Recurring fault lines

If anyone does read this sorry for the typos, and this was written late at night. I may refresh it later.

I was sitting in a pub joking with a friend of mine around a year ago about recurrent themes in our lives. I was joking with him about some patterns in his life, and he was joking about patterns in mine. He asked me, if I had been banned yet from preaching at my current church. Not yet, I stated honestly.

Well, that conversation was about a year ago, and I was banned again from preaching and being a house group leader in my current church about six months ago. Of course I should not really publish this, because though this is not really created to be read it is out there (I could make it private but I do not in case God can use it.)

In the Importance of Being Earnest, Jack is told by Lady Bracknell "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune to lose both seems like carelessness" I kind of feel to be banned once may be considered a misfortune, but twice seems like carelessness.

There are various explanations for this, one is the idea that there is no smoke without a fire. I told my current church leader my previous church experience, he almost certainly also got it on the grapevine, and well there is no smoke without a fire.

Secondly, I do believe it is right to challenge that which is wrong, the phrase that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (attributed probably incorrectly to Edmund Burke) calls us to act. While the New Testament presents God as a God of grace and love, Jesus fell out with the religious leaders of his day and ended up getting crucified. He was quite merciless in his criticism of them. Admittedly it is John the Baptist, not Jesus, who refers to the Pharisees as a brood of vipers in Matt 3v7. However Jesus calls them this in Matt 12, and in Matt 23, indeed in Matt 23 Jesus says of the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law.

33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

and also pronounces woes on them and calls them hypocrites.

You could say from this, and I mean it with no disrespect, that we all have repeating patterns in our lives, even Jesus.

Joseph got thrown in a hole by his brothers and then into slavery, because of his multicoloured dream coat, and their jealousy of his success. But good old Joseph, works himself up, and again becomes Potiphar's favourite slave. But Joseph, ever the golden boy, behaves himself. However, Potiphar's wife does not, and he runs away from her, and leaves his cloak.

Just as in the first story the coat was part of the lie, look at his blooded coat, he must have been eaten by wild animals (no you sold him to slaves), so now the cloak starts another lie. He tried to force himself on me (you wish).

So great one Joseph goes straight to jail.

There is a pattern.

We see David and his issues with women, that are never resolved (when he was old despite the fact that he had many wives they had to find a young virgin to keep him warm). Saying that the way that David got on with his wives that is hardly surprising, Michal he stole from a happy marriage and he never loved, Bathsheba, he murdered her husband, etc... Hardly a recipe for wedded bliss.

Jacob lived with trickery in the family, tricking his brother out of his birthright, getting tricked into marrying Leah rather than Rachel, tricks over the sheep, and tricked over Joseph (see above).

Moses never made it to the promised land, he always tried to do things his way rather than learning to trust in God.

Bonnie Tyler wrote in the song Holding out for a Hero,

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need

We live in a flawed world with flawed people in it. We live in a world where there is only one perfect hero, and he did not come as a white knight upon a fiery steed.

One of my returning themes is the feeling of being cheated, that my Sunday School heroes all turned out to be so flawed. Particularly David the giant killer who turned out to be a lady killer.

We want heroes. One of the biggest issues that we face today is that need for heroes in the church. The problem is we do not have heroes on this earth who we can follow unquestioningly instead we have fallen people. There is only one who is perfect, Jesus.

It seems to me that there are basically two main options of how we can respond to this. The first is that we can just pretend that human beings are all okay really, that are leaders are heroes and close our eyes to their weaknesses. The problem with this is that meanwhile since they are not perfect they make a mess, some more than others. Very often this becomes unsustainable until we hit a sudden point of realisation of what has been true all along, and not only that we have given them a license and therefore opportunity to sin, and where there is an opportunity you will find sin.

The other choice is that we can actually face up to the fact that we are not perfect and try to develop a theology that can live with it. A theology that does not pretend, but does forgive. That seems to me to be the only valid option if we are to walk truly with God and man.

At the heart of this we need to acknowledge that we are not perfect either, that we have recurring fault lines.

Now with the help of the Holy Spirit we can pray that we will learn to overcome them. However, some of these run deep into our character. With Joseph some of his problems were about a lot more than his spirit, but involved his dress sense and the fact that he was physically attractive. That does not mean that he did not have faults, he was perhaps a little vain and conceited, but to note that this was mixed in together with the whole of who he was. Such things are not just going to change over night, and I do not believe that God wants to destroy our character (and just make us perfect) but instead God wants to change us.

Therefore how do we move on, in a world of recurrent fault lines.

Firstly, we acknowledge that we are all human and all flawed. That includes admitting our own faults.

This is not about a passive acceptance, but being real.

Jesus died on the cross for our sins, surely we can forgive those who sin against us - even if they are Christian leaders.

So why did Jesus call the Pharisees a brood of vipers?

Part of the problem is that God does not call us to passive niceness. We do not just say, well that Adolf Hitler, appears to be doing some not very nice stuff, but heh I forgive him. No, sometimes we have to stand up and be counted, both in the world and in the church.

There was an article this week about a boy who raped again. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8354762.stm One of the reasons the judge gave in not giving the boy a firmer sentence was that the Christian family of the victim had forgiven him. The BBC article comments that the views of the victim's family should not influence the sentence.

It is right to forgive, it is right to show mercy in who we treat people, but we should as the article states have a view for the victim, and to extend that to others who may be victims. I uphold the Christian perspective (there are other Christian perspectives) that prison is not there is to punish people for sin, but to prevent sin, ultimately God is judge and punishment belongs to Him. Prison works as a deterrent so people will not commit crimes, and locks up people who otherwise would commit crimes. Forgiveness therefore is not the issue (there does become an issue of forgiveness when obviously someone is no longer a threat and there is no deterrent value in holding them in prison and yet they have in the past done something awful, however that is a different issue).

Forgiveness does not mean passivity. Forgiveness though does mean love.

So back to the topic, how does that impact on how we should behave towards one another, particularly those who have hurt us?

I think the first thing to note is that God does care for the victims (which is why he opposed the Pharisees) what is interesting though is that nowhere does God oppose the Romans, who arguably were far worse. I believe there is a simple reason for this. The Romans were outside of God's people.

Therefore there is a simple rule, to those outside of the Kingdom we bring God's light. Since they do not know God's law, and do not acknowledge God as the lawgiver and saviour then there is no point about pointing out their poor behaviour. They may be being true to what they believe. They may need warning of the consequence and certainly need to be told that there is a saviour. Again that does not mean that we do not stand for the victims, it is just more complex. A pragmatic approach is necessary for those outside the Kingdom, if we can do good by calling them to good lives then there is a case for doing so. However, if like the 1st Century Romans who did not acknowledge God then, it was hardly going to do any good. Jesus of course made the ultimate point about the injustices of the Roman system. His death on the cross demonstrated the ultimate injustice of the Roman justice system.

However for those within the Kingdom, who bear the name, a certain amount is expected, and those who claim to represent God as His leaders have a particular responsibility.

However, that does not remove our responsibility to forgive and to love. Holding both the call to forgiveness and the call to repentance together is difficult, but more than anything we need the humility to remember that just as the Pharisees and fault lines so do we, and we need God's mercy as well.

It would be great to be able to end with some great conclusion that solves the problems, however that is not possible, we live in a world of recurring fault lines in ourselves as well as others and will do for as long as we live on this earth.

Therefore we are called to forgive and love, even as we struggle and protest.

However, one thing we can do and must do is pray both for ourselves that we will have the love and forgiveness and also for others. Prayer is not an opt out, but an opt in, it is not pray and do nothing, but pray and bring God's love to a hurting world, both in loving the hurt and standing up against those who hurt in a loving redemptive way.

Why believe?

Life as a Christian can get interesting and challenging. Paul describes his troubles in 2 Corinthians Ch11. "24Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. 27I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked."

A tough time, but when we pan out to see the context, the real problem he was noting was not all of these difficulties, but he was having problems with "super-apostles". There were real issues in the church in New Testament times, and it is that rather than the lashes and the beatings that Paul is complaining about in this passage.

The Christian race can be a tough race, but the hits that really hurt are the ones that come from those who are supposed to be on the same side.

It is easy to stop there, and not to go on any further, but that is only the introduction to what I want to say, because despite all that Paul says both about the "super-apostles" and the rest of it. Paul is not proposing giving in.

He writes in 2 Cor 12 about the great things that go on, but then continues in verse 7.

7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The reason that I am still in the church and trying to follow the Kingdom is not because it always feels good, it is not because I believe intellectually that it is the truth (though I do), it is not because I feel moved (though sometimes I do).

The reason which keeps on bringing me back is Jesus asking Peter will you too leave, and Peter saying, "Where can we go from you, you have the words of eternal life?"

But God does not abandon us either. I think my journey in the church has long been a difficult one, I have had times of amazing fellowship and friendship within the church, but I have also on more than one occasion had trouble. In fact I am beginning to wonder and worry that part of my calling is to cause trouble. Some people get missions to far flung places, or to serve in certain people groups, my calling is, as one person put it, to be a large piece of grit, the irritation that causes a pearl. At least I hope that is what they meant.

The reason though why I continue is that God is with me, and God is changing me. Now I would like to be able to say evermore from glory to glory. But I don't think that would be entirely true. I am more and more conscious of my lack of glory and my deep need for Him. For His light to shine in my darkness, to His truth to show me the way forwards, in a world of moral confusion.

I have been born again, and God is at work in my life. I would love to say that the Old has gone and the new has come, and some days it feels like that, but often if I am honest the old can be familiar. We can be too comfortable where we are, when Jesus calls us to follow Him.

I'm uncomfortable with the talk of leaving our comfort zone, because I fear that it is so badly abused as a phrase. We can seek to become some sort of spiritual Arnold Schwarzenegger. As if by our strength and spirituality we can conquer the world, "make me day." However we cannot make our days, we need God to make our days.

However, there is a sense in the Pilgrim's Progress sense that we do need to leave our comfort zone. We need to leave the safety of the City of Destruction, like Moses we need to respond to the call we hear from God, and be sent to difficult places. It was not because Moses was able, the man who had thought that he could do it all, finally realised that He could not. There is a sense of journey, a sense of being changed.

There needs to be a journey into reality. One of the great tragedies of the modern church is that we tend to see ourselves as people who are sorted out. We have the answer, the answers, unlike those people in the world who walk in darkness. Of course Jesus is the light, but the truth is we all need Jesus, both inside of the Church as well as outside. On a philosophical level the church is the body of Christ, and therefore Jesus is there very present. However, sometimes when we have another falling out, because we cannot accept someone else's way of doing things, it does not feel like Christ is there in the centre of us.

However, there is a deeper truth. Christ is there, in the mess, the question is not so much whether or not Christ is present, He is always present everywhere and in every situation. However, sometimes in the church it is the beaten bruised and crucified Christ that we see. Hurting with those who are not only hurting but being hurt.

The mystery of the incarnation is that God is with us, not just in the dark places, but perhaps particularly in the dark places. The light that shone at Calvary, the light that lights every man, is the same Christ.

There is a universalism about Christianity in that Jesus is the God of everyone in every situation, however there still is that call, the call that Jesus made, to follow me. The Jesus of the cross, is too often the Jesus of the church.

It is not that He is not present, He is always and ever present, it is that He chooses, as He chose at Calvary, not the route of power and conquest, but the still small voice of love. The refusal to overwhelm, to conquer, to deafen, to shout, but instead in weakness, in powerlessness to present His broken body as the salvation of the world, and particularly of His people. The broken body of Christ, in which He is ever present.

I'm convinced if Jesus came today He would not have His own chat show, indeed He would avoid the press, but he would be someone who we hear rumours of and would want to meet. In the time of Jesus people would hear stories of an amazing preacher who changed lives, and people would think who could this be. They would hear rumours.

Obviously we are many miles in place and many years in time from the historical Jesus who came to this earth in a particular place at a particular time. However, there is a similarity that we hear rumours of something, stories that we struggle to believe, but somehow ring a chord, hear an echo. There is someone who has walked this earth, who healed rather than hurt. Who called people to live the most amazing lives of love. Who changed the world, and still changes the world.

And it is like a rumour, it is a story which we struggle to understand. However, I do believe that the same Jesus who met with those who sought Him out, meets with people today, but like the people who went to find Him in first century Palestine, He may not be the one that we expect. In a world that worships power, wealth and comfort, a poor powerless itinerant is not who we expect to be the Saviour of the World. For He must have looked like such a nobody, Isaiah comments prophetically long before He came.

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

I think one of our problems that we want to remove the mystery and see God face to face. Yet the burning bushes do not litter every highway, indeed Moses was probably around 80 before He saw one, and the people of Israel had been crying in Egypt since before He was born.

Therefore I think there is a danger, and I need to be careful with my words here, and I mean no one any offence, but phrases such as intimacy with God, can I think give, if we are not careful, the wrong impression. Yes, God created us to walk in the garden with Him, yes one day we shall see Him face to face. Yet, here, in this fallen world we see through a glass darkly. In this fallen world there is disfigurement and dysfunctionality. Therefore, and it may be very much our fault, we do not see God clearly. We look for a City with firm foundations, and we long for it, because He has set eternity in the hearts of men, and yet we struggle in a fallen world, spiritually partially sighted.

The divine mystery is that Jesus came and Jesus died for us, but perhaps that is indeed the point, that He had to come and He had to die, because otherwise we would never see Him. He has sent His Spirit, who reveals Jesus too us, but all too often we do not spend the time and therefore we do not see.

For some people this would be woolly doubt, but for me this is real faith, for it is the only faith that I feel I can really have. The only way that I can square my experience of what I live, with what I read and see and try to understand.

That does not mean God is far away. I see His smile in a child's face, I see His joy in the leaves blowing in the wind, I hear His whisper in nature and in my relationship with others. God is here, this is hallowed ground, every bit of it, for He made it. It is the glimpses through the trees that we see.

If I could answer the question of why that is, then so much of philosophy and theology would be answered, but I do not know. Yet somehow I still hear the call, and still seek to follow, in weakness, hopefully in humility and also in love. And sometimes I feel I lose sight of Him in the trees, but still somehow, I do not understand it I still when I turn again to Him find Him, or perhaps it is that He finds me.

Be a friend

The story of the Good Samaritan seems particularly vivid at the moment. Jesus gets questioned by a religious guy, what the man must do to get eternal life?

Jesus throws the question back, what do you think?

That whole response is worthy of a whole series of sermons, how much hot air do Christians create in understanding the culture of the unchurched, I have a really radical solution. Perhaps rather than creating courses on it, we ought to ask them what they think.... Now that is perhaps rather simplistic, the real point is how do we get to that stage where we can get rid of the baggage and have an open and real conversation, because that is not always as simple as it sounds.

The man says, love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

"Great," says Jesus, "Do this and you will live."

Now the story could have ended there, but the teacher of the law has just had a conversation where he set out to test Jesus, but at the end of the day, Jesus turned the situation on its head and turned it into a test for the man. One that he passed, which left him embarrassingly congratulated and associated with Jesus, which he obviously did not want him to be. So in a search for some clear blue water he asks another question, "And who is my neighbour?"

Jesus could have thrown it back to him, "What do you think?" But he doesn't. Why? Well for one thing if he had not then we would not have had this story, and the truth is that Jesus did not live by rules that say if x then y, but by the Spirit of God and we follow that leading.

So instead of giving a straight answer or asking a straight question Jesus tells a story. A very disarming story.

The story is incredibly dramatic a man beaten up and half dead, naked at the side of the road. There is something about this attack that seeks to dehumanise the man.

A priest sees the man and walks by on the other side.

So too a Levite, again a religious person.

So what will happen to the broken man...

A Samaritan walks past, not the favourite for the Jews, the hated foreigner, someone who would be perceived to be far from God. This man though does not cross over the road and try to avoid the situation. The man does good, the man rescues the man, he becomes for him a secular saviour while the religious just walk on by.

We can focus on the question, and who is my neighbour, but I think it goes deeper than that. The man has just stated that what matters is loving God and loving your neighbour, but what does that mean.

The Teacher of the Law could probably find sound theological reasons for walking by on the other side. The man may have been dead or died on him, therefore defiling him, and meaning that He would be unable to serve God by doing His priestly duties. The man may have attacked him, or someone else may have attacked him, and it is dishonouring to God to treat our lives as of no importance.

The Levite similarly was called to live a clean and pure life, but this theology led to him walking by on the other side. and in reality breaking the law of love.

The Samaritan though did not have the complexity of theology, he same a man in need and had compassion upon him. It was as simple as that.

The problem we have is that often we use our religion as an excuse for poor behaviour. Though we know on a simple level that the King of Love should make us more loving to our fellow man. There is a very real danger it can actually make us worse.

Rather than looking with simple compassion on the hurting, we seek out some thing or some one to blame. Rather than doing the right thing, we do the religious thing. We theologise it and blame the bad on theology. Not only do we not follow Jesus, effectively we are using him as a justification for wrong.

At the end of course Jesus does again ask a question of the man, "Which of the three acted like a neighbour to the man?"

In other words Jesus is going to make the man answer his own question again.

The answer is blatantly obvious, the one who had mercy on him.

Jesus tells him to go and do the same.

What is most profound to me at the moment is the universality of this. The man stripped of his clothes, his wealth and his identity, is quite literally naked humanity in need of help. The creed and the colour and the name really do not matter. It is just someone in need of our help.

The reason why this means so much to me at the moment is that we have been left feeling beaten up and bruised by the way that we have been treated at church. By any simple view of humanity what has happened is wrong, but religion can be used as a justification for what is clearly wrong.

What really hurts though is not the beating up, we know that the people who are causing us trouble, are messed up human beings in desperate need to truly know of God's love and healing in their lives. What hurts is the fact that some people who we would have thought to be our friends have walked by on the other side, embarrassed at our predicament.

To be fair on the priest and the levite the sight of the bruised naked man at the side of the road was hardly respectable. The Samaritan though saw the man through eyes of grace as still a man.

Jesus states that whatever is done for the least of these is done for me. So in a sense the man broken at the roadside is, as is every one broken at the roadside, Jesus.

Religion can be a very great force for good, but it can also be and has also been a very great force for harm, and all too often a cause for someone to act respectably but not lovingly.

At the end of the day the man had said what matters is to love God and love people, yet as Christians we can get so caught up in religious meetings and what we do that we forget that it is love that matters. I suspect part of the motivation in some people who have been rather distant from us is that, they have ministries to serve, and they do do good. Therefore, they would not want to sacrifice fruitful ministry. I wonder if that is exactly what the priest was thinking, he had an important ministry, people were dependent on him, what would they do if he was not there. He was an important man.

Yet the man who is remembered as doing the right thing, the one the poor trapped teacher of the law had to admit was doing the right thing, was the Samaritan.

When in times of trouble I have found at times that sometimes Christians do walk by, when people who are not stop and help you out.

Bad theology gets in the way, and it was to address this poor theology that Jesus told the story.

In other words the simple message of the story is behave like a friend of God, and behave like a friend of everyone. Note I state behave like a friend of God, what I mean by that is that we treat God better than we would treat our best friend, and we treat everyone else in the same way.

We need a world where we behave like friends to all, and do not walk by on the other side.

In three months

I've been looking at learn Spanish books, I have a good collection of books on other languages, but not Spanish. There's Spanish in three months, Spanish in 15 minutes and Instant Spanish. What next learning Spanish yesterday?

However my attempts at foreign languages might be more termed not learning German after several years. It takes time.

Growing in faith is like that. There is no route to instant holiness. The Kingdom of God does not come at the click of our fingers. It takes time, it takes perseverance and it takes effort.

But surely, some people will say, we have instant holiness. Jesus died on the cross to take away my sins, and therefore by the grace of God I have been made holy. Well, by the grace of God we are made Holy. God may look at us and see us as holy because of what Jesus has done, but on this earth we have to try and realise that in our relationship with other people and it is then that we realise that though God may have forgiven our sins and made us holy - we still have to change

God does make us holy, God does make us clean, but I still sin, I'm still not perfect. I still make mistakes, and I am becoming like Jesus, but it is not instant, it is not in three months, not in 15 minutes, it is not instant.

How do we reconcile those problems, both with ourselves and with the people who we live with and "do church" with?

Paul writes in Ephesians Ch4v2 "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love"

We are humble - we are not perfect.
We are gentle - other people are not perfect, just like we are not.
We are patient - we understand that there is a process, that it is not instant.
We bear with one another in love - we are committed to love, and so we keep going together.

It is not just humble and gentle, on some sort of relative scale, but be completely humble, completely gentle.

We know we are people in the process, and God may have made us Holy, but we have been made holy, we are being made holy and we will be made holy.

As we face Easter, and remember what Jesus did for us on the cross, the call that He makes to us, is not to some instant solution, but to pick up our cross and follow Him.

It is not to pretend that we are something that we are not, but to know that we are loved as we are. And it is not to pretend that others are something they are not, but to love them as they are.

Happy Easter.

From words to wallpaper

From words to wallpaper
From the Word to babble
From meaning to meaninglessness
From peace to strife
From joy to a constant searching for the next kick
From love to emptiness
From hope to distress

When Jesus is Lord, everything fits together, not just in the church, but everything, art, culture, music. When Jesus is Lord music has sound, and sound has a depth that resonates within the soul.

When Jesus is Lord there is something to paint.

When Jesus is Lord there is something to believe in, something to live for.

When Jesus is Lord, it matters and everything matters.

One of the reasons why people attack Christianity is because they have nothing else to do. Bereft of anything to believe in themselves, they fill their emptiness by attacking those who do believe. I say this not because of paranoia but because I read the front page of the Coventry Times which was attacking the failures of a church. Full front page, without Jesus there is no news, without Jesus nothing matters.

Everything is empty, and why bother to produce great music, or great art, or great anything - it does not matter, we do not matter, nothing matters.

We are just large ants in a big ants nest, with no more meaning. Working hard to build a bigger little nest for ourselves. What for? For nothing, because when perish whoever has the most toys still dies. What does it matter to the Medici's now in their wonderful chapel that they sponsored Michel Angelo who produced fantastic art? Can they enjoy the satisfaction when they are dead? Does it really matter?

The further we get from God, the more we die, at first we live on no longer connected to the power of the universe, yet it takes a while for the lights to go out. It takes a while for the glory to fade.

So we move from words and great sentiment, from great art and great music to wallpaper. Songs like And Can it Be or Love Divine are songs you cannot just ignore. They grab your attention, they get into your head, they speak of a truth, that is The Truth, that cannot be ignored. So much today just fades naturally into the background, it does not interrupt, it is not interesting enough to, but it provides some background noise, like the hum of the fan on our IT equipment if whirs reminding us that we are alive, in case we forget.

Life without God is in fact a bit of a contradiction in terms, life with God and death without.

Life without God has an allure, it is tempting, but in the end though it may promise us greater love, deeper truths, greater experiences. At the end of the day, in the land where nothing matters, nothing is interesting, because it does not matter. I may go for my fix, but that is all that it is, a fix.

Jesus conquered the grave, He rose to life, death could not hold Him even when it drove nails into his hands and feet, whipped him until His skin was peeling off, and thrust a spear into His side. The problem is that though death could not hold Jesus even when it threw everything it had at Him, death still holds so many others captive. Fit, young and healthy, but their vital signs are fading, and the heart though it throws itself into everything loses the will to live.

At Easter Jesus rose from the dead, and we need to challenge the people around us, when are they going to rise from the dead! People are fit, and young and healthy and yet they need resurrecting. They need to be born again.

We have moved from words to wall paper, but before you fall asleep for the last time the Word is still alive and well, and the Word wants to speak to you today.

Happy Easter.

The flow of grace

I'm currently reading a book Lean Thinking, which is about helpfully enough Lean thinking. This is a philosophy that says cut out waste, achieve flow (i.e. don't just do it all in bulk but actually work in flowing processes) and achieve pull (that is let the customer determine what a company wants and be driven by that.

It goes against the logic of economies of scale and producing big batches and instead has an understanding of business and humanity that at times is totally surprising. While the conventional wisdom of the factory floor is line up the machines, make the workers work as fast and as hard as possible, and let it all operate like robots. Lean says forget producing batches, actually people want differentiated goods, so produce what people want. Don't produce 100 blue cars and then switch over and produce 100 red, and then be left with 50 blue cars which no one wants. Instead when someone orders a red car produce a red car.

What you end up with is a more skilled workforce who do not just produce a 100 red cars, and a 100 red cars, but produce one at a time products that people want. It seems like the system works.

So what on earth has this got to do with grace?

How much of what we do is really what God wants? How much of our lives are pulled by what God desires. We end up doing lots of things that "are right" but no one wants, not even the Almighty.

We need instead to be directed by the flow of God and the pull of His Holy Spirit. As Christians we need to stop producing lots of what God does not really want and start dynamically listening to Him and doing His will.

Jesus calls us to Follow Him, that is both pull and flow. Instead we get stuck in a religion of business, of doing stuff. Like the car company stock piling cars that no one really want, we produce stuff that no one really wants.

If we as churches threw off the waste that we spend so much of our lives on, then not only would we achieve so much more for the Kingdom, that is Kingdom value, we would have so much better relationship with God, because we would not blame Him for us spending our time and efforts doing stuff that He never asked us to do in the first place.

We need to learn to be followers, and followers do when Jesus does, but they also rest when Jesus would rest.

One of the biggest questions is do we really know what Jesus wants, and the probable answer for many of us, is that we do not. Isaiah (Is 55v2) commented,
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Many of us are fixated with doing, but that is not the point. There is no innate value in being busy, sometimes what we need to do is to take a break and work on our spiritual life. Jesus never said that we needed to get out of your comfort zone, instead He actually said, Matt 11v29 "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

We spend so much of our lives trying to please other people, or in reaction to that.

We can become so competitive that we stop competing because we believe that we cannot win. We choose to opt out of the race because we do not believe that we can win it. We get left on the side of the losers.

In the end with God His love is not based on whether we win or lose.

The point about getting out of the boat is not about discomfort, it actually was not that comfortable in the boat. I'd be far more comfortable standing on the water than I would rocking up and down on the boat. The boat was being tossed about, Jesus was walking on the water.

The issue of getting out of the boat is the choice to follow the logic of the Kingdom and not the logic of the world. It is about putting our faith in the God who made the world, not in a man made boat. The issue in the story is about faith, not about comfort.

It is about seeing the world differently and obeying Jesus. Most of the time getting out of a boat and onto the water is only worth it if you want to go for a swim. The point about miracles is that they are special occasions. The point was that Peter did what Jesus called him to do, and put his trust in Jesus, thereby acknowledging who Jesus was.

Jesus loved Peter and He did this for a reason. Peter needed to know who Jesus was, and Peter learned to put His trust in Jesus, even when it looked stupid. He found the path of calm through the storm, the place of comfort in the pain of life. He found peace, he found the place of rest.

How much of our lives is wasted on the unecessary, and how much is given, really given to God.

Know what I mean, Harry (Potter)?

Many Christians felt a bit concerned with Harry Potter when it first appeared. All the witches and wizards surely cannot be good for the souls of our children, despite the fact that some decidely Christian authors such as C S Lewis have not been scared of having a little magic in their works.

As the series has progressed the mood has changed, I must confess that I have warmed to it. The tale has a certain morality to it, it talks about the importance of love, it talks about sacrifice, and has the challenge that living out love and friendship brings sacrifices. It warns of the dangers of giving yourself over to evil. It at times it communicates effectively a message that perhaps we as a church should be communicating. At times it has a certain Sunday School feel, an old fashioned conservatism, that we did not expect to come from an author who does not appear to have Christian tendencies, and perhaps with the treatment she has had from some in the church who can blame her.

However, a lot of our problems with Harry Potter come from the fact that J K Rowling was once one of Britain's most famous single mothers. The image of a woman pushing around a baby and writing stories on benefit is not (however accurate or inaccurate), to our mind, going to equal something Christian and edifying.

However, take a second look (well a Wikipedia look) and you realise that that really is a lot of hocus pocus. J K Rowling states "I believe in God, not magic." (American Prospect). She was educated at a Church of England primary whose Headmaster inspired Dumbledore. She did not want to discuss her Christian faith because if people knew that it might give too much away. In reality, though J K Rowling may be a different character from C S Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien, she broadly shares the same worldview.

In terms of sources and influences the story of Harry Potter is deeply influenced by the Christian story.

The problem is not with J K Rowling but ourselves and our worldview. Magic in fiction can help us to see the world in a different way, a way that is more real not less. It is a literacy device, and though the occult holds many dangers, there is a difference between something that uses magic as a device and something that is occultic.

We live in a world where there is a battle between good and evil. Evil does stalk the land and our battle as Paul reminds us is not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities.

In all of this could it actually be that Harry Potter is on the side of the angels? Paul reminds us that the battle for our earth is not one of flesh and blood, but of rulers and powers and authority and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. That battle is fought out in culture, and I have to say that I do think that the values that Harry Potter emphasises are good, and that I therefore would put it on the right side.

Praise God for Harry Potter?!

Called to be family

We are called to be family.

What does it mean to be church? There is a temptation to think and talk about it like we would any other organisation. It has members, it has leaders, it has meetings, it has activities and mission statements.

I think there is a danger of this being so strong, that we fail to understand the upside down nature of the church and the radicalism of Christ.

Mt 12:46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

Mt 12:48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Being a Christian is joining Jesus' family.

1Pe 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10

Please note it does not say that some of you are priests, but the whole of the church are priests. Peter being a Jew knew what he meant by being a priest it was a very special and important position, and yet Peter was saying that everyone was a priest. We tend to weaken the idea of the Priesthood of all believers to a form of equality, however when Peter talks about being a Royal Priesthood, he knew the power of what he was saying.

Paul takes a functional view,

1Co 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues ? Do all interpret? 31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts.

Again Paul knew exactly the power of what he was saying when he called the church the body of Christ. Please note that he does not use terms priest, father or leader. Apostles are special messengers, and are people who are given a special task. It is not a role designed to operate within one local church but one that has a ministry across an area (that could be geographic, demographic, cultural etc.) The next is prophets, which is interesting because our perception of the Old Testament prophet is not connected with church life, but the person who lives in the wilderness. The importance of prophecy is that prophets are people who call people to follow Christ. Teachers are people who teach.

It is easy to see how such gifts rather than competing for importance build up the body of Christ. Paul talks about miracles and gifts, but then goes on to talk a long time about the greater gifts and emphasises love in 1 Cor 13.

The Jews saw themselves as one big extended family, and therefore we see this in both the Jews addressing the Christians, "Brothers, what must we do to be saved," and also the apostles addressing the Jewish people, Ac 3:17 “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders."

So when Peter calls them a people, he may have in mind the story of Ruth. Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.

The community of the early church demonstrates this idea not just in theology but in action. They loved and cared for each other and sold their possessions to look after each other. It was commented about them, "

Loving one another is a big theme of the New Testament, of the whole Bible.

In a broken and hurting world, that struggles to do biological family, we are called to be a supernatural family.

These are incomplete thoughts, because the subject is so big, but it is such a challenge to us and to every age. We are called to relate to each other in a radically different way, based not on what I can get, and my own self-realisation, but on the needs of others and on serving God.

We are called to be different.

Saved by grace

I read an article in The Guardian recently (Sat 27 October, see The sins of the father) about Simon Crowhurst and how he lost his father at sea.

Donald Cowhurst was the final entrant in the Sunday Times' Golden Globe race, a round the world sailing trip with a £5,000 prize - a lot of money in 1968. He was an amateur but he managed to get sponsorship to do it on the basis that he would complete the journey.

At first it went disastrously badly, but then reports began to come in that he was doing much better. However, not far from the final finish line, two policeman appeared at the family home.

It turned out that in reality he had been lying, rather than sailing all around the world, he had decided to loop back to the start. He was only trying to finish the race and save him and his family from bankruptcy. Though in reality his backers were prepared to release him from that and he probably would not have been ruined if he had stuck to the race.

The problem was he cheated, he knew he had cheated, and yet he was on line for winning the race. He knew that as soon as his voyage was checked he would be found out, and therefore he threw himself overboard and drowned.

You can imagine what would happen to the family next. The disgrace at the suicide, the financial ruin, and what that would do to the family.

Except when you read the article you discover that Simon is a research technician at Cambridge, married with children, and when talking about his father seems to have his head firmly on his shoulders.

So what happened? What went right?

Donald Cowhurst did not win the race Robin Knox-Johnston did, however he donated his £5,000 prize money to the Cowhurst family saving them from financial ruin. Simon comments that, "He's an incredibly generous man - a real hero."

The history that would have happened did not happen, Simon Cowhurst and his family were saved by grace. His father did not win the race, but Knox-Johnston who won donated the £5,000 prize money that saved his family.

The term saved by grace generally means little to most people today, but I hope this illustration from real life helps.

Still running for the bus

I was late leaving the house this week, and though I ran at points I was still a distance from the bus stop when I saw the bus driving up. I was not yet late, but the bus was early. I broke my ankle a while ago and it is still not right, and therefore I was not quite quick enough. I did run for the bus, but it drove off just as I got to the back of it.

I was discussing this with a colleague at work and he told me that he no longer ran for the bus. He had run too many times and it seemed like the bus drivers took a perverse pleasure from driving off just as he was almost in reach.

It struck me as an image of lost hope and disappointment.

Bill Clinton famously said, "I still believe in a place called hope." (well he was born there), but sometimes it is difficult to hope.

People talk about clinging onto hope, but the image that we have of hope from the Bible is of something far more certain.

1 Cor 13v7 says about love "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (NIV)

The passage later states, v13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (NIV)

Do we have a hope that remains?

There are other famous passages on hope,

Psalm 25

3 No one whose hope is in you
will ever be put to shame,
but they will be put to shame
who are treacherous without excuse. (NIV)

Great as a promise but what exactly does it mean?

Psalm 62 provides an incredible image.

3 How long will you assault a man?
Would all of you throw him down—
this leaning wall, this tottering fence?

4 They fully intend to topple him
from his lofty place;
they take delight in lies.
With their mouths they bless,
but in their hearts they curse.
Selah

5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from him.

6 He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. (NIV)

Man is shown as a leaning wall, as a tottering fence. That does not sound like a very hopeful image. Leaning walls and tottering fences have a tendency to fall down.

David though refers to God as my rock, my salvation and my fortress. Those are all images of strength and images of hope.

Hope in itself is not the issue. If I put my hope in the things of this world then I am looking for trouble. If I hope that I will get the bus then too many times I will end up being disappointed.

If my hope is in God then I will never be disappointed.

We can give great rhetoric about how we should not lose hope, about how we should always keep running for that bus, always keep believing. My friend is being quite sensible though, don't put your hope in something that is going to disappoint you. Buses and bus drivers are not great things to put your hope in.

There is and there has to be something more. Don't put your hope in the number 20 bus, put it in your rock, your salvation and your fortress.

Don't place your hope in buses, place your hope in God.

Though he slay me

Job 13v15 Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;
I will surely defend my ways to his face.

One lesson I have learned in life is that some things have unexpected consequences. You take a path and it does not always take you where you expected it to take you. Another lesson that is obvious but that I struggle to learn is that even though this happens on a regular basis, I often fail to learn from it, and instead like the goldfish perpetually swimming around the same bowl, I'm still surprised.

Theology matters, by this I do not mean academic theology, but instead what we really believe about God, and what we believe we are here on earth for.

If you believe that God is a man with a big smile on his face who put us on earth to be happy, you are going to have severe problems with reality.

If you believe that God is a strict puritanical God who does not like people to have fun, and put us on earth to do worthy things then it is not likely that you are going to be much fun to be around.

If you believe that God is distant, then most likely while he is far away you are not going to take much notice of what He would think about your behaviour if He was closer by.

As human beings it is quite normal to like pleasure and want to avoid pain. Given the choice between a well paid job, a happy family, a nice house and trying to survive in a slum we would pick the former, and because we would do so we would expect that if we follow God and are obedient that God would do so to.

Solomon was a good boy and he got everything. David well, he misbehaved a bit but the Psalmist became Israel's great King, who thought he could get away with murder. Abraham was blessed materially, so was Jacob, so was Joseph (eventually).

God is nice and he likes us. All true, well depending on your definition of nice, but that does not mean he wants us to be happy - as if God's sole purpose in existing was to make mankind happy.

The problem is with this theological outlook, is that good fathers do not want their children to simply spend the rest of their lives bouncing on daddy's knees going gurgle gurgle. A good father wants them to grow up.

Perhaps I need to grow up a bit. I struggle at times and get angry with God because life has not constantly drawn me a happy lot with everything easy. Indeed trying to follow Jesus tends to make life awkward rather than easy. There are choices, there are prices to be paid, there are at times sacrifices.

And for people who have an attachment to the give away God, the idea that I might have to make some sort of sacrifice - that it might not all come easily and ready on a plate for me to bung in the spiritual microwave is a bit of a shocker. I mean Jesus paid the price to give me free entry to the party, an access all areas pass - didn't he? Isn't all I need to do is to take the pre-prepared and warm it up a bit and enjoy?

The problem is that life can be very tough and it does not always have easy happy endings. This real life, not the Waltons.

If we believe too strongly that we are meant to be happy, we can be vulnerable to the temptation that says I must find my happiness elsewhere. Therefore rather than working it through with God, we walk away to find something else to feed on.

It may be cheesy to say that what God gives us satisfies and nothing else can fit that God shaped hole, but in this case it happens to be true. There is no back-up replacement God for those times when the Almighty seems far away - indeed that is exactly what the people of Israel wanted when the demanded a golden calf.

God is a bit far away a bit distant while idolatry and temple prostitution and the like provide instant gratification. However, God is quite clear that there is no place for idols. We come to Christ, and as the famous phrase goes Christ alone. There is no place for substitutes, no easy quick fixes.

The early Christians were known as the people of the way, Jesus did not invite people to an instant destination, but to an onward journey. We are not called to love the world, not called to pitch our tent and build our castle here, we are just passing through. This is not home, this is not our comfort, we are as T. S. Elliot puts it in the journey of the magi.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

There is something haunting in Elliot's words (written following his conversion) it is a recognition that it is not all found in this world. Life is bigger than this life because God is life and He is bigger than this life.

Therefore trying to be satisfied here in the things of this world is not just missing the point, not just bad theology, but mission impossible. It is when we die that we live, it is when we give everything to God, really give everything to God, that we find what we really have - what really matters.

Christian life therefore is also Christian death - the two are not in this case different. It is through not just Christ's death that we find life, but also our own.

The problem is that without faith, without a belief in something more, without belief in God - then it is all so much hocus pocus. We are called to choose a road which is a tough road to travel, a difficult journey. We are called to walk past the thousand stalls of sin that are set to entice us and call us away, to call us to stop the journey and stay where we all - the problem being that if we do so we may never make our final destination.

We live in a world that worships pleasure, and if I am entirely honest, at times that includes me. I want happiness that is here and now, I want the sun to always shine, and I don't want any clouds to spoil it. Yet God calls me to die to self and to truly live.

It is not, in the end, all about my pleasure, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.

Five loaves and two fish

You just discover that you have five thousand people turn up for lunch and all you have to offer them is five loaves and two fish.

Compared to the challenge the reality is that you have nothing to offer. Five loaves and two fish is not going to go very far.

It looks like everyone is going to have to go home hungry.

Sometimes in life we face big challenges with few resources. It is tempting to look at the problem and write it off as mission impossible without even thinking about it.

David had faced lions before but he had never faced combat with an enemy like Goliath, and Goliath could see the funny side of it and yet....

Gideon had just three hundred men and they were up against the multitudes of the Midianites, and yet....

Daniel was in a foreign land, with foreign God and the lions were feeling hungry and yet....

Miracles are possible.

Jesus manages after a hard day at work - healing and preaching, to feed the five thousand with just five loaves and a couple of fish.

David defeats Goliath.

Gideon beats the Midianites.

Daniel doesn't get eaten by the Lions.

We may not have much to offer. We may face impossible odds, except if God is on our side, the odds don't actually matter.

Five loaves and two fish is enough to feed the five thousand if that is what God intends.

The question is not what do we have, but to stand in the place of faith and hope and love, and listen as Jesus asks you the question what do you have and be prepared to be part of a miracle.

I can't help but notice that at the end their were twelve baskets full of broken pieces. At the end there were not twelve baskets of loaves and fish but of broken pieces.

There is something about miracles that changes everything and that mends that which was broken and breaks that which was not. There is change and there are often broken pieces left over.

Tomorrow we will face challenges that we may feel that we do not have the resources to face, however if God can use five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand then he can use us and whatever resources we have to do his will.

Sheep without a shepherd (Compassion 1)

Matt 9v36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (NIV)

One of the things that is fascinating me at the moment is sight - how we see the world and how that impacts how we behave in the world. If we see the car coming we will not step into the road before it. Or if we watch our steps we will not trip on the last step and fracture our ankle, and I wouldn't be sitting her with my leg in a cast.

How we see influences how we behave.

If we see people positively we behave to them in a friendly manner, if we see people less positively then we may feel uncomfortable around them.

It says "When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

I wonder how we would have seen that crowd if we had looked upon them?

The crowds came because Jesus had been teaching and healing. The dead girl, the sick woman, the blind and the mute and every sickness and disease, and so the people were coming to Jesus.

It would have been easy just to see a crowd, more work, hadn't he done enough, wasn't he tired. He comments that,

37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

However, this was not a moan of self-pity. The start of Chapter 10, he does something about it, he sends out the 12.

Jesus has compassion, but what does compassion mean? The word used is to have the bowels yearn, to feel sympathy, to feel pity, to be moved. The Jews thought that the bowels were the seat of sympathy. The idea is that this is not just some mental note, some thought of "Oh these poor people." Jesus was physically moved, it was so to speak a gut reaction.

Why was he moved?

He saw them as they were.

The launchpad of his mission (see Chapter 10) was his sense of compassion for the lost. He really did feel their pain, their misery, their suffering.

We see the idea of sheep without a shepherd in terms of leadership, we look at the Pharisees and we see that spiritually speaking they were blind guides and therefore they were unable to lead.

However, if we take a step back we can see the image of a sheep without a shepherd in a different way. The shepherd that Jesus was thinking about was not the sort of one man and his dog, who drives them through the gates to try and win the points. This was the shepherd of the 23 Psalm, which we can believe reflects David's glimpse of God's longing for His people.

The shepherd who cares for the sheep who leads it beside still waters, who brings it into pasture, who protects the sheep from danger, who cares for the sheep, who is even prepared to lay down his life for his sheep. Instead these people are like sheep without a shepherd, they have no one to tell them where the water is, no one to tell them where the good fresh grass is, and no one to protect them when the wild animals attack. Therefore they wander not knowing where to go, and are picked off by the wild animals.

To be a sheep without a shepherd - to be a sheep that no one wants or cares for - is a terrible predicament and Jesus is moved to compassion. He looks at these people and sees them through eyes of love, he identifies with them, and cares for them.

The word compassion comes from the Latin which comes from com meaning together and pati meaning to suffer - therefore to suffer together, to suffer with, or to feel the pain.

As Christians we are called to feel the pain. The together element of it matters, for the first question of compassion is connection, it is a connection with the pain of others and therefore we need to be able to connect, to sense our togetherness.

In Genesis 4 we hear of Cain and Abel. Cain goes out into the field and murders Abel because he is a better man, and God asks him, "Where is your brother?" and Cain lies to God and says, "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?"

It is the question that humanity has been asking ever since, for if we truly saw each other as brothers and sisters then we would not behave to each other in the manner that we do.

Christianity needs to be a rediscovery of brotherhood, not just of the people within the church, but of everyone. If we just see the world as us and them we will never connect and never truly have compassion.

We live in a world that has been described as tribal, with a culture that is so diverse and fragmented that the "us" in "us and them" can seem incredibly small - and we look after our own.

Jesus calls us to a totally different perspective - not of us and them, but of universal compassion, of universal togetherness.

We live in a world with sheep without a shepherd and it is easy to look at programmes, services, plans and ideas - but if we do so without compassion we have missed the point. We need to be moved by others, we need to feel it in our bowels. The world is lost, Wesley described there as being "here and about ten thousand souls going headlong into hell."

We can celebrate action, but God does not want action heroes, he wants people who see and do, people who feel and act, people who are moved. People who see the suffering around them and are changed, who become people who act. Not because they ought to, but because God's love compels them to act.

Mission begins not with meetings and plan and strategies, but a crazy little thing called love. It all starts with compassion. He took pity on them, He saw their suffering, He felt their pain, and in our disconnected world we need to as well.

Mercy street

I read in the news today of some women accused of prostitution who had been beheaded in Pakistan by Islamic militants.

When Jesus was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, he said let him who is without sin cast the first stone. The crowd melted away. For they saw in the woman something of themselves, they had all been caught may be not so publicly as the woman they all deserved judgement, they all needed mercy.

Normally I presume that this encounter with Jesus was life changing for the woman. She met Jesus, she was shown mercy and she did leave her life of sin. However, the Bible does not cosily tell us how she gave up her sinful life and lived a saintly life from then on.

We think surely if people encountered the love of God, the mercy of God, then they would change - but that is not always the case. For we have encountered the mercy of God, and how much have we changed?

The truth about God's mercy is that it is based on unconditional love. Jesus showed love not because He was an optimist who thought that every individual who met Him would be changed, but because God shows mercy to sinners with His eyes open - and He gives us the opportunity to change.

Mercy is truly mercy, because it is not based on some certain formula that says mercy means change, mercy is shown to sinners that they might have the opportunity to change - but God knows that does not always happen. God shows us mercy as sinners, far off, dirty, gritty, sinful, and He loves us.

Our faith needs to have a gritty realism to it that faces the reality of life on earth. Jesus came he showed perfect love and yet we crucified Him. He showed mercy and forgave those who sinned against Him, and some were impacted and changed, but some went on to try and destroy His followers.

Some of our ideas of mercy are skewed by images of merciful gods that are not really that merciful. However the facts challenge this, God offers forgiveness and mercy to even those who crucify Him, and He knows full well that they are not all going to suddenly change. Some will, but many will not.

We need to face our own sinfulness, and then receive mercy and the church needs to become a place of mercy. We are called to offer mercy to the perishing - many of Jesus warns will continue to perish and some of whom will persecute us for giving them the good news.

The church needs to become a mercy street, and it is there the reward is - lend and don't expect to get it back. We will have our reward in heaven, mercy often does not get a reward on this earth.

As we are confronted by those whose need for mercy is particularly evident, we need always to remember, as Jesus reminded the crowd, that we are not the morally superior looking onto the inferior but that we are all sinners. We show mercy as people who have been shown mercy. Everyone needs mercy.

Peer Pressure

Cheshire Chief Constable Peter Fahy spoke about the alcohol related problems that led to the death of Gary Newloves. He decries the alcohol culture of young people and how this leads to anti-social behaviour. He proposes more expensive alcohol, more restraints on the sale and consumption of alcohol.

As a nation we are being changed by circumstances. While some of the suggestions sound very sensible and the call for a national debate is wholly to be welcomed, in that debate some difficult questions need to be asked.

Why is it that our young people go out and get drunk. I was discussing this with my wife. What is it that makes people follow their peer group and what is it that makes them rebel against it.

I was talking about how on alcohol and other matters I rebelled against peer pressure and how can I teach my children to do so, and why did I?

We have a tendency to want to please the people that are important to us. That is what drives children to drink, they want to be seen as someone. They want to be accepted by their peer group.

Why then did I not?

One answer is thatI did. I wanted to be admired by the people who were important to me. The question is who was important to me.

Of course, I could say that God was important to me, and that would be very true. I read the Bible regularly and in that and in prayer I met with God. It was about a personal encounter with the divine who loved me and understood me in a way no one else every could or ever would.

I was accepted, I was forgiven, I was loved. That gives us an incredible freedom, and the power to walk away when everyone else says go.

However, if I was going to say the people who matters to me who I wanted to please it was not those my age at school. I belonged to a loving Christian community who I wanted to please.

Now of course they never saw what went on when I was out with my friends, but they had the Holy Spirit, and I wanted God's blessing on my life. I knew that if I wanted God's blessing then I was not going to get it by doing the things that displeased Him.

When tempted to walk away I thought where do I want to be, where do I want to go. I met wonderful older people who were more alive not just to God but to life, than many of my contemporaries. I met few others who really drew me.

You want to please who you love. If we love God we want to please Him. However the church has a really important role to play as well if we love and we respect each other we can provide tangible encouragement to people not by moaning or decrying but just by loving people and believing the best - by being grace in action.

Perhaps what people need most is people to love them and believe in them, and then they will respond to the power of love, rather than the pressures of the world. The problem is that we need the power of God if we are going to be really effective in standing against the pressures. Of course our love can point people to that source, can point people to God.

Grace and Ungrace

How do we deal with imperfections and failure? It seems to be that there are various different methods but they can be classed in one of two camps grace and ungrace.

When we encounter failure we can take over. We can give the message it is okay, I'm here, I'll make sure it is okay. I know what I am doing. The problem is that rather than helping others to discover their potential we instead paralyse them into believing that they cannot get it right. I have worked for bosses who believed that everything I did was wrong, after a while you end up paralysed and doing silly things because it undermines your self worth and your confidence in making a decision. You refuse to ask a perfectly sensible question because you know that it will just receive that sigh and that look, and therefore because you did not ask the perfectly sensible question you flail and fail because you cannot read minds. One person's view of perfection can be incredibly subjective.

I am conscious as I write this that I am writing about other people and other situations and circumstances, and in some ways it can be good to look at other people's faults - if and only if - we realise that we have faults that we are as unconscious of as them. We can be blind to our own faults. Have I made other people feel like a failure because they have not lived up to my standards? I am very conscious that in the past I have. There was no choice of another path, they did not go "God's way*" (*as defined by me) and therefore they went the wrong way - and there is probably some truth in that, but making a big issue out of it probably does not really help, and from based on the evidence it does not seem to have helped.

This can lead to another approach to failure a kind of dejected acceptance. I fail, you fail, we all fail, and we forget to look up at the sky and we forget to believe that God can actually change lives because we all fail. Failure does not have to be the whole story. We do have choices, choices that we can make for good or for evil.

I have been through that phase. Well I fail, I am imperfect, look at the Bible, we all fail and you focus on the failure. It is the response of disillusionment. Things should be better, things could be better, but in reality (we say) we are always going to fail. Maybe we have tried hard and still failed.

Jeff Lucas comments in today's (26 July) Lucas on Life, "To err is human but not to learn from the errors of our ways and so continue in destructive patterns is madness."

We are not perfect, but that is the message of the cross. We fail, but Jesus can save us, and that is why He died. He died not because He believed that we were perfect, and nor did He believe that we would become perfect in these earthly days. He was not just the Son of God, but He had walked this earth for his 3 and 30 years (give or take a year or two) and He had spent three year's travelling with a group of men who were far from perfect and one of which was to betray Him. Jesus was not blinded by Peter, and yet to the man who was going to deny Him, the guy who would continue to make mistakes, He said, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."

There is grace for sinners, and grace is not simply a sticking plaster for sin, or some divine blotting paper, it is about power to change.

God does not come to us and say you have failed against you snivelling little humans, God does not come to us and say you've failed again accept it you are a failure, God does not come and say, let me do it all. God comes with grace.

The issue of Christianity is not that we can believe in God, but that God believes in us. Despite the failures and the difficulties, despite the apparent reasons for throwing in the towel, God has not given up on humanity. He still believes, He still hopes, because

1Co 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1Co 13:8a Love never fails.

The issue is not that we believe in God, but that God still believes in us.

God does not come with a big stick, or a to nullify us and to take over, God comes with the open arms of love, because in the end it is love that changes people not big sticks or big change.

Grace gives us the chance to work it through, to deal with the issues, to start again, and we want it for us, but the challenge is we need to give it to others as well. We want a chance, but we need to be people who give others a chance.

Grace tells me that I do not have to live in the never never land of sin and guilt, grace tells me that tomorrow can be different, that I can be different. Grace tells me that because Jesus died I live in a world of endless possibilities, Grace tells me that I am free. I can make the choices, the chains are broken, I can leave the prison. I can taste the sunlight.

The challenge is that we need to believe that this is true not just for us, but for everyone who lives in darkness who needs to see the light.

This summer it seems that it has been raining and pouring, we have seen the floods, and we have seen little of the sun. We have been living in darkness but we believe that the sun can shine.

We live in a people walking in darkness, and yet the Son of God has shone upon us. We need to accept the Son into our lives for He can drive the darkness away. The light has dawned, and the new age of grace has dawned, free and abundant and available to all that will come, but we need to take hold of the fact that it is not just for us, it needs to be for the world.

Understanding why we do church as we do church

Years ago people lived in communities (some of which were probably quite dysfunctional) but the masses were not educated. Therefore church had quite an educational feel and tended to be driven from the front.

Today people are educated (though whether mass education today challenges people to think for themselves enough is another question) but most people do not live in communities. Therefore churches today have house groups, and often the stopping for a coffee is seen as important as the service itself.

Our environments effects how we do church, and that is an advantage rather than a reason for concern. Just like the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath so church was created for man not man for church.

Life is different and therefore people's needs are different, and therefore how we do church will be different. Church must meet people where they are, and church must reflect the environment that it is in.

The problem is that often we try to reflect the world in matters that really only scratch the surface (music style etc.) rather than understanding the drivers and the deeper issues. For instance we live in a more emotional age and therefore you might say that we should be more emotional to follow the style of the age. However, we need to ask deeper questions. An over emphasis on the emotions and on feelings is dangerous in all walks of life. The approach to marriage that says it's all over because I don't feel anything any more is worrying and applied to Christianity as dangerous as it is as applied to the rest of life. We need to exercise discernment in our interaction with our culture.

In a world of feelings then our worship may be more emotional, because that is where we are. However we need to be careful about the dangers that brings about and steer clear of emotionalism. We also need to look at why we are becoming more emotional and address that. Are people looking for something more, are people dissatisfied with cold science and longing for something more - of course they are. We need to recognise we were created to be more than just rational machines! I also think that there are tensions within society that cause cracks and these are shown by a greater amount of emotional expression.

Princess Diana died and the reaction was worrying, but that was ten years ago, and there is a greater awareness today that perhaps we got a little carried away, there is a move towards greater conservatism (though that could prove to be temporary - the exuberant Blair has been replaced by the dour Brown). In the church we too often respond to what has happened, rather than what is happening, we need to be prophetic rather than just historic.

The church needs to meet people where they are, and meet the needs of the contemporary world remembering that the greatest need we have is for God.

The Paradox Machine

Okay so this is getting worryingly dominated by Doctor Who at the moment.

At the end of the last series of Doctor Who the Master returned and turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine. The Paradox is that it brings people back to interfere with their own past which means that they should cease to exist. It is therefore a paradox, they should not be there, it should not exist.

By the end of the final episode the earth was practically destroyed millions killed, the whole of Japan wiped out and the Master about to start galactic war. However the people chant the name of the Doctor and he gains the strength to reverse the paradox and therefore time reverses to just before the time the aliens invaded and the future, the destruction, the murder, and all that pain did not happen. Of course the Doctor and the others with him know what has happened but for everyone else it literally did not happen.

It struck me that sometimes we are paradox machines. We do things which we know we should not do. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know that certain things are wrong, and by like the Pandora's box we open it and taste the forbidden fruit. The problem is that once we do so it brings in it's wake destruction.

The problem is in real life you cannot just reverse the paradox, in real life you cannot turn back the clock and undo the destruction. However much we may want to, however much we may hope and pray that we could. In the media there is something unsatisfying about it as a literary device, because in real life it does not happen.

In real life we are "paradox machines," praising God and doing all the right things, and then yet at times we blow it all. The religious parallels were striking, the Master was smooth talking and convincing, as these baddies often are - and yet he carried with him death and destruction.

Sin is subtle and attractive but deadly. Jesus came to heal a broken world, but the damage sin causes cannot simple be reversed. We and the rest of the world still have to live with the consequences.

The essential story

Doctor Who is back and is back on form. I had a theory about why Doctor Who became rubbish and disappeared. It was because we no longer really believed in good or evil. We stopped believing in evil, or that there was anything really worth hiding behind the sofa for. Everything was relative, evil was just something that happened when people did not live in good enough conditions. Better housing, a better environment and suddenly everyone would be good. Nothing really mattered, and in a world where nothing really matters it is difficult to have a good yarn, and therefore Doctor Who went down hill. We never really believed in good either that was relative, so try having a story about the battle between good and evil when you don't believe in either, and it is not going to work. Doctor Who never relied on special affects or big fight scenes and therefore it just slowly died, and it was the lack of the story that was the enemy that finally killed off the Doctor.

However, whether or not September 11th changed the world, it and other such events changed our view of the world. Doctor Who disappeared before Kosovo, before the bodies started floating down through Burundi. When we were not really aware of what was happening in the Congo. While we still thought Zimbabwe would sort itself out. While here in the UK violence has increased, so that it is not just over there it is over here again. Till again we believe in evil, till again we believe that there is something worth hiding behind the settee about. J K Rowling has made an incredible success about the battle of good against evil in Harry Potter, and it is a battle where the goodies don't just get away scot free either, but are marked.

To have a good good versus evil story you have to believe in good. It is here again where changing in culture and outlook appear interesting. Both Doctor Who and Harry Potter show a leaning towards ideas of good and heroism that I once thought had disappeared for good in a cynical age. Of course both are family entertainment and have children in mind, there is still much that is unremittingly bleak and dark, where "heroes" just shoot and kill, and it would be very much premature to announce the death of the anti-hero. However there is a resurgence of the idea of goodness and that it might be so to speak a good thing. There is at least a small call to what we might even call traditional morality.

We have lived through the me generation and in one sense looking after yourself is such a part of human nature that it is never going to disappear, but the harshness of some of the self-centredness has been based on the idea that I can get on on my own. I don't need you, you don't need me. I can fight my battles on my own. However when life gets really difficult we turn to others not just because it is the warm and cosy thing to do, but because we have to. We might be a national of individualists but when it comes to fighting something as big of Nazism, you have to work together. When evil is out there and armed and dangerous, you have to alter your behaviour.

One of the interesting questions that is being posed and that I heard on the radio today was the discussion about how much you sacrifice individual freedoms for the interest of collective security. The fact that we live in a world with dangers, with an enemy does have an impact on how we may behave - though we need to ensure that we do not manage to imprison ourselves because of the threats of others.

The world of course has not changed, we have lived in a world of sin since the days of Adam and Eve - there is nothing new under the sun. However the fact that our thinking is in flux matters, really matters. Much of the way that we live is based on the idea that in the end everything will all turn out okay, whatever we do, that life does not really have consequences - that it will be all right on the night.

Car bombs and drunken louts remind us that the reality is very different, that in truth our actions do have consequences and as Iraq demonstrates it is far easier to cause problems than it is to solve them, far easier to set things in motion than to stop them once they are in motion. Our actions do have consequences, the war that we hatch in someone else's country can come home to roost, and of course our actions in terms of pollution and how we treat the planet do have consequences and if we are not careful they can have dire consequences, melting icecaps and rising sea levels and climate chaos.

In the end the battle of good and evil matters because it is the human story and it has consequences. I think sometimes the church has something to blame, we can treat religion as the ultimate panacea - bring it to Jesus and it will all be okay; just believe; just pray - but our actions have consequences. The choices we make matter. There may not be angels and demons on our shoulders shouting or gently reasoning with us to choose a certain direction, but what we do matters - it matters to us and it matters to other people.

Christianity and the church have been seen as irrelevant because the story that we told about good and evil did not matter any more. We lived in a world that not only did not believe in God and the devil, but did not believe in good or evil either, anything went between consenting adults and if you did not like it you could switch over. However we have reaped what we have sowed and perhaps whether or not it makes a difference to people's attitude towards God and Christianity or not, people's attitudes are changing - and as much because of fear as anything else.

History has lessons for us and one of those lessons is that sometimes terrible things can happen, and that once they begin to happen it can be too late to stop them. Events like the French Revolution remind us that nothing is eternal and that sometimes reaping the injustices that we have sown can be a very bitter pill. Mario Antoinette had an idealised peasant village built where she could hide from the world and enjoy the simple peasant life, but it was fantasy, in reality the peasants lived in poverty and many of the city dweller lived in squalor and her rural retreat could not save her from the reality.

Good and evil matter, and therefore Christianity deals with the essential story of humanity, that of the battle between good and evil. This is played out in every aspect of our lives, and that is why morality matters. Easy sex has become part of the British way of life, and sex has become disconnected from marriage, so that the majority of children are born outside of wedlock. The problem is that while easy sex has a certain appeal, the reality that giving in to our passions and desires opens the door to much that is not good. In the end bringing up children and building families and communities is about hard work and self-sacrifice and dedication. The reason why marriage makes sense is that if you cannot commit yourself to someone for life then really you should not be bringing a child into the world, and though your child will be influenced by you and by your genetics, you do not get to choose your child. In the end as the last Harry Potter film finished, the time is coming when we will all have to choose between what is right and what is easy. The time of that choice is now, and indeed is always now.

The reasons why God sets good laws is that we may be blessed by living good lives, but God's laws make sense and can be summed up very simply love God and love one another. In a sense therefore God's rules for our relationships with each other are love. The reason for rules surrounding sexual restraint are because that is the loving thing to do, rather than exploiting and demeaning others.

As Christians we can often become uncomfortable with ideas of goodness. We do not like to teach it in case it makes us out to be boring, or to be the people who like to say no. However if we fail to share what it means to be good, then people will make mistakes and will hurt themselves - and others. People are into experience but the problem is that if we wait to learn from experience we may cause incredible damage both to ourselves and others in the meantime.

The other problem is that when we rely on experience we are limited by our experiences, i.e. we may not know any better, we may lack the empirical data that shows us the other choices that we missed. It is like deciding to go somewhere and not asking for directions but hoping that we will eventually stumble upon where we need to be. We need to take a look at the directions, we need to understand where we are going. The problem is that there are dangerous places, cliffs that we can drop off, bogs that we can sink into, objects that will block our paths - just setting off in hope is not enough. One of the images that I struggle with is the idea that the Bible is a map book, but the image that often we have is that we need to consult it at all times, like something that we carry in a case around our necks. However we know that is not the case, we know the way to go to the shops without needing a map, but there is a reason for that we have been shown, we have learned the way. It is like that with the Bible on much of it we just need to hear and obey, and once we have learned it and obey it we do not need to keep on looking up what to do in a certain circumstance we know because the Bible tells us.

There is a story of goodness and love, we need to learn it by heart, we need it to ring in our ears and to become our story. Not that we have to look at it nervously every day, but that we need to learn to live it out every day. Of course it is not a simple story and therefore we will still learn new things about it and we need to come back to it when fresh experiences challenge or where we find ourselves in uncharted territory. I'm not saying that we do not need to keep learning, of course we do, but we need to learn new things, not just to repeat by rote what we learned in Sunday School. It is about learning new things, and struggling with new terrain.

We live in a world of a battle, where there are real casualties, where what we do matters and has real consequences. In this world Christianity is 100% relevant and it is this message that the church needs to be unafraid to proclaim, it matters, it is the essential story.

I need you like the rain (on a Bank Holiday weekend)

Perhaps the worship leader did not want to go to the church BBQ. Perhaps he wanted a quiet weekend. As the rain poured down, and we sang "I need you like the rain" and I sat there thinking how nice it would be to see the sunshine again, I wondered if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking.

As far as I know there is not a song entitled, "I need you like the sunshine." Now, I know we need the rain, but sitting there on a damp Bank Holiday Sunday morning with things that I wanted to do which involved going outside, I did not particularly feel like I needed the rain. Or rather perhaps I did need the rain, just not here, not now.

Was I therefore trying to say to God, I need you, just not now, not here, not today - dear God please can I have a weekend off??? Today couldn't I have some sunshine....

Some people will be uncomfortable about me saying this, aren't I being slightly silly, a bit ridiculous, a little mocking of things that are spiritual, rather indeed unspiritual. Perhaps I am being slightly provocative, and it's not just that I think we should think seriously about the words that we sing it is something bigger than that.

Jesus came that the relations with Him and the relationships with others that sin has broken might be healed. I once had a boss who commented particularly negatively about some witticism that I had made in a meeting - people had laughed and enjoyed it, and I do not think there had been any negative feedback - it was just that she was rather lacking in the humour department. Her comment was not just that I should not say it, I should not think it. Well she was not exactly what I would describe as a friend, she was a particularly unpleasant boss.

However sometimes Christians can give that impression, don't say it, don't even think about it. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, we do not question the ridiculous - we submit, we love, we trust. What though we end up with is a pale imitation of a relationship. We are called to call God Father, but I can have a joke with my Dad - that is part of having a good relationship. I have said before that there ought to be a programme called Christians do the silliest things, and that is okay. However we need to be able to talk about it, to walk with each other, to travel together and to discuss.

Of course part of the problem is that Jesus did not do ridiculous things, so we do not have examples of how the disciples dealt with Him with spiritual ridiculousness. However Jesus himself had some tough words for the Pharisees and their ridiculous rules and some of that could be seen as mocking the spiritual and quite unspiritual. We know that His language upset them rather. Jesus had a taste for highlighting the ridiculous, for debunking the apparently spiritual. Jesus stood for truth and honesty, and sometimes we need to be more honest.

So God I need you like the sunshine on a bank holiday weekend, but I praise you Lord that you do exist. I need you like the dry ground needs rain. I need you like the plants need sunshine. I need you as a child needs a father.

At times we need to take ourselves rather less seriously. God likes it when we laugh together. Perhaps we need to review of understanding of God, I do not believe that God is the serious school master with a big red pen who delights to mark down our mistakes.

Perhaps He does have a big red pen, perhaps He does mark crosses all over our mistakes, and by it He marks the words, "Paid in full". He has done it because He wants us to live again, to laugh again, to rediscover the joy of living and loving.