Tag Archives: Presence

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Letting go of jumble on the jumble sale

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After my wife and I married, we spent 6 happy years as part of Mount Charles Methodist Church, St Austell, Cornwall.

Among the congregation was a wonderful lady named June. She played the church organ and, she was also the proud and seemingly life-long custodian of one of the brik-a-brak stalls at every church fayre. if my memory serves me correctly, it was jewellery, broaches and necklaces and earrings and other shiny things.

As every church fayre approached, the boxes of goods would come out of wherever June stored them, she would lovingly unpack and display the goods on the table ready for sale.

Then at the end of each event, she would equally as lovingly box the remaining items up, and take custody of them until the next church fayre.

The problem was, that bar the odd item, the same items went back into the boxes that had come out. Much of what I would lovingly call ‘jumble’ never got sold, but was kept hold of.

I’ve been thinking about June and her stall this week following last Sundays lectionary reading of John 2:13-25. It is the episode in the gospel story when Jesus upturns the tables in the temple, and lets the animals go free declaring ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’

In a dramatic story, Jesus declares the temple had become a marketplace, challenging the unjust trading, and the way was distracting people from God.

The passage goes to to share how Jesus talked of his own body as a temple (verse 19 & 21). The physical temple in Jerusalem was the place God dwelt with Gods people, but Jesus suggests he himself, his body, is a temple, and points us to see that Jesus was a person in whom God dwelt.

Elsewhere in the bible, we read a further reflection on ‘temple’ places where God dwells. In the book of 1 Corinthians 6, we read “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?”.

Which brings me back to June and her brick-a-brak. If we are temples of the Holy Spirit – people in whom God dwells – is there jumble on the jumble sale of our lives that needs upturning and taking out? Is there stuff in our lives that distracts us from God?

Sometimes we know there are things in our lives we need to let go of, but we hold on because they are familiar, comfortable, certain, while also knowing they distract us. Perhaps there may even be times when we hold onto the jumble because it is a distraction, and we’re fearful and what God will say when we remove them.

‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’

Are we ready and willing to allow Jesus to help us remove the distraction inducing jumble, to make space in our lives and our hearts, for Jesus?

Are we ready to allow ourselves to experience the depth & breadth of his love?

May we be willing to allow Jesus to upturn that which needs upturning, that we might turn to be more fully who God calls us to be.

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The thin place. ‘There is Room for Revelation’

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We’ve reached the final week of There is Room – and our theme as we conclude this journey is ‘There is Room for Revelation’.

The Christmas story is full of it – so much of it in fact – that I wonder if we to easily gloss over the breadth and height and depth of revelation we encounter in our journey through the Christmas story.

Go right back to the beginning of the gospel story. God revels through an angel to Mary she will bear a son. God reveals to Zechariah that Elizabeth will be with child in her young age. God reveals to Joseph through a dream that Mary was pregnant, despite him know the baby wouldn’t be his.

Then to shepherds on a hillside God reveals the wonder through choirs of angels, and to Magi who saw a star, and through diligent study find prophecy revealed.

And journeying on God reveals to the Magi through a dream not to go back to Herod, and to Joseph through a dream to flee to Egypt.

And all circling a baby in a manger. God revealed as man to dwell – Jesus our Immanuel.

There is so much of God’s revealing threaded through the Christmas story. Moments where the divide between heaven and earth runs thin. Where something more of God, God’s nature, God’s will, God’s plan, God’s faithfulness, God’s presence is revealed.

One of my most personal, most tangible moments of God revealing to me was in a field at Soul Survivor. 10,000 young people gathered in a massive big top. We’d been worshipping for some time, and then ther band struck up an acoustic version of Amazing Grace. Perse by verse the band began to drop out and leave the stage, until we came to sing the last verse:

When we’ve been there ten thousands years
Bright Shining as the Sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begin.

As we song that last verse, 10,000 voices, I could have heard a pin drop. In that moment I got a glimpse of what heaven might be like – I felt the divide between heaven and earth run thin and felt a certainty in the depths of my soul of God’s presence and love for me.

While that experience was a particualrly powerful one, I believe God is always speaking to us, revealing to us, moving among us – but we don’t always notice.

Speaking through dreams, angels,
Through putting a thought in our minds,
Through a conversation with someone else,
As we reflect on life’s events.
Moments when a mundane activity or an ordinary place becomes moments of divine encounter.

As we journey into a new year – let us make room to be ready to see God among us, to and experience God’s revealing. For God is with us. Alleluia. Amen.

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Jesus prays for us

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Read: John 17:6-19

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‘Fool of God (Christ in the Garden)’
Mark Cazalet (1964- )
Methodist Modern Art Collection 
Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208

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Read: John 17:6-19

As a parent of two young girls, I have a duty of care to them. Before they were born my wife and I would fairly often both be out of the house in an evening; we were both in a choir, my wife did some amateur dramatics, I would sometime have church meetings, most months we would head out for a meal or to the cinema, or have an evening out with friends.

But having children means we can no longer choose to head off on our own paths without considering others, because we now have a duty and responsibility to care for these small people we have the privilege to call ours.

The combination of moving away from friends in Cornwall, my becoming a minister, as well as the more recent pandemic means that;

A) only one of us can be out in an evening unless we make arrangements for someone else to look after them for us, and

B) that most evenings now involve Louise and I binge-watching the latest series we’ve take a fancy to on Netflix.

Our commitment to, and love for, our children leads us to ensure at least one us is present to care for them.

Here in these words from John 17, we find part of a long and winding prayer the gospels records Jesus prays to his father for his friends. For his band of disicples, and for all those who call Jesus friend. Because Jesus knows he is about to be taken from them. These people, his friends, who he loves and has been committed to are soon going to be without him.

Jesus is painfully and heart wrenchingly praying to the father for his friends who he will soon depart from. That they will be entrusted to God’s care, that they will belong to God and God will protect them as they seek to live out Christ’s example to them in the world.

I firmly believe in this moment of heart-outpouring prayer of Jesus 2000 years ago, Jesus prayed a prayer that was prayed beyond the confines of time and history – that in that moment Jesus prayed for each of us too.

That each of us who call Jesus friend was held in his mind, his heart, his voice, his prayer. Jesus prays for us, for me, for you.

Jesus prays that just as he belongs to the father, just as he has a close relationship with father – so too might his friends have such a relationship.

So too might his friends belong to God, and all that is light and truth and freedom, while living and serving in the world. 

Jesus makes a distinction between those who belong to the world, who seek and serve the earthly kingdom of materiality, individualism, greed and selfishness, and those who belong to God, people who seek God’s kingdom. Those who recognise, affirm and respond to the stirrings of God’s Spirit abiding within them.

Jesus’ prayer for his friends and for us, and asks that we may be in the world, in the thick of human life and activity, yet belonging not to the world, but to God. That we may be distinctive in the world – ‘sanctify them in truth’ he prays – which means make them holy. (17:17)

What does it mean to be Holy?

We’ll, let’s be honest, perhaps it will take a lifetime of living as friends of Jesus, and experiencing for ourselves what it means to belong to God to know what it means to be holy.

But I suggest to you, that to be holy, as a disticntive of God’s people, is about a heart for seeking God and God’s kingdom. Responding to God’s reaching for us, by reaching for God, and allowing God to inhabiting within ourselves, and bear the fruit of the very goodness and graciousness of God as we live and walk in the world.

And that goodness, that fruitfulness, that abiding connectedness between us and God is what Jesus prays over us.

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What’s your ‘fishing’?

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Part 2 of a 3-part series reflecting on the ending(s) of John’s Gospel, ch20 & 21.

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Last week we began exploring the ending(s) to John’s gospel with its first ending (John 20:19-31). The disciples are gathered in a locked room together, surrounded by anxiety, fear and uncertainty, and into that space Jesus appears and offers them peace and breathes Spirit upon them, to encourage them and continue to teach them more of the story, to help sustain them as they keep on believing.

Now into chapter 21, the start of the second ending to the gospel, some of the disciples are gathered again, not in a room, but on the shore of Galilee. Peter says, ‘I’m going to fish’, and the others who are with him say they will come too.

Peter, and many of the others, were fisherman. So going to fish was familiar to them, and perhaps, after 3 years following Jesus, had become something of a past-time. Sometimes this moment can be described as the disciples going back to old ways, perhaps even turning their back on Jesus’ call to them to fish for people, and instead fishing for, well, fish.

Fishing: Life-giving fun

There can be merit for us in reflecting on that interpretation, but I’m not sure that’s the only way to hear the story. I wonder if Peter and his friends are not do much going back to old ways, but going off to spend time looking after their wellbeing. Why? Because I think we could quite equally read and hear the story as one about a group of friends going off to spend time doing something from their past that they love, enjoy and in the past found life-giving.

But yet, they have a bad night, this band of friends, and catch nothing.

As dawn comes, a voice comes from the shore – ‘children, you’ve not got anything to eat have you?’

‘No’, comes the reply.

‘cast on the right side of the boat’ says the stranger.

And so they do, and FISH! – the nets are bursting.

And Peter dives into the lake – for ‘It is the Lord’.

Once the rest of the disciples manged to drag the net of fish ashore, Jesus has a fire going, and says ‘bring your fish, let’s have breakfast together’.

and so they spend time together, in dawns morning light.

My Paraphrase, see John 21:1-14 for the full story
Fishing: A Children’s game

I love the fact Jesus, intially as a stranger to them, calls children to them. They weren’t children as we would see them, they were probably young adults by all accounts, but I love this image it leaves me with of someone standing on the shore, watching a group of friends playing around like children, having fun fishing together, despite the fact they’d not yet caught anything.

But then, with a bit of encouragement from this stranger, the disicples are blessed with nets a-bursting, and their fun and games bear fruit.

Fishing: Jesus in our everyday

I reckon this story demonstrates to us just how interested Jesus is in us, in our wellbeing, and our every day. Jesus blesses his friends with direction to get a bumper catch after a long and relaxing night as friends on the lake, doing something they love and enjoy.

Then what happens? Jesus invites them to bring what they have, and to share breakfast together. To enjoy the fruits of their leisure. There’s no teaching here, no lesson to learn, no parable told. Jesus just spends time with them, enjoying a meal together as the sun breaks on the shore.

For the disciples, their life-giving, enjoyable, fun-time-together activity was fishing, and Jesus was with them as they did so, enjoying its fruitfulness with them. What’s your ‘fishing’? What is life-giving for you? What fun is Jesus enjoying the fruitfulness of, with you?

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Keep on believing

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Part 1 of a 3-part series reflecting on the ending(s) of John’s Gospel, chapters 20 & 21.

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Do you ever get stuck knowing how to end a letter or an email? I don’t write letters very often, but send many emails, and often pause as I end wondering what the most appropriate ending might be. ‘Every blessing’, ‘best wishes’, ‘regards’, ‘in Christ’. Since the pandemic began I often use ‘in peace and hope’.

I find it fascinating that 2 of the 4 gospels in the bible sort of have 2 endings. Mark has a shorter and longer ending in chapter 16 – depending on which original texts you look at. Often our bibles make this clear with headings and footnotes.

Headings and footnotes don’t usually appear in the same way in John – but it is also thought to have a first and second ending. When we read it, chapter 20 feels to have a natural end – but then, goes on with chapter 21. Many scholars think (though not all!) that chapter 21 was added to the text of John’s gospel at some stage after the first version of the gospel was created.

Stories

All the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are stories of persuasion and intrigue and encouragement. Stories of the life of Jesus, the impact he had on the communities he travelled through, and the lives he touched and transformed.

Each gospel comes from a different perspective and was written for differing communities and audiences. Some repeat stories told in other gospels; others hold stories unique only to them. Few stories occur in all 4.

After telling its version of the story – John’s gospel comes to its first end as we read the last verses of John 20:

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”     

John 20:30-31
Keep on believing

The phrase interpreted here as ‘may come to believe’ can equally be interpreted as may continue believing, or keep on believing.

Some scholars believe this second translation is in fact the one intended by John’s author. They argue that one of the key principles of John’s gospel is that it was written not only to persuade and encourage people to believe, but equally, if not primarily, to encourage and sustain the continuing believing of a persecuted and struggling community, who were not the original witnesses to its story.

The text we now call John’s gospel comes from, probably, around 70AD, 40 or so years on from Jesus’ ministry. The text therefore comes from a point in history where the Jesus-story was being passed on from the original witness to the next generation. This generation, who’s faith up to now had been sustained by the original witnesses, were now themselves the custodians of the story. These custodians needed encouragement to continue believing the story and sharing its life-giving power with others, despite the fact they were not original witnesses.

2000 years on, the story continues to be passed on, so I think we can say they did an ok job.

Promised Presence

Before we get to this first ending of the gospel, we have read another important story –Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to the disicples.

They are locked in a room together, grieving, fearful, lost. And into that room filled with uncertainty and fear Jesus appears and says, “peace be with you.” and breathes on them saying “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

John’s gospel begins with the word that was with God and was God (1:1) – who comes to dwell among us (1:14). An echo of the story of origin that we find in Genesis 1. Now, as we reach a climax to John’s gospel the word that was made flesh and dwelt among us, now breathes the very presence of God upon us.

This promised presence flows throughout the story that is John’s gospel. In chapter 14 Jesus promises the comforter will come to remind what Jesus has taught them and continue teaching more of the story to the community. (John 14:26)

The story lives on

John’s gospel reminds us that what we read in scripture is not the whole story – that the gospel story lives on through the very presence of God – the Holy Spirit – living among us. There is more the be taught, more to be reminded, more to be said. [hence, perhaps, chapter 21 gets added in!]

If the story lives on among us and within us, that means our stories become part of the gospel story – the good news story – that is the transforming life and love of Jesus among us.

So while here in John we are told here is enough of the story that you can believe and keep on believing, by God’s presence with us and in us we too have our own stories to tell of how our human story and God’s story have entwined. Stories of our experince of our lives transformed by the transforming life of Christ.

These stories we can share remind us and witness to the truth that God’s presence is with us, and they encourage us and others to keep on believing.

So friends, what story are you going to tell today?

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My Soul is…

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A reflection based on John 12:20-33.

Reflect: how does your experience of ‘feeling’ through the pandemic echo with or conflict with what you believe or know to be true of God?

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In John 12, after being approached by Andrew, who has been approach by Phillip, who has been approach by Greeks wanting to come to the Passover festival (are you still with me!?), Jesus begins to talk about his coming death. Or at least, we know that he was talking about his coming death. The author of the gospel of John knew. The disciples, the Greeks, the crowd? Perhaps not so much.

In a moment which, in the text, takes us from a conversation with those around him to a conversation with his Father, Jesus says ‘Now my soul is troubled’. (John 12:27)

Though troubled is perhaps an understatement and under-interpretation of the truth of Jesus’ feeling here. A more literal interpretation of the Greek might be agitated, or more crudely, in shock, turmoil or distress.

Jesus wasn’t troubled in a trite and simplistic way. it wasn’t simply that the shopping delivery had arrived and they had swapped your beloved smokey bacon for your less favoured unsmoked.

Jesus was feeling turmoil and anguish in the depths of his soul because of what was looming on the very near horizon. He was soon to be glorified – which to the Author of the gospel, Jesus’ being glorified was the being ‘lifted up’ – the cross.

As Christians we talk of glory, often, as a good thing – ‘To God be the glory, great things he has done!’ goes the popular hymn. But Jesus was not feeling good – despite knowing what was to be gained through this moment.

Jesus has already talked about how useless a single grain is unless it falls into the earth and dies, to then come forth and bear much fruit. (John 12:24)

Jesus seems to know here, what needs to happen – but his feeling – his feeling was pain. His feeling was turmoil. His feeling was fear. His feeling was urging him to say to his Father ‘save me from this hour, this time that I know is at hand’ John 12:27.

In a moment of pain and fear, Jesus was honest with God about how he felt, despite what he knew was to come.

Friends, when was the last time you told God how you feel? How you really feel? Asked ‘where are you God?’ when you’re struggling to feel God with you, despite knowing that God is there?

Jesus’ experience shows us that it is ok to be feeling something that is contrary to what we know, or think we should be feeling. We can’t deny the truth. Can’t suppress the reality of our feeling – if we do, we start to be dishonest with God, and dishonest with ourselves.

Friends, be honest with God today, just as Jesus was, because through being honest with God about how we feel, we are honest with ourselves.