Holy Week Reflection - Overturning

Today, I have been thinking about Jesus overturning tables in the Temple. An indignant response to injustice as the poor were being ripped off for what they needed to come into the presence of God. 

Have we the courage to take action over things that are not fair?

Some of us in the Circuit during Lent had a day looking at the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just two days after Hitler had seized control of Germany in early 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio sermon in which he criticised the new regime and warned Germans worship of the Fuhrer was dangerous and wrong. “Leaders of offices which set themselves up as gods mock God” his address concluded. But Germany never got to hear those final statements because his microphone was turned off mid transmission.

Sometimes overturning things, the money changers, the power seekers of today is hard. Sometimes the Church has to stand up. However hard that is. I read in a church magazine letter the other day we need to challenge prospective MPs over the next five weeks or so how their policies will bring good to people, all people. Some things need overturning. The trouble is most politicians will blame the other lot for the problem or pretend there isn’t a problem. Perhaps the whole of Parliament needs overturning.

Will we challenge those things that are wrong in our own Temple courts maybe?

What needs overturning in our church this very day and us making a fuss about? It might make us unpopular but we might need to make a stand. I did it once, and I was besieged by letters. I was not fit to be the minister and obnoxious and arrogant but something was happening that simply could not continue, injustice and prejudice, discrimination and one group dominating another. Sometimes the call to cleanse the community of God leads to cost and the need to be supported. 

When Jesus enters Jerusalem and it says in the bit before the bit we read “the whole city was in turmoil, this can also be interpreted that the whole city ‘shook’ saying, “Who is this?” Jerusalem shook like an earthquake in the presence of the Christ king because Jesus claims the city’s economics, politics, and culture for the way of God. This city would never be the same. Shaken at its very foundations. Things overturned, a religious system overturned, a reminder of the way of God present. 

Perhaps this week is all about choices. Do we continue to put up with corrupt and unhealthy ways or do we stick to and promote the way of God’s Kingdom. Perhaps Jerusalem was not big enough for Jesus Kingdom and the Temple might. Perhaps sometimes we are determined in our Jerusalem to put with things and not promote a different vision – the vision that Jesus came to announce and live. This week on Friday sees the result of the two ideals clashing. Perhaps this episode reminds us in the end we don’t need a Temple or a church, that God can be met anywhere. This week needs some controversial and radical thinking about. All can come and where we are blocking people or charging them beyond their means, we need to think again about what we are about. 

Holy Week Reflection for Palm Sunday - Cheering

Today, at the beginning of Holy Week, we have waved our palm branches and remembered Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But Jesus was soon in trouble! And perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing.

Crowds can be dangerous places to be caught up in. I don’t know if you have ever been in such a crowd. I remember the old MAYC London Weekends where we would descend on London dressed from head to toe in green and yellow. One year MAYC weekend clashed with England versus Scotland, and we were on the underground and we quickly needed to get out of the crowd approaching us because it was dangerous. They clearly thought we were football supporters – Norwich City I guess. Compare that to rugby crowds – I was on Princes Street in Edinburgh a week yesterday following Scotland versus Ireland at Murrayfield. Pubs and restaurants were full of the two sets of supporters watching to see how England would do. It was good natured and fun to be amongst. There are over crowds that exhilarate us – worship in a big number at things like MAYC and Easter People or even as a Circuit family. I am challenging in a letter this week every church in the Circuit to make it a priority to be here next Sunday evening so we can share in lively Easter worship together. Of course, I am used to being ignored!

Sometimes we can be part of a crowd we really didn’t want to be in. I travelled home from holiday yesterday – due to engineering work 8 hours on a train from Berwick upon Tweed to Kings Cross. Until Newcastle, I had Coach G all to myself. That didn’t last long. A large group got on together with provisions. Coach G now party coach - all those who are around me are together about 30 of them and the gin, lager, Pinot Grigio and shouting loudly started before we left the station!!!! Four on the table opposite me had between them two bottles of white, one bottle of red, four cans of lager, and four cans of gin!

The vodka and the Daily Mirror crossword were opened as as we left York. The lady who clearly was in charge on her fourth glass of wine complains it wasn’t difficult enough.  At Doncaster the mini eggs were passed round. At Peterborough how I wished Brian Blessed were not one of the crossword answers. It was not fun listening to impressions of him. Then they started having a pop quiz involving blasting out tracks on the iPod for the carriage. Robbie Williams Angels with actions!

At Kings Cross they congratulated me for putting up with them! 15 London civil servants who were returning from Newcastle after an overnight sail there from Tilbury Docks (as you do)! I really must get a life...

Palm Sunday is all about crowds, as is most of this week really, responding to Jesus. Jerusalem was a hotbed of tension. The Passover heightened expectation for the Jews that God would come and do what they wanted to make them great again.

Perhaps we need to note that Sunday there were two processions, and two crowds reacting to them. On the other side of the city, Pontius Pilate was entering, coming in from the coast with 600 foot soldiers, horses, armour, banners and flags and standards bearing great carved golden eagles (the symbol of Roman authority), beating drums… Rome at Passover wanted Israel to be in no doubt about who was in charge. One writer has suggested that the cheers would have been eerily similar to the ones we think of when we remember this day. Caesar was Rome’s “Prince of Peace”; he was Rome’s “Son of God” and Pontius Pilate was his representative. Remember little posts were erected all over the city, the vertical pole of the cross, to remind people what would happen if there were insurrection.

Have we ever been in a crowd longing to speak out against what is happening but too frightened to do so? Have we ever been in a crowd whipped up by a few determined to convince us something wonderful is about to happen, even if it feels a bit dodgy? I have been to a few huge evangelical rallies like that, part of me was not comfortable being there, because I didn’t agree with the speaker. But it was easier not to go next year then to challenge him.

Then let’s go across the city to the Mount of Olives. Jesus came down the Mount of Olives on a donkey. Perhaps Jesus procession into Jerusalem was some sort of staged demonstration, to say to Pilate and Rome and the Jewish puppets, there is another way and it isn’t yours. Some sort of holy protests, some sort of evangelism to crowds awaiting the Messiah to come. Remember at Passover they believed that the Messiah of God would come to boot the Romans out and herald a new age. If you were in that part of the city, what would you have shouted at Jesus?

This morning at St Helens in All Age Worship we talked about what we do when we are in a crowd and what we get isn’t to our liking.

My football team, the proper Manchester team, I fear will sack Mr Lovely Pellegrini because he hasn’t won the Champions League for them. My post in the porch last night contained several election leaflets including a letter to me from David Cameron himself. If you don’t like this government we have had for the last five years, you can boot them out if you like, and we can all see what comes next. There are teenage girls bereft that Zayn has left One Direction. Some are forsaking the band. One supermarket, and this is serious, has reduced One Direction Easter eggs by 20p! “He has let us down” by having his arm round another girl’s waist when he is engaged to Perrie from Little Mix, apparently, and because he cannot hack fame anymore. Then what about Jeremy Clarkson? We shout sack him, rubbish policies, you’ve let me down, you deserve what you get. A crowd can quickly turn.

I think it is very significant there were two processions in Jerusalem that Sunday. I want to say to us tonight there are always two of them at least, and we have to decide which one we will join.

When we choose to forgive or not – we decide which crowd we will be in.

When we choose what to do with our time, our energy, our love as individuals – we decide which crowd we will be in.

When we choose what sort of church we will be – for ourselves or open to others like we were to Claire this morning at her children’s baptisms – which led me to book three more at the end from her friend asking questions – we decide what sort of community we will be. A new lady who has starting coming with her little boy to Pett thanked me for letting him run up to communion this morning. Her last church tutted loudly when he made any noise whatsoever.

When we protest, which I think is what Jesus was doing, showing the way of God, standing up for justice, peace, and love, we decide which crowd we are in. We will sing on Good Friday “he left his Father’s throne above, so free, so infinite his grace, emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race. Tis mercy all, immense and free, for o my God, it found out me.” Will we sing it as his body, his crowd, and mean it? Mean it by showing it?

I like what Kathy Galloway writes about Palm Sunday:

“Palm Sunday is always happening, and we are always being confronted by the challenge of that different way of being; the way of peace that does not shrink from conflict but refuses violence, the way that does not theorise but engages with the real needs of suffering people, the way that sees the people who are overlooked and not counted, the way of self-offering.

As we walk with Jesus through Holy Week, let us pray for the courage to face these challenges, following faithfully in his way of compassion and solidarity.”

Which crowd am I in? What leader do I want to follow? 

Thoughts from Holy Island

Some people ask me why I go to Lindisfarne so often. This years first of two retreats has been the most special yet. Perhaps I was more ready for it this time as I have had a very hectic few months. I think I have rediscovered three important spiritual lessons this week:

1. The importance of regular daily prayer.
I love the rhythm of prayer on this Island. Daily disciplined prayer is a communion with God we need to take more seriously. I have reread Bonhoeffer's "God is on the Cross" this week. In one of his sermons he says we can do nothing without doing morning prayer first in our day. That beginning of the day for me is so easily lost going straight to the e mails. This must stop! I can do half an hour of prayer and an office can't I? The little card on the pews in the church each night reminded me that an office comes from the Latin for duty. It has been good to remember duty ... Even if the feast of the Annunication is not in my tradition - I had great fun explaining it to someone from a very evangelical church!! 

2. The privilege of community.
Staying in a house where on arrival you have no idea who is going to be sharing the experience is always amazing. Each time I discover a group of people maybe who I won't meet again but with whom I have formed deep community for a few days. I thank God for shared meals, conversations round a kettle, some sharing of some real pastoral stuff, and watching the sunset together or silly people stuck on the causeway. I thank God for Heather, Ray, Jacqui, Jean, Mike and Glynn. All of them came to the Island with needs, rest, healing, to read about baptism in the Spirit, searching for meaning, or, in the case of two of us in ordained ministry, a break. Sometimes community can be hard, but when you work at it, it is amazing. The seven of us had very different theologies and church experience but there was respect and learning from one another round the meal table and when meeting one another while out walking. Of course community can also be impossible. Some of us found sharing an island with tourists hard. Especially the woman who took pictures of one of us meditating in a garden or another blessed soul who barged me almost out of my cafe window seat because she wanted to sit there!

3. The need to slow down and notice the blessings of God.
Before I came away I was told I am a workaholic. I am not but the work has been great recently and I have had to rush around. People who make such comments though don't see me resting or recharging with other things than church and my lovely (rediscovered) deep friendships. But this week has reminded me I need more times to stand and stare and notice  what there is around me. I have enjoyed watching lambs gambol, the tide coming in, the ponies in the field outside my room, listening to birds sing, sheep baa, seals howl and whatever noise cuddy ducks make! I have taken time over food - and conversation. Perhaps I need it to be fine to breathe in between business especially when it is busy ( like Holy Week ahead with 13 services in 8 days!) I love the prayer which goes thank you God for the bright and glorious things of life, help us to count them and remember them. Back home too!

A service is forming in my head on these thoughts which may be delivered after Easter! But I remember some words I read on my first visit to the island in 2009 to stay - you come here not to get away but to go back. We all of us need to get back to God in order to be Gods people where he wants us to be. But now I must go for my dinner as it is nearly 1 ! Written Thursday in the only cafe with wifi!

A Lent Course Session 4 - The End

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “your Kingdom come”

What do you think about when you pray that? Something we are working towards? An end?

Have you ever begun something not knowing how it will end? Or are you people who cannot start something without knowing all the details of the final destination? 

Have we been frustrated by stories or dramas on the television or radio that have had “bad endings”? Have we been surprised by an ending we didn’t expect? (Lucy Beale’s killer on Eastenders.) Continuing drama of course doesn’t have an ending. It goes on, unless it is axed.

Do we find working out how a piece of work will end easy or difficult. When I was growing up, we had a minister, Geoff, who wrote me this letter about get on and candidate, who used to preach at great speed and with great excitement and he used one of those notepads you can turn the pages over and over, and we used to sit there and count the pages, but when you thought he was coming to an end, he would start up again, so you were never quite sure where his ending would be.

Preparing a difficult sermon for the Baptist Church last Sunday in Rye, I couldn’t finish it as I couldn’t make the list of the tribes of Israel going into Judah interesting. I had to go out for a few hours, and then return to it, to think about it more. A good ending is important – even pastorally. A good funeral, an ending to a job, even sometimes an ending of a relationship if it is amicable. Claire and I only fought at parting over who the Camberwick Green and Trumpton DVDs belonged to!

Are there things in the news today we don’t know how they will end? The election, Syria, poverty, although Comic Relief films have people going back to find things have radically improved, horrific murders, Jeremy Clarkson (!)

What about an ending for us spiritually and theologically. What in the church are we working towards. If we pray “your Kingdom come”, aren’t we working towards an ending? Do we need a corporate commitment to an ending, even if we don’t know all the details?

So in this final session of this little course where we have looked at worth, at grace, at a biased God to the suffering, today we will look whether we are journeying to an end, we will do some exploring of the concept of a Kingdom of God, we will do some Tutu, and we will do some Mark’s Gospel passages and end by dipping into a powerful Oscar Romero quote I use a lot to inspire us to keep journeying, doing our bit as part of the story of God’s people. I believe, and those coming to the Circuit Meeting will hear more about this then, we need a Circuit vision, a destination, a direction of travel together which all the churches can express differently, but we support one another to get to and work towards. Radical!

We are meant to have a Circuit mission statement and we make something up when we want a grant or a minister but no work has been done together on the journey and I am encouraging the Circuit with the Circuit Leadership Team a process begin.

The Kingdom of God

Central to the ministry of Jesus was the concept of the Kingdom of God. We shall discover together what Jesus meant by that.

What did Jesus see the Kingdom being like? What do you know?

A brief whip through Kingdom theology before Jesus – and I mean brief!

Jews believed that God would deliver them, which was their hope for the future.

Israel was at its most affluent during reign of Kings David and Solomon. From that point, things began to go downhill. The Kingdom was divided into 2 Kingdoms. The division made some long for restoration of past blessings. Two concepts in OT theology – Davidic, and Apocalyptic.

Davidic View of the Kingdom

Hope was God would send a king like David, and Israel wanted a nationalistic, militaristic Kingdom to return. Belief in the Day of the Lord when all would be restored. See Psalm 126 for example – Southern Kingdom in exile, Zerubbabel, a descendent of David became king. Davidic hope for a military and political power emerged strongly here. Hope that a descendent of David would return them to the glory of David’s rule.

Important to note the Kingdom of God was thought to be a Kingdom of this world, which would be for the Jews.

There was nothing spiritual or future about it. Some see it as a dream of Jewish nationalism.

Apocalyptic View of the Kingdom

Intertestamental period – 404 to 6BC – apocalyptic literature.

A heavenly kingdom which would break into the present evil age. A new world would break into the present world and bring the rule of God. View that Satan dominated the present and the present was under his rule.

175 to 164 – Antiochus Epiphanes – persecution on Israel, view flourished. Theme of evil winning and good losing.

Books of intertestamental period show us the views of the people at a specific time. Enoch – Satan pictured as a ruler of a Kingdom of evil, with many followers, the demons. Book of Jubilee – a golden age to come in which God himself would usher in his Kingdom reversing the evils of Satan.  

Views about the Kingdom

1.  C.H.Dodd held that the Kingdom of God was realised fully in the ministry of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is an earthly place, where there is righteousness, peace and joy. He called it realised eschatology.

2.  Another view is that the Kingdom is a place of future blessing which occurs at the second coming for the people of God. The followers of Jesus enter the Kingdom when he returns. The coming Kingdom would bring an end to the old order of humanity, and bring a new existence in a heavenly order. Key proponent of this was Albert Schweitzer – said the Kingdom is altogether future and supernatural.

3.  Adolph Von Harnack – the Kingdom is a subjective realm, an inner, spiritual, redemptive blessing. The Kingdom is an inward power which enters into the human spirit and takes hold of it.

4.  Saint Augustine – the Kingdom and the Church are the same thing. We sometimes talk about bringing people into the Kingdom. He believed that as the Church grew, the Kingdom grew. As the Church takes the Kingdom into the world, the Kingdom is extended.

When you pray your Kingdom come, what are you actually praying for? In your view, has the Kingdom come, or are we still waiting? 

Some passages in Mark’s Gospel showing Jesus and the Kingdom

Mark 1: 14 – 20

Verse 15 here is the message of Jesus in a nutshell, and the centre of this verse is “the Kingdom of God” Perhaps Jesus slogan! It means that God is on the throne of the universe, controlling the world and seeking to rule human lives. Jesus was saying, “God’s hour has struck!” A need to turn. 

·       Imagine you were one of the crowd. You have been brought up with dreams of the Kingdom coming. Jesus announces its arrival. How do you feel? How do you then feel when he says you need to change?

·       One commentator has written, “The Kingdom of God was in the Old Testament. It can be clearly demonstrated that the Kingdom is seen in events like the Exodus and Israel’s captivity in Babylon. God acted in kingly power to deliver and judge his children. The Kingdom came into history once and for all in the person and works of Jesus. Is then mission of Jesus, and our task today, to bring salvation and return people to fellowship with God?

Mark 10: 17 - 31 

·       What is Jesus saying in this passage about how we enter the Kingdom?

·       What do you find hard to put lower down your list of priorities to do God’s work today? Where is people’s allegiance?

Oscar Cullmann from Christ and Time talks about the now and not yet.

The Bible clearly tells us Christ will return. It is not clear when that moment will be.

What are we to do? Be busy teaching the words and doing the works of the Kingdom in this present evil age.

Read Isaiah 11: 1 – 16 and reflect on a Tutu quote:

“God has not given up on God’s dream. It has been kept alive by those whom God has sent to remind us of it. Just as Martin Luther King Junior famously proclaimed “I have a dream” in a deeply moving address in Washington DC, so God can keep reminding us, “I have a dream that one day my people will know that I created them to be a family; I created them for togetherness; I created them for complementarity; I created them for a delicate network of interdependence where each makes up for what is lacking in the other.” Is this dream pie in the sky or are we working towards it in our church programme this very day? Who do you thank God for who remind you of it, or have reminded you of it?

Two areas of theology we might need to explore as we approach Holy Week soon, one is death, the other is life.

Do people see death as the great taboo it once was? The end of earthly life? Perhaps there is uncertainty in people about what happens next, is it the end or is there like the leader of the funeral says a new place to go?

And what about the end of the creed. Do you know how that goes? He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his Kingdom will have no end. Theology insists there will be an end.

David Stacey: “History must reach its climax, time and space must come to an end, the universe must achieve its God given destiny. From our point of view that must mean a comsummation and a Last Day. The triumph of God is not complete while there is a time and a place where people can still deny him.

The final stroke must, then, be universal. There must come a moment when all things are subject to his glory when all that is must either be raised to dwell in the light unapproachable, or else cease to be.”

Do we work now keeping an eye on the future, which determines what we do today? Is the Kingdom that is to come the full and consummate expression of the Kingdom that is already here? Are there signs that God is at work around you today? If not, what are we doing?

Endings and new beginnings are part of life. We face them every day. Think about a last day doing something, or being with someone for the last hours of their life. How did you cope with those occasions? Walking away is hard because suddenly things you know have gone. 

Tutu: “I align myself with Origen, who in his universalism taught that ultimately even Satan would be converted, because even he would not be able to resist the attraction of the divine love; and then God would truly be all in all. And the times of the End would be as the times of the Beginning. Amen. To God be the glory. Amen. Amen. (That’s where Tutu’s reflections on being in God’s hands end.)

We do our bit to work towards it now. Remember the accountability of Wesley’s classes! We can all make a contribution but we cannot do it all, and we cannot expect others to do more than they can. In our Circuit, we are working together for a Kingdom not for 12 churches full of burnt out people, aren’t we? So, this prayer I usually use at the end of an appointment, so maybe in 2017 here with you. It reminds me we are but part of a process and we are called to be faithful to the vision and to do our best. It is attributed to Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered for his faith:

A Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of

saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession

brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one

day will grow. We water the seeds already planted

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects

far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of

liberation in realizing this.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's

grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the

difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not

messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

Final reflection for us all:

As we approach Holy Week, the cross and the empty tomb, what is it that God is saying to us? What are you, we, your church, community, the Circuit, working towards?

A Lent Course Session 3 - Grace

“If grace is so amazing, why don't Christians show more of it?” -- Philip Yancey –

Read Luke 15 from verse 17 onwards

The story of the young son makes a decisive turn when he gets up and returns to his father. The story says, “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” The father’s love was ignited when he caught a glimpse of his son while he was still far away. It was unbecoming and considered undignified for a Jewish man to run. And yet this father sets aside all concern for propriety and runs to his son and says not a word to him. In fact, nowhere in the story does the father ever speak directly to the younger son. His actions speak for him. He throws his arms around his son and kisses him.  The amazing grace of the father is active, not passive. It is assertive and persevering. No doubt he prayed for his son while he was away living a riotous life. He never gave up on him. Never stop thinking about him. And when he finally caught a glimpse of his son, he couldn’t wait to embrace him. There were no words of judgement of condemnation. How normal it would seem for the Father to say, “Well, what do you have to say for yourself? Do you think you can just show up after all these years as if nothing has happened?”

Read Romans 5: 1 – 12 – what is the message of this passage?

Ruth Graham, one of Billy Graham’s 3 daughters tells the story of her brokenness including the embarrassing failure of her second marriage which lasted only a few weeks. As the daughter of the world’s most famous evangelist she was filled with anxious emotions as she drove home to tell her parents. She writes, “Driving up the mountain to my parents’ home was one of the most difficult things I had ever done.

I had no idea what they would say or how they would respond. I had gone against everyone’s advice. As I saw it, I had failed myself, my family, my children, and my God. I felt deserving of condemnation and rejection. What would my parents do? Would they say they had told me so? That I had made my bed and now I would have to lie in it?

 As I approached the house, I saw my father standing there in the driveway. I parked the car and opened the door to get out, but before I could as much as set my foot on the asphalt, my father was by my side. He embraced me with those long arms and said, “Welcome home.” His acceptance instantly silenced my shame. I was broken, but I no longer feared. My father had embraced me at my worst and loved me anyway. I experienced grace. I would not compare my father with God, but that day my father showed me in a very practical, gracious way what God is like.”

God’s grace comes to us, even before we move back toward him.

Read 2 Corinthians 12:8 and 9

What is grace in this passage?   

Tutu’s theology of grace:

“God needed nothing outside of the godhead in order to be God. God did not need us. What a glorious, what a fantastic verity to rejoice over: God wanted us in a very real sense.

God was, and is, totally self-sufficient, and needed and needs nothing outside God in order to be God. God created us, God created the world from an amazing outpouring of the divine love.” See Isaiah 49: 14 – 16

“God loves you, God loves me, not because we could render to God what God lacked. God is fullness of being, needing nothing outside God in order for God to be God. God could have been God without us, without the rest of creation. But God decided otherwise. We were thus created as an act of divine grace, a free gift not to be earned – in fact, unearnable, because we were not there to give God the price of creating us.”

Tutu’s question is this:

We find it extremely difficult to be comfortable with the ethos of grace – of sheer gift. It must certainly be difficult for those who have never lacked anything, who don’t quite know what it is to be without, then to experience the exhilaration of being given – of being offered a gift. Why is it so much harder to receive than to give? 

Wesley on reminding ourselves of the grace of God in our lives – sermon 16. “The Means of Grace” using Malachi 3: 7

“Instituted” means of grace:

1.    Prayer – regular, daily.

2.    Daily meditation of Scripture

3.    The Sacraments – baptism and communion (daily if possible)

4.    Fasting

Christian conference   

Large Minutes of 1780, 1789

General Means of Grace Questions for Consideration

Watching

Do you steadily watch against the world? The devil? Yourselves? Your besetting sin?

Denying Ourselves

 Do you deny yourself every useless pleasure of sense? Imagination? Honour? Are you temperate in all things? For instance in food. Do you use only that kind and that degree which is best both for your body and soul? Do you see the necessity of this?

Do you eat no flesh-suppers? No late suppers?

Do you eat no more at each meal than is necessary? Are you not heavy or drowsy after dinner?

Do you use only that kind and that degree of drink which is best both for your body and soul?

Do you drink water? Why not? Did you ever? Why did you leave it off? If not for health, when will you begin again? Today?

How often do you drink wine or ale? Every day? Do you want [i.e., need] it?

Taking Up Our Cross

 Wherein do you ‘take up your cross daily’? Do you cheerfully ‘bear your cross’ (whatever is grievous to nature) as a gift of God, and labour to profit thereby?

Exercise of the Presence of God

Do you endeavour to set God always before you? To see his eye continually fixed upon you?

The author Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful Thinking, puts it this way: "The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too."

Need to remember God’s grace and share God’s grace: Tutu from “An African Prayer Book”

“At the moment when we least deserved it, God demonstrated his gracious love by pouring it out so unreservedly for us. To sin is to hurt and reject this love. Forgiveness is the possibility of a new start. When we fail, God does not abandon us and say, “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” No, God picks us up, dusts us off, and says “Try again.” Christianity is the faith is ever-new beginnings. ”

What is the last sentence of the Bible? Read Revelation 22: 17 onwards. 

  

The God whom Jesus revealed isn't mean or scary. Rather, said Jesus, he's the sort of God who throws a party for a child who wasted the family fortune, who refuses to condemn a woman caught in the act of adultery, who breaks taboos of ethnicity and gender to encourage a woman who had been married five times, who welcomes a criminal into his kingdom as the man gasps for breath while being executed, and who embraces his closest disciples even though they abandoned him and denied ever knowing him. Isn’t that grace?

And so the last page of the Bible invites everyone with these welcoming words: "Let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life" (Revelation 22:17). And note how it ends!