Jesus

The end of sacrifice

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As we approach the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day at the end of the War to end all Wars, we remember the sacrifice of so many.

The soldiers did not only make the sacrifice, they were the sacrifice.  They were sacrificed by the leaders of the nations on the altar of greed and power.

“They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn”

is a message of hope about those who were sacrificed.  They are at peace, at rest; we grow old and weary.  We can take comfort that they no longer have to suffer as we continue to suffer.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them”

helps us to mourn and remember those who are no longer with us.

Yet the sacrifice continues. Will we not learn?

Wars and famine continue.  Leaders send men and women to fight for ‘us’ against ‘them’. Leaders stoke the fires of self-interest, burning the shoots of love from our hearts.

Even in peace, the weak and poor are sacrificed to the same altar, shot not with bullets but with job losses and cuts.  Those without the power are those who continue to be sacrificed.

It is all meaningless without what comes at the end.  Here is the true hope for us all.

“But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.”

Jesus forgive us, we don’t know what we are doing.  Change our hearts and fit us for heaven, the end of sacrifice.

Amen

Christmas – the start of a tragedy?

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We have just celebrated Remembrance Day, and we are in the lead up to another day  of remembering an event that modern philosophy would view as tragic.  Jesus Christ was born specifically with the deliberate destiny of dying a horrific death by crucifixion.  The culmination of his life’s purpose was to die, painfully and alone.  And yet Christmas is a joyful event celebrating his birth.  And his life was not tragic, nor heroic, but marvellous and loving.

At first sight this does not make sense, but only if we come at the event with the wrong assumptions.  To make sense we need to grasp that:

  • This was God himself choosing to become human, living as we live, suffering as we suffer, and importantly, doing himself what was required rather than imposing on another.
  • To do this, God must care deeply about us
  • Suffering is not necessarily bad. It can be necessary to achieve the best
  • Death is not the end, but a doorway to something better
  • It is not possible for us to live a perfect life
  • God / Jesus chose to die to allow us to forgive ourselves for our past, and to choose to live his way … even if it may lead to what the world sees as hardship and suffering

There is so much more that we need to learn, that we have forgotten in this modern age.  Use this Christmas to begin your journey of discovery.

 

“Sorry Jesus, you got it wrong”

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Two children are in a fight, and when we separate them both point at the other and shout “well he started it”.  We might respond “well even if he did, you carried it on!”

But as we grow older we forget to apply Christ’s simple but profound wisdom to our own lives.

 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that.

 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Of course, as we become adults our disputes are less likely to be over schoolboy issues.  We might have a ‘neighbour from hell’ who takes advantage of us and tramples over our ‘rights’.  And when we respond in kind, and when the conflict escalates we say ‘well he started it’.  And perhaps ‘who are you to criticise what I do?’.

When,  was a Christian,e find ourselves in this sort of situation, do we respond by justifying our actions? Do we argue that Jesus’ teaching is wrong and doesn’t apply to our case?  Or do we admit that we are in the wrong, perhaps too tired or weak to do what we should.  Do we accept that we are falling short of his instruction to be ‘perfect’ (i.e. do we repent) and humbly ask him to work with us to correct this flaw in our character?

If we look elsewhere at Jesus’ wisdom we find that he has already given guidance on how to love our enemy.  Again, we have a choice of arguing that he must have got it wrong, or we can choose to work with him to try to follow his words:

“You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too.  If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.”

 “But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.  “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.”

None of us are yet perfect and we all fall short of Jesus standard.  But the critical question is, do we want to be perfect?  Do we want to change and allow Jesus sacrifice and grace wash us clean.

If we want to hold on to our hatred, anger and right to hit back at our neighbour then Jesus cannot help us.  A pastor often told me “Sin cannot get into heaven” … if we want to hold on to our sin, we can do – but we could not be allowed into heaven; we would spoil it for everyone else.  If we choose to hold on to our hatred then we are choosing to separate ourselves from the infinite goodness that is God.

To be clear, I am not judging or criticising anyone who finds themselves in a difficult situation with an enemy. None of us know how we would respond if we were in someone else’s shoes.  None of us can tell another to remove the speck from their eye!  Judgement is for God alone.  But hopefully this post points out simply and lovingly what Jesus tells us.

“the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Immigrants!

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“A business man was coming back from a sales trip overseas.  His flight was delayed and he managed only to get the last train back to where his car was parked at the station.  It was late at night, and as he took his keys to open his car he was set upon by robbers.  They beat him up, stole his keys, wallet and computer, and left him lying there in the station car park.

The car park was quiet, for it was late at night and he lay there, hunched up and groaning in pain.

Another late train drew in. The first into the car park was a wealthy land owner and landlord.  He saw the man lying there and muttered under his breath about how drug addicts were spreading everywhere.  As he clicked the central locking on his 4×4 he made a mental not to write to the leader of the council about cleaning addicts out of the area.

The next person into the car park was a middle classed lady coming back from a day shopping.  She looked across at the man, and in the dark assumed that he was one of the homeless, turning to drink to drown his sorrows.  She kept her distance; she was worried for her own safety.  Why doesn’t the government do something to help these people she thought to herself.  I might have to think about voting for one of the other parties next time.

No more trains came in, but later that night an immigrant was walking by on his way to his night shift at an out of town warehouse and distribution centre.  He saw the man still slumped there, and went across to him.  He saw the state of the man, and tried his best to bandage the wounds and make him comfortable, wrapping his own coat around him and giving him a sip from the hot drink he’d brought with him to keep out the cold on the walk home.  He called the emergency services and waited with the man for the two hours until they came.  Finally some paramedics arrived and told the immigrant that they would now look after the business man and that he should go on his way.

He walked the two miles to his warehouse job, but when he arrived the supervisor berated him for lateness and summarily dismissed him.  His story of helping the injured man was treated as such – a story made up to cover his laziness, and he was told that he was a shirker who should go back to his own country.  He sadly walked back to his shared room, wondering how to break the news to his family, and worrying about how he would now be able to afford this month’s rent.”

Which of these people was making our nation great again?

Is it possible to be a Christian and right wing?

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It’s not complicated.  Jesus said “Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me.”

And what are His commandments?

“‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

and here are some more details:

“If you lend only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? …  Lend to them without expecting to be repaid”

“Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow”

How does this square with austerity measures imposed by the wealthy on the poor?

Just asking…..

“Back in the day …” But why not now?

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There was a time when it was wrong to tell a lie.

There was a time when we were taught that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

There was a time when we were taught that it was good to share.

There was a time when we were taught to “do as you would be done by”; to treat others as you would like them to treat you.  That every person was our neighbour, irrespective of where they came from, or which ‘tribe’ they belonged to.

All of these were accepted fundamental truths: words of Christ which spoke to our conscience and were proved correct by our experience.

Look at the papers, with the lies and attitudes of politicians in the US election and the Brexit campaign, the inequality, the refugee situation, the callous treatment of the poor, and we can see that we do not live in such a time.

I miss when human beings cared about each other, when decency was valued and we respected each other.  I want to see our nation, our world return to those values.

Do you?

Let it start with you and me.  Let’s vote knowingly, and act selflessly to change society back to what it should be.

A contemporary Genesis

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One morning I felt the inspiration to write a modern version of the Genesis account of creation, incorporating and alluding to the scientific discoveries of recent times.  I hope that nobody chooses to take offence:

Before the beginning of time and matter in our universe, there was God.  Of his works other than our universe we know nothing, but of his works in this universe we have learned much through the gift of our intellect. Of all his purpose in our universe we can know only what he has chosen to reveal to us, and he has revealed that we were his purpose.  One purpose alone or one purpose among many is not for us to know.

God chose to create this universe.  He created time, and then he tore nothingness into matter and antimatter, and in that great explosion from nothing he caused there to be an excess of matter over antimatter.  And he causes matter to interact with matter through invisible forces acting across nothingness. And ripples of that rending apart of nothing remain until this day for us to observe with wonder.

Since God knows his plans, he chooses to cause matter to behave in a consistent way. He allows the tiniest particles to behave in individually unpredictable ways, but in community he causes them to follow his chosen laws.  In the presence of spirit, whether God’s own or that of humans or other spiritual beings, God allows his laws to be suspended.  God continues to sustain and guide his creation, acting as and when he chooses and allowing individuals to choose how to act.

And so for billions of years, although years were yet to be invented, the universe unrolled according to the laws that God had chosen.  Particles formed into atoms, atoms formed into great stars and stars drew together into galaxies.  The first stars grew to such a size that the interaction between the matter and the forces caused great energy and the explosion of the stars, and in those explosions new atoms were formed.  God was making the building blocks of life, the carbon and the oxygen atoms.  Out of those explosions, and according to God’s laws of interaction new stars formed, and planets were formed around those stars.

One of those planets, the earth, had the right conditions for the next phase in God’s plan.  The planet was at first a molten mass, bombarded from space by asteroids and meteors as the turmoil of the formation of the particular sun and galaxy subsided.  A crust was formed on the molten mass, and a gaseous atmosphere formed above the crust.  In that atmosphere and on the crust, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms joined to form more complex short molecules.  When the time was right, these short molecules formed into long chain molecules.  These very special molecules continued to work according to the laws that God had chosen for the atoms and particles.  The molecules had different purposes, some formed into cell membranes, some formed into little molecular machines, and some formed into very long instruction chains.  And God caused them to be combined into what we today would call cells, and God had given them the mechanism to multiply in number.

To the first cells he gave the task of changing the atmosphere of the earth.  Using the energy of the nearest star, the sun, the cells separated oxygen from carbon dioxide and pumped the oxygen into the atmosphere.  For more than a billion years the cells carried out their task of preparing the atmosphere of the earth, getting ready for the more complex organisms that were next on his plan.

When conditions were right, the individual cells formed into groups or communities that were dependant on each other, where each cell in the group performed slightly different functions and so the new organism was able to both become larger but also to perform more complex functions.  God gave the individual cells the means to evolve a mechanism that would carry the instructions for each cell in the group to perform its function, and to respond to the communications from other cells within the group.  And so, multicellular organisms were formed.

The instructions embedded in each of these cells ran to billions of characters in length.  The mechanisms of the cell and these instructions were both necessary for the cells to operate and grow, and to reproduce from generation to generation.  God didn’t plan to make all organisms identical, so he designed ways and means of bringing variation to the offspring of the organisms.  He allowed “random” variations due to inaccurate copying, and he caused deliberate mixing of the instructions in one organism with another, requiring separate organisms to come together in order to create the next generation.  The organisms themselves thus had to live in partnership and community to survive.

So God had established a process of growing a wide diversity of organisms of increasing functionality that relied on each other to survive and thrive.  Whilst each individual organism would be allowed to behave in an individual way, only those that were successful in progressing God’s plan survived and reproduced.  God chose to allow a process of competition to develop the organisms as he wanted; a process which required individual capability and cooperation between individual cells within an organism, and between organisms of the same type.  Through this phase of God’s plan he used the law of “survival of the fittest” to perfect each organism, and to select which organisms to perfect.  The organisms didn’t know anything of right and wrong.

But that was not the end of God’s purpose, although it took billions of years to accomplish.  His plans were greater than that, for there to be beings in his likeness; beings that would design and create, but more than that, beings that would know right from wrong, beings that would love, spiritual beings that would know and seek God himself.

So he selected one of the organisms and he planted his spirit in that organism and gave it an awareness of God himself, and he gave that organism the ability to know what is right and what is wrong, and he gave that organism the ability to choose to do what is right or what is wrong.  That organism is mankind, the pinnacle of God’s creation. 

You might not be ready to accept this new account. Certainly it is not literally correct, but maybe it is more relevant to today’s society in the same way that the original Genesis was relevant to the society of its day.  It conveys that all of us are spiritual and material beings, willed by God as the culmination of a creative process of unimaginable complexity spanning billions of years, following the creation of time itself.  Mankind: created with the opportunity to know God and to relate to him, but allowed the alternative of rejecting and ignoring him.

Excerpt from “The Big Picture – an honest examination of God, Science and Purpose”

evolution

David Bowie – The Hysteria, the Sorrow, the Frustration and the Hope

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A clear thinking article.

theweeflea's avatarTheWeeFlea.com

This is my article on David Bowie in Christian Today   – it is slightly amended because I wanted to tidy up a couple of things.  The article came as a result of a conversation with my wife, Annabel, as she gave me a lift down to the church.  And then all these ideas just popped into my head, so I wrote them down and quite surprizingly it has gone, as they say, ‘viral’.  There are so many ‘Bowies’ out there – who need to hear the Good News!  As always comments appreciated.

Its great that The Scotsman has put much of this on their website!

And The Herald

David Bowie’s death, grief, and the frustration of a society that has nothing to offer the lonely

It was a shock. Of course it was. Make your coffee, switch on the radio and you hear Life on Mars on Radio 4. What…

View original post 1,353 more words

God is fair, the economy isn’t, we can do our bit.

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Mankind has established a system that breeds injustice. Wealth sucks money from the poor. Those with money enjoy luxury whilst those without struggle to survive.

God is not like that. He is just and fair. The Apostle Peter writes, “This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of God”. Faith is available to all, rich or poor.

God is fair. “He gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” In God’s kingdom, rich and poor are treated fairly.

God is just. In God’s kingdom rich and poor will receive the justice they deserve.

The poor will receive justice for suffering under the unfair economic system of this world. But the actions of the rich sustain that system.

It is so ingrained in our culture to maximise our income that we forget that the more we gain we gain the more someone else loses. Let’s remember.

Let’s question each financial decision to make sure it will reduce the unfairness of the system:  Does it move money from the poor to the rich, or does it help the poor?

“Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!”

It is hard to go against the flow, but if we choose to reinforce an unfair monetary system, why should we expect to escape justice?

A morning prayer for the wealthy

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Dear Lord,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Thank you for bringing me safely through another night and for the promise of a new day.
Thank you for blessing me with health, wealth and good friends, and thank you for my family.

Thank you for the blessings that I can bring to others. Forgive me please for the times when I have not acted as you would wish, and please strengthen and encourage me to carry out your will in the future. Guide my steps to places and people who I can bless, and form in my heart the desire and will to be that blessing. Let me feel joy at the good that I have been able to do in your name.

It is hard to be joyful when there is evil confronting us each day, sustained by misguided beliefs and the cold hard hearts of so many.

Yet all good things come from you and are part of you, so please help me to know you, love you and enjoy your presence. Please lift my spirit to worship and praise you, and to appreciate your gifts to me. Please be present with me every moment of the day and night, filling me with your goodness and keeping me from harm. Please protect those who I love, and heal those who are suffering in body, mind and spirit.

In this cruel and selfish world, I ask that you work in all people to draw us to love you with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Please correct the growing culture of inequality where we, your children, believe others to be less important and valuable than we are. Help us to see each human being as our brother or sister, parent or child, and to love them as such.

Father, let your spirit drench this land as the wind and rain of winter. Convince the people in this nation of your existence, bring us to see our sin, and to repentance and forgiveness. Draw us close to you.

And please mould your church to feed us with the bread of life and to help us praise you as you deserve. Please remove the barriers that we put in the way of people who would follow you, forgive our mistakes and guide our actions to properly serve you and those we live among.

I ask all this in Jesus’ name, for I believe and trust that this is your will.

Amen