A new temple

Passage for reflection: John 2: 13 - 22

This Sunday’s passage in the lectionary has Jesus getting rather angry. We don’t often see Jesus getting hot under the collar. The times he gets mad are when there is blatant injustice and when the holy in life is profaned. 

Imagine Jesus arriving in the temple and seeing all the commotion of buying and selling, commercialism and greed over what the space should be used for. I love the tussles in the New Testament between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. Part of the reason they contrive to get rid of him is that he is a pain in the neck! His way is too radical, too outspoken, not law abiding enough. He is furious because they should know better, claiming to know God well. And here was absolute commotion! 

A preacher named Mary Zimmer describes the scene this way:

“The courtyard of the Temple smelled like a barnyard. Underneath the bleating of sheep and cattle noises you could hear the doves cooing in their cages. At low tables sat the money changers. The clink, clink of heavy coins was constant. And irritated, impatient voices were raised in arguments over the rates of exchange. The Temple courtyard was full of intense, busy people trying to get the best deal on an animal for the year’s Passover offering. Even the most righteous Jews would have trouble praying in this place.” 

Perhaps there are two lessons in this Scripture for us. 

One is respect for the holy space. I’m finding people are missing the discipline in lockdown of “going to church.” I’m finding providing zoom worship at the time we would normally be gathering is helping people. I’m also convinced in normal times people are drawn into holy space to think, to be still and to pray. So even in a multi use church building, we need to have a sanctuary space we open and keep sacred (in my opinion!) 

As our passage ends, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The confused Jews responded, “It took forty-six years to build this temple! Will you raise it up in three days?” And then John writes in verse 26, “But he spoke of the temple of his body.”

The temple could no longer serve as the dwelling place for God’s Spirit. In cleansing the temple, Jesus also pointed to its replacement. Jesus would tell us that genuine worship is when we come to him. He would be the new temple, the place where the divine-human encounter takes place.

We need to make sure that we don’t let our environment (physical churches) and our souls (our inner life) become so cluttered that we miss the essence of real worship. When we come into the presence of Jesus Christ, he brings us to the joy of the love of God.

Then there’s this sign that something new would soon be coming. Let’s think a bit more about this new temple idea. We are all beginning to think about what sort of church we will be when all the coronavirus restrictions are lifted, perhaps in the summer. Is Jesus calling us to be a new temple? Surely we cannot simply put back everything we were doing which will have been stopped for over a year. Is this a time to be a people of resurrection rather than struggling to keep going? 

Two thoughts strike me:

One that we should be less separate and more together as one church body. We have work to do together. The other evening, from my study, I was leading a Lent group for the Methodist and Anglican communities around Boroughbridge. Six of us were there on the screen, an Anglican vicar, a Methodist minister, a URC minister, two Methodist folk and one Anglican man. At the same time, down the hall, my wife was sharing the same course using the same material with a group from Ripon cathedral where she is a member. How fabulous was it across a diversity of people and traditions we were sharing some profound stuff. While still celebrating our stories and our denominational emphases perhaps the new temple will sing together and celebrate together a lot more. I’m a passionate ecumenist! 

Then just maybe it’s just about going what we should be doing. Jesus was about to rebuild the temple in three days! The old was about to die and something new was about to be established.  Maybe the pharisaical ritual even today needs to die for the spontaneity of God’s spirit to burst out. Maybe we need to just trust a bit and chill out a bit, because perhaps the new temple will not be to a script or predictive and it might surprise us as new life happens. And we are that new temple. The late Rachel Held Evans wrote this about the Church:

“The church is not a group of people who believe all the same things; the church is a group of people caught up in the same story, with Jesus at the centre.” 

Go back in your mind into that temple. This act of Jesus was an act of disruption: not disrupting the events of that day in the Temple but an act of disruption that cut to the core of the historic Jewish faith and all it stood for. This is a moment of crisis: not for the dove sellers and the money-changers: there would always be more doves to sell, more currency to trade. This was a moment of crisis for the people of God.  Jesus was saying that the old way of doing faith was no longer appropriate, that the heart of faith had become lost in the ritualism, that it was passion for God that had sold out, not pigeons for sacrifice. Jesus is confronting the people of God with a deeply uncomfortable truth: this was a moment for them to re-assess. Was it enough for them to be tied to their ritualism or did they need to find the heart of their faith once more?

What needs overturning in your church today? 

Take up your cross

Passage for reflection: Mark 8: 31 - 38 

Have we made our Christianity too cosy? Are we cross centred?

The cross is the symbol of the Christian church and it is empty. Alleluia! 

But imagine you don’t know the end of the story. Imagine you are in Palestine in Jesus’ day under Roman occupation. There would be cross posts at the side of the road to remind would be criminals what would happen to them if they were caught. They would have the post given them with a beam and would be forced to carry it through the crowds to a rubbish tip outside the city to be left to rot. Everyone knew what carrying a cross meant. There was only one destination. The cross meant blood, nails, abandonment and indescribable agony. 

We know Jesus went to a cross. He was condemned to die through the mockery of a trial. What did he do with his cross? He carried it to Golgotha and he died on it. So what does Jesus mean when he says we must “take up our cross”? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Germans three days before the end of World War II, put it best: “When Jesus Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

Jesus wept in agony at Gethsemane.

He was tried and convicted illegally and then beaten by the Pharisees. He was betrayed by his disciples and ridiculed and mocked by King Herod. Then he experienced the rejection of the crowds as they yelled “Crucify him! Crucify him! Then, he was scourged by Pilate and forced to carry his cross up to Golgotha. Can we imagine the pain? I think not. He must have screamed as three spikes were pounded into his flesh. Then, the cross was lifted vertically and the bottom dropped into a stabilising hole. He gasped and shook violently as the cross bottomed out. Three hours later he cried, “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?” Imagine the pain of separation. For the first time in all eternity he was separated from fellowship with his father. There are bits of the passion we would rather not think about.

Perhaps you saw the film a few years ago “The Passion of the Christ” which was very long and very bloody. It had an 18 certificate. It was a very hard watch. One of my churches in West Sussex had a licence to show films on our large screen in church. I showed them this film as part of their Holy Week programme. I was not happy when they decided to stop the film mid crucifixion to put the kettle on and have an interval! But watching someone die like that was almost unbearable.

What does it mean to “take up our cross?” Perhaps we need to remember Christianity in its truest sense is sacrificial and serves even where that costs us and hurts us. Perhaps we need to learn what it means to deny ourselves again, to be last not first. Perhaps we need to remember the suffering and journey to death of Jesus before we can rise with him. We need to carry our cross as an example to the world that worship of self is not the way to life. I’m thrilled that people are getting a vaccine. But I’m deeply worried as restrictions ease, people will naturally want to do what they’ve missed and do those things even when they aren’t quite allowed. To be sacrificial for a bit now will mean all of us can celebrate later. Cross carrying will bring us to points of pain and hurt in ourselves where we will be in a place of utter God dependence but it is often in those awful places God works.

I’ve got a new spiritual director who is brilliant. She suggested to me today I write a programme out to do Holy Week. I love to worship the whole of the week and will miss leading folk this year for the third year running. I was off sick in 2019, last year we were in lockdown and this year it’s very unlikely we will be able to gather safely. But I’ll still live the story somehow. I need to focus on the cross in order to know the wonder that it even with its brutality can be and is defeated.

Rainbows and Hope

 Passage for reflection: Genesis 9: 8 - 17 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Emily Dickinson’s poem captures something of the fragility and persistence of that quintessential Word of Life: hope. In the gale, in the storm, in the chilliest land and on the strangest sea, hope, like a tiny bird perches in the distraught soul, singing the wordless song of hope, singing without ceasing.

That is surely what hope is. Fragile, but never, ever giving up. Fragile but resilient. Hope tells us that God does not give up; God does not let go. God finds different ways in different times to stir God’s people and make them question and wonder and think and disagree and act.

At this stage in the lockdown, I suspect each one of us could do with something of that hope in our lives. Which is why that wonderful passage from the Book of Genesis, talking about the rainbow, remains one of the most hopeful things in the whole of the Bible.
The creation story of the flood ends not in destruction but in hope, and the rainbow is a sign of God’s hope. 

The Noah story is about despair and hope. It is a parable of condemnation and redemption; of rejection and welcome. God’s judgement is overridden, the floods abate, and a hopeful creation emerges out of the chaos and judgement. Hope comes. It can be read as a parable for our time, in the relentless flood of Covid-19 and lockdown. Stuck in the arks of our homes, day after long day, night after longer night, when will release come? That’s what comes before the rainbow of hope.

Humanity is often without hope. Hope depends entirely on a move from God. God resolves to stay with, endure and sustain our world, notwithstanding our brokenness. God takes as God’s ultimate vocation not judgement but affirmation. After the unrelenting grim time, in the parable of the flood, in the present reality of Covid-19, hope will come. It is God’s way.

God makes an irreversible commitment and says, “Never again”. On this basis the rainbow sign is established. God will never again be provoked to use the weapon of total destruction against humanity. The arc of the bow Genesis describes is rooted in the earth but reaches up to heaven, connecting us in a bridge of mercy, and grace, and hope. The God Who is revealed here remains willing to accept hurt to keep hope alive. Hope will never be cut off because of us; hope continues despite us.

We are not immune to future crisis; bad times will come again to envelop the earth, but as they do, when they do, God’s hope will come again, and we will win through.



I have a picture of a scene I experienced last year in the Fens. One wet Friday afternoon I was driving through Marshland St James and I stopped the car as a fabulous rainbow appeared ahead of me. Then I noticed the name of the lane I was on: Hope Lane. Hope comes even in the middle of the darkness. 

We could do with a few more rainbows in the Church. The rainbow is a symbol of hope; a symbol of our remembering God. It is a central message of God’s love and hope to us and to all God’s children. As we wonder about the possibility of the end of lockdown, whenever that comes, we need to debate our future, but we must create it in hope. Those rainbows we put in our windows last year in lockdown number one now need to be put on our churches. I’m convinced people are searching for hope. 

Hope, even in a time of pandemic. Hope, not just as vaccines go in arms. Hope, not just as spring begins to appear. Hope in a new reality. As Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi wrote, “All I know is that the greatest achievement in life is to have been, for one person, even for a moment, an agent of hope.” And as the American writer Maya Angelou once said, “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

 

Valentines Day

In the 1980’s the band Foreigner had a number one hit record called “I want to know what love is.” Today on Saint Valentines Day and preparing to enter the season of Lent on Wednesday, we are going to try and answer Foreigner’s question. 

On Valentines Day we remember love being all around us. There are all sorts of traditions and fun stuff in history about this day. Ladies - how about this. This weird thing was published in 1849. “On Valentines Day, take two bay leaves, sprinkle them with rose water and place them on your pillow in the evening. When you go to bed, put on a clean night gown turned inside out and lying down say softly: “ good Valentine, be kind to me, in dreams let me my true love see. “ then go to sleep as soon as you can in expectation of seeing your future husband in a dream! Weren’t Victorians a bit wacky?

We remember today love isn’t a word or just an emotion but something transformative. We don’t know much about St Valentine. One common story about him is that in one point of his life, as the former Bishop of Terni, Narnia and Amelia, he was arrested for trying to convert people to Christianity. The story is told that St. Valentine was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by the emperor Claudius in Rome. Claudius became enraged and sentenced Valentine to death, commanding him to renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and beheaded.

St. Valentine refused to renounce his faith and Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14.  While imprisoned he healed the jailer's blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, "Your Valentine."

I want to know what love is. Well here’s three suggestions. 

1. Love is all around us. There’s another pop song. I think by Wet wet wet. I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. Today will see flowers and gifts and kindness and extravagant gestures, love is alive in Otley!

Imagine your loved ones face when you hand over a pork pie today! But love isn’t for a day it is for eternity. In the gospel reading for this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent. Jesus takes his closest friends up the mountain of transfiguration. They see the glory of God as Jesus dazzles in white before them. A voice describes him as Gods beloved. They are changed because they have encountered divine indescribable love that cannot ever be defeated right in front of them. So the bible teaches us that many waters cannot quench love, the bible teaches us that love never fails, the bible teaches us that perfect love casts out all fear, the bible teaches us that God is love. That’s how it is. We need no matter what life is bringing us at the moment to rest in that assurance. God doesn’t give us chocolates or roses to convince us, he gives of himself. We will discover as we journey through Lent what love is prepared to do. 

2. Love is something to do. The first epistle of John makes that clear. If we say we love God but hate our brother and sister we are lying about what we profess. People need to know that they are loved just as they are, and that we mean it. 

What is Christian love? It is genuine and it reaches out - it doesn’t wait for us to ask for it, it embraces us where we are. It is large enough to encompass all the worlds hurts and small enough to meet our every need. It is beyond price, it isn’t bought at a garage as an oh no I forgot. John says God’s love is perfected in us. If we are a community of love, whatever community we belong to this morning, that love brings responsibilities. 

3. Then finally, love is transformative. I was reading a quote found last year in a handwritten note written by Dr Martin Luther King, it went up for auction at a price of 42,000 dollars. 

His words reminded me that Christ like love is radical. King wrote the note after someone asked him what he believed was the meaning of love.  The note reads, "Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God." There’s an old hymn which talks about losing the love of self and finding the love of God. Love changes everything - how many words of pop songs are hidden in this blog post? Jesus we will discover at the end of our Lenten journey will show us what love is: love gives of itself, it is sacrificial, forgiving, costly, it always has the last word. To be dazzled by its greatness and to be in its presence changes us and the world. 

Today we celebrate love, real love, the love of those around us, the love that puts itself out for us, the love of God in Jesus. We remember that God so loved that he gave, and that generosity is ours to have and share and our being the people of faith in this time is to worship him and to share him whose nature and whose name is love. 

Looking up...

Passage for reflection: Mark 9: 2 - 9

Are there times we need to look up so we don’t miss something special? I’ve been remembering our wedding service. We will have been married four years on March 3. We got married in the bride’s church as is traditional - Peterborough Cathedral. Wow! 

I remember holding it together until Canon Jonathan invited us to move with him to the high altar for the blessing of our marriage. I looked up at the vastness of that part of the cathedral and little us standing there surrounded as we set out on a new journey by the love of God broader than the measure of man’s mind as the hymn writer puts it. We have a fabulous picture of this scene - it reminds me when I look at it that we are held no matter what, by a divine power and presence far beyond that which we can understand. 

Sometimes faith is about entering a mystery and gasping at it. 

Don’t we need to look up to see what the glory of God is really about? Don’t we need intentional times of reorientation to learn again who we worship? Think about a time you didn’t look up. You can miss something vital or you can come a cropper. 

I’m watching Line of Duty on the I player. It’s pretty gripping. But I have a habit of playing with my phone while watching TV so I can easily miss something crucial in the plot if I haven’t been looking up at the set. Thank God we can now wind programmes back! 

In our Grewelthorpe LEP church they have a problem that the vicar and the Methodist minister have the same Christian name. Meetings on zoom mean you have to concentrate hard. But it’s easy to drift off, look out the window, evict the cat from the study, be writing when suddenly the chair of the meeting says “what do you think Ian?” and both of us look up suddenly to see which one of us she wants! 

I remember going to London for meetings when I did a Connexional job. How dangerous were people who walked along crowded streets checking their phones rather than watching for the kerb or people coming towards them? 

The Gospel reading for this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent, is all about looking up. Jesus takes his closest disciples up a mountain, and there he is transfigured before them. 

They are overwhelmed by the experience. It is good to be there. Moses and Elijah appear then a cloud which overshadows them in which a voice says about Jesus being God’s beloved Son and it tells them to listen to him. Then they are there with just Jesus before coming back down the mountain. They don’t say anything to anyone about their day out but I can imagine it became, like our standing at the cathedral high altar, a memory to go back to again and again to give them strength. 

Two things strike me about this mountain top looking up experience.

One, the need for us to rediscover a bit of awe in our faith and in our worship. Those three men saw a glimpse of the glory of God in Jesus. This Jesus was to be worshipped. He wasn’t just a fine preacher and healer worth following. He was God. People ask me what I’m missing most because of this pandemic. It is being in the holy space, the place set apart for this looking up ritual I need. Yes zoom worship works and is meeting a need, but I need to physically go up the mountain, gaze on Jesus and be overwhelmed at his presence in my life. Maybe our worship has become too cosy. Maybe we need to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness again. And maybe we need to just expect the divine to envelope us when we enter that which is beyond us. Discuss! 

Then second, I think we need to remember where the lectionary puts this story. It comes just before Lent. 

Certainly, the location of this episode in the gospel narrative suggests we are to make some connection between what is unfolding on the mountain and what is about to happen in Jerusalem. Some church traditions hold that the Transfiguration occurred forty days before the Crucifixion. The glimpse of Christ’s glory makes it clear that something else is going on as that narrative unfolds, as Jesus becomes, apparently, yet another victim of the irresistible might of Empire. His glory, power, transfigured self will have the last word. 

Peter, James and John are given a revelation of who Jesus really is. We see quite clearly that Jesus is on a level with God himself. So, we, just before the contemplative and sometimes difficult season of Lent, are given a glimpse of who Jesus really is, resurrected, ascended, glorified. The disciples could not stay there but neither did they leave the mountain. They took it with them. It is what would carry them through the passion and crucifixion to the resurrection.

An Orthodox prayer puts it well:

Thou wast transfigured on the Mount, O Christ God,

Revealing Thy glory to Thy disciples as far as they could bear it. 

Let Thine everlasting Light shine upon us sinners, 

Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Giver of Light, glory to Thee!

May we be ready to climb the mountain before we do Lent. May we worship in awe and in fear of what is above us. May we look up a bit more to cope with the world back down. And most of all, let’s expect a lot more. 

A journey up the mountain of transfiguration can bring us perspective. We have to get on with life in the world but we do so with an eye on things above to hold us and remind us. Knowing Jesus is God we can wow at and yet still empties himself of all but love, must leave us without words but held no matter what. Worry looks around, faith looks up...

Have you not heard?

Passage for reflection: Isaiah 40: 21 - 31 

“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there. And I believe in God, even when he is silent.” 

These words were written by a Jew trying to hang on during World War II. It was a desperate and dangerous time to be Jewish and the unknown person who wrote these words was proclaiming a word of hope where hope seemed dead.

These words could have been written or spoken by the prophet Isaiah trying to offer a word of hope to people who were desperate and whose faith was in trouble. Jerusalem was razed and sacked by Babylonian soldiers in 587 BC. 

The temple was destroyed, and the leaders of the community were taken to Babylon. The words of the prophet Isaiah, “Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted” may have reminded them of the forced march to Babylon.

Their faith was in danger. It felt as if God had deserted them, but the prophet tried to remind them of what they knew but seemed to be forgetting. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.” “Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted;” but then comes a word of hope and inspiration, “But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

The people of Israel had to adjust their understanding of what God was up to when the Babylonians took them into exile. They felt abandoned by God. But the prophet asks them to remember and reframe their experience, so they can live in confidence and hope as they will face restoration and more change. 

These words I read are helpful: 

“Isaiah relays the good news that the end of exile is in sight, although the people cannot see it yet.” They have not yet been told that they will be free to return home and to make new choices for their lives. Isaiah reminds them of experiences they have known and can build on: God is powerful and gracious. God who created still holds creation. God can free them and bring them home. ... The prophet asks the people of God to remember and ponder what they once knew about God’s action in their lives and to reconsider how they build on their trust in God.”

 We need to look beyond what we think we see, to what truly is, and what can be. We need to go beyond the chaos of the present, to step aside and to spend time with God building that relationship. We are reminded to open our eyes and our hearts to what only God can offer. There are times when we need to be intentional about this, but there are also unexpected times when we can experience God’s presence and promise in ways we didn’t imagine.

It’s sometimes about going through the motions even when we think nothing will happen. On days we don’t feel like praying, we need to pray more, on days we don’t want to read the Bible, we need to open it more, on days when we are too weary to go to that zoom service or make that phone call to someone in need, we need to be made aware our being with others even on a screen and down a phone line matters. For me attending evensong in a c of e church reminds me of the importance of regular time finding God. For me hearing and sharing in the same words day after day, words that have been said for centuries, gives me space to think of other than my weariness and problems. Working hard to find God when we think there is no God can be a transformative moment. 

For God breaks into his world in ways we do not expect and in his time, the right time. And for now, we are called to be his people, getting on with it in expectation. 

Once there was a town where one day all the clocks stopped working. No matter what the people tried, they could not get them going again. Though many in the village were handy, no one understood the inner workings of the springs and dials, the gears and pendulum. Because they were off the beaten path, many years passed until a traveller who entered the village was found to be a watchmaker.

Quickly the town became abuzz, each resident bringing their clocks to him and lined up, hoping this stranger could fix them. But each one went away, disappointed. After many long winters and wet summers, their clocks were too rusted to repair.

Yet, among all the heartbroken residents, there was one person who did get good news – the watchmaker could fix her clock. Soon everyone gathered around this lucky time teller, asking her secret. Why could the watchmaker salvage her clock and no other? “When our clocks stopped, I didn’t know what else to do,” the woman said, “so I kept winding my clock each morning as if it worked.” 

Isaiah is telling us that waiting, also translated hoping, in the Lord is when we expect His promises to strengthen us and empower us rise above the distractions and difficulties of this life. We must trust in God. Without trusting that He will never fail, we become weak and disheartened thus plunging us deeper toward despair. Patiently expecting his deliverance is our remedy from the afflictions and tribulations of this earth. 

Remember Longfellow on Christmas Day hearing the church bells ringing? 

On Christmas Day, 1863, the sound of bells ringing moved him to write, spurred on by his sorrow at the state of humankind:

And in despair, I bowed my head:“There is no peace on earth,” I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.”        

And yet hope won out as he penned the fourth verse:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth not sleep;The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.”

Just as the eagle soars above the mountains we too can experience freedom to fly higher than conflict, aggravations, negativity and strife. God can and will strengthen us, shift the wind in our favour, and give us the spiritual vision needed to understand from a different position. We must worship vertically and expect help from above. Too often our worship and hope are affected by horizontal circumstances that dampen our praise and shorten our patience. Look up and allow your strength to be renewed, ascend to new heights with wings like eagles, and we will see God at work again. 

“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there. And I believe in God, even when God is silent.”

This passage has always been important to me. Sometimes we just need a reminder we don’t face stuff alone. I remember preaching on it at my testimony service in 1999 at Heaton Moor Methodist Church in Stockport prior to ordination. My congregation in Mossley had taught me this hymn. I still love it.

Lord I come to you
Let my heart be changed renewed
Flowing from the grace that
I have found in you
And lord I have come to know
The weakness I see in me
Will be stripped away
By the power of your love

Hold me close let your love surround me
Bring me near draw me to your side
And as I wait
I’ll rise up like an eagle
And I will soar with you
Your spirit leads me on
By the power of your love.

Lord unveil my eyes
Let me see you face to face
The knowledge of your love
As you live in me
Lord renew my mind
As your will unfolds in my life
In living everyday
By the power of your love.