A hit family meal! (serves 8)

Bolognese

1lb of beef mince (lean)

2 tins chopped tomatoes

2 large carrots,

1 large onion (we’re not keen on loads of this)

2 tbspn tomato Puree

1tbspn Oregano

1tbspn cornflour

Garlic

Brown onion, carrot, garlic and mince.
Add Tomatoes, puree and oregano plus cornflour. Mix well. Leave to simmer for 20 minutes.

Cheese Sauce

2tbspn Cornflour

2 tbspn Marg

Milk- I just guess on this one!

Cheddar to taste

Seasoning

Melt butter and add in cornflour. Then stir in milk a little at a time mixing well to avoid lumps. keep stiring until you have the quantity and thickness you require. Turn off heat and add cheese whilst hot to taste.

Lasagne

Cheese of choice

Pasta of choice

Seasoning if required

Place a thin layer of Bolognese in a dish. Layer on pasta of choice (I used the dried no need to cook beforehand stuff) and add a thin layer of sauce, Layer on another layer of Bolognese pasta and sauce and then one final time (3 layers). Use all of remaining sauce on the top and generously grate on cheese of choice (Parmesan here!). Place in the Oven at Gas Mark 5 for 30-40 minutes.

Serve with a green salad and enjoy!!

The Titanic, the Temple, and the Terror of the New

I had a little help with this one (I’ll share why in another blog post sometime)…it got very little response (apart from a comment from parishoners who hopefully will be good friends who said something about prophetic…).  Mark so wanted the phrase ‘and of course Heath Hayes will always have a Vicar’ to be included but I think my pastoral side is rubbing off on him a little .

The RMS Titanic began her maiden voyage from Southampton, bound for New York, on 10th April 1912. She was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of her construction, built using the most advanced technology of the day. She was 46,000 tons, and could carry 3,500 people on 9 decks. She was believed to be unsinkable. She hit an iceberg 400 miles south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland just before midnight on the evening of Sunday 14th April, just four days after putting to sea. By 2.30am on the morning of Monday 15th April she had completely sunk, having split into two halves. Of the 2,223 people aboard, only 706 survived. The story of the Titanic is still one that grabs people’s attention. There have been many books written about it and a string of movies. The 1997 movie Titanic starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet made 1.8 Billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing movie of all time. Why is the story one that interests us so much? Perhaps its because, behind it all there’s a simple truth: you can’t be certain of anything in life, especially the things we are often most proud of and put the most faith in. The Titanic was an engineering marvel. No-one would have predicted that it would sink on its maiden voyage. None of those people who bought tickets thought that the ship would never reach its destination. We all find it easier to put our trust in things that seem big and solid, things that all the experts tell us are the best. In Jesus’ day, if you had asked the people of Jerusalem what they put their trust in, many of them would have pointed to the Temple. It was massive, towering over the city, built with the finest craftsmanship, no expense spared. Herod the Great had had the whole complex massively expanded. Like the cathedrals of the middle ages it would have been the biggest building most of them had ever seen. It symbolised the greatest hopes and aspirations of the Jews, the importance of their traditions and their customs, their determination to remain true to the commandments and the covenant with God despite centuries of rule by foreigners. More than this, however, it was God’s palace on Earth, the house made of stone that David had promised to make for God. The Temple represented God’s presence with his people, the promise that he would save them. If the Jews looked to the Temple when they were unsure about the future it was partly because they thought it was a way of looking to God. When things were uncertain, when the Romans made great demands, when prophets talked about doom and destruction to come, the Jews would look to the Temple, to the vast stone walls, to the smoke of sacrifices that had been offered there continually for centuries. That was where they found their certainty. That was where they found their hope. Because stone walls are very comforting. Walk around Lichfield Cathedral sometime and touch the walls, feel the weight, the solidity. It’s very comforting. Just like a 46,000 ton cruise ship. It’s solid, comforting. Bigger than anything else around. You know you’re safe, sitting on a deckchair on the Titanic. When Jesus’ disciples praised the Temple, they were only saying the same thing hundreds of other Jews said or thought every day as they went in and out of the Temple. It was probably a very conventional religious thing to say, as we might say ‘wasn’t the service lovely today’. They expected a conventional response. But Jesus doesn’t give them one. He doesn’t even give an unconventional response. He blows the lid off the whole set of assumptions this conventional remark was based on. The Temple was the hope and pride of the Jews. It was the presence of God with his people. It was faithfulness to the covenant. And Jesus says ‘It will all be destroyed. No more Temple. No more hope. No more God with his people. No more covenant. Destroyed. Gone. Not one stone left on another.’ It’s as if you said to someone ‘wasn’t the service lovely today’ on the way out of church and they said ‘Christianity will be wiped out within a generation’. It’s a conversation-stopper. It makes you uncomfortable. It certainly made the disciples uncomfortable. There was an awkward silence. They walk down through the city from the Temple gates, out of the city limits, up the mount of olives, find a nice spot, sit down opposite the Temple. Only then, and once they can get him on his own, do a group of the disciples dare ask him what he means. And he doesn’t go out of his way to comfort them. ‘There will be false hopes, people trying to lead you astray. There will be wars and rumours of wars. There will be earthquakes. There will be famines. There will be suffering. People will die.’ These are some of Jesus’ harshest words, and some of the hardest to understand. ‘All your certainties, all you put your hope in, is going to be destroyed.’ He says. ‘Be careful. Don’t panic. Something new is being born.’ It’s not what they wanted to hear. It’s not what we want to hear. We want Jesus to say ‘don’t worry, everything will be fine’. We want him to tell us that we and our loved ones will be safe. We want him to tell us that no matter what happens there are things we can rely on. There will always be a church in Heath Hayes. Lichfield Cathedral will stand forever. People will always come here to have their children baptised, to get married, to bury their dead. This will always be a Christian country. People will always be able to say the Lord’s Prayer and tell you the Ten Commandments even if they don’t always come to church. Tell us it’s all going to be ok, Jesus. Tell us that the things we feel comfortable with will never change. Tell us we’re safe here sitting on our deckchairs on the Titanic. But he doesn’t. About forty years after Jesus said these words, there was a rebellion in Judea. The Romans reconquered it. They laid siege to Jerusalem, slaughtering its inhabitants by the tens of thousands. The Temple was destroyed. It has never been rebuilt. The Jewish people still remember and mourn its destruction. Tell us it’s going to be ok, Jesus. But he doesn’t. He says ‘Be careful. Don’t panic. Something new is being born.’ In a few weeks time we will be entering the season of Advent. We look foward to the birth of something new. Something that will turn everything here now upside down. Christianity has never been a faith that encourages us to put our faith in the present, or one that promises that there will not be hard times to come. It promises that what is ahead is better than what is behind, that something new is coming that will turn our world upside down. And that whatever happens, Jesus is with us. Be careful. Don’t panic. Something new is being born. Amen.

The Need to do the word.

(beware it’s a loooong one! Written for Hednesford Pentecostal church)

Being, doing, speaking
James 1:19-27; 2:14-26; 3:1-12
Intro
I want to preach to you this morning from the letter of James. James is sometimes a neglected letter – he doesn’t have a lot of doctrine in his letter, in fact he doesn’t seem especially interested in theology. James is what we’d call a practical theologian – he’s more interested in how we live our lives than in abstract issues. But James certainly knows his theology. As we’ll see, a lot of what he says seems to come out of deep reflection on Jesus’ parables.
It’s a letter that isn’t written to anyone in particular. In fact, it may not have been written as a letter at all, but simply been a record of James’ own sermons, and then circulated around the churches, these being the days before you could hear your favourite preacher by clicking on their website and downloading a podcast.
In any case, James is writing to the church, to committed Christians who already know a fair bit about their faith. To people like us. And what he’s really interested in talking about is this: What does it mean to be a Christian? What should a Christian look like, sound like? How should a Christian live?
Now the letter is too long for me to talk about the whole thing, so I’m going to pick out three of my favourite passages and see what we can learn from them. So we’ll be looking at what James says about Being a Christian in Chapter 1: 19-27, then at what he says about Doing things Christianly in Chapter 2:14-26, then at what he says about Speaking Christianly in Chapter 3:1-12. Being, Doing, Speaking. In every area, James is trying to correct some mistaken ideas we might have about how we are, do, and speak as Christians.

1.    Being a Christian
James 1:19-27
It’s tempting to understand being a Christian as really being about a decision we made to believe or trust in God. I’m sure that all of us have heard stories of how people ‘came to faith’. Perhaps we’ve had to tell our own story. Sometimes there are amazing events that prompt people to make a commitment to God. Sometimes people are won over by seeing the example of their friends or family and want to be like them. Sometimes people think through what seems to make sense to them and make a decision. There are thousands of different stories. But most of us, when we’re asked to talk about how we come to be a Christian, will talk about some moment when we came to make a decision. It might be one decision amongst many, but we tend to think that there was a moment when we weren’t a Christian and a moment when we were, and that sometime between the two we made a decision to change. That sort of story can be inspiring to others and it can be helpful for us, to help us remember how we came to be here, but there is a danger: the danger that we think being a Christian is all about making that decision, the danger that we think that was the hard part, the danger that we think we can put our feet up and think ‘that’s it, now I’m saved’.
James is very aware of that danger. Perhaps he’d come across people who had misunderstood what Paul preached about being saved by faith, and thought that one they were saved it didn’t matter how they lived. We don’t know, but he’s certainly setting out to shake us up a bit if we’ve got at all complacent. For James, however important a moment of making a decision or commitment might be to us, it’s only a first step, and one that might end up leading nowhere. In fact, he’s not that interested in how we come to start being Christians at all. What he’s interested in is being a Christian as an activity – not just something you passively are, but something you choose to do.
If you turn to James 1:19-21 you can see James talking about how we come to be Christians. He says (I’m paraphrasing here) – stop getting angry and stop loving the sound of your own voice and start listening. That’s how you start to produce some fruit of God’s righteousness in your life. So, clear away any wickedness that’s entangling you and stopping you from growing, and welcome the implanted word that can save you. James is so uninterested in the moment we actually become Christians that he leaves it almost to an afterthought, so let’s turn things round to see what James is saying: the word is implanted in you, you need to welcome it meekly, clear away any wickedness entangling you, and produce fruit by living in a way that is holy.
Am I the only one to catch echoes of Jesus’ parable of the sower here? James is really saying ‘be good soil’. Let the seed put down deep roots in you, clear away the weeds, and produce a good crop. For James, the moment of decision hardly features – the soil doesn’t choose to have seed planted in it – or perhaps its better to say that for James there is no single moment of decision. Every moment is a moment of decision, to accept the seed, to pull out the weeds, to produce fruit.
He then talks about the ways we can do that: by choosing to not just hear the word but also do it, and by controlling our tongues. We’ll look at these in some detail shortly, but let’s just see what he says about them here, in verses 22-27.
Be doers, not just hearers of the word, he says. If you just hear the word you’re like someone looking into a mirror and doing nothing about the mess that you can see. Hearing the word, hearing God’s will for us, is supposed to make a difference to how we live. When we look into that mirror, we’re supposed to not just see that we need to brush our hair, we’re supposed to actually do it!
Perhaps if James was alive today he’d have used the phrase ‘you talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?’, except that for James, talking is the thing that’s at the top of his list of things we need to do right. If we don’t think about what we’re saying, he says, we’re deceiving ourselves and our Christianity is nothing but a waste of time. If it isn’t to be a waste of time, if it’s going to be a way forward, it has to involve caring for the most vulnerable in society.

2.    Doing Christianly
James 2:14-26
We live in an age where we are encouraged to think that what is inside us is the most important thing. Our thoughts, our feelings, our sense of identity. Adverts don’t sell us products, any more, they sell us ideas, feelings, ways of seeing ourselves. If we are acting in accordance with our highest ideals we will talk in these terms: ‘It felt right’, ‘I knew it was the right thing’, ‘I felt that was where I belonged’.
Some of the roots of this lie in Christian teaching, of course. Jesus criticized the outwardly-righteous Pharisees for their hypocrisy – the way they play-acted holiness by doing the right thing when their hearts were far from God. If our hearts and minds are not right with God then whatever apparently holy things we do will make no difference.
But there is another side to this, and James feels it’s time to redress the balance. He’s writing to followers of Jesus who already know all this, to people familiar with Paul’s teaching that we are saved by faith. And so he comes to the section of his letter that we so frequently misunderstand: James 2:14-26. Martin Luther, reading this, was so convinced that James was contradicting Paul’s message of salvation through faith alone that he said the letter shouldn’t be in the Bible at all, that it was ‘a letter of straw’. If we read carefully, though, I think we’ll see that James isn’t contradicting Paul. He’s saying something different that stands alongside it.
‘What is the point of your faith if you do not have works too?’ James asks. ‘What is the point of being right on the inside if you aren’t also right on the outside where it can be seen?’ You can know that the naked and hungry should be clothed and fed, but that’s worthless unless you do it. Even Abraham, Paul’s great example of justification through faith, is really an example of justification through works, because his faith was demonstrated in his actions. James’ point here is not that we are not justified through faith, but rather that unless that faith bears fruit in our actions it was never true faith in the first place.
The image at the back of James’ mind is that of the seed again. Good seed in good soil is fruitful. But if it can’t put down roots or it’s choked by weeds then it won’t bear fruit. James’ concern is that faith without works is ‘dead’, ‘barren’, and will not be ‘bought to completion’. If the seed that has been implanted in us is welcomed in, then it will grow and bear fruit. Faith is always demonstrated in our actions, so that by our works people will see our faith. It’s certainly true that, as Jesus saw, people can have works without faith. However, says James, you cannot have faith without works. The person who thinks they are a Christian and yet does nothing is not, no matter how sincerely they believe. Faith changes us and changes others through us or it isn’t faith.

3.    Speaking Christianly
James 3:1-12
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ the old rhyme goes. It’s obviously untrue, as a moment’s reflection will tell you, but it’s amazing how easy it is to dismiss the power of words. Words don’t leave any scars, so it’s easy to think they didn’t hurt, but anyone who has ever been the victim of gossip will tell you otherwise.
James doesn’t make this mistake. He’s already mentioned the importance of controlling your tongue if you are to let the seed of righteousness grow in you, but now, in chapter 3:1-12 he returns to the theme. James talks about speaking Christianly by using several vivid images. First, he highlights the importance of controlling our speech by suggesting the tongue is like the bit and bridle of a horse or the rudder of a ship. If we can control this one apparently small thing, we can control everything else we do. The uncontrolled tongue, however, is like the tiny flame that sparks a forest fire. For good or evil, this easily-underestimated part of our bodies has massive power.
It’s easy to think that James is exaggerating here when he starts to speak about the tongue being a restless evil, set on fire by hell itself. But if we look at what he is saying, I think we can understand. James is simply reflecting on the very human experience of sin. This is James’ equivalent to Paul’s discussion of fighting against his own self in Romans 7.
The tongue, says James, is like the whole person in miniature. With the same tongue we praise God, and curse others, we sing hymns and pray and lie and spread gossip. No-one can tame their own tongue, and the things we say witness against us.
The tongue shows us how messed up and sinful we are: we are like a spring that pours forth fresh and salt water from the same opening, or a fig tree that produces olives. You go expecting something sweet, and come away with a bad taste in your mouth.
Nothing in nature is like this, says James. Things are true to their own inward nature, springs produce fresh water, grapevines produce grapes. But with human beings we see something unnatural: Christians lie and gossip.
On the face of it, James seems to be making a point like Jesus’ – criticizing us for our hypocrisy. But the examples suggest something deeper: a warning, similar to Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree. (Lk 13:6-9) Things are always in the end true to themselves, he says. That’s what we see in nature. That’s why good works must flow out of faith. But this means that the opposite is also true. If we produce no fruit, then the seed in us never grew. And if we produce bad fruit, then the plant has become diseased, good for nothing but chopping down and throwing on the fire. If you tell lots of lies, in the end it becomes obvious that you are a liar. If you spread stories about others, in the end it becomes obvious you are a gossip.
James leaves his discussion with the warning, because he has already given his solution back in 1:19. There is only one way to try and tame the tongue, to try and speak Christianly. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
All of us make many mistakes when it comes to our tongues, he says (3:2), so it’s best to speak less. Especially if you’re one who teaches others. Which perhaps suggests that I too have now said enough!

Conclusion
So, that brings us to the end of our quick trip through the letter of James. James warns us not to get complacent, and think that because we’re saved we can sit back. Being a Christian is an activity, not a state of being, he says. It’s what you do, not who you are. He warns us that just like the seeds in the parable, receiving the seed doesn’t guarantee it will bear fruit, and it is fruit, in our lives and the lives of others that shows that the faith we have is real, not the sincerity of our feelings. If we’re going to produce that fruit, we need to let the seed grow deep roots in us, and we need to clear away any weeds that might be growing. And the main weed he identifies is the sin we commit with our mouths – the things we say. If we cannot control our tongues, he suggests, then we will never bear fruit. Christians should not be liars, gossips, or people who are known for their anger. But that is what we are. In the end our true nature will show itself through our works, says James. Not through the purity of our faith kept locked inside us, but through the way we live our lives.
And so, he gives some simple instructions. They sound too simple, really. Surely, we might think, these are not the sorts of things one needs to say to a church full of devout Christians. But James does. He thinks we need to hear it. So hear it:
Be quick to listen.
Be slow to speak.
Be slow to anger.
If we can do these things, then maybe we can live in a way that shows who we really are. Amen.

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Back to Church Sunday 2009

I want to thank anyone reading here at church who invited someone to church this week.  We were able to almost fill the church and with about 85 people in total and many giving very positive feedback I’m thrilled and thinking about doing it again next year!! (It’s usually only been done every other year)
Zaccheus
It’s not a popular job: tax collector. And it was even less popular in Roman-occupied Palestine. It was the Roman’s taxes they collected. A tax collector was a collaborator. A sell-out. A traitor. Especially the chief tax collectors. And Zaccheus was a Chief Tax Collector. Someone who’d compromised their principles. Not popular at all. Quite the opposite. You wouldn’t want to be seen with a tax collector. What would people think? You were ratting someone out? Telling the authorities that someone wasn’t paying enough? It would have been a lonely life. Probably most of his friends were other tax collectors.
No wonder, really, that so many of them took the chance to line their own pockets. Asking for a bit more, inventing some new taxes. Well, it wasn’t like the Romans paid them that much. Certainly not enough for what they had to put up with. It didn’t make up for everyone hating them, but it gave them a bit of security at least. Corrupt. Especially the rich ones. And Zaccheus was rich. Traitors. Sinners.
Not the sort of people you’d find in the synagogue on the Sabbath. A bit too worldly for that. Corruption. Loneliness. Compromise. Sin. Zaccheus did not have a great life. And he was short too. So short he couldn’t see someone through the crowd. He couldn’t see Jesus.
Why did he want to see Jesus? The story doesn’t tell us. Maybe Zaccheus didn’t really know himself. He’d heard of him, obviously. Minor celebrity, holy man, famous for his teaching and his miracles. And he was passing through Jericho. Maybe Zaccheus just got curious. He wanted to see who this Jesus was. He’d heard some stories, but he wanted to see for himself.
Only when he got there he couldn’t see. This was the man who was used to sitting down at his table while people queued up to pay him money. He wasn’t used to this. He had to run ahead, on his short legs, puffing and panting, trying to get ahead of Jesus, trying to get to where the crowd thinned out a bit. But even then he couldn’t see. So he had to climb up a tree to get a better look. The chief tax collector climbing up a tree. It would have been so humiliating if someone had noticed. And then they did.
Jesus looked up at him and spoke to him. Zaccheus had really just gone along to look and see. He was curious. He hadn’t planned on getting involved. He hadn’t imagined that Jesus might actually want to talk to him. No-one wanted to talk to him.
But Jesus did. Not only did he talk to him, he invited himself to his house. And he knew who he was. He called him by his name. He chose to stay at the house of the chief tax collector. As if he thought he wasn’t the sort of person you avoid. As if he though he wasn’t corrupt. A sinner. A traitor. A sell-out. Even though it made the crowd mutter about him. And they did mutter. It was a risky thing for Jesus to do.
Perhaps that was what made Zaccheus do it. Because if there’s one thing the taxman doesn’t like doing, it’s giving people’s money back. It must have been the riskiest thing he’d ever done. Letting go of his money. His security. And it made a big impression on Jesus. “This is what I came here for today.” He said “To see lives turned around. To see the people no-one wants to know brought back into God’s family. To seek out and save the lost.”
I wonder what you’ve come here for today? Maybe, like Zaccheus, you don’t know. Maybe you’ve just come to look and see what all the fuss is about. Maybe, like him, it’s not what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a bit embarrassing – you’re sure you’ll be spotted doing something silly. Or maybe you’re a bit more at home. Maybe it feels familiar, being in church again.
However being in church feels, whether strange or familiar, I hope that like Zaccheus you’ll meet with Jesus today. It’s funny that, just like Zaccheus, we usually don’t expect to. Even if we’ve come to the place we know he’ll be. At the most we expect to hear about him, not actually meet him. But actually he’s the reason we meet together. Jesus, who came to seek out the outsiders, the ones who haven’t been here for a long time, no matter where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Because he wants to welcome all of us into his family.

The Child and the Argument

Mark 9:30-37: The Child and the Argument

It’s a scene we’re very familiar with from the gospels – Jesus travelling across the Galilean countryside with his disciples. He’s trying to teach them something about how he’s going to be betrayed, die and then rise again, and they can’t seem to understand. It’s probably got something to do with the argument that’s been rumbling on for miles. Not in front of Jesus, of course, but behind his back, when they think he’s not looking, while he’s going on about the Son of Man doing this that and the other. The argument. Who’s the greatest? It was a good one, could go round and round for days, because of course only Jesus could say for sure. But it seems to have taken up a lot of the disciple’s time and energy. Who’s the greatest? There are some obvious front-runners. Peter, ‘the rock’, Jesus told him he’d build his church on him. But, well, he’s not the sharpest tool in the box is he? Big on enthusiasm, short on common sense. John, ‘the disciple Jesus loved’, Jesus’ best friend, but never shown particular favouritism, or given extra responsibility. Then there’s the others. Levi the tax collector – probably the best educated of the lot of them, great conversion story, sinner turned to saint that sort of thing. Simon the zealot – formerly member of a radical revolutionary sect, never compromised, never wavered in his convictions, always given his all for God, not like half of them, who’ve spent more time being fishermen than being disciples. And that’s not even considering the women. Because, chances are, the twelve didn’t – stands to reason that the greatest would be a man, would be one of the twelve.

On and on it went, with every incident providing evidence to bolster the case for one disciple or another. It must have driven Jesus round the bend. Or would have done if he hadn’t been so patient. So when they get to Capernaum, he decides enough is enough. This rivalry, the constant comparisons, the pride, the insecurities, everyone trying to figure out a pecking order, all of it was making it impossible for the disciples to hear what he was saying. So he does something about it. He pulls a child into the centre of the room.

The story doesn’t tell us who they were. It doesn’t tell us if they were a boy or a girl. It doesn’t tell us how old they were.  Maybe they were the child of whoever’s house they were staying in that night. We aren’t told. And I suspect we aren’t told for a very important reason – the disciples didn’t know. Until Jesus pulled them into the centre of things none of these self-important men had even noticed the child was there. Children had little status in the ancient world. To men wrapped up in an argument about who was the greatest, they would have barely registered. Jesus pulls this child, who they had thought beneath their notice, into the centre of things and says “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.”

The disciples are the ones wanting to be first. The child is the one who is last in the room. “You must be like this.” Jesus is saying. Instead of being obsessed with their own status, forever competing with those around them, seeing them as rivals, they are to act as if they know they are less important, as if competition were pointless.

But that isn’t all that Jesus is trying to teach them. “When you welcome this child, you welcome me and the one who sent me.” He says. Not only should the disciples be like a child, Jesus himself is like them, and so is God. Jesus has come as a servant, as one completely outside of the games of status that consume those they serve. He has set aside his own interests and put those of others first. And until the disciples understand  this is the character to his mission – the first who is last and servant of all – they will not understand what he has been trying to teach them about where his mission will lead. Jesus, the servant of all, will be betrayed and killed, because he is putting the needs of others first.

We’ve all got our bugbears, our little quirks, the things we like and don’t like, and there’s nothing wrong with that – as long as we put the needs of others first. Because that’s what children have to do. It’s not much fun being a child – however much we might tell them it is. Your life, your priorities, are dictated to you by someone else. And you can’t do much about it. Jesus wants us to be children. By choice. To choose to allow our priorities to be dictated by others. It doesn’t mean we can’t have our little quirks – whether that’s a liking for Thomas the Tank Engine or for having others admire our knowledge of gardening. As long as we realise that there will be times when the needs of others must come first, when we must allow our priorities to be set by God, not us.

Trinity 12: What is in your heart?

What is in your heart?
Todays readings really speak much of what is in our hearts.  Are our hearts changed by our faith? Are we people who are transformed by the love between us and our God?  I wonder if you were really praying the words of that last hymn for yourself, genuinely?
It’s one of those Sundays where the lectionary doesn’t give it to us gently- but then, matters of the heart are rarely gentle on any of us! Jesus, in the gospel reading, is addressing the Pharisees, seen by all as some of the most religious, publicly devout people of the day. They not only acted in accordance with the commandents in everything they did, they went beyond the minimum, they were exemplary. All of the actions Mark describes in the gospel: washing hands, purifying themselves after going to the market, washing cups, all of it underlined that these were extremely devout religious people. And Jesus calls them hypocrites. He says “you honour God with your lips, you worship him publicly, you teach religious doctrine, but your heart is far from God, so it is all in vain”
Essentially if I were to modernize the gospel into our context it might sound a bit like Jesus were saying : you can come to church every Sunday, kneel devoutly at the Altar, Sing Hymns, wear robes, serve, represent others on the DCC, carry a bible in your bag and turn up for all the proper study groups and worship services but none of this means anything if what’s going on on the inside isn’t right.  Ultimately there is a warning against deceiving ourselves here.  We are not to think that being a fine upstanding church-goer makes us holy, or pure, that it makes us special in God’s eyes. God doesn’t look at what we do between 10 and 11 on a Sunday morning. He looks at our hearts.
What is in our hearts when we come to church really matters- not least because our actions and our motives, the inner and the outer, are all connected in some way.  I think James was perhaps getting at this when he said ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves’.  He wasn’t emphasizing actions over understanding or putting a work ethic onto our faith- trying to say that our works, or our actions are more important than our beliefs or our faith – but rather he was trying to communicate how we can deceive ourselves in our hearing and understanding if we don’t live out our faith in actions. Because it’s often in our actions that others can see what’s going on.
Do I seem to be contradicting myself here? I started by suggesting with Jesus that we should worry about what’s going on on the inside – in our hearts, which might be completely at odds with what’s going on on the outside. Now I’m saying with James that what is going on on the outside is a pretty accurate indicator of what’s going on on the inside. I don’t think there is a contradiction here, though, and the key to seeing how Jesus and James fit together is in realizing that both of them are talking about the way we deceive ourselves by thinking that something other than letting God into our hearts is good enough. Jesus says “If you just go through the motions of religion, however devoutly, but you never let it touch your heart, you’re kidding yourself and wasting your time. None of the religious stuff you fill your time doing will impress God in the slightest.” James says “If you sit and listen to sermons, sing stirring hymns, read the Bible, know your faith inside out, but never actually do anything that shows it makes a difference to you, you’re kidding yourself: it doesn’t make a difference to you at all. It’s never found its way into your heart, even if it’s made its way into your head, because if it had, it would change your life.” Behaving in a Godly way isn’t enough. Thinking Godly thoughts isn’t enough. But that’s not just because you need to do both (though you do) – it’s because you need to do something deeper, you need to love God in your heart. If we don’t, say Jesus and James, we’re deceiving ourselves.
Because there’s something neither of them say, because they think it’s so obvious it needs no spelling out – we’re not deceiving God. And maybe, we’re not deceiving anyone else either. Perhaps we are deceiving ourselves if we think others don’t know or aren’t aware of when our actions are perhaps a little too slow, when we need to be persuaded grudgingly to do what we know we should. Or when our actions are a little too fast, because going through the motions of doing the right thing has become an automatic response that doesn’t really mean anything to us. When we find it hard to be quiet or listen to each other.  When we snap or make rude or unhelpful remarks at or about each other.  When we loose sight of the other people around us and their needs and focus on our own too much. When the way we act, or don’t act, gives us away, reveals what’s going on in our hearts.
So did you really mean it when you sang ‘Purify my heart’? Will you really mean it when you say ‘Peace be with you’ to the others around you? Will you really mean it when you accept the body of Christ, broken for you? That can sound like a trite question, or a facetious one. It might sound like an overly intrusive question, one that’s getting a bit too personal. But it’s not. It’s central to what we’re here for. Do you really mean it? Is it coming from your heart? Is it coming from my heart? Because if it isn’t, we’re just deceiving ourselves.

Purify my heart,

Let me be as gold and precious silver.

Purify my heart,

let me be as Gold, pure Gold.

Refiner’s Fire,

my heart’s one desire

is to be Holy.

Set apart for you, Lord.

I choose to be Holy.

Set apart for you my master,

ready to do your will.

On being a vicar.

I think in many ways being a Vicar is completely different to what I expected it would be like.  I knew that it would be hard work – but it’s harder, more demanding, tiring and at times rewarding than I could have imagined.  I think the expectation to just be there and agree with everyone is a little daunting – especially as it’s certainly not what I believe a Vicar should be doing! I also wish that both I and others could be more patient with each other- in a multitude of ways.  I am the first to admit I’m not always patient but being on the other end of impatience is teaching me an awful lot!

I can’t really blog about the many and varied things I am doing – the majority are a priviledge and personal to the people I work with.  I do however get very fed up with the rota’s, publicity, endless paperwork, grumbles, building faults, grounds issues, grumbles…

Back at theological college we were warned to save thank you cards.  During my curacy I recieved so many that I thought it was a bit odd to keep them all- but I did.  Boy am I glad.  It’s a rare, rare occurance as a Vicar that I recieve a thank you, an affirmation or really a sign of support.  I did this week- following a wedding.  I have recieved them since becoming a vicar but there are particular individuals that are good at it and really the wider church and community relate to me as if it’s their ‘right’ to have a vicar- and not any vicar but a vicar that will do what they want.  That’s not neccessarily right or wrong in some cases but it’s not neccessarily right or wrong in others . It does mean that my sense of how things are going is very vague.  When you have a down and difficult patch this magnifies the grey matter and it’s hard to remember the important things like that fact that there is something you were called to this place to do.

I am finding it very hard to figure out if I am doing the right things, in the right places and it is increasingly cloudier to comprhend what my vocation is in this place and then there is my wider life and vocation- friend, daughter, sister, mother, wife.  To be honest there is never a balance and at different times I feel I fail different people.

This last while has been very hard emotionally and mentally- things are picking up after the summer sleep (that season that is really quite slow and depressing!) but there’s a whole new consort of issues coming out of the woodwork.  If I blog odd things that’s why!

I will perhaps be trying to start a few conversations about issues we need to work through in this place- Children and Communion and the like.

I do appreciate those who read and occassionally comment here- I find it stimulating and encouraging.  Excuse me if blogging gets erratic – I’ll try and find a groove that works alongside being a vicar without just blogging the sermons!

Back to Church Sunday 2009- an Intro

I’ve been reflecting on the Parish profile that I read on the Internet back in May 2008.  Reflecting on the truths, the things that weren’t quite as true as you probably wanted them to be,  and the things that never quite made it on to the profile at all and I’ve enlarged a rather important page of that profile and stuck it over my desk.  Partly because it helps remind me what you wanted in a vicar (and why I applied as I felt my gifts were a good match!) and it has a set of Parish Objectives.  I think you may hear some of these a bit more often this next year!

Today I am going to start by talking to you about Objectives number 2 + 3. That is this:
‘to empower each person in St John’s to use their talents and time to serve both in the church and in our community’
‘’to take to the community the unconditional love of God, making new disciples of all ages.’’
Well, this week you have an opportunity to demonstrate that you are working on these objectives!  This week each of you is going home with an invitation to pass on to a friend or neighbor inviting them to come back to church at the end of this month.
But first, I sat and asked myself the question – What are we inviting people to?
Clearly coming to church is about more than what happens on a Sunday BUT we are inviting people back to church specifically for a Sunday service.  So what are we inviting them back to?  Why do you come?
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I hope that for all of us in some way the answer is that we come because we are followers of Jesus. There may be other things as well – maybe you like to sing, maybe your friends are here, maybe you don’t know what else you’d do on a Sunday morning – but as well as all that it’s because of Jesus, because we follow him. That sense of being a follower of Jesus is a common thread that takes us all the way back to those first men and women who left everything to follow him as he travelled around healing, teaching, and preaching the good news. It puts us in the same shoes as the disciples in our reading today. By being here, we are making a statement: Jesus is important to us. But that’s not enough. Just as he did with his followers then, Jesus wants to ask us why. Why do we follow him? Who do we say that he is? In our reading it is Peter who gives the answer to that question: Jesus is the Christ, our ruler and our saviour. It’s the textbook answer, he goes to the top of the class. But then, moments later, in some of the harshest language he uses anywhere, Jesus rebukes him as if he were the devil himself. And it’s because Peter can’t accept that his saviour and Lord will be leading them, not to a triumphant endless party where all their troubles disappear, but on the way of the cross – through opposition, hardship, and suffering to defeat and death. Because only then could he really save them.
Peter knows who Jesus is, he has already chosen to follow him, but what he hasn’t grasped is what that really means. He doesn’t really want to accept that Jesus is going to die, and that he is leading his followers on to suffering and death. It’s a common fault. Many of us find it hard to really accept that following Jesus doesn’t entitle us to victory over all our problems. Surely God can sort everything out. Realising that following Jesus doesn’t make us immune to life’s ups and downs can be difficult. But this is the way of the cross, this is what it means to follow Jesus.
Knowing who Jesus is is supposed to help us figure out who we are and how we should live. If Jesus is the ruler who serves us all, the saviour who suffers for us, that tells us, as his followers, who we are. We are not the favoured few who are immune to the hard things in life. We are called to lives that will probably involve suffering  – lives of self-sacrifice. And lives where we will need to support each other. That is the truth that Peter had to face up to. Perhaps it’s easy to understand why he didn’t want to accept it. It may not sound like a great advert: “Follow Jesus, and you too can enjoy hardship and suffering in the company of those who are committed to helping you face up to the toughest things in your life. Follow Jesus and be forced to confront your deepest fears.”
So where does that leave us in asking others to consider coming back to church? It’s always tempting to try and ‘sell’ church as something it’s not, to try and present following Jesus as something other than what it is. But that’s the very thing Jesus condemns Peter for doing, trying to live in a dream. We are to invite others to follow Jesus (or at least to resume their friendship with him), but not by pretending everything will be wonderful. We are to invite others to follow because of what we know to be true: what Jesus has done for us, and what he means to us. Asking others to come to church is tough because if we are to do it effectively it means being honest and vulnerable with people, saying something to others about who we think he is.
But it’s vital that we do it. The church will only go on existing if we ask others to join us – it’s one of our objectives.  It’s what Jesus commanded his followers to do, and it’s what we need to do if we want the church that we value to continue to be here in the future. We tend to forget that, because for a long time we could just assume that church would go on as long as there were plenty of children being baptized – the church didn’t have to keep inviting people to come along, because there were children who would grow up and take their parent’s places. But those days are gone. We can’t sit back and wait for our children to come along. I expect this village is full of people who were baptized in this church but haven’t been for years. They won’t come just because they were baptized. But they might if they were asked by people who are their friends, by people who tell them the truth, who aren’t trying to give a sales pitch, but just inviting them to join in something important to them.
It’s always tempting at this point to look around and see if there’s someone else in church you can rely on to do some inviting so you don’t have to. Like the vicar. She’s the professional, after all. Why can’t she do all the inviting for us? Well, simply, because I wouldn’t be able to. We’re talking about inviting the friends who know us and trust us, the people we can be honest with. I’ve been here a year. I don’t have those sorts of friendships with people: you do. I’m not here to do your job for you. I’m here to challenge you to do it, to encourage you to be honest, and to help you to love God and your neighbours in a real way. This is what you wanted both from a vicar and for yourselves in your Parish profile – in the objectives.    Because at bottom that’s what this is about: being honest and being real with those around you. Who do you say that he is?  Is your life real…real in the way Jesus challenges it to be – self sacrifical?  There’s two big challenges I’m wanting to put to you over the next year or so, and both of them are about considering how real our faith is and what it really means to us. Next year I’m going to be talking about planning our giving, being real about how much church means to us and what we’re prepared to give for it. But right now I’m wanting to talk about the first of those challenges – being real about church, about our faith, about following Jesus with those around us. We come here week after week, it’s obviously important to us, but are we honest with those around us about what it means to us? Can we show the courage to tell the truth about our faith to those who are closest to us?
I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, but it’s what I’m here for.  To ask you the questions, the hard ones and to love you as Jesus loved his disiples- without avoiding the hard questions.
So, what can you do? Back to Church Sunday is at the end of this month. The idea is simple: there are many people who used to go to church but have stopped coming, for all sorts of reasons, but if they were invited back, they might come again. On Sunday 27th September we’re going to celebrate Back to Church Sunday. In many ways it won’t be different from any other Sunday – we’re not trying to pretend St Johns is anything other than St Johns. But what we are doing is having the courage to speak the truth about our faith and what it means to us: to say what going to church means to us, to say that it’s a place where God meets with us, that we think there’s something of immense value here, and we’d like to share that with others.
Ideally this is something you share with those you know best, the friends who don’t come to church but who would value hearing you tell them the truth about what it means to you. But you don’t have to have an in depth conversation with someone, you don’t even have to see them face to face if you don’t want. All you have to do is give or send them an invitation. It might be someone who has been before, it might be a neighbour or friend who has mentioned faith or St John’s but never managed to come along- I am sure there would be a variety of people you think would value the things you value about this church and community. The invites are at the back of church for you to collect. All you need to do is fill out the details of the service on the first side. Leave the second side blank (this is a place for people who come back to church to offer us some feedback!) and then write the name of the person you intend to invite on the 3rd side and tear that side off- and keep it, it is a prayer card for you to pray for that person that you have invited.
Pray. Be courageous. Be open and honest. Pray some more. That’s what my challenge is to you this morning.

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