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Acts 8:26 – end The Wind of the Spirit

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Just looking at this passage from Acts Chapter 8 in the New Testament of the Bible.

This book (Acts) is a narrative of the experience of the first Christians.  It’s personal.  We don’t get the Ethiopian’s name, but even so, this account  is located in time and space – it’s not vague, it’s specific.

Our service for God is acted out in these (mostly small, occasionally amazing) acts of obedience that take us to be with particular people.

My tendency is to want to do the planning myself – to plan a course, or a programme, or a sermon series.  And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes.  But it seems that God is more random than that.  God isn’t bound by our lectionaries and time tables, although he graciously works through them.

My prayer today is that I am open to what God is doing, and saying.

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Ad Men and Preachers

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Season 6 of Mad Men started in the USA last Sunday – 7th April 2013.

It’s a great series, probably the best thing around at the moment, but this isn’t an advert for Mad Men.

What I’ve noticed is that the ad men spend a lot of time just sitting around, or throwing ideas around – There’s a lot of waiting going on.  Eventually there comes the punch line, or the idea for an ad campaign.  It’s work, but it’s a different kind of work that is maybe more inspiration than perspiration.

I’m currently trying to write a sermon for this coming Sunday.  It’s just not there at the moment. Maybe it’s because I had some time off after Easter – and I’m just not back into the flow yet … I’m waiting for some inspiration.

I feel like the ad men in Mad Men – except that I don’t drink whiskey all the time I’m thinking.

I’m still working / waiting …

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Ransom my Life

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Reading Psalm 49 today.

Amazing words about wisdom and mortality:

“We can never ransom ourselves, or deliver to God the price of our life”

then verse 15 – “But God will ransom my life; he will snatch me from the grasp of death”

Eugene Peterson on these verses: We recognise the limitations of human life – not to despair, but in order to our our hope in God.

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God is in the detail

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It is my sister and bro in law’s wedding anniversary today.  All those years ago, I had the job of standing next to the church organist and letting her know when the bride arrived.  I have been looking for a slide of the wedding, but only managed to find this one of the family around that time.

And, last Friday, our first grandchild came into the world.  Isaac Christopher Evans, born to Amelia and Joel on 5th April at 9.42 weighing 9lb 3 oz.
These are moments of transcendence that go beyond what we can easily explain.  Love that binds two people together, and new life.
We thank God for blessing us in such wonderful ways.
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Resurrection: Seven Stanzas at Easter

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Just re-read this in a wonderful collection of writings – Bread and Wine – readings for Lent and Easter
Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta*, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
John Updike
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It’s been a while

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I have three blogs … not sure why … so not sure where to post after such a long break. Anyway.

I was on my way to see my spiritual director this week, and had a few minutes spare, so I stopped into a church I found along the way. (St Michael’s, Cherry Burton, East Yorkshire)
Sat in a pew, opened the Bible and started reading Matthew 5.
It suddenly came to me how the beatitudes are progressive – not an original thought, I know, but not one I had ever given a great deal of thought to.
I started thinking for some reason about the 12 step programmes, and how the beatitudes might be similar. (Again, not original I discovered later)
But my take on it is I think a little different.
Step 1 Admit your need
Blessed are … the poor in spirit … or – those who know their need of God
Step 2 Mourn for your sin and the sin in the world
Blessed are those who mourn …
Step 3 Open your heart to God
Blessed are the meek (humble?) those who know that they need God, not just in a crisis, but for the long haul.
Step 4 Change the way you act
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Start to live a life that pleases God. Live to do the right thing in God’s eyes.
Step 5 Change your attitudes
Blessed are the merciful. As you have received God’s grace, so now have the same gracious attitude to others. The life of following Jesus is not just about actions, but attitudes
Step 6 Change your thought life
Blessed are the pure in heart. Purity of heart is a deeper, more challenging way. It is the way to closer communion with God. From the heart come words and actions, good or bad.
Step 7 Share what you have received
Blessed are the peacemakers … the primary way of understanding the gospel is that of reconciliation, peace making. If we are to have an influence for God and for good, then we must be people of peace, and people who make and build peace.
Step 8 Whatever it takes.
Blessed are the persecuted. It is likely that the true disciple will find themselves in conflict with evil. Often it comes in the guise of good.
Maybe we are on a cycle all the time, learning a deeper way of living out each step.
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Home

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It’s been a while.

I’m hoping to get back into the habit of this once the silly season is over. We’re off to the Greenbelt Festival over the Bank Holiday, so there should certainly be some posts about that.
Just this for now.
A recent letter from a friend says a lot:
I regard it (church), not only as a place of worship, but quite simply as ‘home’. Which is pretty marvellous when you consider Heaven – God’s Kingdom – is where we come from, and as the missionaries in China said, dying, death, is Going Home: so, we’re already half way there!
Gets me thinking about heaven again.
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham has been banging on about this for years. Heaven is to do with the presence of God and the activity of God … and when we pray “On earth as it is in heaven” we are praying for more of God in the world; right here, right now.
We’re not praying to be whisked away to some ethereal world of clouds and harps. We’re praying for peace; for justice; for everyone; for everything.
My friend senses that little bit of heaven because of how God has worked in his life, and how he experiences God working in the church. It feels like home. It feels like heaven.
Or as Belinda Carlisle sang long ago … ooh heaven is a place on earth!
Come to think of it – Greenbelt feels like heaven too. Can’t wait.
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Legion Mark 5:6-14

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In which Jesus heals a man with unclean spirits.

On the day I looked at these verses, I was starting a two day course on Mental Health First Aid. Jesus is doing a bit more than first aid here!
Apart from the mental health angle, this passage is important because it shows Jesus challenging yet more of the boundaries and assumptions in his society. He is entering Gentile territory, and taking the ‘good news’ to non Jews. Jesus is radically inclusive.
As I reflect on Jesus’ determination to cross boundaries, I ask myself what boundaries I need to cross. Which people, places and situations challenge me ?
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Body, Mind and Spirit. Mark 5:1-5

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In which Jesus meets a man who is described as having an unclean spirit. He is violent, he self harms (cuts himself with stones), and he is excluded from society (or has excluded himself).

There are different ways to look at passages like this in the Gospels. Some would see this as an example of ‘demon possession,’ while others would see here a man with a severe mental illness. There can be a great divide between these two ways of understanding.
At one end of the spectrum there are churches that practise a deliverance ministry where almost anything can be ascribed to the work of evil spirits. (Someone with a short temper can be described as having ‘a spirit of anger’ that needs to be cast out). At the other end of the spectrum are Christians who would say that talk about evil spirits is superstition, and we should look for scientific ways to explain illness, and look to modern medicine for treatment.
What I find especially interesting (and we miss it if we get hung up on arguments about modern medicine versus prayer for healing) is that in the gospels, Jesus addresses all kinds of illness, with a variety of causes. Jesus seems to have a holistic approach that recognises body, mind and spirit. When we get into arguments about the nature of the illness, we risk missing the fact that the Jesus of the gospels heals people who are afflicted in body, others who are afflicted in mind, and others who are afflicted in spirit. What this says to me is that Jesus’ healing is comprehensive. There is no aspect of human suffering that is outside the scope of the healing of Jesus.
A prayer that we use for healing goes something like this … “Name of person we lay our hands on you in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We pray that you may know God’s healing power at work in you – bringing wholeness and healing to every part of you, body mind and spirit.”
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A Different Kind of Peace Mark 4:35-41

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In which Jesus calms a storm.

I presume that before the storm started it was calm … But I also guess that the calm after the storm felt quite a lot different!
The Christian Gospel has sometimes been presented as ‘Come to Jesus and he will sort you out’. But the experience of the disciples here is ‘Come to Jesus and he will mess you up!’
Jesus is leading the disciples into situations that will be scary and confrontational. In the next chapter, they will encounter a demon possessed man, and on the way, their lives are threatened by a severe windstorm.
In these situations of hostility, Jesus is what we would call in mediation terms, the ‘non anxious presence’. He is the one who can take things forward. He is the one who will not be dictated to by the circumstances. He is the one who will inspire confidence in others that they too can get through the difficult situation.
And the bigger picture is here too: these encounters – with the forces of nature, and with the forces of evil – show us that Jesus is engaged in something HUGE here. As he makes visible the rule of God, there is resistance. This peace making is no easy task.