Ash Wednesday - Asking God to spare us

I’ve decided to use Lent to do some serious thinking and writing about where God is in my life and how his way might prevail in a world which feels madder every day that passes. 

In an Ash Wednesday service tonight I was challenged by the words of Joel we had read: 

Blow the trumpet in Zion,
    declare a holy fast,
    call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people,
    consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
    gather the children,
    those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
    and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
    weep between the portico and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.
    Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
    a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
    ‘Where is their God?’”

This is the second Lent in a row I am not leading a congregation through the passion and resurrection story. I was struck tonight by what we might find not a really attractive part of the priestly call. Are we called to weep? Are we called to remind people of the consequences of not returning to God? Is Joel right when he warns that God’s story becomes so irrelevant because his people aren’t sharing it or worse, living it,  that people in the world (the nations) suggest God is no more? 

As Lent begins I suggest two things might need to happen. First we need to return to God ourselves! My counsellor who has been really helpful in recent days has said I have to love myself before I can really minister again. I’m good at caring for other people, I’m hopeless at caring for me. A nurse practitioner had to tell me off because my blood pressure the other week was sky high and I’d forgotten to get a new prescription for my pills and had stopped taking them which was foolish! In the Church we are great at raising funds, talking strategy, worrying about how to fix the roof, we are like me and my pills, hopeless at looking after ourselves spiritually as a priority and then we wonder why we are so unwell and exhausted. And then we don’t think God can do anything any more so we don’t turn to him and we have lost confidence that anything new or different might be possible. We hanker after the good old days because we are frightened of the future. So like the mockers at the cross, the world says “where is your God?” and we say “I don’t know any more...” 

So first I’m calling for all God’s people to turn back to God! Put Church second for a while. Read the Bible, pray more fervently, find an Evensong and hear the psalter read honestly, take time to listen, expect God to speak again. Care deeply for those around you and find God with you in that caring. I believe madly if the spiritual temperature of a church is right then we enjoy being church so much more. We need our assembly to be consecrated again! Don’t we? 

Then secondly I think Lenten discipline invites us to call on the mercy of God to heal our broken lives. We’ve been staying this week in a lovely cottage on the Fountains Abbey estate. I love the picture above. I took it in the Abbey ruins tonight as dusk fell. There is a chink of light in the distance but the journey to get there is a hard one through the gloom. In the service tonight we prayed a lot “Lord, have mercy.” Jesus in a forty day wilderness hell, could only lean on the mercy of God as he was tested, empty physically and mentally. 

Perhaps we need to weep, to call out, to protest, to say all is not right at the moment and let God come into those emotions. Perhaps Lent as a season is a call to return to vulnerability. I’ve been asked so many times since I became unwell if I’ve lost my faith. I have never lost my faith in God, I have in other things but not God. Why? Because my God is in the dark journey not just in the light. This week my future at least for the next few months has suddenly become uncertain. Some things have changed. There is light ahead but I feel at the moment because stuff has happened outside my control I’m holding on in the gloom. 

We watched the DVD “Judy” the other night. It’s a brilliant film about Judy Garland’s 1969 shows in London, when she was really struggling mentally. At the end of her last show, she sings Somewhere over the rainbow. Before she sings it she says sometimes the journey is all there is and it’s about hope and she says “and we all need some of that.” 

So second, I’m calling for us to be real this Lent. The Church needs to be a safe space where all of us can be who we are at the moment. In worship we’ve lost that calling on God to come because maybe we’ve as I’ve already said forgotten the need to call on him. What do you think? 

May all of us have an honest, real, relevant and faithful Lenten journey. May we weep, stop, and call out. And then may we really believe that the incarnate God might just help us through what today feels too much... 

Do not worry - really?

  

  

There was a man who was a chronic worrier. He would worry about anything and everything. Then one day his friends saw him whistling.
"Can that be our friend? No it can’t be. Yes it is."
They asked him, "What’s happened?"
He said, "I’m paying a man to do my worrying for me."
"You mean you aren’t worrying anymore?"
"No whenever I’m inclined to worry, I just let him do it."
"How much do you pay him?"
"Two thousand pounds a week."
"Wow! How can you afford that?"
"I can’t. But that’s his worry."

The word "worry" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning to strangle or to choke. While we need to be attentive to life's concerns, worrying about them "chokes" the joy out of life.

“Don’t worry!” we hear. Surely, it is hard not to do so. The world has problems and the future is always uncertain. It’s amazing what we worry about in the church. Mostly money or dwindling numbers or petty trifles...  the dominant issue is for one minister at the moment this  – it is to chair a debate at Church Council whether to put a lock on the biscuit tin as 28 biscuits have gone missing in a month!

 

In his sermon the mount, Jesus tells us not to worry. He reminds us that animals and flowers get along fine without worrying.

 They don't have to worry because God provides for them. Then Jesus goes on to say that since God provides for them, what have we got to worry about? We are worth much more to God than they are, so God will look after us infinitely better. So Jesus concludes: Don't worry!

As we all know, that's easier said than done. Someone saying to me on a bus crowded with coughing, sneezing,  nose blowing passengers, "Don't worry. You won't catch a cold," does nothing to ease the anxiety I’m feeling. Now that the situation has been pointed out to me, that makes me worry even more.

And isn’t it true that we often worry about things that happened in the past, and we can’t do anything to change that? On the other hand, we worry about things that might happen in the future most of which never become a reality. And when we do achieve that moment when we don’t have anything to worry about, we worry because we aren’t worrying. I’m my experience, when someone tells me not to worry I immediately conclude that there is something to worry about. Or there is a panic when someone says “you don’t need to worry about this, but...”.  It has always been natural to worry – for good reason. This is why the most frequently repeated command in the Bible is “Fear Not. Don’t worry.” In other words, trust in God’s providence, despite everything.

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of its own, today’s troubles are enough for today.

John Newton, he who wrote Amazing Grace after being rescued after a storm once said “I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of sticks, far too large for us to lift. 

But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. 

This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for us each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to our load, before we are required to bear it.”

There are people who dread tomorrow. Some little children still dread school on Monday morning. 

I used to worry enough to make myself physically sick on a Thursday morning at secondary school, because first lesson was swimming and the teacher was a bully. I could never convince my mother I needed the day off, so I’d walk the six miles to school deliberately missing the bus.  

 Many people can’t face tomorrow, perhaps they have a hospital appointment or in the world of work, not knowing what the demands of the day will be, they go off work with stress, others face crippling worries over housing and money and relationships. To be told “don’t worry” or worse “get over it” can do huge damage. Indeed some Christians can do huge damage. Put “sermons on worry” in Google search and you get all sorts of nonsense especially from America. That worry is a sin.

 Worry is part of the human condition. Most of us will have come to church this morning with worries. 

I’m very conscious I’m speaking to a diverse group of people every time I lead worship and I can’t know how you feel this morning, but hopefully we support each other by being here. 

Worry however common it is  blocks out any thoughts of what God is able to do for us. We are worried about how we are going to handle the situation.

So when Jesus talks about worry he just doesn’t say "Don’t worry", he tells us how to prevent worry from talking control. "Be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things."

That's simply saying: put first things first. What we need to do more than anything else is to realise that God can be trusted, we can depend on him, that he will take care of us, if only we would have faith in him as our loving God. Let God be God, as the saying goes, and let him take charge of your life. First and foremost, as a member of God's Kingdom, realise that you are dearly loved by your heavenly Father who is always watching out for you, as is seen in what he has done for us through his Son Jesus.
Get to know what great things God can and will do for you.

Learn to trust him.
Come to God  and "leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7).

So what’s the pastoral response to Jesus saying worry doesn’t have the last word?

As I’ve said, there is nothing more damaging than glib Christian answers or no answers at all when you are walking in the dark. I keep thinking about Sam, who I met in Peterborough this week in cathedral square two nights running. He’s homeless. 

He thanked me for remembering his name. He was gobsmacked on the night I met him I asked his name. We all no matter what we face need to know we matter. 

Perhaps we need to take time to be with people where they are in their worries, promising to be with them, being God bearers even where that hurts. I was at a  thanksgiving service this week in Oakham for the late Rev John Ansley. John was a dear gentle encouraging Christian minister. When I arrived to be Superintendent in Oakham in 2002, aged only 35, I shuddered when I saw how many Supernumerary ministers I had in my congregation. They all used to sit on the back row. But they were my greatest friends and greatest support. John was at the heart of that group. His eulogy was given by his friend, another of the Supernumerary group, Barry Gent, who simply said “when John was at your door, you instantly felt better.” 

Isn’t that a great epitaph? Christian pastoral care is about letting people name their worries and then together giving them to God who understands our fear and enables us to hold on. When I was struggling in late 2018 not able to work or speak or walk far, I was ministered to by the Psalms. The Psalms allowed me to voice my anxiety and be honest about things and place the hard stuff into the hands of God and at the foot of the cross. The crucified Christ was there for me. I remembered how he was anxious before he died in the garden the night before. He placed his worry before his Father and found peace even in the midst of indescribable suffering.

 It’s sad then that some Christians walk by when there is honesty or people need help and the person with the worry is left quite alone. If Christianity is real, it enters into the worry. 

And let’s remember worry if we believe our faith means anything does not have the last word.

 Gods mercy endures for ever. Do you know that? Often the Psalms are best read in the King James Version. I love Psalm 136.

O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.

2 O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.

3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.

4 To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever.

5 To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth for ever.

6 To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever.

7 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:

8 The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:

9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

10 To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever:

11 And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever:

12 With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for ever.

13 To him which divided the Red sea into parts: for his mercy endureth for ever:

14 And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: for his mercy endureth for ever:

15 But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea: for his mercy endureth for ever.

16 To him which led his people through the wilderness: for his mercy endureth for ever.

17 To him which smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:

18 And slew famous kings: for his mercy endureth for ever:

19 Sihon king of the Amorites: for his mercy endureth for ever:

20 And Og the king of Bashan: for his mercy endureth for ever:

21 And gave their land for an heritage: for his mercy endureth for ever:

22 Even an heritage unto Israel his servant: for his mercy endureth for ever.

23 Who remembered us in our low estate: for his mercy endureth for ever:

24 And hath redeemed us from our enemies: for his mercy endureth for ever.

25 Who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever.

26 O give thanks unto the God of heaven: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Do you know about Og? 

The Psalmist in Psalm 136 lists all the things God has done to make the world he made better again. He confronts evil. He subdues the likes of Og, King of Bashan.  He was, along with his army, slain by Moses and his men at the battle of Edrei.

The Jewish Talmud tells us that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of the Israelites by uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the entire Israelite encampment.

The Lord caused a swarm of ants to dig away the centre of the mountain, which was resting on Og's head. The mountain then fell onto Og's shoulders.

As Og attempted to lift the mountain off himself, God caused Og's teeth to lengthen outward, becoming embedded into the mountain that was now surrounding his head. Moses seized a stick of ten cubits length, and jumped a similar vertical distance, succeeding in striking Og in the ankle. Og fell down and died upon hitting the ground… 

Evil, death, threats, you see do not have the final word even if today you think they do. Who is your Og, King of Bashan? He might worry you now, but God’s mercy endures forever. It’s louder and stronger than anything that is crippling us with worry today. It may not feel like that now but Christian hope calls us to hold on, and those who can’t hold on need to be held and loved by others who don’t let them go. 

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear…”

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of its own, today’s troubles are enough for today.

I’m not happy with this sermon. I’ve not had a good week. We have terrible trouble with the house being rented for us and it’s hard and I’m worried about the future, and as well as preaching to you I’ve been preaching to myself and I’m not sure I’ve helped any of us. I just say to us all worry is real, but we need the confidence to place the worry into a bigger picture, that Gods purposes for us are good, and in the end all shall be well, even if we get a bit bruised getting there. I end with two quotes I find helpful. The first is from Rainer Maria Rilke: 

“Go to the Limits of Your Longing”: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” 

But perhaps this is what we need to remember if nothing else as we go out of church into our worrying world again: 

Some words from the prophet Isaiah:

You Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm, and put their trust in you.

And a little later he says:

Israel why do complain that the Lord doesn't know your troubles or care if you suffer injustice? Don't you know? Haven't you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God... Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed.                    (Isaiah 26.3; 40.27,28a,31a).

Living light

The Bible readings for last Sunday and for this one invite us to think about light. One of the things I’m enjoying about living in the Fens is the opportunity to see fabulous skies especially on clear days. When you see light, positivity is possible. To grope in the darkness can be crippling mentally. We need in a time of darkness and struggle to know that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all, and to hold on to that truth tight. 

A week ago, we were privileged to be in Ripon Cathedral for Candlemas. As the gathered community remembered Simeon acclaiming the infant Jesus as a light to the nations and the glory of Israel. The cathedral was filled with 7000 candles, many laid out to form a message. The congregation of about 500 all processed around the candle displays. This took five hymns to do! It was very powerful and very moving. A reminder at the liturgical end of Christmas that Christ’s light makes a difference in the gloom of February and every day. 

We have also in recent days remembered the atrocity of the Holocaust. I remember the horrific experience of watching Schlinder’s List at the cinema. Remember that film begins in colour and about twenty minutes in you see a candle shining. The film then goes into black and white for about three hours. Then at the end, it returns to colour and a candle again and a procession of elderly people in Jerusalem at the Holocaust memorial there, and you realise you haven’t been watching a story, you’ve been remembering a dark part of history and the fact in the end a light shines. However hard that is to believe. We saw the film Jojo Rabbit the other week. That film ends with a young boy in the Hitler youth told to hate all Jews, finding a Jewish girl hiding in his house, and having eventually befriended her, after the war is over, they emerge and he says to her “what are we going to do now?” “Dance!” she says. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out. 

We are not having the easiest time at the moment. The house being rented for us has all sorts of problems not least no heating or hot water for over two weeks now. We’ve had to move out as the temperature is around five degrees! We’ve been this past week in hotels and are now in a converted stable - living out of suitcases again is hard, but we are being held by kindnesses like hospitable hosts when the bigger picture is challenging. We have no idea what we are going to do if we still have no heating into a third week this Friday. It’s about believing the light will come. 

Often a change of approach is all that is required. I was invited this week to try and help a small church look at its future. What could have been a difficult meeting actually as we gave the five folk there encouragement to have a go, ended really positively. We even wrote a mission statement: 

Murrow Methodist Church believes, despite being small in number, it still has a call to be God’s people in the village being the only expression of Christian presence in it. 

In the next six months, Murrow Methodist Church will:

Celebrate the work that is done in our building at Knit and Natter group, the Book Café, school reading group, homeschoolers, and our monthly stall which the village supports in healthy numbers. 

Hold an open day with a history exhibition and displays from user groups and our own activities on Saturday 4 July and a Church Anniversary led by Debbie on Sunday 5 July. 

Purchase good quality printed cards with details of our services and activities to give out at the above weekendand possibly, with help, leaflet drop some of the village.

Write a positive article about our church in the May edition of Village Voices. 

Try to get into the local primary school via Debbie offering to do regular assemblies. 

Purchase a new, good quality notice board to be put at the front of the building on the left, with service details, ministers contact and regular activities in large letters and a perspex part to display notices. 

Purchase a radio microphone as few preachers now usethe pulpit.

Apply for a mission grant at the March Circuit Meetingfor publicity materials for our open weekend and a radio microphone and a new notice board. 

Share worship, when needed, with Parson Drove and Tydd St Giles chapels. 

“A small church is no more a failed big church than a satsuma is a failed

orange, they are different.”

 

Our call is to hold onto the light...

I’m using the vision of Martin Niemoeller in my service tomorrow. In 1936 in Germany as the Nazi message was spreading, he preached this:  

“The problem with which we have to deal is how to save the Christian community at this moment from the danger of being thrown into the same pot as the world: that is to say: it must keep itself distinct from the rest of the world by virtue of its “saltiness.” How does Christ’s community differ from the world?

We have come through a time of peril – and we are not finished with it yet – when we were told: “Everything will be quite different when you as a Church cease to have such an entirely different flavour – when you cease to practice preaching which is the opposite of what the world around you preaches. You really must suit your message to the world; you really must bring your creed into harmony with the present. Then you will again become influential and powerful.”

Dear brethren, that means: The salt loses its savour. It is not for us to worry about how the salt is employed, but to see that it does not lose its savour; to apply an old slogan of four years ago: “The Gospel must remain the Gospel; the Church must remain the Church; the Creed must remain the Creed; Evangelical Christians must remain Evangelical Christians.” And we must not – for Heaven’s sake – make a German Gospel out of the Gospel; we must not – for Heaven’s sake – make a German Church out of Christ’s Church; we must not – for God’s sake – make German Christians out of the Evangelical Christians!

That is our responsibility- “Ye are the salt of the earth.” It is precisely when we bring the salt into accord and harmony with the world that we make it impossible for the Lord Jesus Christ, through His Church, to do anything in our nation. But if the salt remains salt, we may trust Him with it: He will use it in such a way that it becomes a blessing.”

This living of light can happen in small ways and remind us all is not dark. We were getting into a lift in Peterborough hospital yesterday. The doors began to lose before we were safely in. A young girl held the door open. She said, “if I can’t hold a door open for people, it is a sad world.” I said, “many wouldn't!” She said, “I’m a nice person!”

May we be reminded of light in what feel dark days and receiving it may we share it!