Language Of Zion

The other day I came across Ben
Myers’ post on Daniel Radosh’s book ‘Rapture
Ready! Adventures in the parallel universe of Christian pop culture’. The
very title (which seems, from an Amazon
search, to be based on quite a few books) came the same day that somebody
had sent me an email, where the sign-off was something I hadn’t previously seen
in my sheltered Methodist upbringing: ‘Stay rapturable!’ It doesn’t quite fit
with my eschatology, but I suppose it’s better than being rupturable.

Which made me think about the ‘language of Zion’ that we
employ. Any specialist field or discipline has its own language, or uses common
words with a different meaning (think ‘factor’ in Maths, for example). We have
just had Trinity Sunday, and few Christian doctrines have more technical words
than the Trinity. And I certainly don’t want to diminish the importance of ‘the
language of mystery’.

But we get a bit daft in the church. Do I need all those
letters that begin, ‘Greetings in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ’?
I know what they mean, and some of them are sincere. Why, a few are even from
friends. Yes, the name of Jesus is precious, but over-use and reduction to
catchphrase diminish that sense of value for me.

I know a fair few of the Protestant (and especially
evangelical) words and phrases. I’m less familiar with what my friends who
climb burning candles and inhale pungent incense use. Or is this just an
evangelical disease? Can anyone help on this question?

I’m not blameless myself. Often, I end an email with the
words, ‘Grace and peace’. No, it’s not that I fancy myself as the Apostle Paul,
but I do like his use of those words in greetings. They convey something
important to me. I end some letters with ‘Yours in Christ.’ Prepare your
charges of hypocrisy to lay against me!

So why do we do it? Perhaps we need a secret code. On this
understanding, it is Christian undercover spy language. It is our equivalent to
the ICHTHUS symbol in the catacombs, before we made the fish badge something to
market. PTL and WWJD are the combinations that crack the code and let us
inside.

But if it is that, it is quite worrying. Although things may
be going against Christians in western society, we have not reached the level
of persecution that many of our sisters and brothers have. So we hardly need
the equivalent of the secret handshake. It therefore becomes a marker of who is
‘in’ and who is ‘out’, and our society is sensitive to issues of inclusion and
exclusion. Of course, some fundamental degree of inclusion and exclusion is
inevitable by virtue of positive or negative responses to Jesus Christ, but a
form that implicitly suggests superiority, and thus contradicts grace.

On another level, perhaps it indicates the difficulty we
have in translating the Gospel into what the Book of Common Prayer in its day
called ‘a tongue understanded of the people’. Are we so caught up with church
stuff and so unused to enjoying the company of non-Christians that we have no
language for mission, apart from slogans? Does anyone remember the Christian
policeman characters on ‘The
Fast Show’? They had some of our religious clichés down to a tee.

In fact, what may seem to be a facetious subject is a missionary
question. It is indicative of our failure to heed the dictum of Helmut Thielicke that
the Gospel must always be forwarded to a new address. It is about the
assumption that people need not only to be converted to Christ but to our
culture. It thus denies incarnational mission.

Of course, maybe we shouldn’t get too po-faced about this.
Maybe the best account I’ve ever seen of this comes from the time when Ship Of Fools was a printed magazine in the
early 1980s. They published ‘The Ship Of Fools Dictionary Of Sanctified
Jargon’. It contained such gems as, ‘Suffer the little children’: see Sunday
School.

Why do you think Christians do this? And do you have any
amusing examples? Let’s have a bit of fun here.

I was going to end the post with that last paragraph, but as
well as having fun, we need (without getting po-faced, as I said) to think
about some solutions. Some are inherent in what I’ve written already. We need
to be careful about the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, especially when it is
couched in terms of persecution. We need to be more comfortable around those
who do not share our faith: rather than being petrified of them, 1 John reminds
us, ‘Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.’ We seem to
function more with an Old Testament fear of ritual contamination than a New
Testament faith in which all those understandings have come to an end and
fulfilment in Christ.

But what do you think? As well as sharing some examples of
Christianese, what do you think we might do in order to kick the habit?

2

Photo Woes

Yesterday and today is Chelmsford's annual festival of strange and wonderful street theatre, streetdiversions. Having a day off yesterday, I went into town and spent six hours snapping away. I was snapping so much I thought I needed a new spare memory card for my camera. A helpful assistant I've dealt with before in Camera World sold me one of the spanking new 4 GB SD cards. Wonderful. That would take over two thousand photos at low resolution, or five hundred at high resolution.

Problem number one came last night. I formatted the new memory card, but the camera then threw up an error message. It wouldn't format on our Windows Vista computer (which occasionally throws hissy fits about formatting), but did so perfectly on our old Windows XP machine.

Fine, but the camera still gave the error message. It looks like it can't accept more than 1 GB of memory. Drat. Oh well, at least I can try to exchange it for some smaller cards, I thought, and if the shop won't accept that, I'll just have to eBay it to recoup some losses.

However, still needing memory space on my existing card, I decided I would back up the photos on it and delete them from the card. With too many to fit on a data CD, I formatted (successfully, it said) a data DVD. I left Vista churning away for the half an hour it lazily took to copy the pictures onto the DVD. I checked, and the photos were clearly on the DVD, so I deleted them from the memory card.

This morning, I thought I'd upload some of them to my Flickr account. Second problem. Mighty big one. This formatted DVD with photos on it now appears as a blank, unformatted disc to Vista, and is unreadable or corrupted to XP. And I had deleted the pictures from the memory card – nearly five hundred. While most were from yesterday, I needed several ready for a church website we hope to upload.

I think you can imagine how I feel …

3

Sunday’s Sermon: Don’t Worry, Be Faithful

Matthew 6:24-34

Introduction
Petrol
prices up, up, up: a
barrel of oil has doubled in a year. Gas and electricity up. Food prices
up. And the official inflation figures? Not up very much at all. Of course,
governments never fiddle statistics …

I paid
my credit card bill this week, and it looks like we’ve just eked out the money
to the end of the quarter[1].
It had been an expensive quarter. I had needed two new pairs of glasses. The vacuum
cleaner had become so unreliable it needed replacing. My car required an
expensive annual service, not least because the garage discovered that the
front brakes were in advanced state of wear.

You
may well be able to write your own version of this – not least if you are on a
limited or fixed income. Financially, things are becoming tighter for many of
us.

And
in a world like that, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry about money, food
and clothing. ‘Don’t worry?’ we wonder, ‘How can we not worry?’

So
how can we receive Jesus’ words today? Is he hopelessly unrealistic, or does
his teaching here help us to face an uncertain and rocky world with faith and
hope? Well, there aren’t too many Christian preachers who will say Jesus is
unrealistic (there shouldn’t be any!). I think he helps us to face uncertain
times with confidence in him. He does so by giving us a mixture of challenges
and encouragement.

1. Loyalty
‘You cannot serve God and wealth,’ says Jesus (verse 24). God versus Mammon:
choose. Mammon seems to have been the god of wealth in ancient Carthage[2].
God versus wealth is a choice of gods: whom will we serve? Who will have our
loyalty? Only one can have our devotion, and to the extent, says Jesus, in
typically colourful Jewish language, that all else will seem like hatred.

If we
are to face financial matters with peace and not worry, the first thing we have
to do is settle the issue of our loyalty. If Mammon is our god, then our moods
will swing more violently than the stock market. If the Lord is our God, then
our trust is in the One called The Rock. God is dependable.

It’s
easy to see the ways in which the gods of wealth – modern-day Mammons – are worshipped
today. Remember Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he was first elected to the
White House: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. But wealth is a created thing: if it
is worshipped in place of the Creator, then it must be an idol, a false god. It
should not command our ultimate loyalty.

Yet
do we get our loyalties twisted, too? In another context, I recently read a
book where the author was saying that one of the problems in certain sections
of the church was that people invited Jesus to be part of their story, when true
conversion was about saying we were becoming part of Jesus’ story[3]. Jesus
is no optional extra to be added to life. Jesus is Lord.

This
is not necessarily a call to take a vow of poverty, although God may call some
to that. We still need money. We should still be sensible with it. Nor is God a
spoilsport: he does allow us to enjoy good things from his creation, just so
long as we remain more attached to him than to things. For times will come when
our loyalty to Christ is tested by our attitude to finance. It may be about a
major purchase, or the expectations we have about our lifestyles. It may be
about what we budget for in our outgoings.

However,
it will be rare to find there is a biblical passage that explicitly tells us
what to do. No verse tells me what quality of car I may drive, how much I should
spend on a new computer or a reasonable amount to spend on a meal out with my
wife.

It’s
more subtle than that. The test of loyalty is a test of the heart. We answer it
by listening to the promptings of the Spirit, seeking advice from others and doing
that most difficult of things, listening to the true motives of our hearts. When
we can discern our motives, we shall know whether our desire is to please the
Lord or serve the idol of Mammon.

2. Value
If you’re anything like us, one of the things you’ll have thought about in the
current financial climate is your major outgoings. What is your biggest
expenditure, and where can you trim? Not having a mortgage, our biggest regular
expense is the weekly food bill. We try to be careful not to buy those impulse
purchases that bump up the bill.

Then
Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink and clothing! Yet they are some
of our biggest expenses! And don’t worry about how long we might live – even though
our nation spends billions on the National Health Service. Isn’t this advice
financial suicide? It sounds like it.

It isn’t
when you consider why Jesus tells us not to worry about these things. He tells
us to look at God’s care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In
God’s eyes, we are more valuable than either of these is. The people who spend
their time worrying and striving after these things are ‘the Gentiles’ – that is,
in this context, those who do not believe in the Lord. (Verses 25-32)

Therefore,
it’s an action of unbelief to spend all our time worrying about money and
possessions. What is it we don’t believe? We don’t believe that God loves us. We
don’t believe that God values us like nothing else on earth.

So stop
for a moment and consider just how much God does love and value us. God is
love, and created everything in love. Human beings are the only part of that
creation to be made in God’s image. In love, God still sought us out when we
turned our backs on him. Ultimately, in love, the Father sent his Son. Jesus
was born in poverty and humility. He died a terrible death and was raised from
the dead to reconcile us to God. God then comes by his Spirit to dwell within
and among his disciples. God wants to be with us; God is with us! That is how
much God loves and values us.

When
worry and stress come our way, we tend to forget important things. It’s time to
remember that God has placed an extraordinary value upon us. No transfer fee for
a footballer can match God’s valuation of us. He values us by the life of his
Son. No riches or possessions can compare with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling
within us.

So am
I advocating a reckless attitude to money? No – and yes. No, because we should
still plan our income, our spending and our giving carefully. Yet however
wisely we do that, we may still feel the pressure. Then it is time to remember
the great love God has for us, and the enormous value he places on us. A God
who views us like that will give us peace; he will look after us and provide for
our needs.

But
yes, there is a sense of recklessness about this, too, because on top of everything
else, God may challenge us in prayer to do something with our finances or
possessions that may seem crazy. God may lead us to do something that humanly doesn’t
make sense. Then, even more, is the time to remember the value God places on us,
and the immense love he has for us. If God clearly leads us in an unusual
direction with our wealth, we can be sure he will provide. The missionary
pioneer Hudson Taylor
once said, ‘God’s will done in God’s way will never lack the mean or the means.’[4]

3. The Kingdom
If we have an unqualified loyalty to our Lord and we believe he loves and
values us immeasurably, then what should our attitude be? Jesus says that instead
of striving for money and possessions, we are to ‘strive first for the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to [us] as
well’ (verse 33). Put simply, commit yourself above all things to the will of
God and he will supply your needs. Here’s how that happened once for me.

As you
know, I have been to two theological colleges. I applied to my first college at
a time in my life when I knew God was calling me to something, but I didn’t
know what, so I couldn’t ‘candidate’ for the ministry. Trinity College, Bristol offered me a
place. I applied for a grant (this was before student loans), but my education authority
turned me down. The college gave me a deadline by which I could guarantee them I
had the funds for my first year, and I appealed against the decision the
education authority made.

Forty-eight
hours before the college deadline, I learned that I had lost my appeal. What now?
Had I misread God’s guidance? However, it was at this stage that things started
to happen. My parents rediscovered some old funds they had forgotten. A student
who had taken a gap year between A-Levels and college and had worked to save
money for a car gave those savings to me. Her boyfriend also gave me some
money. Two elderly women at church gave me large sums of money. One wrote a
covering letter. She said, ‘It seems that God is asking you to trust him to
supply your needs. He will supply ours, too.’

By the
deadline, I had three quarters of the money required for that first year. I phoned
the Vice-Principal. He said they would take me, and help me with applications
to charities and trusts when I got there. He didn’t know I’d tried that and got
nowhere.

I preached
a sermon at a church other than my own in my circuit where I told how God had
provided for my needs. I didn’t explain that I still needed some more money. Afterwards,
a friend invited me back to his flat for coffee. He explained that he had been
planning a big holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie, but she had since died
and he saw no point in going. He had exchanged his sterling for New Zealand
dollars. However, the dollar had since fallen in value against the pound and he
had held onto the currency in hope that the exchange rates would go back in his
favour. They had worsened, and the money was annoying him. Would I like to take
this annoyance off him? Into my lap he threw two plastic Thomas Cook envelopes.
They contained NZ$2310. At the time (1986) this was worth £741, and I realised
he had originally exchanged £1000.

Later,
a friend at church who was a bank manager set up an account so that anyone
could give anonymously towards my support. With that and other gifts, all my
needs were provided for three years at college.

It all
felt like something out of a paperback testimony. Yet I felt very ordinary. I was.
I still am. I was no superhero of the faith. Jesus meant it when he said, ‘Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.’

Conclusion
This morning we are offering prayer for healing during the intercessions after
the next hymn. However, healing is not merely about our bodies. It is about
every aspect of life. Perhaps your fear or anxiety needs a healing touch from
God. If so, then let me invite you – just as much as anybody else – to come to
the communion rail for anointing with oil. Come to declare your unqualified
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and find an assurance from him that God loves you and
values like nothing else, and that when you commit yourself to his will, he
will meet your every need so that you may fulfil his kingdom purposes in your
life.

[1]
Methodist ministers are traditionally paid quarterly, not monthly (although the
latter option may now be chosen).

[4] An
apology for the exclusive language, but Taylor was a man of his time.

0

Sunday’s Sermon: Don’t Worry, Be Faithful

Matthew 6:24-34

Introduction
Petrol
prices up, up, up: a
barrel of oil has doubled in a year. Gas and electricity up. Food prices
up. And the official inflation figures? Not up very much at all. Of course,
governments never fiddle statistics …

I paid
my credit card bill this week, and it looks like we’ve just eked out the money
to the end of the quarter[1].
It had been an expensive quarter. I had needed two new pairs of glasses. The vacuum
cleaner had become so unreliable it needed replacing. My car required an
expensive annual service, not least because the garage discovered that the
front brakes were in advanced state of wear.

You
may well be able to write your own version of this – not least if you are on a
limited or fixed income. Financially, things are becoming tighter for many of
us.

And
in a world like that, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry about money, food
and clothing. ‘Don’t worry?’ we wonder, ‘How can we not worry?’

So
how can we receive Jesus’ words today? Is he hopelessly unrealistic, or does
his teaching here help us to face an uncertain and rocky world with faith and
hope? Well, there aren’t too many Christian preachers who will say Jesus is
unrealistic (there shouldn’t be any!). I think he helps us to face uncertain
times with confidence in him. He does so by giving us a mixture of challenges
and encouragement.

1. Loyalty
‘You cannot serve God and wealth,’ says Jesus (verse 24). God versus Mammon:
choose. Mammon seems to have been the god of wealth in ancient Carthage[2].
God versus wealth is a choice of gods: whom will we serve? Who will have our
loyalty? Only one can have our devotion, and to the extent, says Jesus, in
typically colourful Jewish language, that all else will seem like hatred.

If we
are to face financial matters with peace and not worry, the first thing we have
to do is settle the issue of our loyalty. If Mammon is our god, then our moods
will swing more violently than the stock market. If the Lord is our God, then
our trust is in the One called The Rock. God is dependable.

It’s
easy to see the ways in which the gods of wealth – modern-day Mammons – are worshipped
today. Remember Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he was first elected to the
White House: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. But wealth is a created thing: if it
is worshipped in place of the Creator, then it must be an idol, a false god. It
should not command our ultimate loyalty.

Yet
do we get our loyalties twisted, too? In another context, I recently read a
book where the author was saying that one of the problems in certain sections
of the church was that people invited Jesus to be part of their story, when true
conversion was about saying we were becoming part of Jesus’ story[3]. Jesus
is no optional extra to be added to life. Jesus is Lord.

This
is not necessarily a call to take a vow of poverty, although God may call some
to that. We still need money. We should still be sensible with it. Nor is God a
spoilsport: he does allow us to enjoy good things from his creation, just so
long as we remain more attached to him than to things. For times will come when
our loyalty to Christ is tested by our attitude to finance. It may be about a
major purchase, or the expectations we have about our lifestyles. It may be
about what we budget for in our outgoings.

However,
it will be rare to find there is a biblical passage that explicitly tells us
what to do. No verse tells me what quality of car I may drive, how much I should
spend on a new computer or a reasonable amount to spend on a meal out with my
wife.

It’s
more subtle than that. The test of loyalty is a test of the heart. We answer it
by listening to the promptings of the Spirit, seeking advice from others and doing
that most difficult of things, listening to the true motives of our hearts. When
we can discern our motives, we shall know whether our desire is to please the
Lord or serve the idol of Mammon.

2. Value
If you’re anything like us, one of the things you’ll have thought about in the
current financial climate is your major outgoings. What is your biggest
expenditure, and where can you trim? Not having a mortgage, our biggest regular
expense is the weekly food bill. We try to be careful not to buy those impulse
purchases that bump up the bill.

Then
Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink and clothing! Yet they are some
of our biggest expenses! And don’t worry about how long we might live – even though
our nation spends billions on the National Health Service. Isn’t this advice
financial suicide? It sounds like it.

It isn’t
when you consider why Jesus tells us not to worry about these things. He tells
us to look at God’s care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In
God’s eyes, we are more valuable than either of these is. The people who spend
their time worrying and striving after these things are ‘the Gentiles’ – that is,
in this context, those who do not believe in the Lord. (Verses 25-32)

Therefore,
it’s an action of unbelief to spend all our time worrying about money and
possessions. What is it we don’t believe? We don’t believe that God loves us. We
don’t believe that God values us like nothing else on earth.

So stop
for a moment and consider just how much God does love and value us. God is
love, and created everything in love. Human beings are the only part of that
creation to be made in God’s image. In love, God still sought us out when we
turned our backs on him. Ultimately, in love, the Father sent his Son. Jesus
was born in poverty and humility. He died a terrible death and was raised from
the dead to reconcile us to God. God then comes by his Spirit to dwell within
and among his disciples. God wants to be with us; God is with us! That is how
much God loves and values us.

When
worry and stress come our way, we tend to forget important things. It’s time to
remember that God has placed an extraordinary value upon us. No transfer fee for
a footballer can match God’s valuation of us. He values us by the life of his
Son. No riches or possessions can compare with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling
within us.

So am
I advocating a reckless attitude to money? No – and yes. No, because we should
still plan our income, our spending and our giving carefully. Yet however
wisely we do that, we may still feel the pressure. Then it is time to remember
the great love God has for us, and the enormous value he places on us. A God
who views us like that will give us peace; he will look after us and provide for
our needs.

But
yes, there is a sense of recklessness about this, too, because on top of everything
else, God may challenge us in prayer to do something with our finances or
possessions that may seem crazy. God may lead us to do something that humanly doesn’t
make sense. Then, even more, is the time to remember the value God places on us,
and the immense love he has for us. If God clearly leads us in an unusual
direction with our wealth, we can be sure he will provide. The missionary
pioneer Hudson Taylor
once said, ‘God’s will done in God’s way will never lack the mean or the means.’[4]

3. The Kingdom
If we have an unqualified loyalty to our Lord and we believe he loves and
values us immeasurably, then what should our attitude be? Jesus says that instead
of striving for money and possessions, we are to ‘strive first for the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to [us] as
well’ (verse 33). Put simply, commit yourself above all things to the will of
God and he will supply your needs. Here’s how that happened once for me.

As you
know, I have been to two theological colleges. I applied to my first college at
a time in my life when I knew God was calling me to something, but I didn’t
know what, so I couldn’t ‘candidate’ for the ministry. Trinity College, Bristol offered me a
place. I applied for a grant (this was before student loans), but my education authority
turned me down. The college gave me a deadline by which I could guarantee them I
had the funds for my first year, and I appealed against the decision the
education authority made.

Forty-eight
hours before the college deadline, I learned that I had lost my appeal. What now?
Had I misread God’s guidance? However, it was at this stage that things started
to happen. My parents rediscovered some old funds they had forgotten. A student
who had taken a gap year between A-Levels and college and had worked to save
money for a car gave those savings to me. Her boyfriend also gave me some
money. Two elderly women at church gave me large sums of money. One wrote a
covering letter. She said, ‘It seems that God is asking you to trust him to
supply your needs. He will supply ours, too.’

By the
deadline, I had three quarters of the money required for that first year. I phoned
the Vice-Principal. He said they would take me, and help me with applications
to charities and trusts when I got there. He didn’t know I’d tried that and got
nowhere.

I preached
a sermon at a church other than my own in my circuit where I told how God had
provided for my needs. I didn’t explain that I still needed some more money. Afterwards,
a friend invited me back to his flat for coffee. He explained that he had been
planning a big holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie, but she had since died
and he saw no point in going. He had exchanged his sterling for New Zealand
dollars. However, the dollar had since fallen in value against the pound and he
had held onto the currency in hope that the exchange rates would go back in his
favour. They had worsened, and the money was annoying him. Would I like to take
this annoyance off him? Into my lap he threw two plastic Thomas Cook envelopes.
They contained NZ$2310. At the time (1986) this was worth £741, and I realised
he had originally exchanged £1000.

Later,
a friend at church who was a bank manager set up an account so that anyone
could give anonymously towards my support. With that and other gifts, all my
needs were provided for three years at college.

It all
felt like something out of a paperback testimony. Yet I felt very ordinary. I was.
I still am. I was no superhero of the faith. Jesus meant it when he said, ‘Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.’

Conclusion
This morning we are offering prayer for healing during the intercessions after
the next hymn. However, healing is not merely about our bodies. It is about
every aspect of life. Perhaps your fear or anxiety needs a healing touch from
God. If so, then let me invite you – just as much as anybody else – to come to
the communion rail for anointing with oil. Come to declare your unqualified
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and find an assurance from him that God loves you and
values like nothing else, and that when you commit yourself to his will, he
will meet your every need so that you may fulfil his kingdom purposes in your
life.

[1]
Methodist ministers are traditionally paid quarterly, not monthly (although the
latter option may now be chosen).

[4] An
apology for the exclusive language, but Taylor was a man of his time.

0

Sunday’s Sermon: Don’t Worry, Be Faithful

Matthew 6:24-34

Introduction
Petrol
prices up, up, up: a
barrel of oil has doubled in a year. Gas and electricity up. Food prices
up. And the official inflation figures? Not up very much at all. Of course,
governments never fiddle statistics …

I paid
my credit card bill this week, and it looks like we’ve just eked out the money
to the end of the quarter[1].
It had been an expensive quarter. I had needed two new pairs of glasses. The vacuum
cleaner had become so unreliable it needed replacing. My car required an
expensive annual service, not least because the garage discovered that the
front brakes were in advanced state of wear.

You
may well be able to write your own version of this – not least if you are on a
limited or fixed income. Financially, things are becoming tighter for many of
us.

And
in a world like that, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry about money, food
and clothing. ‘Don’t worry?’ we wonder, ‘How can we not worry?’

So
how can we receive Jesus’ words today? Is he hopelessly unrealistic, or does
his teaching here help us to face an uncertain and rocky world with faith and
hope? Well, there aren’t too many Christian preachers who will say Jesus is
unrealistic (there shouldn’t be any!). I think he helps us to face uncertain
times with confidence in him. He does so by giving us a mixture of challenges
and encouragement.

1. Loyalty
‘You cannot serve God and wealth,’ says Jesus (verse 24). God versus Mammon:
choose. Mammon seems to have been the god of wealth in ancient Carthage[2].
God versus wealth is a choice of gods: whom will we serve? Who will have our
loyalty? Only one can have our devotion, and to the extent, says Jesus, in
typically colourful Jewish language, that all else will seem like hatred.

If we
are to face financial matters with peace and not worry, the first thing we have
to do is settle the issue of our loyalty. If Mammon is our god, then our moods
will swing more violently than the stock market. If the Lord is our God, then
our trust is in the One called The Rock. God is dependable.

It’s
easy to see the ways in which the gods of wealth – modern-day Mammons – are worshipped
today. Remember Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he was first elected to the
White House: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. But wealth is a created thing: if it
is worshipped in place of the Creator, then it must be an idol, a false god. It
should not command our ultimate loyalty.

Yet
do we get our loyalties twisted, too? In another context, I recently read a
book where the author was saying that one of the problems in certain sections
of the church was that people invited Jesus to be part of their story, when true
conversion was about saying we were becoming part of Jesus’ story[3]. Jesus
is no optional extra to be added to life. Jesus is Lord.

This
is not necessarily a call to take a vow of poverty, although God may call some
to that. We still need money. We should still be sensible with it. Nor is God a
spoilsport: he does allow us to enjoy good things from his creation, just so
long as we remain more attached to him than to things. For times will come when
our loyalty to Christ is tested by our attitude to finance. It may be about a
major purchase, or the expectations we have about our lifestyles. It may be
about what we budget for in our outgoings.

However,
it will be rare to find there is a biblical passage that explicitly tells us
what to do. No verse tells me what quality of car I may drive, how much I should
spend on a new computer or a reasonable amount to spend on a meal out with my
wife.

It’s
more subtle than that. The test of loyalty is a test of the heart. We answer it
by listening to the promptings of the Spirit, seeking advice from others and doing
that most difficult of things, listening to the true motives of our hearts. When
we can discern our motives, we shall know whether our desire is to please the
Lord or serve the idol of Mammon.

2. Value
If you’re anything like us, one of the things you’ll have thought about in the
current financial climate is your major outgoings. What is your biggest
expenditure, and where can you trim? Not having a mortgage, our biggest regular
expense is the weekly food bill. We try to be careful not to buy those impulse
purchases that bump up the bill.

Then
Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink and clothing! Yet they are some
of our biggest expenses! And don’t worry about how long we might live – even though
our nation spends billions on the National Health Service. Isn’t this advice
financial suicide? It sounds like it.

It isn’t
when you consider why Jesus tells us not to worry about these things. He tells
us to look at God’s care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In
God’s eyes, we are more valuable than either of these is. The people who spend
their time worrying and striving after these things are ‘the Gentiles’ – that is,
in this context, those who do not believe in the Lord. (Verses 25-32)

Therefore,
it’s an action of unbelief to spend all our time worrying about money and
possessions. What is it we don’t believe? We don’t believe that God loves us. We
don’t believe that God values us like nothing else on earth.

So stop
for a moment and consider just how much God does love and value us. God is
love, and created everything in love. Human beings are the only part of that
creation to be made in God’s image. In love, God still sought us out when we
turned our backs on him. Ultimately, in love, the Father sent his Son. Jesus
was born in poverty and humility. He died a terrible death and was raised from
the dead to reconcile us to God. God then comes by his Spirit to dwell within
and among his disciples. God wants to be with us; God is with us! That is how
much God loves and values us.

When
worry and stress come our way, we tend to forget important things. It’s time to
remember that God has placed an extraordinary value upon us. No transfer fee for
a footballer can match God’s valuation of us. He values us by the life of his
Son. No riches or possessions can compare with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling
within us.

So am
I advocating a reckless attitude to money? No – and yes. No, because we should
still plan our income, our spending and our giving carefully. Yet however
wisely we do that, we may still feel the pressure. Then it is time to remember
the great love God has for us, and the enormous value he places on us. A God
who views us like that will give us peace; he will look after us and provide for
our needs.

But
yes, there is a sense of recklessness about this, too, because on top of everything
else, God may challenge us in prayer to do something with our finances or
possessions that may seem crazy. God may lead us to do something that humanly doesn’t
make sense. Then, even more, is the time to remember the value God places on us,
and the immense love he has for us. If God clearly leads us in an unusual
direction with our wealth, we can be sure he will provide. The missionary
pioneer Hudson Taylor
once said, ‘God’s will done in God’s way will never lack the mean or the means.’[4]

3. The Kingdom
If we have an unqualified loyalty to our Lord and we believe he loves and
values us immeasurably, then what should our attitude be? Jesus says that instead
of striving for money and possessions, we are to ‘strive first for the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to [us] as
well’ (verse 33). Put simply, commit yourself above all things to the will of
God and he will supply your needs. Here’s how that happened once for me.

As you
know, I have been to two theological colleges. I applied to my first college at
a time in my life when I knew God was calling me to something, but I didn’t
know what, so I couldn’t ‘candidate’ for the ministry. Trinity College, Bristol offered me a
place. I applied for a grant (this was before student loans), but my education authority
turned me down. The college gave me a deadline by which I could guarantee them I
had the funds for my first year, and I appealed against the decision the
education authority made.

Forty-eight
hours before the college deadline, I learned that I had lost my appeal. What now?
Had I misread God’s guidance? However, it was at this stage that things started
to happen. My parents rediscovered some old funds they had forgotten. A student
who had taken a gap year between A-Levels and college and had worked to save
money for a car gave those savings to me. Her boyfriend also gave me some
money. Two elderly women at church gave me large sums of money. One wrote a
covering letter. She said, ‘It seems that God is asking you to trust him to
supply your needs. He will supply ours, too.’

By the
deadline, I had three quarters of the money required for that first year. I phoned
the Vice-Principal. He said they would take me, and help me with applications
to charities and trusts when I got there. He didn’t know I’d tried that and got
nowhere.

I preached
a sermon at a church other than my own in my circuit where I told how God had
provided for my needs. I didn’t explain that I still needed some more money. Afterwards,
a friend invited me back to his flat for coffee. He explained that he had been
planning a big holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie, but she had since died
and he saw no point in going. He had exchanged his sterling for New Zealand
dollars. However, the dollar had since fallen in value against the pound and he
had held onto the currency in hope that the exchange rates would go back in his
favour. They had worsened, and the money was annoying him. Would I like to take
this annoyance off him? Into my lap he threw two plastic Thomas Cook envelopes.
They contained NZ$2310. At the time (1986) this was worth £741, and I realised
he had originally exchanged £1000.

Later,
a friend at church who was a bank manager set up an account so that anyone
could give anonymously towards my support. With that and other gifts, all my
needs were provided for three years at college.

It all
felt like something out of a paperback testimony. Yet I felt very ordinary. I was.
I still am. I was no superhero of the faith. Jesus meant it when he said, ‘Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.’

Conclusion
This morning we are offering prayer for healing during the intercessions after
the next hymn. However, healing is not merely about our bodies. It is about
every aspect of life. Perhaps your fear or anxiety needs a healing touch from
God. If so, then let me invite you – just as much as anybody else – to come to
the communion rail for anointing with oil. Come to declare your unqualified
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and find an assurance from him that God loves you and
values like nothing else, and that when you commit yourself to his will, he
will meet your every need so that you may fulfil his kingdom purposes in your
life.

[1]
Methodist ministers are traditionally paid quarterly, not monthly (although the
latter option may now be chosen).

[4] An
apology for the exclusive language, but Taylor was a man of his time.

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Gardener’s Gospel

I am no gardener. I hate gardening. But my writer friend Fiona Veitch Smith loves gardening, and is writing about it from a spiritual perspective. Why not surf over to her site and read some of her ‘Gardener’s Gospel’ posts? Oh, and leave her a comment to encourage her.
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Gardener’s Gospel

I am no gardener. I hate gardening. But my writer friend Fiona Veitch Smith loves gardening, and is writing about it from a spiritual perspective. Why not surf over to her site and read some of her ‘Gardener’s Gospel’ posts? Oh, and leave her a comment to encourage her.
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Gardener’s Gospel

I am no gardener. I hate gardening. But my writer friend Fiona Veitch Smith loves gardening, and is writing about it from a spiritual perspective. Why not surf over to her site and read some of her ‘Gardener’s Gospel’ posts? Oh, and leave her a comment to encourage her.
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Sermon For Trinity Sunday: The Holy Trinity In Ordinary Time

2 Corinthians
13:11-13

Introduction
‘It’s the end of the festival season,’ said a friend of mine the other day.

The end, I thought? But it’s only mid-May! The mud bath that
is the Glastonbury Festival hasn’t happened yet, let alone all the other summer
music festivals.

Then I realised. He wasn’t talking about that kind of festival.
My friend is an Anglican priest, and he was talking about the festivals of the
Christian year. We began with Advent and Christmas, we went to Epiphany (and
Candlemas for the enthusiasts). Then it was on to Lent, followed by Easter,
then Ascension and last week Pentecost. Today is Trinity Sunday, and it’s the
end of the festival season. From now on, everything until Advent is what we
call ‘Ordinary Time’. Trinity Sunday leads us into Ordinary Time. The festivals
are over, and it’s time to live out our faith in the ordinary seasons.

And it’s that faith in the Trinity that enables us to live
the life of disciples in ‘ordinary times’, when there are no festivities or
dramatic events, when everything is reduced from saturated colours to shades of
grey. I want to do some exploring this morning of what faith in the Trinity
means for us on those plain vanilla days. I’m going to use the familiar words
of ‘The Grace’, which form the very last verse of 2 Corinthians, as a
foundation for this.

So you won’t get an explanation of the Trinity this morning.
I once took a series of sermons to scratch the surface of that! There will be
the odd hint about it, but I can recommend a book[1]
that is not aimed at academics, if you want deeper exploration. What you will
get is some sense of the work of the Trinity, from which we deduce the
doctrine.

Off we go, then. I wonder if you can guess how many points
the sermon has today …

1. The grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ
A friend of mine called Colin had been a missionary in the Far East when he was
single. He had stayed with a Christian family. They had one daughter. Her name
was Grace.

Colin once asked if Grace had any middle names. ‘No,’
replied her parents, ‘because – as the Scripture says – grace is sufficient.’

The grace of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ is what is
sufficient for us. It is more than sufficient to bring salvation. Grace is a
gift of God. It is well summed up in the old acronym that G.R.A.C.E. stands for
‘God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense’. That is, through the suffering of Jesus, we
receive blessing upon blessing. It is more than the idea that we don’t get what
we do deserve as sinners (mercy): grace is the flip side of the coin, where we
receive many things we don’t deserve.

So grace is a gift. It is the gift of God in Christ. It is
the mercy of the Cross, the new life of the Resurrection and the power of
Pentecost. It is the generosity of the Holy Trinity, where the Father lavishes
his blessings upon us through the Son, by the Spirit.

But there is more:

‘In Paul’s usage, grace
is most characteristically action and gift … and in these words Paul prays for
a continuation and deepening of what has already been done and given in Corinth.’[2]

Grace is an action as well as a gift. That is where it comes
into play in ‘ordinary time’. In ordinary daily life, we need grace to be
action as well as gift. As disciples of Jesus, we already know the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ as a gift – and yes, of course, we often need reminding of
that gift. But we also need grace as action. That is, we who have received the
gift of grace in Jesus need to express it in our actions.

Corinth was a messed-up place, where the powerful threw
their weight around, discriminated against the poor and against those who didn’t
have an impressive appearance or charisma (Paul included!). Relationships were
damaged and broken as a result. They were a group of people constituted by the
fact that they had received the gift of grace. Now they needed to act in grace,
if they were to be the community Christ wanted them to be. If relationships
were to be repaired, they needed grace in action.

It’s the same for us in our ‘ordinary time’. People hurt one
another. They don’t consider one another’s feelings. One person’s ambition
means others are trampled. Somebody blows a short fuse. It’s time to turn the
gift of grace into the action of grace. It’s the call to practise the
discipline of forgiveness. And yes, I do mean discipline of forgiveness,
because much of the time we won’t feel like doing it, but we need to.

So if we have received the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ as
a gift, let us turn it into an action.

2. The love of God
To those of us used to normal Trinitarian formulae, it seems strange that Paul puts
Jesus before God. ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ’ is followed by ‘the love
of God’. But this is important. Behind the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is
the love of God. Jesus brings grace because God is love. It is not that Jesus
has to persuade God to love us: rather, it is as Paul said earlier in 2
Corinthians, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’.

And it’s more than the love of God. Why does God love us? He
loves us, because that is his nature. The most fundamental statement about God
in the whole Bible is this: ‘God is love.’ Now love is something that must be shown,
so how could God be love before he had creation to love? The answer, surely, is
that within the Trinity mutual love is expressed.

But then, love that is within a relationship has to go
beyond those in the relationship to others. In the love of man and woman in
marriage, the conventional way this happens is in children – perhaps biological
children, or adopted children, or maybe fostered children. When I prepare a
couple for marriage and I discover they do not plan to try for children
immediately, I challenge them to find a way of putting the love they have for
each other to work in serving the community, or in helping the needy. Love cannot
be turned in on itself forever.

So with God: the love within the Trinity burst out in the
loving act of creation. Then, in the light of sin and brokenness, the love of
God became salvation – ultimately, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If the love of the Trinitarian God is like this, what does
it mean for us in the ordinary time of routine life? It surely means that if God’s love is shared
among us, it cannot be contained within us. The church or Christians who experience
God’s love will share God’s love.

Does that mean doing something scary or dramatic, like
travelling to fearsome places to show the love of God? It will for some. In the
meantime, we need to start where we are. Where has God placed us? Those are where
we begin to share the love of God. For Debbie and me, the location of our manse
and the ages of our children place us at particular school and pre-school
gates. There we are available to people. Unconditionally, we help anyone in
need if we can. It may be the family split apart by alcoholism, or the little
girl whose mother’s behaviour towards her is deeply worrying. We hope and pray
people will realise we do this because of God’s love, and that the
opportunities will come to share just how much more God has done for them in
Christ.

Where has God placed you? That is the location to begin
showing the love of God beyond the boundaries of the church.

3. The fellowship of
the Holy Spirit
Paul’s final prayer here amounts to this:

‘Paul wishes for his readers a ‘continuing and deepening’ of
their participation in the Holy Spirit.’[3]

This is tricky. Participation in the Holy Spirit is a
slippery thing. Why? Because one thing we learn about the Holy Spirit in
Scripture is that the Spirit never points to himself[4],
but to Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the self-effacing Person of the Godhead.

If that is the case, then participating in the Holy Spirit
isn’t just about welcoming all the ways in which the Spirit works. It is also
about the manner in which we immerse ourselves in the Holy Spirit.

What does this mean? I think it means we welcome all the
gifts the Holy Spirit wants to give us. Anything from God is good. But how do
we use them? We cannot use spiritual gifts to enhance our own name or reputation.
If we truly are deeper and deeper in the Holy Spirit, our passion will be the
name of Jesus. There are times I have had this right in my life, and other
times when I have had it badly wrong.

One time I got it wrong was in 1997. I had been invited to
be a seminar speaker at Spring Harvest. It was the fulfilment of a prophetic
word given to me in 1980 that I would speak at conferences. The speakers that
week (including one Nicky Gumbel, by the way –yes, I have laid hands on him in
prayer, not that he would remember me!) could gather in a team lounge when not
on speaking duty. We would be expected to attend one of the evening celebration
meetings. One night, I was asked if for the rest of the week I would be
seconded from the one I attended to a children and family celebration that
friends of mine were running. I agreed.

A day or two later, I heard that in the team lounge while I was
at the family celebration, the Spring Harvest leadership had announced some
social evenings after the celebrations each night that the speakers could go
to. This would be a chance to mingle with the great and good of the evangelical
world. Hearing it second-hand later, I asked the people who hosted the team lounge.
‘No, it isn’t for you,’ they said. So I never went.

On the penultimate day, I discovered they were wrong. They had
mistaken me for someone else. I could have gone, but now the social evenings had
finished. My chance to get to know these people – and get known myself – was gone.

Then I realised that my motives were all wrong. When I had
heard about the social evenings, I had been too concerned to promote my name,
and not that of Jesus. I wonder whether that was why God allowed the
misunderstanding so that I didn’t go.

The next year, I had learned my lesson. I was running a Saturday
conference at a church for people involved in contemporary styles of worship. At
the evening worship celebration, an elderly man from one of my churches hadn’t
been able to attend. But two women from that church who did make it felt such a
fire in their hands during prayer that they were sure the Holy Spirit wanted
them to go and see this man after the meeting and lay hands on him. When they
did, he was healed. The next morning, he was in church, giving his testimony to
what happened the night before at a baptism service with many non-Christians
present.

I circulated the story on an email list on the Internet.
Back came a reply: ‘David, you mighty man of God!’ it said. (I mean, honestly,
you could tell he didn’t know me!) I was quick to reply and say it wasn’t I who
had laid hands on the man, but the two particular women, and in any case, it
was the work of God. That, I believe, is to participate more deeply in the Holy
Spirit – to welcome his gifts and make sure God gets the glory and no one else.

Maybe those two stories don’t easily qualify as mundane ‘ordinary
time’. But the principle remains. The gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit are
for everyday, not just Sunday, for the street as much as the church. In all the ways we participate in the Holy Spirit’s
ministry, our part is to ensure the glory goes to the God of love whose grace
is made known in Jesus Christ. If we do, then we will imitate that God by
acting in grace to heal the wounds of the world, and showing God’s love to
those beyond our spiritual family. May the Holy Spirit enable us to do so, to
the glory of God.

[1] Darrell W Johnson, Experiencing
The Trinity – which I used for the aforementioned sermon series.

[3]
Ibid.

[4] Or
should that be herself? Can anyone remember the N T Wright comment from about
twenty years ago, where (in a Bible study at General Synod?) he said there was
a feminine personal pronoun in Romans 8 referencing the Spirit?

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