grow together as God’s people in God’s world? Especially in hard times…

• Matt 5.20 – what J is NOT saying is… “If you want to go to heaven when you die, you must be a strict follower of religious rules, even more strict than the scribes and pharisees.
• To get what he IS saying, back to Isa 58

Notice in Isaiah 58.1-5 what is motivating the people, where they are going wrong.

Is 58.6-10, striking similarity to Matt 25.31ff judgement parable of sheep and goats.

• In both passages, focus on behaviour seems odd – whether we see our membership of God’s people as ours by being born (Jews) or born again (Christians).

• But we are not being called to save ourselves by good Works either.

• We are being called to share God’s heart & concerns and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THEM.

• Look at Jesus to see exactly what God is like

• Eg concern to relief hunger & thirst; end oppression and the use of violence; provide basic care and shelter etc

• Isa emphasises empty/insincere religión is worse than none at all.

• Just adding a few ‘good deeds’ to our religión is no good either.

• What is called for is a change of heart, which can only come when we really belong to God in Christ.

• Then we can work with God to bring transformation.

• This doesn’t EARN righteousness, it IS righteousness…

• God’s goal was NEVER to separate a few righteous people from the wicked world into heaven.

• It was always and still is to bring the kingdom of heaven on earth. Meaning to bring the reign of God, the gentle, healing, peaceful reign of heaven on earth.

• Good deeds are important, but where they come from is also important. We are called to do good out of love for our neighbours and because of God’s love for us in Christ.

• To do this we need to be changed and saved from the inside out, freed from fear, especially the fear of death, and free from the need to compete with each other for our Father’s attention and approval! (like little children – mummy look, my picture is better than hers!, or vicars trying to catch the bishop’s eye, or perform better than each other…)

• … so that we can love as God loves and ‘leak grace’ everywhere… I love this idea of leaking grace which Justin, Dean of Liverpool used.

“The test of a man then is not, “How have I believed?” but “How have I loved?” . . . Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew him, that for us he lived in vain. It meant that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that he inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once near enough to him to be seized with the fervency of his compassion for the world”.
Henry Drummond (1851–97 Scottish evangelist), The Greatest Thing in the World, 57–58.


• As you come to the Lord’s table today,may you know that you are loved and accepted, that you belong.
• May you be free from the feeling that you need to – or even that you are able to - prove yourself to God, or earn God’s approval.
• May you let go of the controls of your life and know God filling you with his grace.
• And may you go from this place with holes in your pockets, carelessly leaking grace as you walk around, and may the kingdom of heaven come on earth.

I’m going to end by reading slowly the words of Isaiah 58.10-12.