Big Bible Overview

Time to get this Deep Stuff Blog back up and running... This week is our Big Bible Week, where we are celebrating the gift of Scripture... so here's my overview talk which I presented this evening.  These are my own notes so its a bit warts and all.......

The Big Bible overview

I want to start with a little ‘word association’ exercise – it’s quite a simple one, I’ve only got one word that I want you to consider – Bible.  What comes to mind when I say ‘Bible’ – anyone?

Here’s a Vox Pop from some young people…

There are so many words that we can associate with the Bible.  Some are purely descriptive titles, some are somewhat more loaded.

Scripture, for instance is relatively simple – the Bible is the Holy Book of Christian Faith.

Writings, again a simple one – all of the parts of the Bible are definitely writings.

But we get a little more contentious if we start using words like ‘The Word of God’, or ‘Truth’, or ‘Inspired’.  Even within our Christian Faith there’s a fair amount of disagreement as to what those terms might mean.  For instance what do we mean when we say ‘Word of God’?  In the first chapter of the Gospel of St John we have a wonderfully resonant piece of Scripture that seems to have a different perspective – “In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God’.  You see in the Greek world view which shaped the writing of John’s Gospel a word was considered to be connected to the person who said it – it remained in some way a part of someone.  So to describe Jesus as the Word was to say that he still remained as part of God the Father, the word goes forth and yet remains.

And there are many who think that way about the Bible too!  I’m not going to tell you how you should understand it and how you should interpret this book, but there is in the historic Christian faith a belief which is stated beautifully in the 39 Articles of the Church of England – that Scripture contains within it all things necessary for salvation…  That there is ultimately no need to have anything more than this book to discern the working of God’s salvific word to the world.

2 Timothy 3.16 "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."

Inspired… an important word, as it is one that the Bible uses to describe itself – or to be specific it is a word that St Paul uses to describe what we might call the Old Testament.  St Paul was concerned that these new Christians who he was pastoring were, as they believed that Christ freed them from the constraints of the law, leaving behind also the sacred writing of the Jewish faith – the law and the prophets – within which the wisdom of God could be found.

It’s tricky to argue about inspiration of Scripture by saying ‘it’s because the Bible says it’s so’ –that’s the very definition of a circular argument, one which only finds it’s justification in self reference…  Also that as we know Paul was writing about before four hundred years before the books which got into our Bible actually got into our Bible (but more about that in a minute) and Judaism didn’t set what was to be included in the equivalent of their ‘canon’ of Scripture until after the Christian Church did.

But if we do believe that God was somehow in the writing of this book, then inspiration is a good place to start. 

Does the word Inspire make you think of any other words that are very similar?

Respire

Expire

Conspire

All breathing words – Respire, to breathe,  Conspire ‘to breathe together’, Expire to lose breath, and all from the same root: Spirit.  In both Hebrew and Greek the word ‘Spirit’ – Ruach in Hebrew and Pneuma in Greek can be variously translated as Breath, wind, spirit, air.

So when St Paul talks of all Scripture being inspired, he is talking about God breathing into the Scriptures, that somehow God was present in the transmission of these Scriptures – and (if we believe that Paul was somehow talking about the whole canon of Scripture and not the undefined ‘Hebrew Bible’ of his day) then God was in on the way that our Bibles came together as they did, and how they found themselves looking like they do.

And that’s really what I want to talk to you about this evening.  It’s just taken me a while to get here.

First of all I want you to have one phrase in mind as we do all that we do here for the next few minutes

By Faith:

from Faith,

to Faith

& for Faith

Our Bibles come to us – however we might want express Inspiration, and my point of being here this evening is not to justify one way or another of thinking on that – By Faith.  Those who told the stories, transmitted the stories between generations, wrote them down, compiled, edited, did so because of their faith, sharing these things with others who were a part of that faith or with the desire to draw people into that faith, and in order to inspire and nurture faith. 

So I would always recommend praying before opening up a Bible, because it’s an act of faith to want to truly discern the truth within our Scriptures – and besides if the Holy Spirit was in on the writing of these books, surely it would be good to have the Holy Spirit help us out with the understanding of it.

As Kate shared at Lunchtime, the whole of this book shares one great theme – God’s Story of salvation.  God’s relationship with human beings and his will to draw all people to himself.

So what does that look like?  What does that mean?  Well from the creation hymn at the start of Genesis to the vision of the end in the Revelation to St John of Patmos all of these seemingly disparate parts have this thread of God’s work in, through, towards, because of and sometimes despite human beings.  We have a huge variety of writing and a number of developments, and lots of interpretations of what it means when God interacts with people.

Of course what I should say is that the Bible we have today is not a book, but a library of books.  Biblios, the greek word from which we get Bible is the plural of biblion meaning book.  So it’s books.  That may seem an obvious thing to say, but it’s amazing how easily we lump together the whole book as if it’s one thing, one style, almost as if it was all written at one time with one author.  It wasn’t. (Though we could claim God was the ultimate author, of course)

So some thought about that…

The Bible isn’t just one kind of writing, it’s lots of different genres or styles.  I’ve said before that if it had a trailer like a movie we’d be here forever as the voice over said ‘War, passion, faith, romance etc etc etc’ as we went through the type of thing we have in the bible.

Pop Quiz

How many books do we usually have in our Bibles?  66 – 39 & 3x9…

Can you tell me how they’re divided? Old Testament/New Testament (Covenant)

Does anyone know what languages they were originally written in? Hebrew & Koine Greek

Can anyone think of a style of writing within our Bibles that we might call a genre?
Here's some I thought of....

• Hymn/Worship
• Poetry (including Erotic Poetry!)
• Proverbs/Wisdom
• Parables
• History
• Law
• Letter
• Vision/Apocalyptic
• Gospel
• Prophecy
• Myth
• Humour/Comedy
• Horror!  Texts of Terror!
• Romance
• Genealogy

Look through these passagesof Scripture and with your neighbour or a few people around you talk about what type of writing each one is.  I am only going to give you a couple of minutes with this one, so some of you might want to start at the end and work forward and others at the beginning… Or just pick a few out at random….

Just being aware of this should make a difference to how we read our Bibles.  When our only contact with the Bible is having it read to us in Church week by week we have a very artificial, very stilted and (to be blunt) wholly inadequate view of what the Bible contains – particularly as so often we hear the Bible read in a certain type of Bible Reading voice which makes it all seem like the same kind of thing.  Not in these parishes, of course, but we have all heard people stand up and read in a unique way that I like to call a Biblical monotone which reduces our Bibles to one kind of genre, boredom…!  (Yes I know that boredom isn’t a genre, but it could be in some Churches)

Both on those occasions when we read the Bible out loud and when we read the Bible every day (this is a good discipline but may be more a statement of hope than of fact for many of us) learning to discern the different styles of writing we are reading and consciously thinking in terms of ‘this is a letter’ or ‘this is a hymn’ or even within a letter, such as Paul to the Philippians or to the Ephesians  or the Colossians, working out that Paul is probably quoting hymns in his letters (for Instance ‘He is the image of the invisible God’ or ‘Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped’) can enrich our study of the Bible and prevent us from falling into the trap of thinking ‘well, it’s Bible innit?’ and just leaving it at that.

Something that has helped me understand more of the genres and the background to the Bible has been an Academic method of Bible Study called Source Criticism.  Now I’m not going to get all academic on you – I probably couldn’t if I tried anyway – but one of the things that has helped me get to grips with the Bible, as well as causing me to scratch my head and sometimes find myself wrestling with it’s meaning, is the process of considering where it’s all come from.  What is the source of the Bible we have, how did it get into our hands…and why is it in the form it is in.  I hope that by communicating some of my enthusiasm about this I might be able to get you to think and even study some more of this so I want to just give you a glimpse into this world of looking at the sources of our Biblical Text.  One from the Hebrew Bible and one from our own Christian Scriptures we call the New Testament:

Isn’t that a beautiful thing?  Don’t worry you’ll have a copy of it on the handout I will give out at the end so you can meditate upon it later….

The Four Source Hypothesis or Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis is a way of considering how the First Five books of the Bible came to be in the form we have now.  This group of books known as the Pentateuch or Torah or the Books of Moses (though that’s not a great description)

We have these five books which are actually, if we could read Hebrew, quite different.  In some parts of the book they quite obviously use the name Jaweh (YHWH) or Jehovah it is translated to refer to God.  This is the ‘J’ tradition or source.  In some parts the term Elohim or ‘God of Hosts’ is the preferred reference – this is the ‘E’ source.  In some of the Pentateuch we have a focus on the ritualistic and temple based life of the Jewish Faith (even though there’s not actually a temple in these books) which is often called ‘Priestly’ or ‘P’ tradition and lastly there seems to have been a fair amount of editing and the later addition of the book of Deuteronomy which has been done by someone or someone’s involved in the later life of the Temple and this is the ‘D’ source. 

It’s by no means an exact science and all of these things are mixed up.  It does help us consider the complex structure of just one bit of our Bibles, though, and to perhaps glimpse some of the motivation for recording particular bits of tradition, story, belief or ritual we find in those first five books.  Of course all of this isn’t quite so neat as, on the whole, what these writers did was preserve and edit an oral tradition that had been carefully handed down over centuries.  Though the content of Scripture goes back many hundreds of years, millions if we go right back to Creation, the written form of Scripture didn’t appear until, we think, 900 BCE and without universal literacy – or even basic literacy in most cases – things were transmitted by oral tradition over many centuries, word for word until recorded later.

These five books were edited very carefully together over many hundreds of years.  Though we call them the books of Moses it is a bit of a stretch to think that Moses wrote them all – partly because the sources of them come from all over the place, and were passed down and compiled, partly because there is reference to the life of a temple which Moses hadn’t dreamt of let alone seen, and partly because in those books we have the recording of the death of Moses.  What these books offer is a broad vision of God at work in the history of Israel over hundreds, thousands of years, and (in my understanding) the Spirit at work bringing together and weaving all these disparate parts to make the story of salvation clearer for us.

Let’s look at a simple example.  Have a quick look at Genesis 1& 2

Can you spot the join?

Did you notice anything about the difference between Chapter 1v1-2v3 and 2v4 and what follows?

They are two different stories of creation in different orders.  In the first one Humanity comes last in the order of creation, in the second humankind arrives quite early on in the process.  They come from two different sources and whilst one is very much a hymn to the creator with a repeated refrain ‘and there was evening and there was morning’…. The other is much more concerned with human involvement in the created order and the reason behind the creation of man and woman.

We can do something similar with the New Testament too.  Again as an example I want to show you something which I hope will start a process rather than give you definitive answers…

We have four books we call Gospels.  Bible Scholars used to think they were a unique form of literature, but study in the last 20 years has come to a conclusion that the Gospels share a form with a genre called ‘Heroic bibliography’ but that’s a distraction… We can talk about that another time if you wish….

Three of our Gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke, have much in common – they share stories, approaches, some passages seem almost identical, some are very different.  The fourth Gospel, John, is quite noticeably different, the Greek is very precise and beautifully crafted, with a more ‘cosmic’ feel about it.  It is thought that John’s Gospel has, at least in part, the aim of contradicting some of the Greek based ‘heresies’ that were springing up in the early Church and uses similar language and imagery to what was called ‘Gnosticism’ whilst refuting the elitist and dualistic beliefs of the Gnostics.

The other three have so much in Common they are known as synoptic Gospels ‘syn’ meaning same or similar and ‘optic’ meaning seeing.  They see the same way.  But why such similarities and why the differences.

Simple viewpoint – Mark comes first, Matthew next, borrowing from Mark and Luke next borrowing from both.  Plus both add their own stories.  I should say that by using the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John I am not actually definitively saying who wrote them, but their different attributions given by the early Church.  The authorship of these would be an evening, or a number of evenings, in their own right…

Anyway, with the documents we have it seems likely that Mark came first, the shortest Gospel and one from which both Matthew and Luke seem to draw heavily.  Yet there are also things that Matthew and Luke seem to share that aren’t in Mark, so another source – from the German ‘Quelle’ meaning (imaginatively) source comes in.  Quelle gives both Matthew and Luke material which they use in their own way, sometimes almost identically sometimes very differently.

And there are even more variations on this theory – with other sources unique to each Gospel writer.  Or set of writers, as it is thought that some of the Gospels were compiled by communities rather than written by individuals.

Anyway we can get more complicated, and more complicated as you want – and though it might seem like getting a bit fiddly for the sake of it, actually considering the content of the Gospels and the way in which the writers wrote can add depth to our understanding of these wonderful books…

For instance Mark is shorter, the language full of urgency, the Greek not so carefully constructed.  The book is still very carefully put together but he motivation seems to get the message out there quickly before Jesus comes back and to give more and more people the chance to know Jesus….

Matthew has a lot to do with Israel, and Jesus is very much the Jewish Messiah or king, the roaring lion of Judah come to reclaim the Jewish people and to renew God’s chosen race in order that they may bring all people back to God.

Luke is a gentile-friendly text, seeking to bring out the truth to those who aren’t Jewish.  He often explains Jewish traditions so that outsiders will understand.

And I did a bit about John earlier….

The purpose of all of this is not to try and impress upon you how very clever I am for remembering my undergraduate Biblical studies but because knowing more of our Bibles means we can see the wonder of the way all these strands weave together.  We have Gospels that meet different needs, for the intellect, for the Spirit, for the Jews, for the non Jews, we have a sense of urgency (Mark) and a sense of reflective meditation (John) and a if we were to spread this approach to all of our Scriptures then we would see hidden depths and be able to answer critics who talk about the Bible contradicting itself or being out of date or made up or whatever.  The Bible stands up to criticism and we shouldn’t be afraid to take it to bits in order to see something more of how it works… and so we can use it to put ourselves and our faith together….

I want to say a little bit more about how the Bible got to us before I tie all of this up….

First of all I mentioned  a little way back we have a Canon of Scripture… these are the books authorised to be included in the Bible and we believe, again through the work of the Holy Spirit, are the books which contain what we need to know God’s plan of salvation.  This Canon of Scripture was fixed pretty much by the end of the Fourth Century, but there has been some development and (as seems to be the way in the Church) some difference in the way different denominations treat different books.

The Church of England recognises what is known pretty much universally as the ‘Protestant Canon’ of the Bible – the sixty six books.  We give these books, since the 39 articles in 1563 a certain authority in life and doctrine and the ordering of our faith.  There are other books which are given various levels of authority in different traditions which we call the apocrypha or Deutero-Canonical books.  These books are considered to have value in teaching us, and contain many passages and ideas that will be familiar to us, but are not considered to have the full authority of the other books of the Bible.

I could spend a long time talking about the way in which books were included and excluded by the councils and Bishops of the Church and how later people like Martin Luther didn’t like the letter of James so never used it…. But that’s the kind of thing that I recommend you go and study yourself, cos it is surprisingly fascinating….

My last thought is to do with the way in which the Bible has made its way from it’s original languages to the English translation we have.  I could again run a whole course on this – but it might be as well to give you a handout…

Of course it doesn’t give the story of just how much went into this story – suffering, division and pain –for those such as Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale and others who were willing to give their lives in order that the Bible might be available to people in a language that they could understand.  Even going way back into the depths of Church history we can see division and disagreement over the what went into the canon of Scripture and what should stay out.

But in the end we have all this history that gives us this wonderful book, this library of faith.  For those of us who know God and long to know God more we have a great gift which allows us to seek God in the pages of this word.  Knowing where it came from and why it was put down as it has been can add to our own discernment and awareness of the ways in which God works with and alongside human beings.

And in case you want a quick summary of the Bible, just to take away with you – here’s the Bible in a minute

 Archbishop Rowan Williams said this, which I am going to finish my thoughts with…

I believe that the Bible tells us what we could not otherwise know: it tells us that God, the maker of the world, is committed to that world, and desires with all his being to save it from disaster and the imprisonment of sin; that he does this by calling a people to witness to him by their prayers and their actions, in obedience to what he shows them of his will through the Law; that he brings this work to completion when God the eternal Son, the eternal Word, becomes human as Jesus of Nazareth, and offers his life to destroy or to “soak up”, as you might say, the terrible consequences of our sin; and that Jesus is raised from the tomb to call a new people together in the power of the Spirit, who will show what kind of God God is in the quality of their life together and their relation with him. This is revealed in the acts of God in history, and it is once and for all set out in the Bible. There is no going round this or behind it.

THIS IS the world of the Bible into which the Church has to be brought again and again.

Christians have to be in the habit of looking into Scripture to find where they are failing to understand and trust the God of the Bible and living in such a way that no one outside the Church would guess what kind of God they served. Nowhere else do we find the questions of God put to us so authoritatively and directly.

To say that the Bible is inspired is to say at least that God’s Spirit comes to us through the text to call us to repent and be converted. Some would want to say further that we must also say certain things about the absolute accuracy of every detail in Scripture if we believe in inspiration. … But I can say with complete conviction that a Church that does not listen for God in the Bible, and treat the Bible as the unique touchstone of truth about God and about us is losing its identity, its raison d’être.

St Michael & All Angels sermon

St Michael & All Angels (2010) RCL Principal

Genesis 28.10-17
Revelation 12.7-12
John 1.47-51

Problems with Angels

Let me start with a confession. I have a problem with Angels… Not that I mean I have Angels under the bed or falling out of cupboards or anything like that, but I struggle with the whole culture of Angelic beings that has sprung up both within and beyond the Christian Church. Guardian Angels, Healing Angels, Warning Angels. New Age Spiritual Beings. All the Angelology (if that is a word) that I’ve heard about since I was a child. And this obsession with Angels isn’t a new thing – the Church wasted far too much time in the medieval era talking about how many Angels could dance on the head of a pin, or what the exact order of rank in the nine heavenly choirs is.

The problem I have is that so many of the descriptions that people give of Angels, and the new age obsession with some form of Spiritual beings, and those wings of the Church (no pun intended) which have complex teachings regarding Angels seem to have little or no Scriptural substance to them. And, to be blunt, if it ain’t Bible, it ain’t Gospel. The focus of our reading of Scripture should be the working out of God’s wonderful plan of salvation, and the application of God’s living truth to the world we live in and the way we live.

So there’s a certain irony to the fact that forty percent of the Churches God has called me to serve here in our Mission Community are dedicated to St Michael and All Angels. And even more so that the first major feast we observe following Kate’s ordination, and therefore the first Communion service at which Kate presides is the feast day of St Michael and All Angels. Perhaps God is trying to teach me something!

I followed a link to a site on the Internet courtesy of the Bishop of Texas which did make me think again. It was an encyclopaedia of Feast Days of the Church and started with a wonderful introduction to this day written by someone called James Kiefer.

On the Feast of Michael and all Angels, popularly called Michaelmas, we give thanks for the many ways in which God's loving care watches over us, both directly and indirectly, and we are reminded that the richness and variety of God's creation far exceeds our knowledge of it.

I don’t dismiss the possibility of the reality of Angels, certainly because Scripture, and Jesus himself, refers to them. I’ve not seen them, but if I only believed in what I saw I would be a very sorry excuse for a Minster of God’s Gospel, and steward of the mysteries of the God beyond all understanding! If we were to trawl through our Scriptures we would find a number of references to Angels in the Old Testament and the New. Often appearing in visions, and in the Old Testament almost certainly meant to be God appearing in some kind of human form there is an allusion, thought not completely clear that there is an order of created beings that worship God and serve him. Calling again on the words from the online guide:
The Holy Scriptures often speak of created intelligences other than humans who worship God in heaven and act as His messengers and agents on earth. We are not told much about them, and it is not clear how much of what we are told is figurative.

With this in mind we also have the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel and St John of Patmos in the Revelation which give some more ideas. Michael is referred to as an Archangel and leader of the armies of heaven. He slays the Dragon in the book of Revelation, often causing confusion in some artworks with St George! Again the question of literal or figurative language comes up, and I have to ask – what does this add to my understanding of a God who is intimately involved in this world, in an earthy, real and everyday way. My problem with Angels isn’t actually whether they exist or not – that’s a question far beyond my ability to answer – but whether they are a distraction from the reality of faith that needs to be lived out everyday!

But on this feast Day of St Michael and All Angels which is also a celebration of the ministry of our new Priest in the Five Alive Mission Community, I do believe there is something to learn from this whole ‘Angel thing’ that we can apply to our everyday life and faith.

I liked the introduction from James Kiefer which reminds us that within our faith and in our Scriptures there are mysteries beyond our understanding. We need reminding sometimes that we don’t have all the answers, that human beings with all our cleverness and Theology and knowledge cannot grasp all the mysteries of this universe, or indeed of our faith.

The very act of sharing this Holy Communion, this service of thanksgiving we call the Eucharist presents us with one of the deepest mysteries of our faith. As Kate prepares to preside at this service for the first time she leads us in the mysterious sharing of Bread and Wine which somehow for us becomes the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Anglican Tradition we don’t believe in Transubstantiation, which means these elements literally become the blood and body of Jesus, but we do hold to what we call the ‘real presence’ – that Jesus is here, shared in bread and wine. The technical term is ‘Consubstantiation’ which I am more than happy to discuss at length later!

In her role as Priest Kate shares with us the mystery of the Eucharist. Priest’s are often called ‘stewards of the mysteries of faith’ which means not that we want to keep things mysterious and secret, like some kind of society where arcane knowledge is passed on through the generations, but that we carefully lead in prayer, presiding over certain rites and rituals of the Church even though we can’t describe exactly what is going on or what happens!!! In faith we hold to God’s reality made present here in the bread and wine and in our sharing, just as in faith we proclaim God’s special presence in the bond of marriage, and we proclaim (along with our lay sisters and brothers who also perform this ministry) the mystery of eternal life in the face of death at funerals.

These are mysteries beyond our explaining, yet we continue to carefully share them. Perhaps not being able to sum up the how, why and wherefore is part of the gift of them to us. As James Kiefer says
‘we give thanks for the many ways in which God's loving care watches over us, both directly and indirectly, and we are reminded that the richness and variety of God's creation far exceeds our knowledge of it.’

Also, our meditations on Angels can remind us of our essential calling as Christians. The word ‘Angel’ comes from the Greek word ‘Angelos’ (from which we also get the word ‘Euangelion’ from which comes the title Evangelist) in turn the Hebrew word is Malach. Essentially it means messenger. Angels crop up a number of times in Scripture, both in visions and in meetings, to share something of God’s purposes and plans in humanity.

Angels share with Abram his wife’s impending pregnancy, they ascend and descend the ladder that Jacob sees in a dream, they proclaim the coming birth of the Messiah to Mary and they sing of God’s peace shed abroad to all people at the birth of Jesus.

Again, in her Priestly ministry Kate bears that responsibility for bearing and sharing the message of Jesus, in word and deed. In this Holy Communion, the proclamation of forgiveness of sins, the offering of blessing she is messenger of the good news of God in Christ, present with us through His Holy Spirit. But, as I said on Saturday, it’s not just Kate’s responsibility to share that message, it belongs to all of us as the Body of Christ.

In this Communion God offers his grace, his sustenance, his power as he feeds and nurtures us not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of the world. If anyone wants to know why I hold this Eucharist so highly it is because Jesus is shared here, not just in bread and wine but in prayer, in song, in sharing of God’s word. But not only that, the purpose of the Eucharist is summed up in the last sentence our Priest will utter in this service – GO in love and peace to serve the Lord. We are sent as Angels, as messengers of the Gospel, to share the Good news, the Evangelion, in all we do and say, indeed to be the message as well as the messenger.

So Angels can remind us of the mysteries of God beyond our understanding and of our own calling to share that mystery and the message of Christ in our everyday life as Christians. Perhaps I shouldn’t have any problems with Angels whatsoever.

An Ordination Sermon

It is very unlikely that I will ever get to preach at an ordination again - but last week I had the immense privilege of speaking at the ordination to the Priesthood of our Curate, the Revd Kate Woolven. It is worth following the link to the lessons for the day before reading the sermon here....

Isaiah 61.1-3
Ephesians 4.7-16
John 20:19-23

Ordination Sermon – Kate Woolven

What a privilege it is to be here. Celebrating the ordination of Kate as priest within the Church of God as part of the people of God! Today is a good day, and a wonderful ocassion. Already in the weeks Kate has been with us she has proved herself to be a competent, compassionate, warm, funny, thoughtful, faithful, spiritually mature and committed minister – and I still keep being told how good her sermon was at the last Mission Community service we held! Now we share in the next stage of Kate’s journey of being and becoming who she is called to be under God. We are here to support her as Bishop Bob ordains her to the office and work of a Priest within God’s Church. Alleluia!

Kate takes on this role of priest in a changing Church that sometimes seems to be struggling with a changing world, and a changing role within that world. Yet in the midst of that change she – and we – hold on to truths that are eternal, and we continue to listen for where God, through his Holy Spirit, leads us. And in the midst of a changing world we would do well to hold on to the truths which we believe to be unchanging – the life and teaching, the death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God revealed in that story of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of God still living and active in the Church and in the world, and in the lives of faithful people seeking the will of God.

And somewhere in all of that comes the Church. A Church which, though flawed and sometimes broken, is still loved by God. A Church which gives us a spiritual home, and from whose authority we who are called to be priests receive a calling to serve the people of God and minister to a world that cries out for the life and light of Christ.

So, what is this priestly role to which Kate is called? What is it particularly that we celebrate here this afternoon? For some idea of that we have to turn to our Scripture readings for today – taken from those suggested for any ordination service. I could speak at length to any of these passages, and got very excited reading them in preparing for this sermon, but I want to take one thing from each of them partly because I promised that this wouldn’t be a long sermon – and more importantly because all that we do here, in Kate’s ordination and in sharing bread and wine in this Holy Communion is so filled with meaning that I don’t need to layer too much on top of that!

In ordaining to the priesthood we carry on in a perhaps undefinable way the calling that Jesus gave to his disciples in the Gospels, and particularly in our reading from John’s Gospel chapter 20 that Priests proclaim peace, and forgiveness from sins. One of the great privileges of being in this ministry is the sharing of peace in the Eucharist, and being able to offer both absolution and a blessing on behalf of the Church – carrying on with sharing the breath of God in the Spirit that Jesus breathed upon his disciples. Though that breath sweeps not just through those of us called upon to be priests, but through all Christian people – but more of that in a moment.

What else particularly are we ordaining Kate to in this service? Well in my days as a university Chaplain a colleague of mine used to talk of the role of a Chaplain as ‘keeping the rumour of God alive in Academia’. But that equally applies to the everyday life of a priest. We are called to keep the rumour of God alive, sometimes to say those things which are uncomfortable and sometimes declaring the light, life and light of God against the darkness of the age. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me” says our passage from Isaiah “because the Lord has anointed me...” and the reading from Chapter 61 of the book of Isaiah goes on to talk of proclaiming good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken hearted, proclaiming liberty to to the captives and release to prisoners, comforting those who mourn and givng gladness and praise instead of mourning and ashes. But we also read that the day of vengeance of our God is proclaimed alongside the year of the Lord’s favour. The priest doesn’t always get to share good news, some of the things she or he is called to share might be difficult to say and even harder to hear. As you may have heard me say before, the Holy Spirit is the comforter of the afflicted, and afflicter of the comfortable. In prayer, study of scripture, pastoral care, sharing of the sacraments we speak out the word of God as we are bidden, and we cannot flinch from sharing the hard truths about our Church, about the true cost of taking up the cross of Christ, about the discipline that is inherent in being a disciple as we follow the way of Christ.

And there’s an uncomfortable, or potentially uncomfortable thing I think I need to say in response to the other reading of our three – that wonderful reading from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter four. And I hope this comes under the heading of ‘speaking the truth in love’ that Paul mentions....

The priest isn’t here to do your faith for you.

Though we celebrate Kate’s gifts and talents, and we rejoice that God has called her to this place to excercise the ministry of being a Priest and a Curate in our Mission Community. Though we hold to the ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons to serve and minister to, within and beyond the Church of God. Though we rejoice today that Kate’s journey has brought her to this place and that we in the Five Alive Mission Community get to share that and to support Kate in her ministry, even as she blesses us with all that she offers. We remember that in the Church of God no order is higher than another, that no calling is greater than another, that we are all a part of this wonderful body of Christ who have Christ alone as our head. Through our shared life in baptism we all have a vocation and ministry to serve and to share and to live and BE the Gospel.

St Paul writes ‘EACH of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift’ – not just the priests, or the bishops or deacons of the Church but each one of us. Even as we celebrate Kate’s calling and benefit from her leadership and service we remember that every one of us has a place within the Mission and Ministry of God’s Church. We all have our God-given gifts, we all have a part to play.

As Priest, part of Kate’s role and responsibility will be to foster and nurture the spiritual life of the people of God. This is in order that, as Paul writes, we may no longer be children. Small children, as we know, need everything done for them – but it isn’t long (and I speak from sometimes painful experience) before they are striking out, making a bid for independence and wanting to do things for themselves. So it should be in the body of Christ. Kate has her part within the body, just as all of us called to ministry and leadership have a part, but it is not her (or my, or any Priest’s) role to do Church on everyone’s behalf. As a representative of the Church she will preach, lead, preside at the Eucharist, Bless, Absolve and offer pastoral care and prayer – but it is the responsibility of all God’s people to find their gifts and offer them in the service of Christ and his people.

You may or may not be amazed to hear that I have heard the words ‘It’s good that you’ve got a Curate, another Priest, that’ll be a help to you’. In response to which I often want to say ‘actually it’s a help to you’. Kate in her priestly role is here to support the work that WE, the Church are doing, to reach out to those beyond our congregations, to live and proclaim the love of God in Christ. But she is here in partnership with each one of us as together we make up this wonderful, strange, challenging body we call the Church.

So we rejoice that God has called Kate to this work. We rejoice in the celebration of the life of this Five Alive Mission Community. And we rejoice that together we have such a great salvation to proclaim. May God join and knit us together as we are equipped for service, evangelism, worship and let us pray that we will be built up in love for the sake of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, our living head.

Bless you Kate in this ministry – in a wonderful place, with wonderful people. And God bless us all in his body, the Church.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

St Giles Patronal Festival Evensong

Philippians 3.7-14
Song of Songs Chapter 8.6,7

St Giles Patronal 2010

Saintly Calling

It’s a pleasure to be gathered here with the people of God to celebrate our patronal festival at this evensong this evening. A pleasure because our remembrance of Saints, and today we remember particularly St Giles of Provence, is an uplifting way of reminding ourselves our our heritage of faith, and because a patronal festival reminds us of our heritage and history in this place, and calls us to faithfulness as God’s saints here and now in our parish and as part of our Mission Community.

As I said this time last year (though I would be interested as to who could remember that, I had to look it up). We have a good example for us in St Giles of Provence whose feast day was actually on Wednesday of this week just gone. Little is known about him apart from his birth in the early 7th Century, probably to noble parents who were Athenians, and the foundation of a monastery in Provence, in a place now know as St Gilles-du-gard between Arles and Nimes in South East France. The stories talk of him being nourished by the milk of a Hind, crippled by the arrow of a Frankish king and therefore the ‘patron saint of cripples and lepers’ as it says in one history, and of his service to the poor and needy.

Churches of St Giles are often dedicated to the saint because his feast day was the nearest day to the opening of the church or because they are churches particularly welcoming to outcasts, often found on the outskirts of a town or on a pilgrimage route. I suspect this Church was first dedicated on or near the 3rd of September so we find Giles our patron, meaning our guardian saint.

That tradition of welcome and embrace, particularly of outcasts and the needy, is though, the best legacy our naming. It is that which should inspire us rather than devotion to any one person in our church history!

Despite how it may seem Christian faith doesn’t – or perhaps shouldn’t - really go in for hero worship. Yes we have many ‘Saints’ in the tradition of the Anglican Church, which comes from our Roman Catholic roots, but they are remembered with veneration not in order to place them on to pedestals, but to inspire and to challenge us in our own walk of faith. These ordinary-but-special individuals, often deeply flawed yet deeply faithful, are fellow-pilgrims on our journey of faith. Their passion should be our passion, they are brothers and sisters not set apart but alongside us as we seek to live the Gospel in this time, this place, amongst these people here in Kilmington.

That wonderful short but powerful reading from the Song of Songs (also called the song of Solomon) is a cry of love from the heart. “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm” is the passionate cry of human love which can be translated into our devotion to and love for God. St Giles in giving up all he had and following a way of poverty, chastity and obedience is simply an example of the way we should all, with God’s help through his Holy Spirit, live. We are called to lives of simplicity and obedience, of faithfulness and mutual love.

Our Scriptures again and again call each one of us to faithfulness – not just a chosen few, but each one of us. When Paul refers to ‘The Church’ he is referring to the people of God, not a building (for there weren’t any Church buildings) or an institution or organisation. Paul also frequently refers to ‘Saints’ – by which he means all those who have accepted the life Jesus offers and who are being transformed in the power of the Spirit into the likeness of Christ.

On this Patronal day, when we celebrate St Giles – we don’t simply celebrate that one man, we celebrate the people of faith who have lived and prayed and worked and worshipped here in the village of Kilmington over many years. We don’t just celebrate the Vicars, or the Readers, or even the Curates – wonderful as they may be. We celebrate the Churchwardens and PCCs and Vergers, the bellringers, flower arrangers, church cleaners, those who have been baptised, married, buried here, those who have played the organ or been in the choir, those who have read lessons and led prayers, who show the mission and ministry of God in this village with acts of love and kindness, those who have come faithfully week by week, to pray, to think, to learn, to grow and to live and share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

They, and we, are the Saints of St Giles.

The Christian faith doesn’t divide us up into who is more or less worthy of God’s love, or of respect. Each one of us are saved sinners, being sanctified – made holy – by the Grace of God. For just as the Bible tells us that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God’ it also tells us that each one of us, saved by faith and rooted and grounded in Christ, are being built into the Body of Christ with the risen Jesus as our living head.

Another common name for a Patronal Festival is a Dedication Festival, so called because it is the day that the Church was dedicated and consecrated for worship. Let us use this dedication festival to be a people so dedicated to Christ, and so consecrated for worship that not just on this day, or just on Sundays, we are bearers of the life and light of Jesus Christ. In our second reading for this evening – readings taken from those offered for festivals of the Saints – we see St Paul writing with passion ‘Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. ‘ If each Christian person echoed such passion, and the passion that leaps out from the words of the Song of Songs, then our Churches would be living, active, attractive, challenging, inspiring places in which people would continue to encounter our living God.

So in the light of our Patron Saint Giles, and following on from the great heritage of faith that has been shared with us here in Kilmington and in our Mission Community, we have an opportunity to put our own journey of faith into perspective. We, like the saints, are followers of Jesus Christ our living Lord. Are we like them willing to allow God to transform us through his Holy Spirit into the the disciples he calls us to be? Are we willing to give our all for Christ, no matter what the cost?

If we want our Church to grow in faith, if we want to reach out to the world around us, if we want more people to be a part of the life of our Parishes then it’s not going to be your Clergy that do that, It will be the prayers and faithfulness of the whole Church that will make it possible.

We must pray for one another in our common task of living and sharing the Gospel. The Saints give us examples not of spiritual heroics, but of what it is possible for each of us to do in the power of the Holy Spirit and bathed in the prayers of all God’s people. So let’s recommit ourselves to prayer and to each one of us finding our vocation and ministry within the Church, through the Holy Spirit and in Prayer we can all fulfill God’s calling to us to live faithfully and to share in the task of bringing the Gospel to this world that God loves so much.

As St Paul says:

this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Thanks be to God.

The sermon this morning....

Proper 18 (2010) Year C RCL Principal

Jeremiah 18.1-11
Psalm 139.1-5 & 12-18
Philemon verses 1-21
Luke 14.25-33

Grow Up!

One of the subjects that comes up again and again in our household, as is probably the case in any household with small children, is ‘growing up’. What do you want to be when you grow up? Is one of those questions that Katherine and Jack seem very happy to keep replying to, despite giving different answers most times its asked. Or there are comments about ‘how grown up they look’ or ‘aren’t they growing up fast’. Most of us have probably heard all this before and if we don’t remember people saying it to us, then we probably remember it being said to our children, or grandchildren, or other family members or friends.

And scripture is quite keen on the subject too. St Paul talks of Christian faith needing to mature, in 1 Corinthians 3v21 of needing to move from ‘milk to meat’ in our spiritual journey as a child needs to be weaned. Paul also talks in Ephesians 4 v 15 of ‘growing up into Christ our head’. Jesus too, whilst instructing us to be child-like, never calls us to be child-ish, and in fact calls us to be mature in our faith, to be willing to make sacrifice, to truly consider the cost of our faith, and to be open to losing everything for the sake of the Gospel.

Crumbs, Christian life is hard.

On a purely personal note I am reaching the end of my second year in these parishes, and though it has been and continues to be very rewarding, it can also be really hard. This isn’t a complaint, and if it had been too much I wouldn’t be wanted to stay! But it has been a tough couple of years. I have to say that I have been on quite a steep learning curve in my personal, pastoral and professional life. I know I’ve not always been right, and there have been some things I could have done better, things I didn’t do as I should have, and things I wish I’d known when I arrived. But I hope and trust that I have learned and grown in my time here, as many of those in our Parishes have done also.

Our parishes are going through major changes too, in personnel, in our times and styles of services, in the fabric of our buildings and the organisation of our Mission Community. Many of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive but alongside that we have lost some very special people, we’ve struggled with the issues facing our villages today and we’ve had pain and sadness alongside the joy and the rewards of our ministry.

For those who think that this Christianity lark is a doddle and that Churches are havens for the weak, a short time in our villages would soon show what a nonsense that is.

I have had people say to me that ‘religion is a crutch’ and that it props up those who are too weak minded to carry on without some kind of spiritual panacea. Actually, if we were to carry on that metaphor I would say that religion isn’t a crutch, but a stretcher, because the only way we can truly encounter God is by being carried there by his grace, and through grace alone.

But those of us who have actually committed to following Jesus know that it is difficult to be a Christian. It’s not a way out of the ‘real world’ but a way which makes us sensitive to the pain and brokenness of our society and the world around us. Christian faith doesn’t make us immune to suffering or pain, in fact it more often than not makes us more aware of the suffering of others and prevents becoming apathetic or uncaring towards one another or the world.

But none of this should surprise us. Being a Christian is hard, and today’s Gospel reading is quite clear about that. Jesus doesn’t pull any punches. Jesus compares following him to setting off to war, or preparing a major building operation, not something to be taken lightly, and not something to be undertaken without planning to see it through to the end. Even more so he says ‘Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’.

Crosses would have been a relatively familiar sight to the people Jesus was speaking to. A grisly, agonising and long lasting form of execution it was used as much as a deterrent to those thinking of disobeying Roman law as a way of punishing lawbreakers. Crosses were put in prominent places where people would see them, and before each crucifixion the condemned would be forced, as in the Good Friday story we know so well, to carry their cross to their place of execution – a very public spectacle.

So Jesus refers to something that is both familiar and shocking to try and give some idea of the cost of discipleship. There is no hint in this passage, or indeed in any of Jesus words, that being a disciple is an easy option, or the route to a cushy life. In fact throughout the Gospels Jesus talks of his own homeless status, about the need to endure suffering, about the threat of persecution, about working hard and about absolute devotion to God’s cause – a devotion that is equivalent to hating family, friends and even life itself.

But this suffering is not an end in itself, it often comes as a part of the life of the disciple, part of every life – but we don’t follow in order that we might suffer, but we endure suffering that we might be faithful. Our call is not to suffer, but to remain true to our faith and to the truth of Christ no matter what we endure.

And even from suffering God can bring life. Jesus suffered and died on the cross that he might defeat the greatest suffering, that of death and the power of sin. Then through his faithfulness was brought back to life again through the power and the love of God.

“But what has all this got to do with being grown up?” you may ask. Well, Jesus doesn’t want us to have a naïve, blind, infantile faith, but to take on board the very real, very difficult, even very painful cost of being a Christian. One of the commentators I read on this passage tells us that Jesus is encouraging us to have a mature, reflective attitude to our journey of faith.

For those of us who remember the pains of growing up, of finding the world to be less and more than we had imagined as children, of discovering that things weren’t quite as much fun when we became adults as we thought they would be as children, we are reminded that Christian faith shouldn’t have a rosy or incomplete picture of the world. Being mature means accepting responsibility for our own journey of faith, being willing to take on the responsibilities of adulthood, and to behave and respond to the world in a thoughtful and appropriate way.

In the church that means that we all take responsibility for the ministry of the Church and no longer hope to be spoon fed by someone at the front, or that the work of ministry will be done only by the ‘spiritual grown ups’ we call clergy and readers. St Paul says, we ‘work out our own salvation with fear and trembling’. – we all have some responsibility for our own spiritual growth, our education, our calling to serve in the name of Christ here in Stockland and the other villages in the Mission Community to which God has called us.

It means being willing to take up our cross and follow.

Let’s pray not that we might escape all the troubles of the world, but rather that through everything we may endure and be faithful, allowing the potter to reshape and create something new, fashioning from the struggle something beautiful and filled with purpose. That we may mature through good and bad and grow up into Christ our head. And let’s pray that we will have the faith to see God at work, even when it seems the struggle is too much.

May God bless us in all we endure, and give us strength, faith, hope and love.

What was I thinking about around Trinity time?

Actually this is the first Sunday after Trinity, Proper 5!

Year C Proper 5 (2010) RCL Principal

Psalm 146
Galatians 1.11-24
Luke 7.11-17

The Big Picture

I don’t know if you have ever seen the magic roundabout, a rather surreal children’s TV show from the 1970s that was made into a computer generated movie a couple of years back. It was a very strange show, but great fun, and even my children aged 5 and 8 enjoyed reading a book we found in a Church jumble sale about the characters going on a picnic – which I am happy to go through in detail if anyone would like to later!

The most wonderful part of the magic roundabout was the characters, Ermintrude the cow who loved singing, Dougal the dog with a fondness for sugar lumps, Brian the snail, Mr Rusty, Florence and Dylan the rabbit. Dylan is my favourite, he is, to say the least ‘laid back’ – a guitar strumming hippie with a fondness for words like ‘wow’ and ‘cosmic’. I have been accused before now of being the Dylan of ministry, and giving an impression of being laid back and generally spaced out – at the time it was meant as something of an insult, but looking back I’m not sure that, if it were true, it would be a bad thing to be the Dylan of ministry! For one thing, the frenetic pace that seems to have been part of our ministerial life here in the team would probably benefit from something of a more laid- back attitude. Though I don’t think that will be happening in the near future. And also I wish sometimes my attitude were a bit more ‘cosmic’.

Because, and this is the reason for the long preamble, today’s readings from Galatians chapter 1 and Luke chapter 7 offer a wider perspective on life, a cosmic perspective if you like, than those of us caught up in our day to day lives are wont to have.

Look at what St Paul writes, in Galatians – by far his most obviously passionate letter, and probably his first – he tells us in verse 15 of chapter 1 that God had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace – he saw the bigger picture. He could see something of God’s plan. How many of us would describe our Christian life as set apart by God? How many of us talk in terms of being chosen by God? Paul is in no doubt that this is the case, and sees himself and his role in relation to Jesus – he has a cosmic perspective. The opening words of today’s passage, starting at verse 11 say
11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; 12for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
That gift of revelation is still the foundation of our faith. We see Christ through Scripture, through the sharing of bread and wine in our Holy Communion, in our worship and prayer together. The revelation hasn’t changed – for no one can conjure up the life of Christ in oneself, it comes only through the Holy Spirit working in our lives. Paul knew that, he saw his sense of calling in the light of the glorious life of God, promised to all those who believe and who are open to Christ living in them.

For Paul, all the authority he needed came from his own encounter with Jesus Christ, he didn’t need the blessing of the Church, though we see that he sought it later on in his ministry, he didn’t need clever arguments or tricks. Paul was certain of his calling, and his vision was straight from God above. It was this that gave him the confidence to proclaim Christ and to live the Gospel he was called to.

How different would our proclamation be if we were that bold, and had that sense of being called before the world began to God’s service? If we truly had the feeling of our worth and value before God. Yet that is our calling, and that is the boldness we should have – for God has chosen us. If we consider that Paul changed from being Saul of Tarsus, persecutor, hater of the church to the one who would be transformed by Christ as the apostle that made it possible for us, the Gentiles, to be drawn into faith – how much more can we expect of God here in Stockland, or in our Mission Community, or our Deanery or Diocese.

To have a ‘cosmic’ viewpoint is to start to see that God is bigger than even our imaginings, and able to do far more than we can conceive or plan. Again and again in our meetings and in conversations I have around our parishes I hear expressions of concern, even despair, for the future of the Church. People ask me what we can do to build up the Church, as if I knew, or to attract young people, or grow more disciples. Actually I do know, and it is not in programmes, or plans, or events or Sunday schools, or youth ministry (though they all may play a part). The Church will grow when we let God be God, when we open ourselves to doing what God wants, not what we want. When we let go of the trappings of religion, and turn to faith in Christ.

And it will mean a whole new perspective from all of us! And I include myself in this… A way of looking not at how we can keep going with what we have, but how we should be moving on with what God wills. For God can change things, God can transform our Church, our world – and until we realise that, our Church is bound by the past and we will be those of little faith who Jesus railed against so often.

In our Gospel reading for today we have another calling to have a cosmic perspective. We have the raising from the dead of the young man in the town of Nain. Like all of the stories know as ‘the miracle stories’ this short passage is here to inspire us and to inform our viewpoint, to give us a new vision and perspective!

Here we see the power of a God whose love is stronger than death. There is nothing that God cannot do, and as Jesus touches the bier and calls the dead boy to rise the young man indeed does rise from death. Not to the immortal resurrection which we will all one day share in, but he is returned to life again on this earth.

Again, this story shows us that God is bigger than our limited imaginations can conceive. We may not be bringing the dead back to life week by week – but we do have new life to live and to proclaim. Again, if the perspective of the Church was informed by an understanding of that compassion and power of God which comes from this story, how much would we be able to achieve? How much more value would we attach to our faith? How much more excitement would we have about this wonderful, amazing, cosmic faith of which we are a part?

I have no doubt it would do us no harm at all to have a somewhat more cosmic view of our faith. To have a sense of our calling coming straight from Christ – not just the calling of our ministers, but of all God’s people. Called to proclaim this God who can change the world, who can even bring the dead back to life, whose love is more than we can ever understand, and whose life is on offer to all.