A Churchless Sunday —- and faith?

To wake up on a Sunday morning and not have to go to church is a rare treat for me. Is it naughty to use the word treat? I did think about going, honestly! But after an exceptionally busy few months waking up in Farnborough West Premier Inn about nine then discovering checkout wasn’t until midday, I rolled over and went back to sleep. 

For the majority in this country a good lie in on a Sunday is a gift. The part of the country I’ve been in this weekend, Surrey and Hampshire, part of the Greater London commuter belt is full of large houses crammed in wherever there is space and I have to say I noticed a lot of soulless housing estates and also a lot of aggression on the roads especially when they want your parking space! Hard work in the week deserves a good lie in on a Sunday morning doesn’t it? 

At lunchtime today we found a bistro in Fleet as we hadn’t had breakfast. There was a huge queue to get in the place. Perhaps a breakfast or brunch out is the norm on a Sunday morning in Hampshire and a leisurely read of the Sunday papers over a coffee. All the Sunday papers today discussed “stop the boats” - either good on you, get tougher, put them on more barges and blame the French for any deaths, or this is a scandal. When I do ever read a Sunday paper?!  I went into the Waitrose. (Which shows what sort of area we were in!) The Waitrose was heaving! Perhaps shopping on a Sunday is the norm now. Perhaps it’s the only day people can do it. Is shopping the Sunday God now? We had to collect an order in Argos in Luton on the way back north. That was heaving too! As were all the shops on the retail park. 

How else do people use Sunday? Maybe to catch up with family. Commuters who live in big houses in Surrey and Hampshire find Sunday is the only day they have time to be a father or a mother. We’ve been to my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Guildford which was lovely and today we were invited to Graham and Pippa’s garden in Sandhurst along with my Aunt and Uncle just to sit in their garden! It was really good just to sit and be with family. We’ve not many family left so we both treasure our cousins! It was precious just to be together. A lovely use of a Sunday afternoon.

What else do people relax with at the weekend? Sport of course. Myfamily team Luton Town FC are in the Premier League for the first time. They got a 4 - 1 drubbing at Brighton yesterday but they will remain optimistic they can stay up all season. Then there’s the box sets bingers and the radio addicts. A lot of people listen to Liza Tarbuck on a Saturday night. I love this article in yesterday’s Telegraph:

The funniest show on British radio right now isn’t some hip young affair on Radio 1 or 6 Music. It’s not full of pre-scripted banter, nor is it hosted by a pun-slinging stand-up. Instead, it’s a riotous weekly gossip session, helmed by a self-effacing 58-year-old woman, tucked away on dear old Radio 2.

We were recently regaled with a listener’s story about a friend proudly boasting that her son was holidaying in France, “staying in a quiche on the edge of town” (she meant a gîte). This prompted another caller to gently tease his mother for calling the Wimbledon crowd “a bit parmesan” (she meant partisan). Such faux pas recalled the listener who confessed to forgetting Rasputin’s name while on a sightseeing trip to St Petersburg and asking the tour guide: “Is this where they murdered Rumpelstiltskin?” Welcome to Liza Tarbuck on Saturday evenings – reliably the most uplifting show on air.

“It’s my favourite Radio 2 show of the week,” says breakfast host Zoe Ball. “Liza plays the finest music and nobody makes me belly laugh like that woman. She actually got a shout-out at my friends’ wedding this summer. In the years that [they] Damian and Kim, the new Mr and Mrs Harris, have been together, they always make a roast listening to Liza’s show. It’s just the thing they do. Liza is a broadcasting legend and there is no one finer.”

Tarbuck’s show is a weekly fixture in Claudia Winkleman’s house, too. “We never miss it,” says Winkleman. “One story that sticks in my mind is the male listener who was accosted by a glamorous stranger outside the supermarket. He couldn’t work out if it was aftershave or the fact that he’d just bought a jar of sauerkraut that made him so irresistible. Liza’s verdict? ‘Quite plainly, you’re looking after your gut health and that excites me.’ My entire family was howling.”

For the past decade, Tarbuck’s joyous blend of eclectic songs and freewheeling chat has sound-tracked two million listeners’ Saturday sundowners, supper-making or domestic pottering. The BBC blurb calls it “a mishmash of tunes, a hearty portion of hilarity, a side of whimsy and a dollop of dinner chat”. That doesn’t do justice to this exuberant cult phenomenon that has built a devoted following.

That loyal listenership is key. Tarbuck calls her audience “the hivemind”. All she has to do is mention a loose theme – say, summer fêtes, horticultural accidents or “who’s the most famous person to have petted your dog?” – and amusing anecdotes arrive in reams. She receives the most listener messages of any programme on the station – more than 50 texts and emails per minute – and plunders the best for material. Most missives end with a cheery “love to everyone”. It genuinely feels like a club where like-minded folk meet every week for a catch-up and a cackle.

She always asks what we’re having for dinner, which she reads aloud with peckish envy. She canvasses calls from “mohos and caras” (mini-breakers and mucking-about-on-a-boat-ers), asking what they can currently see and cooing at their lyrical descriptions. Listeners offer their ornithological sightings (“top bird trumpingtons”, Tarbuck terms this) and wildlife news. Squirrels are known as “Ben Fogles”, ­presumably because he looks a bit like one. Indeed, the show has developed its own language. The Wirral is always “the leisure peninsula”. Contributors are known as “fots” (friends of the show). Listeners’ husbands (“hello, men!”) are invariably “gorgeous” or “filthy”, depending on what’s funnier.

Tarbuck’s infectious dirty laugh only fuels the mirth. Stories involving rogue pets, mischievous children or naughty nanas always get her chortling away. A fertile recent theme was sneaky teenagers throwing house parties while their parents were away – and the telltale signs that got them busted. Cue unsavoury finds behind the sideboard or in the fishpond. Body parts resembling famous people were another rich seam. The man with a toenail that looked like Angela Lansbury is seared in my memory.

As a woman of a certain age, Tarbuck revels in tales of “menopausal madness”, celebrating scattiness in a way that’s subtly empowering. A running thread is an enigmatic figure nicknamed “Beryl the Brick”, an elderly lady who surreptitiously helps herself to two house bricks per night when there’s building work in her neighbourhood. What does she do with them? Nobody knows, but speculation is rife.

The way that Tarbuck mixes music with crowdsourced input and her own riffing may sound effortless, but it’s deceptively skilful. The seat-of-the-pants pandemonium is thrillingly unpredictable, but never quite careers out of control. It’s testament to her restless, roaming mind. When Ken Bruce left Radio 2 this year, many championed Tarbuck to inherit his morning show. For now, she remains a weekly treat, rather than a daily one.

Crucially, she keeps a firm grip on her playlist. Most Radio 2 shows pick from the same roster of songs. Tarbuck goes pleasingly off-piste. She spends all week carefully compiling a mixtape. An average show might take in Motown classics, Swing­ing Sixties gems, gritty 1970s funk, disco anthems and vintage jazz. She might lob in a marching band, some country or calypso, per­haps a rousing show tune or cheesy crooner. David Rose’s The Strip­per pops up weekly, as does Percy Faith’s Theme From ‘A Summer Place’. When she played Champion, the Wonder Horse recently, social media went wild. Most songs are followed by a nugget of trivia about the rec­ording. Tarbuck does her research, but wears her knowledge lightly.

Her trademark sound effect of a squeaky dog toy began as a prank. A friend’s mother was driving a vanload of mutts up the motorway and Tarbuck thought it’d be amusing to send them all mad. Now, it’s a high-pitched fixture. Come Saturday, listeners send in photos of their pet pooches sitting by the radio, ears cocked, head tilted. “Where is it?” asks Tarbuck in her dog-owner’s voice. “Find it!”

Tarbuck treats us as friends and fellow fun-seekers, rather than a passive audience. Each episode, she describes an imaginary ice rink. Listeners send in descriptions of their fantasy skating outfits, before a dreamy interlude where everyone visualises taking to the ice together. “I love having that skating moment with all her lovely listeners,” says Ball. Jane Garvey said on Radio 4 last year: “It’s rarer and rarer for people who really understand radio to get on air. But Liza just knows radio and she makes it special.”

“Liza is just a brilliant listen,” says Channel 5’s Dan Walker. “She even somehow makes handing to the news an event.” Those anarchic segues into the 7pm news bulletin recently went viral. She can’t resist putting on silly voices and taking the mickey. It’s invariably “all over your smart trousers”, as opposed to “on your smart speaker”. “Smell that fromage!” she might declare. “We interrupt this fun to bring you some miserable news.”

It’s not exactly from the BBC manual. “Liza’s intros to the news are a thing of legend at Wogan House,” says fellow DJ Scott Mills. He admits it took him time to tune into Tarbuck’s comic frequency, but he is now addicted: “When I first heard Liza’s show, I didn’t get it at all. Now, I’m fully invested and it’s a key part of my weekend.”

Former 6 Music favourite Shaun Keaveny now plies his trade on Community Garden Radio. “The best broadcasters feel like instant friends,” he says. “That’s Liza. You don’t actually know her, of course, but somehow she gives enough of her inner self that you can put a mosaic picture together of this potty, brilliant, hilarious, music-loving woman with a rich inner-life that she wants to share with you. Better than that, she wants to hear about your daft nonsense as well. It’s a reciprocal merry-go-round of idiocy. Daft and profound sit cheek by jowl. There aren’t many people funnier on UK radio right now.”

She might be a garrulous host, but off-air, Tarbuck keeps a resolutely low profile. She’d rather go on a dog walk than sashay up a red carpet and rarely grants interviews. In contrast to carefully stage-managed showbiz careers, her CV is refreshingly random. She’s the daughter of the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck (he and wife Pauline listen live every week, always getting fondly mocked). She has hosted The Big Breakfast and various game shows, including Blockbusters. She’s Rada-trained, and has alternated presenting jobs with acting roles in Linda Green, Watching, Upstart Crow and, most recently, feminist comedy The Change. Add voice-over work and a gardening podcast and it all makes for a charmingly idiosyncratic résumé.

Tarbuck dances to her own beat, which is why her show is so unique. She’s influenced by Kenny Everett and was once part of Steve Wright’s “posse”, but smelted her own glittering brand. The only drawback is that the giddy mood can lead listeners astray. “Like most people, I make the tea as I listen,” says Keaveny. “The trouble is, it’s too much fun. If I’m trying not to drink that day, I have a problem. Usually by the second hour, I’m halfway down a bottle of something.” Liza Tarbuck: so funny, she should come with a health warning.

So why am I troubled by my lie in, lunch, time with family, sport, radio and anything else that isn’t church on a Sunday? My Grandad used to go ape if I went out with friends on a Sunday! I used to challenge him he was watching the cricket on the telly on a Sunday afternoon and people were working to bring it to him. Sunday used to be sacred. Now it isn’t. 

The thing that bothers me most is that I didn’t miss going to church today at all. I found God in a bed I didn’t want to get out of, in a leisurely breakfast with my wife, in time with family. Even if not in the Torygraph I had time to read today. I found God in kindness and relationships and in the beauty of creation. There is SOME green space in commuter land! And what bothers me more is that the people who lie in in big houses or go out for coffee or brunch or who read the Sunday papers or spend time with family or do a sport or a hobby or follow a celebrity whose radio programme makes them feel included in a family have no intention or desire or interest whatsoever in coming to church. It isn’t even on their radar to consider. The gulf between church and society is wider than it has ever been. 

We talk of going out into the community. This is necessary. But we have to understand the community we are trying to engage with. We can’t any more think people will just come to us. We have to be relevant and offer what they want and so we need to know what they want before we offer something totally irrelevant! What mattered today to those people out for coffee or lunch in Fleet today? Do we care? We have to meet people where they are and we have to prove we are normal amongst them!!! I didn’t get asked what I do at the wedding reception yesterday. Normally my profession is a conversation halter at any social gathering like I should be holier than thou and not know all the words to the Abba tracks blasting out as the dancing started last night. You can’t suddenly make people include church in their Sunday. They have their Sabbath. But maybe we being amongst people might attract them to a different kind of rest and being. I don’t know. 

Can you be a Christian without going to church? I know so many good people of a similar age to me who left church years ago because it said nothing to them. Some of them read my weekly blog. They hold on to faith - it’s just the church that isn’t necessary. 

Will I go to church next Sunday? Maybe. The challenge is how we get alongside people for who it really doesn’t matter. My wife said to me earlier “we’ve not been to church today” - did she think that was a problem? For me today has been liberating. I’ll be back but sometimes isn’t it nice to break free and find God dancing and laughing in the world, in the rest, in the coffee shop, in what makes us laugh like Liza Tarbuck, in creation and in family? 

Discuss! 

Show us how to share our bread

The passage for this Sunday is the feeding of the 5000 and more in Matthew’s Gospel. Here’s my sermon for Sunday. 

Let me speak first to cat owners. Do your cats stare at you in the morning on the bed until you get up and feed them? Do they go to the food place and sit by the biscuit bowl until you fill it again? If you live in a multiple cat household like we do, do they all try to get the food you serve them out of the same bowl barging each other out of the way instead of waiting for all the bowls to be filled? Here Bella is eyeing up my sandwich. At this stage she didn’t know she didn’t know it wasn’t bacon in it or ham but vegan fake meat! 

Do we really know what it is like to be hungry? Perhaps not. We know the craving as we pass the chip shop or see the chocolate bar. We know when we need food but I suggest none of us really know food poverty. Hunger is now widespread in this country. Almost 10 million adults and 4 million children do not have enough to eat – nearly double what it was a year ago. More than 2 million adults cannot afford to eat every day. Someone has called it a “domestic humanitarian crisis.”

So in this area we see Ripon Community House and its food pantry and its waste not Wednesday, the food bank at the Salvation Army, Helen Mackenzies back to basics project feeding families and the community larders in the Circuit at Masham and at Boroughbridge being used more and more. In Boroughbridge we see around 100 people every Wednesday and afterwards excess food given is taken to the local schools, nursing homes and pubs to be shared.

Hungry crowds are nothing new. We remember those news reports we see from time to time in Africa of food being dropped from planes and desperate people fighting for it. Imagine being in the crowd Jesus faces. 5000 men plus women and children all hungry. We don’t know their story but I think like those we’ve thought about they knew about poverty. I want to focus on just one detail of the story. When the great multitude came to Jesus in the wilderness, he was moved with compassion because he saw they were tired and hungry. Late in the day his disciples suggested that he send the people home so they could find something to eat. You know the rest of the story :how Jesus blessed the we have only five loaves and two fish so that it fed 5000 and more with 12 baskets left over.

This is one of the great miracles of the Bible. Suppose you had to feed 5000 tonight. What would you do? It’s late, the people are tired and hungry, and there’s no 24 hour drive through Macdonalds. Dominos Pizza doesn’t deliver to the wilderness. The disciples make a very practical suggestion: “Send them away and let them find food.” That’s logical. The suggestion is not made from bad motives. In themselves the disciples had no resources to meet this enormous need. They had no food and no money. What else could they do? Answer: They could do nothing! They didn’t see 5000 people; they saw 5000 problems they couldn’t solve.

Most of us would have said the same thing. We’re quick to see what we can’t do and quick to talk about what we don’t have. The disciples saw the crowds and realised their inadequacy. Somehow they forgot that the Son of God was standing right there with them.

I love it when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat” (verse 37). It’s funny because the disciples have just explained why they can’t feed this massive crowd. One wonders if they were thinking something like this: “You want us to feed this crowd? You are joking! Didn’t you hear what we just said? We don’t have any money and we don’t have any food. What we have here is a failure to communicate.” But Jesus wouldn’t let his disciples off the hook. He wants them to get involved in the grand adventure of helping others.

This is how Jesus often works with his followers. Over and over again he puts us in positions where we are helpless, and then he says, “Do something!”In our desperation we cry out to heaven, “How?” and he replies, “I’m glad you asked.” It’s not that Jesus wants us to fail, but he does want us to know that without him we can do nothing.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this story: “Some of the crowd must have laughed out loud, while some of them were mystified and still others were embarrassed for Jesus, that he should have promised so much with so little to deliver.”

Let them feed themselves, say the disciples. “They need not go away,” says Jesus. “You give them something to eat.” Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now. Stop looking for someone else to solve the problem and solve it yourselves. Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have. Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.

Bring what you have to me; that is where we start. Remember that there is no such thing as “your” bread or “my” bread; there is only “our “bread, as in “give us this day our daily bread.” However much you have, just bring it to me and believe that it is enough to start with, enough to get the ball rolling, enough to start a trend. Be the first in the crowd to turn your pockets inside out; be the first on your block to start a miracle.

No one knows how it really happened. Your guess is as good as mine, but what Jesus has been saying to his followers forever, he goes on saying to us today: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” If it is a saying that strikes fear in our hearts, that makes the loaves we have seem like nothing at all, we have only to remember what he says next. “Bring them here to me.” We have enough here if we offer it to Jesus. With Jesus anything is possible. There will be enough and basketfuls of providence left over. And you know what? I think this story shows us what Jesus is all about. 

Earlier in chapter 14, John the Baptist had just died a gruesome death by order of Herod, and after John’s disciples buried his body, they went to tell Jesus what happened. The very next verse tells us, “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” It seems that upon hearing the news, Jesus needed some time to pray, to reflect, to grieve, to think about what would happen next, and he slipped away to find some quiet. When he returned, a crowd had gathered on the shore. When he saw them, he had compassion for them and began to move among them, curing the sick. He knew pain, he knew grief and remember in the wilderness he knew hunger. He had compassion for the people. Compassion – literally suffering with others. He identifies with the crowd and despite being wobbly and fragile and needing space he can do other than meet their needs – and more. In John Gospel the crowd come back the next day for another free feed. And next day Jesus follows practical help with theology – yesterday I gave you bread, today I want to tell you that I am the Bread of Life. 

Jesus spent time with people who were marginalised by the social structures of his community, including women, children, those stigmatised by their physical health and people who were impoverished. Jesus highlighted the needs of the marginalised in such a way, that it is reasonable to conclude, that to abandon people experiencing poverty is to abandon the gospel. Our tendency when we want to change is to look towards the wealthy and powerful, those with influence, Jesus often looked towards those who were oppressed, those who were marginalised. A crowd fed, leftover food, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all people, where no one will hunger and all will be satisfied. 

We all know this story. We heard it in Sunday School. People outside the church know it. It’s so important it’s told in all four Gospels albeit slightly differently, today we have no little boy who finds his packed lunch stolen! My college principal used to say in his criticism of our services where was your clincher young man? What do you want them to do? Well this is it. To truly follow Jesus we need to find a way to emulate that same compassion, love, and care for all those around us, even when it may feel most difficult. We need to be a church that feeds the starving, materially and spiritually. Seven days a week.  How generous are we? Not just in what we offer here, but will we work for a world where all are fed? And ask difficult questions of those who can make a difference? Will we hope for the day when food banks are no more and poverty is eradicated? That is the work of the compassionate church of Christ and of a God who has open hands and satisfies the needs of all living things. Our cats are happy when they are fed and then they go off to snooze on the window sill in the sun. 

 

God with us, in all our speaking, fill us with your word. In all our thoughts, grant us your generosity of spirit, in all our deeds, show us how to share our bread. 

Reflecting on my Sunday

How’s your Sunday been? It’s been an interesting one here. 

This morning my largest church at Allhallowgate had another large congregation and we continue to see signs of growth. I was given my portrait drawn during the service! We explored being reckless sowers of seed and we enjoyed singing Bringing in the Sheaves and remembering Little House on the Prairie! We will be receiving five new members in September - very exciting. 

Not having an afternoon service today it was good to get to Evensong in the cathedral. It’s lovely to live in a cathedral city and to drop in to worship when I can. Choral Evensong is a gift when you feel frazzled! A tough week lies ahead so it was good to sort some stuff in my head. 

I returned to Allhallowgate tonight for evening service. Perhaps the men’s final at Wimbledon going into a fifth set explained why I only had six in the congregation. Tonight we explored encouragement and I ended with an evening hymn new to me which is lovely. 

A good day - how’s your Sunday been? 

Finding rest for our souls

I love one of the prayers suggested might be used in a service today:

Grant, O Lord, we beseech you,

that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by your governance,

that your Church may joyfully serve you in all godly quietness;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A peaceably ordered world, wouldn’t that be nice?

And us serving in that world in godly quietness. The church that is calm offering people sabbath rest. Drop thy still dews of quietness til all our strivings cease. Quiet, still, be — let your God love you. 

 

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”That’s how the Message translates Jesus’ words, which in an old service book used to be called his “comfortable words.” 

 

More familiar is this translation: 

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

But surely you can’t rest with a great big yoke on your back can you? 

 

What’s a yoke? A yoke is a large and heavy piece of agricultural ploughing equipment, used to harness two animals to a cart that they then pull. A yoke can also be used with a heavier piece on the larger, stronger animal, and a lighter portion harnessed to the new or younger animal being trained. The yoke was designed to better distribute the weight of the load and also to give mechanical capability to the work the animal was set to do. So, what is the yoke of Jesus? It is a place of rest where we will find humility and gentleness and learn his ways. We must first accept the yoke of Jesus’ relationship to experience the easing he speaks of. The yoke of Jesus will provide us with the mechanical capability to do the work we have been called to – but we first must be attached to him – physically and spiritually. We may just be surprised with how light the yoke actually is, and how much easier we operate when connected with to Christ. What are you yoked to in your life right now? Jesus? The world? A person? Something else?

There are times the church feels like a yoke. It’s hard work. We get stressed. We get tired. We are challenged by how we keep the church open. There are some who say “you can’t do it like that” and put faith in a small box making it confined and narrow. I’ve had people in the past who’ve been made very unwell by the church. That cannot be right. Jesus in these verses has a swipe at the narrowness of the Pharisees and their pompous law abiding religiosity.

He says the heart of who God is has not been revealed to them but to infants, little ones, who aren’t cluttered by life or yoked to tradition or to rules, but open to new ideas. They also aren’t tempted to conform to the world being burdened by its issues. Anna in the classic Mister God this is Anna had it right: 

“The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The idea of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations withMister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn't everywhere, he wasn't anywhere. For her, churchgoing and "Mister God" talks had no necessary connection. For her, the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message when you were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn't got the message or didn't understand it or it was "just for swank.” 

Maybe today’s lesson is how we find rest in church is to take on Jesus’ yoke not the church yoke. The old covenant service wording had it right: “Beloved in Christ, let us again claim for ourselves this covenant which God has made with his people, and take upon us the yoke of Christ. This means that we are content that he appoint us our place and work, and that he himself be our reward.” And making space to rest in Jesus might mean we see things differently. The Old Testament reading this week is from Zechariah. You might be saying “it’s not Palm Sunday!” But it’s saying to us this week Jesus is radical if we will only take time to see him. Only those who really saw got what he was up to in Jerusalem that day. “Return to your stronghold o prisoners of hope.”

Jesus says “Come to me, take my yoke upon you, my burden is easy, come and find rest for your souls.”  Rest…

When you travel on a motorway these days a sign can be passed which warns “tiredness can kill – take a rest.” Indeed our car after a lot of miles will flash a picture at me on the dashboard which is a cup of tea and above it comes these words “do you think it might be time to take a rest?” We all need rest especially after stressful things. There’s a Facebook group called the  nap ministry. It says you are enough right now - every system in this toxic culture tells you the opposite. It thrives con you hating yourself and believing the lie that your birth didn’t grant you divinity. You are enough! 

Rest is your birthright. You can just be.

The Church needs to be a place people can find rest for their souls. I had to be in Manchester for something yesterday which was fun as I love Manchester – I had a very happy and life changing time living in the city for a while – and I hadn’t been for ages. I went into the John Rylands library on Deansgate and there was an exhibition in there how workers in the industry of the city in Victorian times mostly mill workers found rest. Not just the wakes week where factories closed and everyone went to Blackpool but it reminded me that Methodist churches used to be places where people went to find rest and relax. There was a wonderful programme of a Methodist tea party in Eccles put on by the married gentlemen of the church – I bet they didn’t make the tea! There were Sunday school outings in a charabanc – my first church in Manchester still had a Sunday school outing even though it hadn’t had a Sunday school for years! 

But rest in Jesus isn’t about an afternoon snooze after lunch nice as that is nor restful space or outings nice as they are. It’s about resting safe in s relationship that holds us especially all else is a bit mad. Jesus promises us rest not stress. And if the church is making us stressed we have to have a serious look at ourselves, don’t we? 

Let’s remember the words weary and burdened and tired can be our experience. So we get tetchy and we enjoy nothing. We can feel mentally and, in some cases, physically “worn out, tired, and fatigued.” But Jesus says, ”Come to Me.”

We must to go to Jesus. 

And how do we do this? We go to Jesus when we pray. We go to Jesus when we declare His promises in our lives. We go to Jesus when we praise and worship Him. We go to Jesus when we sit quietly in His presence.

Remember what Jesus said in John 14:27 about his peace? Peace I leave with you, my peace give I unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

The peace that Jesus gives us is not determined by the circumstances we face. The peace that Jesus gives is not determined by what we see in the news or read in the news. The peace that Jesus gives is “not of this world.” And the only way we will be able to access that peace is through Jesus.

The phrase weary and burdened means to be “overloaded or to carry a heavy burden.” Does this not describe how most people are feeling right now? And perhaps some you are feeling this way too. But Jesus says “Come to Me.”

Well I’ll end with a reflection from the US Episcopal Church sermon site. This is the crux of it. Do we do stress and worry and get bogged down or can we find rest and joy?

“When we think we know what we’re doing according to the world’s view or even the church’s, God teaches us a new step in our dance. We are supposed to be different. We are supposed to be followers of Jesus Christ. After all, if we made God in our image like in Norse or Greek mythology, who would save us? 

Who would draw us out to be the people God created us to be? Jesus says in our Gospel today, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Boy, is that out of our comfort zone! The more we follow God’s ways, the more we know that we will be rejected by the acknowledged experts of the world—those that might see what we do as followers of Jesus as foolish.

We are called to a different standard. When we stop listening to those voices from without, we can finally hear the voice that comes from within. When we try to carry out our own salvation, we get weary, we feel burdened. That is when Jesus says to us, “Come to me… and I will give you rest.” This rest can come to us like a mindfulness exercise: pausing to be still and noticing five things with each of our senses—things that will ground us in the present moment with God. In doing so, we rest in God and who God created us to be instead of being taken over by the “devil” or our complexes. When we rest, we also give other people permission to rest and experience God fully. How would our world change if we focused on simply being with God and cultivating thanksgiving? Let’s find out.”

The fourth Sunday of Bible Month - a new heaven and a new earth

So we’ve reached the last Sunday of our study of Revelation.Perhaps you are glad about that! I said at the beginning of the month that the reformer Martin Luther said it either finds you mad or drives you mad. Well, we are still in one piece. Four sermons on it and leading two training sessions on it and three Bible studies on it I’m still in one piece – just! 

 

We have arrived at chapter 21 today. John sees a vision of a new heaven and  new earth and he gives us the greatest promise of Scripture: See the home of God is with mortals and he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them and he will be their God… and it’s a fabulous place — you think about all the things that drag us down, well.there’s none of those. 

No more tears, no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. Why? The former things have passed away. Throughout our journey grappling Revelation we’ve been reminded over and over that Jesus is on the throne. And today he says “behold” (that’s a word he uses a lot) “behold, I make all things new.” 

 

There are two powerful things I see in these verses.

 

One, that they come while there is still threat and trouble and real hardship. Remember John receives God’s long term vision while in exile for being a Christian. But the message here is one of hope and life and celebration one day. The message here is that today is not how it will always be. There’s a lot for us to cry about, the state of the world, so much so we don’t want to open a newspaper anymore. There are so many people we know in pain. But God is telling John today might be rubbish, but tomorrow won’t be. We sing it don’t we in Great is thy faithfulness: “Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.” Over and over again we are told in these verses “do not fear” and “behold” so you can stand firm because God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. We are singing that in my afternoon and evening services this Sunday. 

 

Some of us have been meeting to do some more in depth Bible study on some of the chapters in Revelation we might not ever read in church. Thursday’s was a real explosion of the delights of theology about judgment. Before chapter 21, we’ve been told Babylon, the name for everything evil will be destroyed. Of course as Revelation is a survival guide to get through the horror of the Roman Empire, Babylon is Rome. Read chapter 18 sometime, everything is obliterated in an hour. 

 

An angel casts a mighty millstone into the sea – thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down and shall be found no more at all evil, is never to be seen again, and we are to sing praises because of that. Alleluia for the Lord our God omnipotent reigns! So I guess here’s a call to be strong in our faith, to remember the mighty power of God, to remember Jesus is king and to remember nothing will separate us from his love. 

 

There are times when we think the world or our dire situation we find ourselves in is it forever. I wrote this in a silence on a quiet day I was leading up at Dallowgill. Dallowgill had its roof lift off in a storm a year last May. 

It took Methodist Insurance ages to send sometime to put it right so in the meantime lots of damage was done to the inside walls of the chapel leaving us through a wet winter. We took Methodist Insurance on and we’ve now had the chapel painted for nothing and it looks bright and lovely. Sometimes you’ve got to keep believing! So I guess Revelation 21 calls for optimism in our preaching and our prayers and our programme. God doesn’t give us here the possibility of a new heaven and a new earth, it is a certainty. 

 

It’s like in Psalm 42 where the psalmist says, “As the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after Thee, O God.” The psalmist in the same in Psalm 73, he says, “Nearness to God is my good.God is my portion forever.”  Being preoccupied with the person of God, longing to be in the presence of God is the heart of Christianity.. In fact, the pure in heart, according to the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes, are promised that they will some day see God. Through the centuries, that desire to see God, to be in God’s presence, to enjoy God forever, that desire, that there is nothing in the world that can satisfy has been on the hearts of believers. That’s why we come to church! You know it took another 300 or so years for the Roman Empire to be defeated. But in that time the Christian community wasn’t completely destroyed. We might not know how to be church today in a confusing and largely agnostic world but we I think are called to keep going —- why?

 

Well, here’s the second thing I see in these verses of Revelation 21. There’s a new way God works. God comes down to us. The Holy City, the new Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. God comes down. We think about that at Christmas when we remember Jesus coming long ago as Immanuel on earth, but actually God promises to be alongside us always and one day Christ will return. There will be a second Advent. 

 

We say it in our creed but have we lost any excitement or anticipation about it? We believe that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and that his Kingdom will have no end. Don’t we? The corruption, injustices, greed, and dodgy leadership in the earthly city will be replacedby a holy city, with no chaos, with peace and Christ triumphant returning in glory. Come to Bible study on Thursday this week where we will do chapter 22 and debate the second coming! We need a new heaven and a new earth. I don’t like cities. When I go hospital visiting in Leeds, I have the aggressive driver behind me who can’t cope with my hesitating over which lane to be in. 

We were in Newcastle on a Saturday night. I was only going to pick up a take away pizza. Swarms of people were on the street so I couldn’t go very fast.  Newcastle FC had just won. They thumped my bonnet did some shouting “TOON!” rather the worse for drink. Then’s there’s London, a mass of people all looking at their phones as they walk along or on the underground pushing and shoving because they’ve a divine right for a seat. Give me getting stuck behind the slurry lorry in Kirkby anytime! But note the city is transformed. There is a new Jerusalem. Jerusalem a hotbed of political and religious unrest for centuries will one day be the arena where God is closer to us than we can ever know now.  “See the home of God is with mortals and he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them and he will be their God…”

 

Remember, as this chapter opens all the sinners of all the ages, demons and men, including Satan, the false prophet, the Antichrist, and everybody else, are now in the eternal lake of fire. They are out of the presence of God and the saints and the holy angels forever. They have been dismissed into their own disconnected, isolated place of eternal punishment. They are gone from the presence of God, the saints and angels forever. God comes and makes His home with us. Now this is the Father’s house, and we’re all in it together. That is the amazing reality of heaven. “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” 

 

That means, according to verse 22 of Revelation 21, “There’s no temple.” John sees a new Jerusalem and there’s no temple. Why? “Because the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple.” In other words, a temple would indicate that you have to go somewhere to see God; or go somewhere, as in the Old Testament, to behold the shekinah. You don’t need a temple, because you’re in God’s house. This is so staggering that John’s listening to this voice, and the voice repeats this thing several times: “The tabernacle of God is among men.” And the voice says it another way: “And He shall dwell among them.” God’s going to dwell with His own. And what the psalmist, I’ve quoted him a lot, here’s Psalm 16 - he anticipated when he said, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures forever,” is going to become reality. 

 

Isn’t that amazing?

But here’s where I end this sermon. Sarah and I put this service together on Thursday afternoon and we had a think about whether to end the Revelation 21 reading at verse 7 all nice and hopeful and positive or at verse 8:

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Um! Would you like me to climb the pulpit steps and thunder to you like a Victorian preacher might well have about hell? Well if hell is separation from God then life like this cannot be enjoyed. Remember Jesus said in Mark 8 where some fear they might lose their possessions or their jobs or their friends or their comfortable life if they trust him it is worthless to gain the whole world but lose one's soul.   

We still have work to do. The new heaven and the new earth haven’t come yet. They will — but we are called to expect and anticipate and help people see a foretaste of it. Do we expect it ourselves? That’s the issue. Tom Wright when he was Bishop of Durham did some Easter services in the very deprived former pit village of Easington Colliery. He said in one “If we believe God’s new creation has begun, we are called to make little bits of new creation happen in our world as it is.” There is no temple in Revelation 21 as we don’t need help finding God. What will we do with our time? What will we talk about when we don’t have to worry about paying the assessment or where we find more stewards? But for now we have a Gospel to proclaim until Jesus comes again.

Is that okay? Don’t give up. God is ahead of us. All shall be well. 

 

A lady at the coffee morning at Allhallowgate on one of the coaches that arrived told me her problems. She said “maybe I shouldn’t have read Revelation!” She’d read the hard bits and she’d not read the promises and the reminders. The notes for preachers suggest you read it with a highlighter pen in your hand and mark all the promises, worship and certainties and then remember them when we have it tough or we think there’s little future. That’s not a bad idea. 

 

Luther found Revelation found him mad or drove him mad! Whilst I am glad next Sunday there will be no reading from Revelation in my services it’s been good to do a book all about how to be when it’s so so hard. There is a new heaven and a new earth coming and God will dwell amongst us for ever. We hold on to the foretaste of that through our stories, our fellowship, our service, our sharing of bread and wine, our waiting on God, our remembering his mercies and we look forward in hope and expectation. 

 

“Everyone who wins the victory will inherit these things. I will be their God, and they will be my children.”