We are doing a Lent course in our Circuit based on Desmond Tutu's book "In God's Hands"- I have been asked to blog the sessions for those who cannot get to the actual meetings.
Here is session one about worth.
Is Lent about rediscovering God’s place in our lives and what
we have to do as a result of that?
Is Lent about doing less church (I wish) and more God? I wish
we could ban all business meetings in Lent and gather when we were to meet for
business to do some serious thinking about God’s will for us and our response.
Here is Janet Morley on Lent: "To keep
Lent is to turn aside from the ordinary routines of our life in order to
reflect; to notice what is going on, to detect what is really significant. It
is to attend properly to what seems insignificant and might otherwise be
missed, but is actually indicative of the whole direction of our unconscious
priorities - so that these can be reconsidered. It is consciously to take a
slice out of ordinary time, so as to understand how we use time overall."
I like these quotes from Pope Francis:
·
“The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the
place in which the Lord's mercy motivates us to do better.”
·
"Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at
our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us
cultivate the style of the good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need
and took care of him."Both aspects of Lent – taking in
God again and being equipped to take God in Jesus out. Remember Jesus’ 40 days
of serious reflection before ministry. One Gospel says he was “driven” to this.
Tutu
invites us to rediscover the nature of God in whose hands we are every day.
Consider a time when you were told you were worth something,
who showed you that and how were you shown. How did it make you feel?
Consider a time when you were told you were worthless, who
told you that or make you feel like that. How did it make you feel?
Self-worth is a big issue in society today – a need to look
better, achieve more, be the best we can be, a need to be loved by someone.
Thousands of people in counselling sessions being told by someone that they are
not loved anymore, devalued and not wanted. Lots of people are ill with depression
– it is not a nice place to be, I have been there. Perhaps the biggest
challenge in society is to convince people they matter – we will see in
election manifestos very soon. You matter!
Churches opening up for community events are finding people
coming to find something, the new encounter with church in whatever form is
relational and on the edge but we need to work hard at those times. I met a
very young Mum wanting her daughter baptised at Rye in July. I arrived and
asked her why she wanted that. She told me her partner was the religious one
and it is tradition. She told me she wasn’t really into it. I asked her what
she thought about God. We ended up having a very deep discussion about
acceptance and worth and love. I think I did more theology with that young Mum
in an hour than in many church house groups. We start with people who have
little self-worth and little idea of a God who can love you as you are.
Are you good at giving compliments or receiving them? Do we
know the worth in this room? Often when people pass on we only know how much people were valued
when we hear their eulogy. If we rediscovered our gifts, then the church would
be very different, especially if we encouraged people to use them.
A passage to ponder: Genesis 1: 26 - 31
Some points from Tutu:
Everything God created is good – indeed, very good.
Everything!
We are given dominion over all of creation. “That is why we
were created, to be God’s viceroys, to be God’s stand ins. We should love, we
should bear rule over the rest of creation as God would. We are meant to be
caring in how we deal with the rest of God’s creation. God wants everything to
flourish.”
“God asks us to be co-creators with God, to be those who
promote flourishing, not promoting death.”
What does it mean for you to be made in the image of God?
What does it mean for you to be given dominion over the
earth? What responsibilities does that bring to daily life? Think about where
that goes wrong about worth.
Later Tutu goes on to talk about community being made if we
believe not just we but everyone are made in the image of God.
“If we really believed what we asserted – that each human
being without exception is created in the image of God, and so is a God-carrier
– then we would be appalled at any ill treatment of another human being,
because it is not simply unjust but also, shockingly, blasphemous. It really is
spitting in the face of God. “If we truly believed that we are each a God-carrier and a
sanctuary of the Holy Spirit then we would not just greet each other by shaking
hands, we would bow deeply as Buddhists do, or genuflect in front of each
other: “The God in me greets the God in you.” Have we lost respect for each
other today?
Does society enjoy putting people down? Discuss!
Think about finally what attracted you to Jesus? For me it
was seeing someone who is into worth, building people up, giving people life,
listening, engaging, transforming, never shunning people but giving them time.
I wish I had more time to visit people in their homes, it is my biggest
frustration. I tend only to visit those who have need and who ask me to go. I
know other ministers who don’t do any of that. Our work must be relational
first in the church.
We will grow again if people know we care about them and see
them as much as we are made in the image of God. We are seeing it through work
in Food Banks and Street Pastors and shelters and coffee shops and CAP etc etc.
Tutu ends the first chapter of the book reminding us that
Jesus told a parable where he declared that we would be judged fit for heaven
or hell, not by whether or not we prayed or went to church, but rather on this
basis “in as much as you have done these things to the least of my sisters and
brothers, you have done them to me.” Where is that Scripture in our church
programme?
Note Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”
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