Thoughts and reflections

July 2024

GOD THE FATHER

Late Anglican Priest Michael Hewlett gave us a 6 verse hymn that begins:

Sing to him in whom creation

found its shape and origin;

Spirit, moving on the waters

troubled by the God within;

source of breath to all things breathing,

life in whom all lives begin.

Clearly these words allude to or echo the opening verses of Genesis ch 1. An indication that we really do have something going for ourselves with God is that we have times and experience when we are inwardly troubled. When our conscience plays up and we are remorseful for our failings this is evidence that God is present within us. In one of my resource books for worship material, I read a story by  man named Thompson, a story he tells against himself. It was when he was a schoolboy and had achieved the rare distinction of scoring a 100 for his school team. Next time when it was his turn to bat, he was facing his cricket master and, so full of what he had achieved. he set out to hit the Master for en enormous 6, only to miss the ball and be bowled for a miserable duck. Thus he embarrassed himself and walked away from the wicket feeling like he was but a fool.  Boy or man of faith, he sensed that God had something to do with his demise and loss of pride.

Years ago, in my student days, I was playing snooker against fellow student Gareth and I missed an easy red pot. Gareth said to me, “May I say something?” “Yes,” “You rushed it, you are too impatient.” 

Engagement with God can be a chastening experience. In ‘Hallowing The Time’, the late Catholic Priest Geoffrey Preston, writes that a sign that God truly and really cares for us is that He troubles us and challenges us, this because His desire for us is to be as good and spiritually healthy as we can be. That God is deeply concerned for us and stimulates us to be concerned for ourselves is sure evidence that, as I heard Rowan Williams say, “God takes you seriously.”

So we do God an enormous dis-service, if all we want with God is that God bless us with comfort zones. In his his collection of meditations ‘Journey For A Soul’ the late Archbishop George Appleton gives a section on ‘Jesus The Healer’but immediately follows this with Jesus ‘Disturber of our peace’. The German theologian Wolfhart  Pannenberg observes that one of the reasons we like fixed orders of worship and tight infrastructure and red tape in the way we do Church is because we want to close God down, to confine and to control 

God. Strangely enough as he aged he started to return awards he had received to those who had given them if they were sympathetic tor favourably disposed to those in same-sex relationships.

A mistake the Church has made is to give the impression that God is so obsessed with our failings that, had we all been saints, God wouldn’t have known what to do with Himself! Genesis 1 gifts us with the vision of a God who can and wants to take time out to relax and to enjoy and to celebrate that “which is good and worthy of praise”. Jesus talks a lot about people in the parables. I think He meant us to think much about those people who feature in the stories: fictional characters who mirror real individuals: some deserve to be and are in need of being taken into account but others delight, are a credit to themselves and are an asset to those who know them.

Hope all is well with you! Please feel free to forward these thoughts to others,

Geoffrey  

February 2024 (2)

JESUS

In ch 7 v 23 Mark moves on from writing about Jesus’ being engaged in argument with Jewish religious leaders to saying about when He went to Tyre. He went into a house there and hoped to have a time of privacy away from the crowds. He was seeking something of a sabbatical, time to Himself or, should I say, time with God that was time away from the crowds. Whose house was it? we are not told. but I think we might presume that it would have been the house of a sympathiser; or was it a property that the family of Jesus owned? (As I said in my Christmas Morning talk at The Bay URC I think Jesus was born not into a poor family but into one that was well-off, even very well-off. I visualise Joseph as having been a substantial property developer.)

It strikes me about Jesus that He was always wise when it came to knowing what was best for Him. The gambit however doesn’t come off. The people coming knocking at the door. They clamour for this wise man, for this man who has a real healing Ministry. If successful, a person can be in demand: by being or seeming to be a winner that person puts pressure on themselves.  

Interesting that Mark, immediately after recalling Jesus’ being in confrontation with people who were strongly opposed to Him, tells us about people who wanted Jesus, people who had high expectations of Him. This significant and telling, because, almost certainly, Mark  was writing to encourage and give hope and re-assurance to Christians who were living in a environment, a society or community where it was not at all easy, indeed very tough to be a follower of Jesus. (We might, with good cause, think ‘Rome’, but I heard Rowan Williams suggest ‘Antioch’)

HOLY SPIRIT

There are in the Bible a range of images for the Holy Spirit. Mid 19th century Baptist Pastor J C Philpot preached a sermon where He likened the Holy Spirit’s impact on us as people to a variety of positive and good things that water does to us. His typically lengthy sermon was preached at North Street Chapel, Stamford on Sunday moring October 17th 1858.

It is based on a text from Isaiah ch 44: “”I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”

PAUL

The Apostle writes a good amount about himself, especially when writing ‘Galatians’. He is hurting deeply because so many of them, who had become Christians on hearing Paul preach ‘faith in Jesus Christ’, about what a different oerson he had himself become after converting from Judaism to Christianity, had returned to being very Jewish in their thinking and outlook. He is at pains to tell them that aftwer hisa Damascus Road experience, he had deliberately left it some years before he had gone to Jerusalem to meet up the leadership and people of the Church there.

At the beginning ch 2 he says about how 14 years later he had gone there, along with companions Barnabas and Titus. “I went because God revealed to me that I should go.” Maybe that remark resonates with you. It will when we have come my an inner hunch, sense, conviction that we should be going somewhere, like the thought has not been dreamed up by ourselves but been given us or out into our head from ‘outside of ourselves’, ‘from up above’. Usually we don’t discover the reason for going until we get there or have been a while.

Please feel free to forward these thoughts to others. Wishing you plenteous blessings!

Geoffrey 

February 2024 (1)

GOD THE FATHER

Two other important things we do with words are, says Philosopher Peter Donovan, exhorting and inspiring people to get thinking and to get involved with an activity. We will have sought to do this ourselves in formal speeches (such as sermons), informal group chit-chat and face-to-face conversation. We will have experienced it happening to us. These are further ways in which God uses language with the aim and intention of impacting upon us and making a difference to us as people, the way we think, the way we live. 

There are times when someone says something to us that has a telling, maybe a profound, even a life-changing impact on us and, if sensitive to God, then the words of the person who spoke seem to have been inspired by God. God talks to affect our thoughts and our behaviour.

JESUS

In the opening part of Mark’s write-up of Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, we sense a certain amount of tension between Jesus and His disciples.  Jesus had sought to get away from the crowds, hence with the disciples they took to the lake only to find that when they came ashore the crowds had guessed to where they were heading and had hurried there on foot. Jesus feels for the people, for their being “like sheep without a shepherd”. The disciples can tell that Jesus sees this as an opportunity to talk to them, perhaps at considerable length. The disciples are getting vibes that the people are getting hungry and tell Jesus in as many words like they think that He hasn’t noticed this Himself and even question whether this bothers Him. I picture the disciples becoming a bit ratty and somewhat irritated with Jesus. For a while they are more in mood with the crowd than they are with Jesus. 

This scenario brings back to mind a sermon I heard preached at a companion student’s Ordination and Induction to a Pastorate, by our Theological College Principal, Dr Henton Davies. He said about Ministers that there are times when we face the Congregation on behalf of God and that there are times when Ministers face God on behalf of the Congregation.

A feature of Mark’s Gospel is that he is quite frank about how there were times when the Disciples were not on the same wavelength as Jesus.

HOLY SPIRIT

The other day I was on a local bus when a elderly lady with shopping trolley came on. Given combined sizes of trolley and lady who was dressed up for its being a cold day, she need that area of the bus where there is space for passengers with buggy and the like. I noticed a much younger traveller (also a female) dropped down the tip-up seat for her and she said with a smile “thank you”.

I know nothing of the two but it struck me immediately that the Spirit is party to our doing helpful little touches that make the world seem it is and could be even more so a pleasant place. It is the small kind things that people do that refresh our faith in human nature. We must guard against the thought that the Spirit is only involved in making large and sensational and conspicuously spectacular things happen.

PAUL

Paul with Silas and Timothy tells the people of the Church in Thessalonica “We always thank God for you all and always mention you in our prayers”. It does him a power of good when he thinks of them. It has a positive effect on him. on how he is and the condition of his own faith for they put their faith into practice, their love made them work so hard and their hope in our Lord Jesus Christ is firm.

How important to us are those people whose own faith and character stimulate our faith, those people who because they believe, we believe.

Like to think that you are well but if not, are getting the help that you need.  Please feel free to pass these thoughts on to others.

In the words of the now late Methodist Minister Ted Bishop, “May blessings abound!”     

December 2022

GOD THE FATHER

Philosopher and Theologian Peter Donovan points out that “we use words … to promise, make contracts, pledge loyalty …” Indeed If the language that we usually talk in lacks the vocabulary we use to make promises etc we would be in no position to make promises etc.

Important to ourselves and God are our participating in certain rituals or rites and practical activities (notably Baptism and Holy Communion, the kissing of Icons) but these are without meaning if we cannot explain the point of them in words. 

Some 60 to 70 years ago the late Oxford Philosopher J L Austin pointed out that there are some things we do that we do through use of words. He used the instance of marriage vows. We are married through our saying the words that constitute the marriage vows. This is an example of how it is through language we make something happen.

God seeks to be our God and ourselves to be His people; key to our achieving a bonds between God and ourselves is our making verbal commitments to each other. It has to be said, of course, that the verbal commitment we make comes from the heart. We must mean what we say, not does say it.

JESUS

Following the grim account of how John the Baptist met his death Mark writes about Jesus’ Feeding of the 5000. So having dwelt upon a situation which highlights how Godforsaken the world can be and how capable people are of practising man’s inhumanity to man, Mark tells a story of how remarkable and how popular Jesus was.

But before he reports the Feeding he brings out the humanity of Jesus, telling of how Jesus sought for Himself and His closest disciples some respite for themselves. They were being so pressurised that they could find no time to get themselves something to eat. Jesus felt the need to ‘get away’, to make time for Himself and also for His key workers He knew God was with Him when He was in the thick of it, talking to, debating with, ministering to people. The people who asked and demanded much of Him would surely have stirred and uplifted His Spirit, but there came times when He found that for the health and enrichment of His relationship with God He need to retreat, to go to a place where He was by Himself with God.

Is this not true for us too, that we more surely find God in one kind of place because we also find Him in another sort of place?  I remember one Minister saying to me about another Minister (they were good friends, I should emphasise) that he was concerned he seemed to spend nearly all his time being feverishly busy. If we are too much one thing, we limit what God can do for us and our own well-being in spirit, mind and body.

HOLY SPIRIT

Last Saturday afternoon from 3 30 till just after 4 30 a good number of us who are Minnis Bay’s United Reformed Church sang carols in a local Cafe. This was a first time for doing this. The place was packed out, owner and staff and customers gladly welcomed us. I think I am right in saying that this initiative was one person’s idea. The idea was converted into an action plan. We went ahead and experienced its being a winner. From start to finish this was the initiative and brainchild of the Holy Spirit.

A LOVELY CHURCH

Not one but several and all in Denmark a country where we have holidayed a few times from east to west and from north to south. It is a land where I found countless beautiful Parish Churches – Lutheran, of course – each with its own distinctive features and, therefore, personality. Uplifting, too, the level of care they are shown. And something else that was good: in the outside space a building that housed well maintained and clean toilets open for anyone who was craving the need of such a facility!

26th November 2022

GOD THE FATHER

Regular readers will have noticed that I quite often reminisce. My articles for the Whitstable Town FC Programme are likewise most often my reminiscing. I have indeed had readers of the Pro gramme thank me for my re-calling games they also saw or players they watched or even knew from the past.

Philosopher and theologian Peter Donovan says of us that it is a feature of us that we like to reminisce and talk to one another about times past. We gain something from sharing our memories through talking about them. Back in the 1980s Stan Bryant of ‘my’ Chorleywood Church said to me that he found it remarkable how often I would refer to a sermon I had heard preached in years past, remarkable that I should recall them because I surely couldn’t be thinking of them all the time or that they be the ‘thing’ that I spent most of my days dwelling on in my mind.

This habit we have helps us to connect with God and God to connect with us. Awareness of His having been present with us in previous times helps us to know that He is with us in the present, where and when we are in this current moment. It encourages us to stay on and continue our faith journey through and because we re-live that faith journey that we have been making in the past. So both Martin Luther and John Calvin said that it reinforces our confidence inn God that He is our God to remember our baptism. Talking about our journey of faith inspires us to keep going on that journey of faith.

JESUS

Jesus had experiences that told Him quite clearly that God is for real an some of those were very much personal to Him; but He also had experiences which might challenge His faith, when people wanted nothing to do with Him, as happened when He returned to Nazareth, for there (as Mark reports) He experienced powerlessness because people whom He had known did not want His ministry. 

Sometimes life and the people we mix with ‘give us God’. Other times the way things are and how people are come between ourselves and God, they impede our access to God. With Henry Francis Lyte we must pray ” …. Lord abide with me when other helpers fail and comforts flee ..” We may well have times when we find it hard to think that God is for real or to be sure that God is our God. Our faith is something that can get tested but maybe, it only becomes real once it has been tested? How much faith do you and I really have if believing in God has been for us a easy matter? Faith being challenged can be a providential stage on our faith’s journey: it can become the making and strengthening of our faith.

HOLY SPIRIT

Back to my days in Oxford: I was in The Parks watching the University playing cricket. I was sitting in the small pavilion. Others were there including a man (whom I assumed was a retired Don) who often ‘went on about things that seemed to be bees in his bonnet’, including on one occasion his saying that ‘the trouble with today’s batsmen is that they don’t take their first run quickly, thus missing the chance to score 2’. He carried on his ‘lecture’ (!) by naming a list of players from the past who, to their credit, invariably took the first run quickly. He was sitting in front of me and alongside me was the University Cricket Club’s current President, namely former Blue and Kent Player Tony Pawson, who had not long come to join us. As he was going on naming names, I thought to myself, “You’re getting yourself into a tricky situation here, because Tony Pawson had been one and enjoyed the reputation of having been one of the fastest ever runners between wickets! The just as he was teetering on embarrassing himself, the man came out with, “Bot, of course, Tony, nobody was ever as fast as your good self”!

The Spirit is with us when we come to our senses. The Spirit impacts upon us when we are saved from ourselves and we avoid making a fool of ourselves or falling from grace.

A LOVELY CHURCH

A German Church I have visited more than once is the main Church in the Mosel town of Cochem. Since my first visit new striking stained glass windows have been installed, but at the front to the left of centre as you face towards the alter there is a statue of Mary with Jesus. Jesus is struggling to get out of her arms, because He is desperately keen and eager to get to us! He wants to be His true self, to become the person He believes He is called and chosen to be. The representation reminds me that we have and can enjoy a relationship with Jesus because Jesus wants to have that relationship with us.

2 August 2022

In the Nick Fawcett hymn  I quoted from last time, we also read this:

“Like a father, you are there,

reaching out your arms to hold us,

speaking words that show you care.”

I have recently been re-reading a book ‘Religious Language’ by New Zealand Philosopher and Theologian Peter Donovan. Peter and I were contemporaries at Regent’s Park College in Oxford in the late 1960s and early 70s. I recall his blurting out to me one day as we were sitting down next to each other for lunch in College, “God is a language user”. It is one of the basic things about God that He uses words in order to communicate and so engage with us. Likewise we engage with God through words.

A memory from my time as Minister of Whitstable United Reformed Church is (now late) Church Member Avril Sandall’s saying that she had heard someone say of God that He was ‘up for it’. She suggested that this was an odd way of talking about God. A task for Philosophers of Religion and Theologians is to judge what is an appropriate and what is an inappropriate way to talk about God.

JESUS

It was when He found himself banging His head against a brick-wall when talking with the people of His home town of Nazareth that Jesus said of prophets that they are so often unwelcome in their home towns. A prophet’s vocation is to make people think. That will be OK with the people if what the prophet says is something they like to hear but they don’t like it if the prophet takes them out of their comfort zone. 

Another Oxford memory is of College Tutor, later College Principal Barrie White’s warning us against only ever preaching ‘comfortable sermons’. Jesus had the faith, courage, conviction and daring to live with the consequences of unsettling people. The people who took exception to Him would have thought that or liked to think that they were ‘in with’ God. Jesus challenged them on this. We must beware thinking that things are more OK between ourselves and God than they actually are. Prayer writer Julie Hulme leads us in praying this: 

“Hear our sorrow. O God of mercy,

for our falling short of your high love,

our unwillingness to entrust our hopes and dreams to you,

our resistance to your encircling arms.”

HOLY SPIRIT

The most familiar picture of the Holy Spirit is, perhaps, the symbol of the dove. The dove is so often associated with ‘peace’, but that may well be not the significance it has in the story of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. I suggest that there the dove symbolises the presence of God because Jewish people thought the sound that doves make was (strange to us as it may sound) suggestive of the presence of God.  The coming of the Spirit like a dove reinforces the message that Jesus enjoyed a special and unique relationship with God. The 3 – God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit are in-with one another. Jesus has ‘something with God’ that we do not have. It is what Jesus has with God and the Spirit and what They have withe Him is the core thing about Jesus as a Person.

A  LOVELY CHURCH

It is some years now that I visited the magnificent Cathedral of Rouen in France. Something that struck me at the time and stays with mew is how one of the side chapels was dedicated to the people who built the Cathedral. 

In a Church community, those who lead when it comes to taking responsibility for the care, upkeep and maintenance of the building can become unsung heroes and heroines in that community. Thank God for those who show their affection for Church through using their D-I-Y skills or professional skills for the good of House of the Lord!   

The latest reflection from the Reverend Geoffrey Collins (August 2022)

GOD THE FATHER
Amongst the hymns penned by contemporary hymn-writer Nick Fawcett is this one in which he gets us singing and affirming how God is beyond words and imagination:
v 1 God of life, God of love, all around we glimpse your greatness, here on earth and far above. We would worship all our day seven though no words can ever give to. you sufficient praise.
v 5 God of life, God on high, we can barely grasp your goodness, language fails us when we try. As a Father, through your Son, by the Spirit you are with us, somehow three, yet also one.
JESUS
From my Chorleywood days I recall psychologist Myra Chave-Jones’ saying that it can be at home, amongst those whom we know best where we can find it most hard to be Christian: rather than build one another up, we are prone to putting one another down. Even Jesus experienced this when He went back to Nazareth. The local people didn’t want Him to become ‘local boy makes good’. Indeed they are so unwelcoming that Jesus leaves knowing the frustration of being unable to achieve what He could have achieved for them through His already established teaching and healing Ministry.
I heard it said years ago about the Jewish people that, when telling the stories of their heroes, they did not hold back from telling the stories where the heroes met with failure not success. There are times and places when and where the world does not want God; this is something that God Himself has to live with. The people of God, a Church might find itself with a catchment area where the people ‘don’t want to know’.
Paul told the people in the Church at Philippi how his faith has stayed with him through both the ups and downs of his life: “I have learned this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power Christ gives me.”  
HOLY SPIRIT
In Romans Ch 12 Paul talks at length about how we are gifted by God’s Spirit so that we may be useful to God in the Name of Jesus Christ. Something the Spirit does for us is alert us as to how we play a part in the life of the Church and society. We are enabled to identify for ourselves the potential God sees in us. Some if the gifts of the Spirit we may be born with or acquire through our upbringing and education. Others come our way only through the supernatural gifting of the Spirit.  With these latter, we might say that the Spirit is demonstratively and conspicuously present. With the former, we might say that Spirit can be quietly, almost unobtrusively present and indeed that we see them in the character and skill of people who have no faith in God.
A LOVELY CHURCH
I liked very much the East window in an Anglican Church in Porlock. It was close on 40 years ago that nI went to it because I recall seeking to create some semblance of it on an acetate for us in worship at Chorleywood for the Sunday after Christmas.
The window is in 3 ascending parts: the bottom level depicts the Christmas scene, the middle the Good Friday and Easter scene, the top Christ ascended and enthroned in glory. Food for thought comes in this: the different in depth, with the bottom being narrowest and the top the deepest, so the middle deeper than the bottom but not so deep as the top
So it is in the presence of the ascended and glorified Christ that we, in our Christmas and Holy Week-Easter devotions, meet with Him.

 

GOD THE FATHER
In his book ‘Faith’ Keith Clements says of God that He is “the One who is utterly other than us, yet utterly for us”, He is “holy and in our midst”. ” … God being both holy and present, faith is a desperately serious affair.”
That God is “utterly for us” means that we can trust ourselves completely to God. If, however, we lose sense or sight of God being holy, of being “utterly other than us” then “faith could be a pleasant affair of bright and trivial chatter and good intentions.” On the other hand, if we lose sight of God being “utterly for us”, “faith could be a matter of calm, donnish speculation over the port.”
So we both warm towards and revere Him. Keith alerts us and reminds us that meeting with God is a critical experience for us. God being both trustworthy and holy impacts upon us by asking questions of us, questions that have to do with how we live and what we are like in this life and that have to do with what will become of us in eternity.
JESUS
Continuing with the story of the man who was possessed by evil spirits (Mark 5 vv 1-20) Jesus clearly felt a large responsibility for him, to do all that He knew how to sort his enormous problems. It is indicative of the man’s troubles that he fears what Jesus might think of him and say to him. He fears Jesus will punish him. Mark says nothing about the early history of the man’s troubles, about when or how they started, to what extent the man was an innocent victim of forces beyond his control or had brought his situation upon himself. Whichever, he is full of guilt and sees himself worth only of punishment. We notice that he is not immediately confident of the mercy and grace of Jesus. He was in a state of mind where he trusted no one. He was so physically strong and aggressive in how he spoke, we might wonder if there was a chance of his physically attacking and harming Jesus. If so, then we see Jesus in a vulnerable situation, a situation He is ready to go into for in hope, faith and trust that with the help of God He could make a real difference and effect a breath-taking transformation. The man is indeed healed and is freed to live a new life within his community.
Mark says that he would have liked to stay with Jesus and accompany Him on His travels but Jesus says to him to stay where he was and bear witness amongst the people who had known for many a year. Do we in this see Jesus’ encouraging the man to believe in his own healing? Was he wanting to travel around physically close to Jesus because somewhat apprehensive that he might re-lapse and find himself back in his old bad place? Was Jesus saying to him that he would find that, as he talked about what he had been through and experience, that he would grow in health and well-being? that as he told his story, he would find himself able to stand on his own two feet and be an asset and blessing to the people around him where he lived?
HOLY SPIRIT
Peggy, a member of ‘my’ Chorleywood Church, recalled one-time Minister of the Church J O Hagger’s saying that a sign of our being influenced by the Holy Spirit is when we “bite our tongue” and thus stop ourselves from saying something that we shouldn’t say. When Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 v 22, he singles out ‘self-control’ as the last in the list. We might say that being able to show and practice restraint is a sign that the Spirit is having a beneficial impact on how we are and behave.
So one of the focuses of the Holy Spirit is to save us from ourselves, this both for our own sakes and for the sake of those around us. We need to pray for the Spirit’s help when we find ourselves in situations which or with people who bring out the worst in us and we act, speak, and think like we are not very good at being Christians
A LOVELY CHURCH
Recently I four times passed the Catholic Church in Langney near Eastbourne. Each time I was on a bus, so I have never been inside the building but i warm to the way it is named ‘Christ The King’ Church.

Geoffrey

A reflection from the Reverend Geoffrey Collins

GOD THE FATHER
Even when we say that what faith we have in God is a personal gift from God to us, we ourselves have our part to play in the sustaining and enlarging of that faith. We need to ‘want that faith’, to be people of faith, who crave the presence of God; to show God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit that we have a longing for them and delight in them. If Richard Rolle were around today, he would be telling us to make time to ‘just be with God’, time when the only thing we are doing is ‘attending to God’. We may indeed ‘touch Him life’s throng and press’ but we need to get to know Him, like we may need to get to make a point of getting to know another person even whilst we are getting on and along with that person.
The Rev Andrew Wingfield-Digby, whose path and my path crossed in Oxford, when he opened the bowling for Oxford University, wrote of himself in later days, that because he had been brought up in a ‘Churchy environment’ God had always ‘been around’. He was sent to spend time at (later Bishop) David Sheppard’s Mayflower Centre in Canning Town. It was spiritual eye-opener for him, for he met and mixed with there young people from a different social background to his own to whom God was more real and personal than He had up to then in his life been to him.
We can be in a position where we want God to be for real but we do not hanker after a real close relationship with Him. Sufficient for us that we have some contact with Him only ever now and again; important that our family have their weddings in Church and a Minister or Priest lead our funeral services, that someone is praying for us when we have a tough task ahead of us or a large decision to make. God, being full of wisdom and grace, understands us if this is how we are. He would love to have more to do with us but He gets it why we are where we are. Indeed He understands us better than we understand ourselves.
JESUS
I heard Canon Angela Tilby saying very recently on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ that it is very much part of our Christian faith to realise that we should judge ourselves more than we judge others. Thus we read Mark’s reporting Jesus as saying to us “The same rules you use to judge others will be used by God to judge others — and with even greater severity.”
In other words, what should matter most to us is what God thinks of us. What truly irks God is our being fast to find fault with others but being equally quick off the mark to defend ourselves when we get taken to task: it is our being like that that truly runs God up the wrong way. We sometimes say of our conversations that ‘we have been putting the world right’. We sometimes say that jokingly but on occasions we may been going on complaining and going out of our way to find fault with someone or a group of people.
I think this exposes a fixation we can have that there are people we simply or we just don’t want to get on with. We want there to be someone we have it in for, to be against. We like to be divisive. We have some difficulty with embracing peace.  
What I think Jesus’ comment also tells us about ourselves is that we will only be at our best if we fear judgement for not being like that. We don’t behave well because we have a real heart to behave well but because we are afraid of the consequences and repercussions of our not behaving well. Jesus was very alert to the problems we give God because we do not enough crave ‘heaven on earth’. Is that because it is easier to be a sinner than to be a saint.
HOLY SPIRIT
One of the best comments I heard paid to people who belonged to my Churches was about two men, one had been a postman and one a dentist: the comment about each was this, to his credit. ‘he is always the same’.
BEREAVEMENT
It doesn’t happen nowadays and hasn’t happened for some years on BBC Radio Kent’s Monday to Saturday’s Breakfast Programme, that is a pre-recorded or live ‘Thought for the Day’. But when it was part of it, a regular contributor was Anglican Vicar Michael Camp. He as a favourite with me. In the talk I particularly recall he talked about a youngish lady who as a wife had suffered the tragedy of two bereavements. Her second husband’s death was not to be begin easy to explain but eventually the medical people were able to ascertain the cause of death. She had struggled coming to terms with her second bereavement even more so  because of the absence of an explanation of his death, but when she knew why he died, she began to move on, because knowing why he died had the effect of her gaining some ‘control’ over her situation. So long as there was no answer to the ‘why?’ she felt things were ‘out of her control’.

IS CHANGE POSSIBLE 2Pet:1-11

A cautionary tale is told about a frog and a scorpion. The scorpion needed to cross a river and so asked the frog if he would take him over the water on his back. The frog was reluctant. He said: ‘If you ride on my back how do I know you will not sting me?’ The scorpion replied: ‘Why would I sting you, if I did we would both drown?’ Having been persuaded by this argument the frog allowed the scorpion to sit on his back as he swum over the river. Half way across the scorpion stung the frog with his poisonous venom. As they were both drowning the frog asked: ‘Why did you do it?’ The scorpion replied: ‘It is in my nature!’

Can people really change their nature? Can a leopard change its spots? It is easy to be cynical. So many people seem to revert to their basic nature as soon as the façade is lifted. The question goes to the heart of the Christian faith. Are those whom God has forgiven transformed?

The story of Zaccheus’ encounter with Jesus is an account of radical change. Someone who had taken money wrongfully from others now freely returns it. When salvation came to his house it seemed to transform aspects of his character.

Here is the acid test of Christian reality. On this point the Christian faith stands or falls in the minds of those who are watching. For some of us who are all too aware of the crack lines in our lives this is very unsettling. For it is painfully obvious that Christians do continue to sin. Perhaps one mark of genuine conversion is that a Christian can no longer sin happily.

Peter writes to those who through the reconciling act of God have received a faith that is precious. These are those who have stumbled on the treasure of great value. They have discovered the salvation of God. To them the promises of his Son and his Spirit are given so that they might share in the divine character – love, forgiveness, generosity, faithfulness, truth, purity. As they share in the character of God they escape the world’s corrupting influences.

Peter calls us to strive to grow or change, to make sure of our calling.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

• Faith is our vision of the kingdom as real, the ability to recongise the truth about God. It means taking hold of the divine promises. Here lies the basis of the new life.
• Goodness – an affirmation of all that has value in this created world. Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is pure whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy thing about such things. Re-establishing the created goodness of the creation.
• Knowledge – the truth is what sets you free, you must seek to know and understand the truth
• Self-control – sometimes we know what is right but lack personal discipline, exercise a leash on our bad habits.
• Perseverance – finishing the task, running the race, fighting the good fight.
• Godliness – God-centeredness, a mind that is set on the things that are above.
• Mutual affection – loving care for those around you, even as they come to love you.
• Love here all the commands are summarised.

Grow in these ways and your life will not be wasted. The saddest thing to say about a Church is that it is ineffective and unproductive. Each of us has by the grace of the Lord been brought here to offer value to the life of the church.

We are called to confirm the reality of God’s gracious purposes in us by seeking real change.

A HEART OF FLESH Ez36:24-32 (Reverend Alan Spence,9th April 2021)

Like putty left out in the open, human hearts can become hard. Steve Biko a famous South African activist died in jail, apparently killed by the police. When asked to comment on his death the minister of Home Affairs responded with the words ‘It leaves me cold’. The Bible describes the Egyptian Pharoah as having a hard heart. He refused to allow the Hebrews to leave Egypt whatever disasters befell his own nation. Robert Mugabe’s heart appeared to be untouched by the plight of his own people, a time of drought in Zimbabwe.

The promise of the Gospel is that God will pour out his Spirit on his people so that their hearts might be changed from stone to flesh. A distinctive mark of the Gospel is that hard hearts will be made soft.

In today’s reading the Jewish people are being held in bondage in Babylon. They are far from the temple in Jerusalem in which God’s presence dwells, and so far from their earlier experience of God. But in this dark situation God makes a sovereign promise to them to bring them home to Judea and renew his relationship with them.

He promises that he will be their God and they shall be his people.

He will forgive their sins and cleanse them from their darkness.

He will give them his Spirit and so change their hearts.

1. He will move them to love his law.
2. He will replace their hearts of stone for hearts of flesh.

Sometimes, when we feel distant from God, it is helpful to hear again the promises of God, in particular his pledge to soften our hearts.

What is a hard heart?

We sometimes recognise it in the way we view family members where there is an unwillingness to forgive past wrongs or where broken relationships appear impossible to be mended.

Sometimes it is apparent in our lack of sensitivity to those around us who are in pain or need. Only the good Samaritan stopped to help the man who had been mugged on the road to Jericho.

Perhaps the hardness of our hearts is most visible in the way we are able to write off people who are in some way different from us.

But softness or hardness of heart also has to do with our relation to God and the matters of his kingdom.

A soft heart has:

a) a sense of of awe or wonder before the glory of his presence;

b) a sense of revulsion and horror at the darkness of our own sins;

c) an emotion of unbounded love in discovering the mercy of God in Christ Jesus;

d) a burning desire that God should be glorified;

e) a deep hunger that we should be like him;

f) an overwhelming thankfulness for his grace towards us.

We don’t have the ability to change our hearts in any meaningful way. Such a transformation is a gift of divine grace for the people of faith. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for such a gift.

A TIME OF TESTING 1 Pet 1:1-9 (Reverend Dr Alan Spence)

Noah waited 40 nights and days for God to stop the rain.

Moses was led into the wilderness for 40 years before God called him to lead his people out of Egypt.

The Hebrews were tested for 40 years in the wilderness before entering into the promised land.

Jesus was tested for 40 days in the wilderness before he began his ministry.

You have been tested this past year. Many of you have been in effect prisoners in your own homes. You have been cut off from those you love. You have had birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas without family or friends. You have not been able to worship together or sing out God’s praises. You have lived under the cloud of fear of a terrible death on a ventilator.

We find in this passage the promises of God for those who have gone through a time of testing such as this. Be encouraged as you reflect on them.

1. God has given us hope. You have been born into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Because the tomb is empty, you have hope in a life to come. However dark the hour hope remains. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death you are with me. I have hope.

2. You have an inheritance. You have an unfading imperishable inheritance in heaven waiting for you. In my father’s house are many rooms. We are invited to the marriage feast of the beloved son.

3. You are protected by the power of God. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. God will protect you. We are standing on holy ground, we know there are angels all around.

4. In this you rejoice even though you continue to suffer. Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord. That is why there is joy in our hearts this morning. God the Lord is our strength.

5. So that your faith like tested gold may redound to God’s praise and honour. All heaven rejoices that you have kept your faith.

6. Even though you do not see him you love him. In our homes away from the congregation of God’s people and their communal worship, we see so little and yet we still love him. This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.

From our Minister, Reverend Alan Spence, for Mother’s Day…

FOR A TIME SUCH AS THIS Esther 4

Like many other worlds and cultures the Media-Persian Empire was a tough place to be a woman. The book of Esther is a story told by Jews who were a vulnerable and marginalised community in this vast empire. With a great deal of irony the book describes the place of women in that ancient society.

Xerxes the Persian Emperor was holding a series of banquets with all his governors and leading officials. When they had drunk too much he wished to show off the beauty of his wife Vashti to them. Sensing possible humiliation she refused to come. Her act of disobedience was an incredible blow to male pride. The powers that be felt they had to do something, for when word got out of Vashti’s actions the peace of every household in the empire would be under threat. Vashti had done wrong not only against the king (so they argued), but against all the nobles and peoples of the empire. She should be banished from the King’s sight forever and a new wife of great beauty and physical desirability would be found. They were to hold what we might now call a beauty or talent contest. And the emperor would play the role of final judge.

And so ‘worthy’ officials started choosing candidates from among all the beautiful young virgins of the empire. And as is often the case, those who were most vulnerable found themselves complying with this dark system demeaning themselves and selling their souls as they sought their own hour of fame. Among them was a beautiful young Jewish girl called Esther, who was taught the arts of seduction in preparation for the contest. In due course, she rose to the top of the pile and was selected by the emperor to be his new queen. Her uncle, Mordecai and her friends would have been delighted with her new status. But to survive in this alien world she was forced to keep her religious faith and Jewish heritage secret.

However, as it happened, a plot arose to kill all the Jews in the empire. Mordecai sent a message to his niece that she would need to carry the cause of her people to the King if they were to be saved. It was a very dangerous course of action. She could lose everything, even her life, if she failed. It is a situation which speaks to so many of us in compromised positions where our faith is not integrated with our wider world or our work. To encourage her to act faithfully Esther’s uncle said to her:

‘And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’

At great potential cost to herself Esther did what was right. She plead the cause of the Jews before the king. For her integrity and bravery she is recognised as one of the great heroes of the Jewish people and is celebrated annually at the Feast of Purim, one of the most significant of all their festivals.

My mother is my hero. She did right by me in all the great trials of my early life and beyond. She was always there. So it is that on this Mothering Sunday we together find ourselves thinking of our mothers and celebrating their lives and their heroism.

The latest reflection from our Minister, Reverend Alan Spence …

LOVE COSTS (Sunday 7th March 2021)

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John4:7-12)

Reflection

Where should a good story begin? In particular, where should one start if one was to offer an explanation of the Christian good news to someone who was interested?

One fruitful point of departure, it seems to me, would be the theme that God is love. If people from different world-views are to engage in meaningful discussion with one another they need to find some common ground. The priority of love as a force for good and well-being in the world is one such place. Who doesn’t believe in love?

But the idea that God is love in the New Testament is not a philosophical theory derived from our reflection on the divine perfections. It is not something simply given. The Scriptures argue that we only know that God is love from history – from what God has done among us.

This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. (1John 4:9)

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)

God’s love in inextricably linked with the gift of his son Jesus to a suffering world, resulting in his cruel death on a cross. We might say the love of God is cruciform in shape. The cross reminds us that at every point God’s loving is costly. God is not like some cosmic chess player who plays games with our lives. Rather, Jesus offers himself as a sacrificial pawn so that we might live.

The text above indicates that God sent Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The word translated atoning sacrifice is hilasmos in Greek. It is the same word group as the ‘mercy seat’ on the Ark of the Covenant in the Greek Old Testament. God’s love is given so that mercy and forgiveness may be found – so that things can be put right. And that is how God’s love works.

Prayer

To you, great lover of my soul,

Eternal fountain and bedrock of all human loving,

Slow to anger and ever ready to show mercy,

I come as an object of that sacrificial love,

Captivated by it and liberated through it,

So that I too might become a channel of your love

To a world that is unwittingly searching for it.

The latest reflection from our Minister Reverend Alan Spence…

PANCAKE DAY

I understand that Pancake Day arose in the medieval church as a feast of sorts before the Lenten fast began. The idea was that if you were going without certain luxurious food items for forty days you might as well have a decent meal and empty the larder before the fast began! If Lent has to do with facing temptation this might all appear a little cynical – just as someone might feel free to curse like a trooper before beginning a period of swearing abstinence.

But there is I think a more charitable way of interpreting this practice. In the medieval church there were both feast days and fast days. There were times to enjoy food and celebrate the sense of community it encourages. There were also seasons during which it was helpful to place some restraints on our natural appetites and desires. We are called as Christians to be neither hedonists nor ascetics. There is a time in our lives for generous hospitality and for good food. There is a time for living simply, taking care of our own health and showing solidarity with a suffering world. And it is not always easy to strike that balance.

Paul seemed to have found a way.

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13)

These are tough times for all of us. With a lockdown still in place there are no grand celebratory events around a family dining table. There is no rejoicing with our friends at a pub lunch. The wine we drink we drink alone. And yet even in this we are encouraged to find contentment through the Lord who gives us strength. In Christ we learn that life is more than bread alone. And by his grace I am a survivor in these dark days. The prophet Habakkuk gives us a glimpse of how a person of faith might respond to them.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. (Habakkuk 3:17,18)

A reflection from our Minister, Reverend Alan Spence for the week commencing 8th February 2021…

THE VINE John15:1-17

Jesus used everyday farming scenes like planting and harvesting as the material for his parables. He said: the word of God is like seed in the sower’s hand. He said the whiteness of the fields is an indication of how ready people are to hear the Gospel. He said superficial Christians are like weeds that the devil has planted in the church. He explained that the Kingdom of God is almost invisible. It is like a grain of mustard seed. It grows into a great tree.

Jesus told parable to overturn the way we usually look at things. He challenges our normal world view. He leaves us disturbed about things we thought we knew. After hearing Jesus speak you would come away having to rethink your perspective. It happened then, it happens now.

In the parable of our reading today Jesus points to a vineyard, where vines heavy with fruit hang on the trellises. He suggests that God is like the gardener of the vineyard. The gardener’s role is to cut off dead wood, that is, the branches that fail to bear grapes. A Christian culture that looks good but fails to produce any spiritual fruit will be consigned to history. The gardener is concerned about fruit and life, not show. He is not preparing an entry for the Chelsea flower show but good wine for the joy of the human heart.

The gardener’s role in the autumn is to prune back the fruit-bearing branches. Where there is spiritual life things don’t always proceed merrily along. We often encounter tough times and it is those difficult experiences that God uses to give shape and richness to the fruit we bear. The true church has always had periods in which it participated in the sufferings of Christ. Even this present plague is I am sure shaping the character of the church.

In the parable of the vine, Jesus sees himself as the central stem of the vine and says that the Christians are the branches. (They are those who have been made clean by responding to the word of Christ.)

Now our task is to remain in him, or live in him or to abide in him. God’s goal is that we might bear fruit but our immediate duty is to remain in him. Separate a branch from the trunk and the life-flow stops. Graft it properly back onto the trunk and the fruit starts to appear naturally. Spiritual vitality is an energy that we don’t have in ourselves. We draw it from beyond our own being, from God. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are fruits of the Spirit. They come from the life of Jesus in us.

Abiding is an attitude of trust and dependence that draws all its life from Christ. It is maintained by a spirituality that daily feeds on him through the Word and through prayer.

It is interesting that the New Testament seldom uses the words ‘Christian’. It is not how the early believers generally viewed themselves – as a group differentiated from others. The most commonly used designation that they had of themselves was ‘in Christ’. If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. I am not the follower of a new code or of some outstanding new teacher. In some mystical and paradoxical way I am in a new position. I am in Christ. This young Galilean characterised by both joy and suffering, and anointed by God, is recognised as God’s own Son – I am in him. I was baptised into him.

Jesus promises: You remain in me and I will remain in you. So the converse is also true– Christ is in you the hope of glory. Part of the symbolism of communion becomes clear. Feed on him in your hearts by faith. It is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me.

The promise is that you will bear much fruit. Your life will be spiritually productive. It is the natural outcome from living in Christ.

Who am I? What is it that defines me? Well, I am a person in Christ. Together you and I in Christ will bear fruit for God.

From our Minister Reverend Alan Spence week commencing 1st February 2021

A NEW COVENANT Gal 4:21-28

It is a long standing tradition in the Methodist Church that its congregations begin the year with a service of covenant renewal.

What is the covenant? To understand this we need to remember that the bible comes to us as a book of two parts, the Old and New Testaments. ‘Testament’ is the Latin word for covenant. It is only our love of ancient language that obscures the fact that this is a book of two covenants.

What are these two covenants? In our reading from Galatians, Paul explains that one covenant is represented by Hagar, the slave woman who bore Ishmael. This covenant has its foundation in the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. It is a covenant practised in the Jerusalem temple with its rituals of worship and sacrifice. In short, this covenant is about law and ritual and the burden of bondage that such observance brings about. It is a covenant of servitude and not freedom. It is a covenant for slave children and not for the true heirs.

The other covenant is represented by Sarah and her child Isaac. Isaac is the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. Paul argues that Ishmael, Sarah’s son was born in the ordinary way. But Isaac was born out of divine promise. The bodies of his parents were as good as dead. They just didn’t have it in them to bear children. God gave Isaac to them as Abraham believed in the divine promise. It was a miracle. It is always like that with the New Covenant. God gave Isaac out of the barren womb of Sarah. God gave a saviour from the virgin womb of Mary. God raised Jesus from death leaving an empty tomb.

Javert, the policeman in ‘Les Miserables’ is a modern emblem of the old covenant or the law. He sees it as his absolute duty to bring the criminal to justice.

And so it must be, for so it is written on the doorway to paradise

That those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!

On the other hand, Jean Valjean, the former convict is an emblem of grace.

‘My soul belongs to God I know, I made that bargain long ago

He gave me hope when hope was gone, He gave me strength to journey on… Who Am I?….I’m Jean Valjean!’

If we are to renew our covenant with God let it be a covenant of grace and not a covenant of law. In 1838 some 500 Boers faced ten thousand Zulu soldiers in a critical battle for the future of the Afrikaans people. The Boers made a covenant with God that they would celebrate that day, 12^th December, perpetually if they should be granted victory. They did win and the ‘Day of the Covenant’ became a permanent feature of South African life. It was a day that caused deep division among its people. But this was a covenant of law not of grace. It was a deal that they had manufactured with God not a response to his promise of grace.

If we are to renew our covenant with God let us come as Peter. Not as Peter arrogantly promising that he will never betray Jesus. But as Peter humble and broken saying Lord you know that I love you. He hears Jesus say feed my sheep.

When Jesus shared a final supper with his disciples he raised a cup of wine and said: this is the blood of the new covenant shed for you.