The Bread of Life

Passage for reflection: John 6: 25 - 35

Bread is such an important image in the Bible.  It crops up again and again.  We hear in the Gospel for this week that Jesus is the Bread of Life.  And we also get an echo of the story of the manna from heaven sent to feed God’s chosen people in the Old Testament stories.  Bread is the most basic of foodstuffs.  

Every culture has its own version of bread: baguettes from France, the very English feeling tin loaf, Middle Eastern flatbreads, focaccia, rich with olive oil from Italy, bagels from Polish Jewish communities, chapati from India, tortillas… the range of breads you can find around the world is endless.

Bread was the main substance of any meal when Jesus said "I am the bread of life".  If you had bread, you could survive.  Without it, in a time when food had to be carefully planned and rationed as storage was hard, you would go hungry.  That’s a hunger that few of us ever have to face in this privileged life we lead.  And so, we give thanks for the abundant provision of the earth.  

But the flip side of that is that we need to take responsibility for the fact that we are not good stewards of the earth.  We hear the statistics that tell us that 165 million people suffer from childhood malnutrition whilst we in the uk throw away around 15 million tonnes of food a year.  We fill our bellies with junk food which, although it’s delicious, takes more resources to produce and damages the earth even more.

What  does Jesus mean when he says that He is the Bread of Life?

We ask in the Lord’s Prayer for 'our daily bread'.  We use the words 'dough' and 'bread' to talk about money.  We say we go out to work 'to put bread on the table’ - a person who works to support their family is the 'breadwinner'.  Everyday ordinary things are our 'bread and butter’.  Bread is a by-word for something which is essential to our function.   But bread of life is something different.  This isn’t the bread which fills our stomachs.  This is the bread which fills our hearts.

What are we hungry for?  What will fill our need for life?  As with physical food, we can easily fill ourselves with junk, over processed rubbish.  What is it we want for our lives?  What do we search for?  And are these the things that make us happy for a moment, or are they life-giving things which will sustain us?

We all want to be happy.  We desperately hope that we will never face sadness or difficulties.  But we also know that life is complicated and that sometimes things don’t go according to plan.  So we hope that we get through those difficulties in the best possible way, not letting things get on top of us and learning from our mistakes.  We want to know love - to have people in our lives who love us completely and unconditionally … and we want to have people that we love in same way.  We want to laugh until we think we will never stop.  And we want to lighten someone else’s day by making them laugh.  We want to never feel lost, alone or scared.  We want to want for nothing.  This is life in abundance.  This is life in Christ.  A life free from the junk-food of the heart that satisfies us briefly but ultimately leaves us needing more and more.  This is the life which feeds us so we never feel hunger and emptiness.

We are part of a family of God where we support each other in prayer and love.  We want each other to flourish and grow to experience all the good things God has in store for us.  When we join in with God’s mission we want this bread of life to be given to everyone and we desperately want the whole world to find that life in abundance that Christ has promised.   All are welcome at God’s table where God wants to feed and nurture His people. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Being his people, can we be companions on the journey, literally sharing bread with others? 

Concentrating on what we don’t have

Passage for reflection: John 6: 1 - 14 

We’ve had to go back to our old shopping habits now that restrictions have been lifted by the government but the  “extremely clinically vulnerable” group of which we are both members are now told “don’t mix with people who’ve not had two vaccines”. I love to shop and to browse so to go back to on line shopping is hard. The Sainsbury’s delivery this week was short of milk and bottled water and cat food pouches. There were things also they just did not have. So we have to just use what there is. And adapt!  

 

I’ve just read a sermon on the passage for this Sunday, John’s account of the feeding of the 5000. The title of the sermon was “We often concentrate on what we don’t have.” That’s a good summary of the panic the disciples had when they saw a large and very hungry crowd come towards Jesus. 

Jesus asks where can we buy some bread. 

Philip panics. “Where are we going to get enough food to feed all this lot?”  

He probably SHOULD have said something like, “Well Jesus, I’ve seen you provide wine at a wedding from water, I know you healed with a word, and while I don’t want to sound like Satan, is it possible you could turn these stones into bread?   Or is there any chance you could just make some bread materialize?

No, he doesn’t go the “I’ve seen what you can do, I’m sure you can handle this” route.

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do any better.

It’s more like, what, are you kidding me?  If there was even a place to buy it (which there’s not) we would need 6 to 8 months wages to just give all these people a few crumbs.

Enter Andrew who says  “We’ve asked everyone – “got any fish?” No. “got any fish?” No. “got any fish?” No. “got any fish?” No.

4,999 times they heard no.  One time they heard yes.  Another Gospel tells us a young boy had something. Five loaves and two fish. Enough for one, not 5,000. 

Here’s what we do have, but there’s no way this will suffice. 

Who will be the judge of whether it’s enough?

There’s a difference when we control what we have and  when we hand it over to Jesus.  If Andrew had kept it, he would have been right, no way it would have been enough.

But when we give what we have to Jesus –  its amazing what he can do with what little we have.  If you have the faith of a mustard seed…faith in what or whom?  Faith in Jesus.  Have faith in Jesus and He’ll meet every need – spiritual and physical.

And He almost always uses people to meet those needs.

They gave it to Jesus. Jesus gives it back to them, and has them share it around. 

Don’t concentrate on what we don’t have, or how little we do have.  Whatever we have is enough if we place it in the  hands of Christ.  He’ll make do with what we have and bless it, and use us to bless others. Think about it, twelve disciples found the Church, and at communion, one piece of bread and one cup of wine are enough to renew those who receive them in the words of one post communion prayer to be sent out “in the power of the Spirit to live and work for God’s praise and glory.” 

Some of you think you’re not the right one for something, but Jesus says you’re exactly the one. But we are not good as churches believing that.

“We haven’t got enough money.”

“We haven’t got any energy.”

“We haven’t got anyone to take on that job.”

“We haven’t got the time.”

“We often concentrate on what we don’t have.”

The problem is I think we don’t give what we have to Jesus. We rely on our scarce resources being sufficient and we wonder why we are burnt out and exhausted. A simple act of allowing Jesus to bless what we can offer, however inadequate we think that offering is, then he can make much out of little. I wonder if we’ve just got into a “can’t do it so won’t do it” mentality. Or maybe we’ve forgotten to believe in ourselves. 

Lord, so often I think what I can give you won’t make a difference so I won’t offer it. 

I don’t have the gifts you need.

But then, Lord, you remind me of this. If I give you what I can, however small it is, you will take it and do great things with it. That tiny bit of bread and fish became a miracle of abundant sharing because you blessed it and valued it. 

So today, Lord, will you remind me of my usefulness? Will you call me to make a difference? Will you help me feed others through my giving? 

Compassion - the call of the Church



Passage for reflection: Mark 6: 30 - 34 and 53 to the end of the chapter.

In the chapel I grew up in, Folly Methodist in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, there was a little brass plaque in the pulpit. It reminded Sunday’s preacher of his or her task: it was put there in pre political correctedness days. It said “Sir, we would see Jesus.” That little plaque challenged me years later when I became a Methodist local preacher. It wasn’t easy preaching to your mother and your aunts and uncles. Mum used to say to me on the way home “why did you say that?” and “why did you pick that hymn?” Despite the challenge of preaching to your relatives, for most gathered in that little chapel were related to me, that plaque helped me as I started worship why we were there - to meet Jesus.

I wonder what picture of Jesus you have as you hear the Gospel for this Sunday. What does he look like? What’s the expression on his face? What draws you to him? For me, the passage from Mark in the lectionary this week sums up for me what Jesus is all about.

“ As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

It’s a lovely image: a compassionate Jesus. Before we go on, we need a Latin lesson. What does compassion mean? Com passion - suffering with. How comforting pastorally is it to know Jesus suffers with us? We talk at Christmas (which is five months and one week away :) ) of Jesus being incarnate, one with us, born amongst us, in poverty, in chaos, identifying with our pain and suffering. Then in January we forget all of that! For me, as a Christian minister in the Methodist Church, whose doctrine and theology says all matter and all are welcome and all are encompassed by the grace of God, a Jesus who is compassionate is a Jesus I find attractive and who gives me energy to do what I do. The ordination charge of a Methodist minister is to care for the flock. The thing I find amazing about Jesus is how much time he spent with people, often on a road, or changing his agenda as he visited a town to minister where ministry was most needed and that ministry was often to people folk around him would avoid. 

Compassion to sheep without a shepherd. Where have we seen that? Last Sunday evening, many of us watched the Euros final, which of course ended in a penalty shoot out. The last penalty taker was 19 year old Bukayo Saka. He missed, and we had this image of Gareth Southgate consoling him and counselling him, and trying to put him back together. That was before the disgraceful racist attacks on him, and Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho. The manager showed compassion. He knew what a penalty miss in a huge tournament was like. He put his arms round his young suffering team, and he felt their pain… 

Compassion - suffering with. Ministering to sheep without a shepherd. We know don’t we what sheep are like. I drive up to Dallowgill chapel, and have to be patient as sheep wonder all over the road at their own speed and often they go to the opposite place to where it’s safe and you aren’t going anywhere until they decide to shift! 

“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

What are sheep without a shepherd like? They go all over the place. They go where they want. They sit on the road stubbornly. They get into dangerous places. They get lost. It is the vocation of the shepherd to lead them patiently and sacrificially as Psalm 23 says into “green pastures” and onto “right paths.”

The shepherd is compassionate. He or she suffers with the lost sheep.

Are we at the moment like “sheep without a shepherd”? In a week where post that football match we’ve seen unacceptable racism, a reduction in how much aid we give to suffering people in the world, flooding causing death in Germany, and restrictions around Covid being lifted because “if not now, when” but the lifting of those restrictions while cases are on the rise leaves a clinically extremely vulnerable group in a pickle as we are told to not mix with anyone who hasn’t had two vaccines. Where’s the compassion to those who are really struggling with so called “Freedom Day”?

All of us need that assurance that whatever we face we do not face it alone. All of us need to know however hard and uncertain today is the compassionate Christ takes time to lead us to a better place. I read an article in the Saturday Times by the Labour MP Jess Phillips. She sees a disillusionment in people especially with politics and that people have “stop believing anything will change.” I sense two things going on at the moment: people are exhausted. Like the white rabbit in the Alice stories we say “it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.” This pandemic and now pingdemic has left so many people desperate for a different narrative. But here’s the other thing - I sense unlike Jess Phillips, people are looking for change, for hope, for compassion. For someone to say “it’s going to be okay.” People soon got to hear Jesus offered that. 

No wonder at the end of the Gospel passage people rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.” For the first time in their lives people found a God of compassion. A Jesus who knew their story and invested in it. You know people say to me when I visit them pastorally I must be too busy to sit with them. I always say I can only be in one place at once and today I’m with them, no one else. With eight churches I sometimes wish all my poorly people would be in one area but hey, that’s life! A Jesus who showed compassion, a church that is compassionate. That’s his call and ours. We need to take time to be there for shepherd less sheep. We are to be at the service of all, not just some. There’s a lesson for a Church which at times can be judgmental, unkind and discriminatory. 

One of my friends sent me a verse from 1 Corinthians from the Message version of the Bible. Is this the call of a compassionate Church, in July 2021?

“Looking at it one way, you could say, “Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.” But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.” 

Helping others live well. Challenging injustice. Making sure everyone is safe. Reassuring people who are anxious. Loving as though there is no one else to love.  Being kind.  Suffering with people who share our road. 

That little brass plaque on the pulpit said “Sir, we would see Jesus.” What sort of Jesus do we show? I pray we will work hard to be compassionate, sheep by sheep by sheep. 

Go away, seer…

Passage for reflection:

 Amos 7: 7 - 17

Amos 7: 12: “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.”

 

There’s a version of the Handmaid’s Tale on Channel 4 at the moment. Here’s a quote from the book: “The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it? We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read.”

God’s word is on the move! 

 

I’m enjoying reading Lilian Chandler’s history of  Laverton and Dallowgill at the moment. In the chapter on Methodism she tells two stories of preachers at Dallowgill. One preacher was apt to shout and on one occasion as he shouted “and the Lord came down”, his false teeth shot out and over the edge of the pulpit. Another preacher got so excited in the pulpit when preaching a sermon on Jonah, that when telling how Jonah was thrown into the sea, he threw the Bible from the pulpit to demonstrate. If any of the congregation were having forty winks, they would get a rude awakening as the heavy Bible landed with a terrific thud.

 

God’s word is on the move! 

 

This Sunday I’m going to a new place to share God’s word. For the first time since moving here last August, the plan has sent me across the West Tanfield bridge over the river to the other bit of the Circuit to Masham. 

 

God’s word is on the move! 

 

Some of my churches are thinking about who to invite to take their special services later in the year like Harvest and Church Anniversary. We like a nice preacher for our specials. West Tanfield so wanted me for their 3pm Harvest service when I said I was already booked to do Sawley Harvest then they moved their service to 5 so they got me. What if I turned up to do their Harvest and upset them? What if  I unsettle the Masham folk? They’d send an e mail to Gareth our Superintendent and ask that I never be planned there again. 

 

“Get out, you seer, go back to the land of Judah, go back to Ripon. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.”

 

Friends, if God’s word is on the move unlocked from the cupboard or like the preachers false teeth or the Bible dropped from on high, then maybe it just might unsettle. Maybe we’ve forgotten its prophetic and radical nature. 

 

So let’s imagine this visiting preacher and seer, one who tells, comes first to achurch and then he looks at the market square. What will God’s word, through him, say to the people of God, and to where the world is. His name is Amos, and he’s come from somewhere to the south of you. You certainly won’t say “nice service” at the end, and when he starts shaking the town up a bit, well, you’ll all want him gone. 

Amos the prophet lived under king Jeroboam II, who reigned for forty-one years (786–746 BC).  Jeroboam's kingdom was characterised by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, and unprecedented economic prosperity.

Times were good.  Or so people thought.         

The people of the day interpreted their good fortune as God's favour. Amos says that the people were intensely and sincerely religious. But theirs was a privatised religion of personal benefit.  They ignored the poor, the widow, the alien, and the orphan.  Their form of religion degraded faith to culturally acceptable rituals. Making things worse, Israel's religious leaders sanctioned the political and economic status quo.  

 

Amos was a shepherd, a farmer, and a tender of fig trees.  He was a small town boy who grew up in Tekoa, about twelve miles southeast of Jerusalem and five miles south of Bethlehem. He was an unwelcome outsider. Born in the southern kingdom of Judah, God called him to thunder a prophetic word to the northern kingdom of Israel. 

In the passage from today's reading Amos gives the illustration of God standing by a wall that has been built true and straight. He's also holding a plumb-line in his hand to confirm that the wall has been build true to plumb. If the wall's true, the plumb-line will prove it, if its not, then the plumb-line will show that also. The plumb-line can't lie, as anyone who's tried to build a wall will apparently testify.  

Amos holds up the measuring stick of the 'Word of the Lord' for the Israelites to judge themselves by, as a mirror in which they could look at themselves. He believed they were found sorely wanting. And its clearly an uncomfortable image for Amaziah, the prophet of Bethel, who immediately gets on the Israelite equivalent of the blower to inform his boss, the King, that trouble is brewing and suggests to Amos in the strongest terms that he should return back from whence he came. 

“Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.”

God’s word is on the move, and God’s so called people were threatened by it. So they said “what does this upstart from the south know?” Let’s get rid of him so we can back to our rituals and religiosity and our appalling ethics as we bask in luxury through the week. As long as we check in with God once a week, we will be fine. “This is the kings sanctuary and a temple of the Kingdom! How very dare you!” But you know what, their relationship with God was empty, they just went through the motions. You know the seven last words of a dying church don’t you. “We have always done it this way.”

God’s word is on the move! 

Risking never to be invited here again, I suggest there are two things to learn from this Scripture. One is about us being responsive and the other is about us being brave enough to be prophetic. 

Maybe God is saying to us “you need to listen to me again” and maybe God is saying to us “you’ve sung about me, you’ve read my word, you’ve worshiped me, now what? Are you ready to be rocked and rolled and challenged? Maybe I’m about to do a new thing.” I used this quote in my sermon last Sunday. The theologian Annie Dillard once asked, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or (as I suspect) does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offence; or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

 

Who are the prophets in our own community challenging us and do we want them to get out? 

Then maybe we need to be more prophetic as a church. Here’s my controversial bit. Maybe we aren’t growing any more because we just aren’t that relevant or interesting. Speaking into the world can be costly. It cost John the Baptist his head. Maybe we will be rejected or told to go home but maybe we will be more respected and listened to in our community if we are brave enough to engage with it and speak out where in our own age there is blatant injustice, prejudice and selfishness. The Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan who did time in prison for his civil disobedience against American policies on racism, nuclear proliferation, and Vietnam, when asked how many times he had been jailed for subverting caesar because of Jesus, he responded, "Not enough."

           

The frightening thing though about the Amos passage is that he isn’t  speaking to the world, he’s speaking to a people of faith or so they say. And even more frightening is it comes to Israel, the Northern Kingdom, in a time of peace and prosperity.

 

I wouldn’t dare have this as a text – words you would find if you read on in chapter 7 of Amos thundering: “‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country. And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land.’ 

 

But rather these words from two chapters earlier: “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

 

God’s word is on the move! It’s unsettling, unnerving and maybe not what we are used to. But maybe we just need an Amos to come and challenge us a bit. 

 

I remember preaching this sort of sermon once and someone saying  to me at the door afterwards “are you alright?” because I’d not given them something fluffy bunny and comfortable. 

 

Amos could do no other than say what God put on his heart. He was no professional. He was just told to go. A very brave man! 

 

Do you want to say “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.” Will my Sunday congregation after my first visit to them go home and over the Sunday dinnersay “good grief we won’t want that minister to come again. 

 

Maybe. 

 

But I’ll just say this. Remember whose church we are part of. Remember how Jesus spoke out. Remember what happened to him. But also remember however rejected he was, on that cross he had the last word, the wounded prophet became the saviour of the world, and today we are his people, whatever that costs and however uncomfortable a bit of a divine shake up might be.

 

I’ll end as I began: God’s word is on the move!

 

Your God is too small

 

In 1952, there was a little book written by J B Phillips called “your God is too small” and in that book Philips challenged the church a bit.   “The trouble with many of us today” he wrote “ is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In varying degrees we suffer from a limited idea of God. One chapter is about the "God-in-a-box" where he attacks the idea that many Christians have that God is only working in their own denomination, heritage or community. They might deny it, but many conceive of God as approving their style and disapproving others. God is so much bigger than that.

 

We sing of the problem sometimes: “But we make God’s love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify its strictness with a zeal he will not own.” 

 

Today’s readings talk of us taking this big God into the world and finding this big God in others perhaps we cannot cope with finding God in. Jesus calls us to radical discipleship and reckless hospitality and to see that God’s Kingdom might well be breaking in in ways we need time to think about. The way of God can be mind blowing. To hear the challenge of the Gospel might be dangerous! 

I had a Chair of District once who used to keep reminding us we need to catch up as a church to where God is ahead of us. Jesus’ last earthly instruction to his church is to “go” “go into all the world…” but the world can be a horrible place to go into, we are safer in the womb of the churchbuilding… we may have tasted the world’s flavours and never want to taste them again. I was in Harrogate for a meeting on Thursday and stopped on the way back at a Cook, you know, that shop that does posh frozen food. They’ve got a new vegan range. So I bought a shepherd less pie. It said it had a bit of rosemary in it. The chef had put as much rosemary he or she could find in it and then some more so we were still tasting rosemary hours later and we’ll never buy a shepherd less pie ever again. We are like that when we have a bad experience engaging with the world – never again we say, because our encounter left a nasty taste in our mouth.

 

But Jesus still says “go” and God calls people still like his prophet Ezekiel to go to a “rebellious nation.” God’s message of gracious love and acceptance and of radical inclusivity in Jesus is our task and our call. However hard it is. In the words of an Iona liturgy, we are to help “those who need to forget the God they do not believe in, and meet the God who believes in them.”

This Sunday’s Gospel reading really is in two parts. First Jesus reminds us going out, flying our colours to the mast, might bring rejection. He shares with his home town of Nazareth. The people remember him as the carpenter’s son. The lovely boy growing up amongst them. And now? Well, Jesus concludes "A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household." 

 

So hostile is Nazareth's opposition that Jesus "marvelled because of their unbelief.” It’s hard to witness in your home village. Perhaps everyone knows you go to chapel. Perhaps we’re scared what our neighbours think of us. 

 

I remember being a local preacher in my home Circuit dreading the plan sending me to the chapel I grew up in. Preaching to your mother and your aunties was a hard gig! “Why on earth did you pick that hymn, and why did you say that?” Mother would say over lunch! 

Jesus contrasts the unbelief of the religious at home who should get it with the missionary potential of going out of the comfort zone to reach other people.His rejection at Nazareth sets the stage for the first missionary endeavours of Jesus' disciples. Jesus hadcalled them to be fishers of men, and now they will go fishing. We are told: "And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits" With rejection fresh on their minds, they will be under no illusions that warm receptions will meet them as they travel. Their work will always be arduous, and many lonely and painful days are before them. Just as Israel rejected the Old Covenant prophets, and even Jesus, so they too meet frequent rebuffs. But go they will, and they will go with authority over the powers of darkness because they go in the name of Jesus. 

Jesus called and sent them. His authority – not their personal strengths or gifts – assure them that they will fulfil their mission. They see the kingdom of God take shape in powerful ways – demons are cast out and the sick are cured, and people are brought to repentance.  That takes place wherever the disciples are welcomed.  

The kingdom of God becomes real where there is hospitality and openness rather than fear and a desire to protect oneself. Jesus was rejected at Nazareth because his vision of an inclusive God was just too scary.

This past week the Methodist Conference has met in Birmingham and perhaps has challenged us with the most radical agenda for the Church to consider than we have had in my lifetime. 

 

For years we’ve concentrated on how we keep the inner church going, and that’s still important – but we seem now to be saying in the Kingdom of God there is a place for all, injustice won’t be tolerated and we will show the world through how we act and what we stand for that the big God can be met and the radical Kingdom can come. So you will know about the permission if we want to have same sex marriages on our premises, or not, if we aren’t comfortable with that, you will know about us pledging to walk together even where we profoundly disagree, you will hear about a challenge to live justly, to work for a kinder politics, to challenge the amount of foreign aid we give, to look at governance where small churches are burdened with the weight of administration and trying to free them for mission, and a desire to liberate the oppressed wherever they are, to align ourselves with the God who always, always has more to show us, and just when we think we’ve got him sussed, he goes and surprises us. 

The theologian Annie Dillard once asked, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or (as I suspect) does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offence; or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

 

And I read this from a sermon from Canon Jonathan Baker. Jonathan is the vicar at Beverley Minster but before that he was at  Peterborough Cathedral. He married us, he’s a deeply spiritual man:

 

“So do you see why the task of the preacher is hazardous?  I cannot presume to know the mind of God.  I cannot fake a familiarity which, if it exists, is illusory.  All I can do is point to the cross and say:  There he is. Not a victim, but a victorious Lord.  

Not a carpenter, but the Christ.  Not a symbol, but the Saviour.  There he is, in all those who are like him; the vulnerable and poor, the rejected and misunderstood, the victims of injustice and prejudice.  That’s where you find Jesus.  And as you receive them so you receive him, and the kingdom of God takes shape, as the poor hear good news and the captives are set free and the sick are healed.

I wonder.  Who will you meet this week? If you could see past the label, it might be Christ himself.”

Jesus says “go” – share the gracious invitation of God, get a bit bruised, get involved, you never know what you being with people where they are might lead to. 

I began with “Your God is too small.” I end with another book. The late Rachel Held Evans, an American theologian, was working on a children’s book called “What is God like?” before she died tragically young in 2019. The book has just been published. “What is God like? That’s a very big question, one that people from places all around the world, throughout all time, have answered in many different ways. Keep searching, keep wondering, keep learning about God. But whenever you aren’t sure what God is like, think about what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel brave, and what makes you feel loved. That’s what God is like.

May we as a church be bold enough to go.

May we as a people show the inexhaustible love of God.

May we work for the Kingdom, look for the signs of divine activity and be prepared that how it is is not necessarily how God intends it to be.