Happy birthday

So, for those (I'm sure very few) of you who spend your time thinking about something other than me and what I am up to, I feel duty bound to let you know that today is my birthday. And according to 'Deep Thought', the computer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I am now of the correct age to know the answer to life, the universe and everything.
So today is my birthday and traditionally we like to put ourselves at the centre of things-well, I do at least, but I knew things would be muted as I had a few diary commitments that I really wanted to keep. I had squeezed in the opportunity to book in a cheeky lunch out with loved ones so all was well.
Until eldest son went straight back to bed first thing with flu-like symptoms. Not a disaster-he's big enough and educated enough to be able to make a Pot-Noodle if he wakes up hungry.
And then the phone rings from school regarding youngest. We'd sent her in even though she felt rough as she seemed to be on the mend and the fresh air and routine should do her good. She has a sore throat and a headache, they tell me. What should they do? Not knowing whether she had taken anything before school I did what any parent in my position would have done-I considered telling them that she'd be fine and they should send her back to the class-room. But I paused before I spoke and, wondering whether she might be feeling as rough as her brother looked, I offered to go and get her, ticking off in my mind the things that I would have to miss as a result. First and foremost was, of course, my planned restaurant experience, with other meetings and events lurking somewhere in the background.
So, tied to home I have managed to get on with all sorts of work-related things that I had been avoiding, have had lunch brought to me by aforementioned loved ones, and all in all had a lovely day. Which surprised me. But it has been all the more lovely because I wasn't the centre and yet have still known that I am loved and needed.
There is something very profound about being affirmed by others, about being thanked or about being told that we are needed, about being special in some way. It gives us a strong sense of wellbeing, of purpose. And yet so many of us spend much, if not all, of our lives living without apparent purpose. Many people never get thanked, or get given gifts, or are told that they are loved or valued. This present generation of school-leavers faces an increasingly unpredictable job market. Where will they find the answer to what they are here for, for what their purpose is?
I believe that we are made in the image of a loving God and are adopted as children into his family and our purpose is summed up in what Jesus called the greatest commandment: we are to love God and we are to love our neighbour.
Our primary purpose is to worship God, closely followed by serving others. If we can start with these then we will receive all the affirmation that we need. And every day can be like it is our birthday.

The kingdom of God is come near...

This is the text of Sunday's sermon.

Sermon in a sentence: Lent is a time when we open ourselves to the activity of God so that our faith, and the faith of others, can be deepened.

Word order is important. (mirror signal manoeuvre )

Listen to what Jesus says, and the order in which he says them: The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.

Jesus first words in Mark’s gospel describe a process-experience God, reorientate your life, accept the truth as being a something worth sharing.

The kingdom of God is near

Obviously when Jesus said this there was God stood in the room with people, and signs of his kingdom became more and more evident wherever he went-people who had been excluded from society became included, people who were sick or afflicted were set free from their burdens, people without hope were given a future.

How have you experienced God in the past? What have you seen of his kingdom? How did it affect you?

What might it look like if the kingdom of God came near in this area? How would people know who aren’t church-goers?

Repent

Not saying sorry, Greek work means literally to be ‘other minded’-it evokes an image of heading in a different direction-repenting is turning, it’s the pivot point. One of the most significant moments in anyone’s life is when they first turn towards Christ, even if they have yet to take a step in His direction or to make any sort of decision. Because by turning towards him they can see more of him.

• repentance is an ongoing process. Ancient Greek has slightly different tenses to English. It has something called a present continuous. We are transformed and we go on being transformed. Repentance is something that is best understood as a present continuous-we turn to Christ and we go on turning to Christ. Lent offers us the opportunity to focus on which way we are facing in aspects of our lives that we may not have really thought about before. So although on Ash Wednesday we are marked with ashes, a symbol of sorrow and mourning, as I said during the service, our focus as we begin Lent is not so much on all we have to be sorry for but on how amazing God is in his acceptance of us, and from a place of gratitude we identify what more we can do to bring our lives further into line with His will for us. On Ash Wednesday I made it explicit that today is the day, here and now, that we are offered the opportunity to step into the forgiveness already won for us by the cross of Christ. It’s not a new batch of forgiveness that we are asking for by saying an extra sorry-we are simply opening ourselves up to accept what has already been given. That’s why I offered people the opportunity to perhaps open up something to God that they have never done before, some old wound or sorrow, something they may have said or done that they would actually rather bury. Repentance is turning away from a way of living, of thinking, of being in stages, but we don’t just bury our pasts or pretend they didn’t exist. We offer them to God to receive his blessing and his pardon. And it is an amazing thing to do. It liberates us. It literally sets us free. Lent is a great time to step into that, but actually it can happen any day of the week, month or year.

• evangelism might seem less scary if we saw it in terms of helping people to turn towards Christ rather than in terms of telling them about him or trying to win disciples.

Believe the good news

Believe the good news. During Lent we ask ourselves ‘do I believe it?’ and ‘do I believe that it really is good news’? Because if we do we won’t be able to stop ourselves from sharing it.

This years lent course is about being mission-shaped. Traditionally Lent courses are introspective affairs, helping us to delve deeper into our inner beings as we seek those places of repentance to offer to God. Which is all good. But just as important is the fact that our experience of God and our reorientation of our lives leads us to a deeper understanding of the gospel, the “good news”. And as we reflect on the fact that our faith is built upon something that we know to be good news, so our realisation grows that it isn’t just good news for us. Our faith is not just about our personal salvation, but about good news for the whole world.

During the course on Thursday we reflected a bit on the fact that there is often a tension in churches between worship (the ‘me and God’ bit) and mission (the ‘change the world’ bit). Such a tension is not necessary because if the kingdom of God is come near and we have reorientated our lives then the ‘me and God’ and the ‘change the world’ become so intertwined that we they can’t actually be separated. As we repent, changing how we think and how we interact with others, we will see more and more of God’s activity in the community around us as it is transformed, giving us more to be thankful for and deepening our sense of wonder and awe.

Ali and I are so excited to be here with you at SAaAS because, though you may be feeling tired and burdened in some aspects of life, and though you may be lacking in confidence in other aspects of life, (and what congregation isn’t?) what is abundantly clear here is that you are people who know that the gospel of Christ, of God become man who took our sins to the cross and rose again and reigns in heaven, is good news, good news to be celebrated and to be shared.

So as we journey together through Lent, let us take the opportunity to reflect on what the kingdom of God coming near might look like in our lives and in this community, let us continue to orientate ourselves to Christ, repenting of what was in order to become who God wants us to be, and let us build each other up in our belief of the good news, the good news that we are set free and so is this community in which we are set and called to serve through bringing God’s transformative love.

And let us keep a holy Lent.

Amen.

Some thought before Lent

I hope you have had an enjoyable half-term week with the various ways that it may have changed your week; perhaps for you it involved more work, less work, more time with loved ones, different routines, more rest, less rest…I could go on!
This morning was a bit of a first for me as I was interviewed on the radio on the subject of Lent. I actually found it really difficult and quite nerve-wracking being on live radio, only managing to calm myself by believing that no one would be listening to the radio at that time of the day. And then I got to church and the first person I saw said “I heard you on the radio…” If you fancy a listen it is just after the 8am news, 1 hour and 3 minutes into this clip

Lent is special time of preparation for us, characterised by fasting, by self-examination, by doing good deeds, and by praying. How will you mark lent this year? At church you can come to the Ash Wednesday service which will now start at 7.30pm, not 8pm as advertised, for an opportunity to stop and reflect on the forgiveness of God. Or you could join in the Lent course which begins on Thursday at the Vicarage at 7.30pm. If you can’t come for some reason but would like to read along with what we are studying then please ask me for a copy of the course and I will get one to you.

I pray that you will have a holy Lent, and will be drawn ever deeper into the presence of the One from whom all good things derive, God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Incarnation?

Sermon in a sentence: "God came to be with us. We are called to go to the broken world. Church helps us do this."

In our gospel reading we heard that "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us". But why would this ‘Word’ that we had just heard was with God and was God, why would this Word wish to become a human being?

It is a good question. Why would God become a human being in Jesus? Why would God enter into this world and live among us ordinary people? Why would God not stay outside of human reality ... away from the muck, the suffering and confusion?

Where we live says something about us. Some of us live in palaces, some in shacks, some in residential homes, some in flats. Some live in the countryside, some on a housing estate, some in England, or Cameroon, or Palestine. Some in the district of St Anne and All Saints, and some outside it. And wherever it is we live, we tend to identify with those who live around us.
What we’ve just heard is that the creative power of God, the wisdom of God, the Holy One became a human being and dwelt among us. God chose to move into our neighbourhood and to identify with us, funny bunch that we are.

So "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" is pretty much the good news of the whole Bible summed up in one sentence. That is the central message of Christ ... the core mystery of Christianity ... what we Christians call, the "Incarnation" ... God with us, Emmanuel.
God came to us because he loves us. He came to us. Some of us know that to be true even if we don’t get all the details. That’s us in church. We are children of God, and as such we try to live as we believe God would have us live. We are the chosen ones.

Some others have a pretty good idea about it but might have got some of the details a bit muddled. That’s how I understand our brothers and sisters who practice other faiths, who like us strive to come close to God and to live as he would have them live but miss the point of the incarnation.

And yet many, many more have no idea that God came to be with them, that he loves them and wants them to live in relationship with him. So what does that mean to us here in church? He chose some of us to get it, to work it out, to live in the truth, and yet we know that he came for the whole world.

I believe it means that we need to stop thinking in terms of the church being about Sunday mornings. Now you may have noticed that I’ve been tinkering around the edges a bit with regard to what we do when we gather together to worship.

Things a little bit different-move things, use a different projector, maybe sing some new songs. What you need to understand is that I’m not fiddling with things in order to be awkward or to upset people, and nor am I fiddling with things because I am trying to mould the Sunday service to be just the way I like it, putting my territorial mark on it. Remember, God came to us. He came to where we live in order to make himself accessible to us. Which means that we, too need to think about how we can make God’s message accessible, and so to go to where God isn’t, to go to the whole world.
All changes so far have been about making what we do here more accessible to those who are gathered, those who don't hear or see so well, those who aren't sure what happens next.

The primary business of the church, the reason we gather to share together and to learn, is not just to worship, which we could just as easily do at home, but to build each other up and to train ourselves for the task at hand. The Greek word that we usually translate as disciple actually means learner, or student. A disciple is someone who is in training, who is absorbing the wisdom of the master. And the wisdom of our master existed before the world began. We are in the business of absorbing the timeless wisdom of the universe, which is no mean feat. The whole way that we organise our church services is designed to help us to do this. We make ourselves right with God through repentance, we hear scripture read and then made accessible in the sermon, we greet each other in the middle of the service (and hopefully again at the end when we share coffee and stories with each other, we participate in salvation story through bread and wine shared, and finally we are sent back out, hopefully better equipped to go to the places of darkness.

So in order to ensure that we are properly equipped we need to keep re-evaluating what we do when we gather. Why are we here? Is it helping us to be as God wants us to be? What did we come here for today?

Did we perhaps come reluctantly, or might we come out of habit or out of duty because we think it is the right thing to do, and might we leave having had our day made either marginally better or marginally worse depending on how things went? Or are we arriving expectant, desiring to learn and to be fed, to meet with God, and then leaving inspired, ready to live differently?

So my tinkering around the edges is my way of drawing us in to that process of evaluation. How do we know what is important to us? How do we decide what we do and don’t do? Why do we do what we do? What does it say about us and about what we believe or what we prioritise? How does it equip us? How often should we do it? And that process of evaluation is inextricably linked with change. And we all know that change is hard. We’re creatures of habit. It’s how we’re made. Ali and I and the kids have had to endure all sorts of changes as I embarked on a journey from Mental health nurse to vicar via three house moves so I really do know how hard change is.

But the good old C of E, with its solid foundation through history, is catching up to the fact that we cannot stay the same. This is not the only small church in the country.
But what we have that not everyone does is LIFE-we are seeing signs of how God wants us to grow as we welcome new people as they join us and we hear our Sunday Club report towards the end of the service and we meet together for Bible study and for prayer and for fellowship. This is a congregation that has already started down the road of reshaping for growth. It was clear in the parish profile and it’s been clear as I’ve been meeting with you over the last few weeks. But we’re not there yet. There’s more to be done.

One of the things that the DCC are considering at the moment and which they will make a decision about at the next meeting on the 4th March is whether there might be a place for a slightly different type of Sunday service here once a month, a service that offers a different sort of opportunity for us to learn and grow, to go about the business of being disciples by spending more time discovering that ancient wisdom that was and is beyond time and space in order to be equipped. In order to do this, to do more of something, we will necessarily have to create the space to do it if we are still intending to get home in time for lunch.

To provide a space that could perhaps resource us and equip us in new ways, opening us up to God’s plan for our lives, to the possibilities of all that he would have us do and be, would mean that we might have to miss out that day on something that we enjoy and prioritise, that is the very special time we have when we share communion, or we might have to take it at different time of day. Now I love communion. It is a very special time, and it has been such a privilege to be able to celebrate it since being ordained priest and a true pleasure to celebrate it here with you all. But it isn’t the only way that God wants to resource us, and it also isn’t a way that all of us can be resourced. It rather depends on where we are on our Christian journey. Some of us here today are not at the place of feeling able to come and participate, so it isn’t something that we can ALL do. But remember that God also wants us to pray together, which we can all do. He wants us to praise together, he wants us to socialise together, he wants us to feed on his written word together. If we are really desiring to grow in our faith and in our relationship with God, and we are wanting to do that all together, then I believe that we should create that space to go deeper once a month. Please do think and pray about this and discuss it among yourselves so that the DCC members know what all of you think.

Call me an idealist, but I long for the time when every time we leave our Sunday gathering we all automatically do as we say in our final blessing, and we go to the darkness around us with the light of God, wherever that may be, and whether or not the people we find there are even aware how lacking in light things are in their lives as they may have become used to the dimness, like eyes adjusted to the twilight. We go to where there is poverty and pain and emptiness and loneliness. And we make the world a better place. We bring heaven to earth by embodying kingdom values.

This is like our refuelling station, and from here we go to engage in the mission of God. The DCC have recently adopted the phrase “bringing communities together” as being what we are about. We go to get alongside and to identify with people, not to isolate ourselves in a holy huddle with our own ways of talking and behaving, or to go to people in order to preach down to them, to issue judgements and criticisms-God stopped all that Old Testament style telling off, that living under law business, by being incarnate, by coming and showing. We need to do the same. We need to train together to live incarnational lives.

My prayer for us all here at St Anne and All saints is that by spending time together we will be inspired to try to live his risen life wherever we are, particularly when we’re not in church. We will go to be with those who need God’s love. We will show them how to have a relationship with God. We will show them how to live in peace and harmony with each other. We will show them the power of forgiveness. We will bring communities together. We will make our dwelling among them.
Amen

All You Need is Love.

Text: John 2, 1-11

Ok, so Jesus is at a wedding, and the wine runs out, and he turns a load of water to wine. Well known story. Big deal. Clever, but so what? We've seen Dynamo apparently walk on water on the Thames and David Blane stay in a box for I don't know how long. It takes a lot to impress us now.
Well what is it that weddings celebrate? (ask Anthony and Maria)
Love.

LEARNING

“The local church needs to know the needs of the community in which it is set, and what resources it can mobilise to meet those needs”

Jesus was someone who knew how to be at the right place at the right time. He had this uncanny knack of being able to see a need and meet a need wherever he went.

One of the things anyone getting married needs is a venue. And we’ve got one.

But what else might they need that could happen in this venue? How do we develop a plan for using this building? What might need to change to allow us to meet an identified need? (mention change of furniture-maybe it will be different every time?)

As a new vicar I am well aware that finding out what people need could take time as I get to know people and allow them to get to know me, and I’m hoping to come round and meet with you lot-(appointments list) but what about the needs of the others who aren’t here? Our friends and neighbours, and their friends and neighbours? What other needs might people have, and what resources might we have to meet them?

OUTREACH

“the church needs to be a visible and active presence in the community, sharing gospel values and building relationships”

Did you ever wonder what Jesus was doing at a wedding party? Wouldn't he be too busy being holy, playing God somewhere else, to mix with ordinary people like you and me at a social event?
Actually, no. Jesus learned how to be holy precisely by mixing with ordinary people - and he taught ordinary people how to be holy by hanging around with them. No-one was too bad, or sad, or strange, or old, or young, or rich, or poor, or dull, or anything for Jesus to want to be with.
Jesus went and hung out where the people were at, bringing transformation by being there. He didn’t wait for them to come to him. (Blue coat neighbourhood forum etc.) As church we must expect to do more than that which can happen in this building. Jesus didn’t have a base for his ministry-he moved around to where people already were. This reading teaches us that although it is great what we do in here, we also need to focus on what we do out there.

VOLUNTARY SERVICE

“The church needs to offer itself for the benefit of those who are not members”

So Jesus was where the people were, and it became apparent that there was a problem. Something was ruining the party, something was stopping people from really relaxing, letting go and experiencing the good things. The wine ran out, and Jesus did what needed to be done. He made a difference.

Well there’s something ruining the party for all of us, stopping us from really relaxing and experiencing the good things. It is a separation from each other and from God that the Bible calls sin and it causes all sorts of problems and difficulties. And something needs to be done.

Someone once said that, ‘Church should not be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.’ When you think of a museum everything is carefully categorised and laid out, with 'do not touch' signs and roped off areas and repeated admonishments to keep a reverent silence. When you think of a hospital you think of confusion as you enter, seeking the signpost to the ward you are heading to, and all around you see broken damaged people, some of whom you see being fixed, and some you see deteriorate or even die despite the best efforts of the staff. It’s a place where people try to do what needs to be done, facing the realities of how difficult that can often be.

All too often churches are a too like museums and not enough like hospitals. How might we learn from Jesus and do what needs to be done here? Someone else said “the church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of non-members.” As well as building on the relationships we already have those groups already using this building we need to form a plan, a vision, for what could be possible here. If you have ideas, share them with each other.

I see this building potentially becoming a Christian centre offering all sorts of things that could facilitate the transformation of the community through the ministry of the church: (church isn’t building-it’s the people) we could link with refugee centre, offer language courses, CAP Money, help with forms, support university chaplaincy if issues with withdrawn or struggling students in the area, link with the food bank, provide a contact space for disintegrating families, build links with Murray Lodge, run a youth group or a children’s after school club. I could go on and on and on. There is so much that could be done. But the reality is that it is only really useful to suggest the things not that we can do or they should do but that I can do. So together we need to hear what God is calling us to do together, here and now, so we can do what is needed in order to see His kingdom in this place, this locality.

At the wedding Jesus needed to do the whole water/wine thing, but as we share communion together we’ll focus on his ultimate self-giving for the good of all humanity, his death on the cross that we might live, and part of our response to receiving communion is that we emulate that self-giving by living as changed people. What might that look like specifically?

EVANGELISM

“The church aims to facilitate transformation through enabling people to come to Christ”

But there was another problem for the people in Jesus day because of the whole ‘sin’ thing. At that time it was hard to live a life that seemed pleasing to God. There were so many rules and regulations. Do this. Don’t do that. Wait this long. Do it so many times. Only the real experts even stood a chance of knowing anything about being in God’s presence. One of the things they did was to try to get clean of all the things they’d done wrong by washing using these enormous jars of water. And it was these jars of water, the ones used to try and get close to God, that Jesus turned into something that would help the party be more fun.

He showed us that being close to God is for everyone, for the ordinary people like you and me, not just the holy experts and that being close to God is now something to celebrate. We don’t need to worry now about getting clean of all the bad things we’ve done because Jesus has done that for us. The old way of experiencing God was replaced by a new way.

Jesus chose to offer everyone, whoever they were and whatever they were up to, the same sort of new life as he'd injected into that party with that new wine. We are offered it, too, a life that makes sense and has purpose.
You know, God loves a wedding. Because he loves people, loves to spread joy. Think of the deep love of a couple embracing on their wedding day. That's the sort of love God longs to share with you. And that’s worth celebrating. And it’s worth sharing. How can we effectively facilitate others coming to know that God accepts them and loves them?

So in summary,

Weddings are about love, and this particular event that happened at a wedding was about that love including everyone, whether they were ritually pure or not, whether they belonged or not.

The challenge for us as church, for us here today, for those who are part of this family but unable to be with us today, is how we, too can be agents of LOVE who offer new wine to liven up the party, and who bring God’s transformation to everyone whether they belong here or not.

Jack of all trades?

Vicaring is a funny life. As a public figure, the visible face of the church, the establishment, one gets all sorts of invitations to join forums and committees and steering groups and to attend meetings and studies and to be present at events and supporting social gatherings and great at assemblies with both tiny tots and tired teens and to generally be available in the way that it used to be in the good old days when the shops were shut on Sunday and everyone went to church in their best clothes. And presumably all of those activities are viewed by the people who participate in them and who invite vicars to join with them as being of the Kingdom of God. And we've not yet got to the infirm and the emotionally needy or to writing awe-inspiring sermons that gladden the heart, comfort the soul and kick the backside, or to preparing people for weddings or baptisms, or meeting with grieving families, or tidying one's study, or having lunch with a loved one. And so the list could continue. So vicars need to be jacks of all trades and masters of all of them, which sets us up to fail from the outset as we discover that we're master of none of them.
Or is there another approach? As I have started this new post I have tried to hit the ground not running but walking slowly, looking around, trying to discern where the people in the congregation, the local residents and I overlap in terms of creating opportunities to see the Kingdom of God in all its glory. But it's hard because I know that I need to let people down if they expect me to say "yes" to everything or to change nothing and do what was always done. Our relationship with God needs to be living and active, which means that the way that we order our worship lives and our church activity will also be changing as we grow and learn.
Rather than be a jack of all trades and master of none of them, I'd like to really discern the charism of this place, this calling on me and my family to minister in this place, and to do it to the best of my God-given gifting and potential.

Giving is not the same as fundraising - by Bishop John

- GIVING is NOT THE SAME AS FUNDRAISING

- GIVING is BASIC TO CHRISTIAN LIVING & HEALTH

- WE DO NOT GIVE TO MEET THE NEEDS OF A BUDGET

Giving is much more important than that. It is essential to our spiritual health. It is a sign of living in that life in all its fullness that Jesus longs for us to enter and enjoy. It is a sign of Kingdom life. Giving sets us and others free. Giving sets givers free to receive more of God’s grace. Giving, freely and in God’s name, sets others free. It is Kingdom-building.

I have brought an icon of the Holy Trinity, revealing amongst other things, the exchange of love constantly being given and received in the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Known, in the East, as the icon of hospitality, inspired as it is by Genesis 18, where Abram and Sara offer hospitality to three Persons, they later discover to be God himself. This icon invites the viewer, each one of us in, to share in the divine life of the Trinity, to become as Peter writes ‘partakers in the Divine Nature’ (2 Peter 1.4). There is a strange Greek word perichoresis, used in Orthodox theology which again reminds us of themovement and exchange of God’s love in terms of dance. We are invited to share in the dance of Divine life. ‘I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.’ It is a dynamic understanding of God’s life-changing love.

I have also brought this water fountain as another image of the movement of God’s love, as Jesus described the new life that he brings as ‘streams of living water’ (John 7.38).

Let me ask you a personal question! Are you a bath person or a shower person? In a bath, once the water is in, it stays in. You wash yourself in the water and then you lie in the dirty water until you get out! In a shower, there is always new and fresh water. God’s life is always new and fresh. Are we living in this new life, receiving and giving or holding on to what we’ve got and becoming stagnant. Are we conduits or containers?

I want you to open your hands. You need open hands to give, you need open hands to let go, you also need open hands to receive, to bless, to touch and to heal.

Now, close your hands. With closed hands we cannot give, we cannot receive, we cannot reach out to touch, to welcome, to embrace or to heal.

The way of the world, of the ‘old Adam’ within each of us says, the more you give, the less you have, so hold on tight to what you’ve got, indeed get, grab even more and hold on to it.

The way of Christ, the subversive and liberating truth of the Gospel teaches us that as we give, we become more truly the ones we are created to be, as we are made in the image and likeness of God, the giver of all things. As we give we open ourselves up to receive more of God’s grace and provision, we remain within the prodigal and life-giving love of God. Withholding who we are and what we have takes us out of the flow and deprives us of the oxygen of the Holy Spirit.

Rockefeller was once asked, ‘How much money does it take to make a man happy?’ To which he responded ‘Just a little bit more’. I guess, at one level, if we are honest, we might all recognise that somewhere in ourselves and we can all give all sorts of good reasons for it. But is this desire our master or our servant? Jesus could see so clearly the spiritual danger of the wrong attitudes towards money, how it can imprison us and prevent us from enjoying the glorious freedom of the children of God.

You will know the story of the monkey or ‘How to catch a monkey’ …….

You will remember the account of the Rich Young Man who having met with Jesus, went away sad, with a heavy heart, he could not let go, he was (as someone put it) possessed by his possessions.

So where are we, as individuals and as PCCs or Diocese in all this? To what extent are we in captivity through wrong attitudes to money? To what extent are we actually, despite all we would like to think and be keen to profess, in hoc to Mammon.

Thomas Merton wrote ‘Money has demonically usurped the role of the Holy Spirit in much of our life today.’ How often, in our personal lives, in our Church life, in our Diocesan life is money the key criterion for our decision-making, coming before and displacing the seeking the mind of God and the wisdom of the Spirit? What does God want to happen? If he wants it to happen, provision will be discovered. How easy it is for me, for us to collude in the ‘sensible’ accountancy thinking of ‘we can’t even think of doing that, because we haven’t got the money.’ So we miss out on God’s plans and provision for us.

In 1987 I spent 3 months with a Christian community in Washington D.C., an area of great poverty, with many street people, refugees, high unemployment, poor housing, high levels of drug addiction, prostitution and criminality. It was a hugely impressive ministry rooted in inspired worship, a real and daily engagement with Scripture, and expressed in great variety of ministries changing lives and communities. (A ministry unlike so many lop-sided ministries which took seriously both the King and the Kingdom.) It was a difficult Church to join. The Church welcomed all unconditionally but to be a full member, there were particular commitments. You had to have a particular call to a particular ministry which you will offer to God and to others. You had to join a group of others with the same kind of call, to work with them in the same area of ministry whether it be in housing provision, or refuge for asylum seekers, or health or healing, or coffee shop ministry or whatever. As part of the induction for membership you had to write not only your spiritual autobiography, tracing the journey of your relationship with God from the time of your earliest memories but you also had to write your financial autobiography tracing your relationship with or your attitude to money from your earliest memories. Both of which exercises can be profoundly helpful and revealing, bringing to light, as they will, areas of our own lives which may still need the liberating ministry of Christ.

It may just be that the priorities of our lives and the decisions we have made actually reveal that there is another Master in our life and as Jesus says ‘No-one can serve two masters.’ ( Mt. 6.24). But as with the Emperors New Clothes, we collude with one another in avoiding facing this truth.

Or we could come at it from another angle: Are we building/have we built our identity, our self respect more on what we have and our status amongst others than on our primary identity as infinitely precious children of God, with whom through the Spirit we can enjoy intimacy and call ‘Abba’, Father.

Such questions, I suggest are not for instant answering but for a real and prayerful pondering over days – perhaps this Lent. What is in no doubt is that God loves us so much, he wants to set us free in our relationship with money as in every other aspect of our lives. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ (2 Cor. 3.17)

2 Corinthians 8 & 9 provide us with a window into the flow of grace, gratitude and giving. In fact the passage is full grace ‘charis’, the word is used 5 times in these few verses though not always translated as ‘grace’.

v.1. Paul writes: ‘We wanted you to know about the grace/charis of God that has been granted to the Churches in Macedonia.’

The secret, the source of their giving was grace.

Grace overflows – that image of flowing again – in giving.

v.2. Their abundant joy and extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

At a time of great affliction, God is giving these Christians abundant joy (v.2) and out of this joy in the Lord flows their generosity. Grace – joy – generosity –giving. And it is not as if they are wealthy, they are giving out of their extreme poverty (v.2). Many of us who have travelled abroad to Christian communities in areas of great poverty will have been stunned by the generosity of hospitality we have been offered, given the very best and most valued of what the people had to offer. No meanness of spirit, no holding on to the best for themselves, not even what we might a call a sensible apportionment of resources, ‘well we’ll give you something nice but we need to keep plenty for ourselves’. A radical prodigal generosity echoing the prodigal generosity and love of the Father for each of us. And it stuns even Paul ‘ they give according to their means and even beyond their means’(v.3) The grace of God overflowing in generosity. We might think of the despised Zachaeus who when he experiences the acceptance and love of Jesus is set free and cannot help but give (Luke 19.8). He says to Jesus ‘Half of my possessions I will give to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone, I will pay them back four times as much.’ The grace of God given to him overflows in almost reckless giving.

He no longer needs to hold on to his money to give him security or to buttress his identity, he has discovered, he knows on the inside that he is loved by Jesus. We see this outflow of giving, this reckless generosity in the woman who has discovered and experienced the forgiveness of Jesus, and she ministers to him with extravagant love and devotion as she anoints him with the most costly of perfumes (Luke 7.47) as in this batik.

MUTUALITY

v.4. These Christians in Macedonia saw generous giving not as a duty – ‘well, I suppose we ought to give something’ but as a joy and bringer of joy. Paul tells us:

‘They were begging us earnestly for the privilege/charis of sharing in this ministry/koinonia to the saints.’ The privilege of giving is grace/charis. The word Paul uses for this ‘ministry’ is koinonia. One of the essential marks of the Church is koinonia – which means fellowship or mutuality, belonging to one another, helping and supporting one another within and across the Body of Christ. And here they are begging for the privilege, the grace to support other Christian families who are struggling. (As some of you will know from conversations I’ve had with Christian leaders suffering great affliction in Middle Eastern countries, I’ve been convicted by one Christian leader who said Christians in his country are missing the support and solidarity of us Christians in the West.) Here Paul tells the Corinthians – and us today - how the Macedonian Christians begged for the privilege of giving. When I was in Oxford Diocese, we had a link with the Anglican Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman and I remember one of their priests who was in our Diocese telling us how every year in his Archdeaconry, clergy and lay representatives from every parish go away together for a weekend for mutual prayer and encouragement and during the course of their time away, they compete with one another about which parish will give the most into the common kitty to be used to support those who were struggling the most. It is a very inspiring and humbling ministry. This is gospel giving, bringing joy to the givers. It is the kind of free and generous giving that allows us to enter into more of God’s blessing for us. So Paul, quoting Jesus says It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20.35)

Here, in this passage, this ministry/koinonia is for the saints in Jerusalem. So we see this gospel principle of mutual support across cultures within the Body of Christ.

So where does this grace of giving come from? Paul is in no doubt.

v.5. Because they gave themselves first to the Lord.

This is surely the heart of the matter for them and for us today. Giving the whole of our lives to God and that includes our financial lives. As Martin Luther wrote ‘there are three conversions necessary for the Christian life, conversion of the heart, conversion of the mind and conversion of the wallet’.

Giving ourselves first to the Lord is the preventative medicine that will help us to avoid what one wag has called ‘cirrhosis of the giver’. What is ‘cirrhosis of the giver’? “It is an acute condition which renders the patient’s hand immovable when it is appropriate to move it in the direction of the wallet, chequebook or purse. One treatment which always works is to remove the patient from Church. It is clinically observable that this condition does not occur in other places like the pub, the shops, the restaurant, the golf club etc.”

Gospel-giving however is win-win. It releases more joy in the givers, it blesses and encourages the recipients, as Paul writes, it ‘supplies the needs of the saints it overflows with many thanksgivings to God’ (2 Cor. 9.12) and it glorifies God.

Win-Win, Giving opens us – and others – up to more of God’s grace and blessing. Gospel giving calls for faith, for trust in the Living God. I have never known any individual or any PCC, for that matter, who has taken a step of faith in giving, who has ever regretted it or who have found themselves worse off for doing so. Giving builds our faith, and we discover more of God’s love and provision.

I have a friend who gets very annoyed when people say to him ‘take care’. He says ‘no, take risks’. The more we dare for Jesus in faith, the more we discover the riches of his grace. Jesus invites us to trust him, to take a step in faith, to life in all its fullness.

Or as someone said ‘If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat!’

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse

Trust me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it. Malachi 3.10

Jesus said ‘Give and it will be given you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap.’ Luke 6.38

+John Warwick

2006