We first arrived in Chile not long after a major earthquake in September 2015. The pictures of the damage caused by the Tsunami that followed were seen around the world.- Ships that had been tossed onto the land, flooding that had washed away houses, roads that had broken up, houses and lives that were lost.The first thing we did as we moved into our apartment was to read the earthquake advice and make sure we knew all the exits and had a cache of equipment, axes, crowbar, and torch, that we could use to extract ourselves if necessary.The secret of course is to be prepared, or as the earthquake advice leaflet says: ‘Take an active role in your safety’A brutal massacreThat could be the theme of this short passage in Luke’s account of Jesus' teaching that ends with his lament over Jerusalem.Jesus has just heard of a recent massacre of Galileans by Roman soldiers struck down as they worshipped. Pilate then ordered that their blood should be mingled with the blood of the animals they had brought to sacrifice. The worshippers are taken unawares and unprepared, they have no means to defend themselves and no time to escape. Jesus is making a point about their innocence. This is not an act of divine judgment as some had said but an example of the pointless brutality for which Pilate was well known.A tragic accidentThe same point is made, in a different way as Jesus reminds his listeners of a tragic accident that had recently happened in Jerusalem. One of the defensive towers on the walls of Jerusalem had collapsed and crushed 18 innocent bystanders. The point is made again, they are not to blame for the fact that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor is this a sign of an angry god taking it out on wayward humanity. This is just a tragic accident!However, Jesus ends this description of innocent suffering with the chilling words:“But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 3Complacent crowdsThe common assumption in Jesus' day was that ‘Bad things happen to bad people’. The Book of Job is an example of this kind of wisdom. Job’s comforters attempt to get Job to confess his sins, since he must, surely, have done something terrible to deserve such suffering.The reverse was also true, in so far as those who prospered were assumed to be blessed by God. The so-called, ‘Prosperity Gospel’ still has a strong appeal among many Christians today, equating our comfortable lifestyle with a God who seems to have a bias towards the rich rather than the poor.It is this complacency that Jesus is determined to challenge with these chilling words. For the second time, he says forcefully:“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 5The Parable of the Fig TreeClare once made me a cushion decorated with fig leaves. It is very precious to me as it represents a difficult time in my ministry when there seemed to be no ‘Fruit’, a barren time. I looked for other openings and applied for another post, but nothing worked out. Clare, however, must have had this parable in her mind as she stitched it because she gave it to me just as a new project began with my Bishop’s blessing and an exciting 3 years of growth began.The lesson I take from this parable is that times of barrenness, when nothing seems to be happening are not a sign of God’s disfavour but of His love and mercy. Times like those are times when we should be growing in other ways, not maybe the showy fruit but the deep roots of faith. Only when those roots are established can the fig tree bear the weight of the fruit. These are the times when we can assess our lives and ask ourselves difficult questions.Christ in the Wilderness - The EaglesThis is very much the theme of Stanley Spencer’s wilderness series, painted at a time when Spencer was in a wilderness of his own. He had divorced his wife for another woman but the new relationship had not worked out. His erotic paintings featuring this new woman in his life had not been well received! To add to all this gloom Spencer relived the trauma of the Great War as Britain battled for survival in the Second World War.It was a time to reset and renew his life and the ‘Wilderness series’ provided just the means to do so. In ‘The Eagles’ he reflects on the violence of the world, maybe with the passage of Luke’s gospel in mind.The Eagles gorge on a young deer, ‘Nature raw in tooth and claw’ we might reflect, this is not the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ where the lion is to lie down with the lamb but a world of suffering. Jesus looks away, he too is headed for a cruel and agonizing death, an innocent victim of our cruel world. Just in case we are tempted to point the finger at those terrible Romans or Russians we are reminded that Christ died for the sins of all because we all share in the violence of this fallen world. We are part of the problem!Jesus lies prone like the fallen deer, maybe to remind us that his body and blood feed us too, for through his death we like the fig tree are given a second chance and given a good manuring! An opportunity to start again, to reimagine the future, to reset the agenda, or as Jesus puts it to repent. Maybe this is what Spencer was so desperately asking of his friends and family.Wilderness years are not lost years, but waiting years as we examine our lives ready for the next move forward. We do not know what the threat will be but we must be prepared. Jesus’ parable then doesn’t represent a barren tree but a growing tree that is about to fruit, given time.“We should wait”, the gardener says before we uproot it and so he digs around it so the water can reach the roots and manures it so that the rich minerals can nourish the soil.Repentance?Part of the process by which I came through my wilderness was by ‘Reimagining’ my ministry. Why was it not bearing fruit? What could I do to change that? I took time out to study and re-examined what I believed Parish ministry to be. By the end of this process, I was a very different person and approached parish life in a completely different way.Smell the Coffee!That’s the way I talk about repentance today. It is a call to wake up and realise where we are heading and what is ahead of us. Are we sleepwalking into a disaster? If so, it will be entirely of our own making. We have been given time to think, to change, to reimagine our future but we have been asleep. Wake up, ‘smell the coffee’, as they say!LentLent, is rightly understood as a time of repentance in which we reflect on our life choices and ask whether we are going in the right direction.We have time and space. We have a loving and merciful God who patiently watches over us, watering and nourishing us with his gracious gifts so that we can bear abundant fruit. So let’s be fruitful!Rev Simon Brignall
The natural world has a way of teaching us lessons for life. Jesus often pointed to the birds of the air, the grass of the fields or the fruit on the vine. Artists have also used this rich imagery to illustrate Jesus’ life. Stanley Spencer pictures Jesus as a kind of butterfly emerging from the broken shell of the cocoon in the last of his studies on the ‘Temptations of Christ’. Jesus emerges from the struggle with wings spread out ready to fly. Just as the butterfly must struggle to free itself from the restrictions of the cocoon, so the wrestling in the wilderness prepares Jesus for his ministry. The wings of the butterfly would have no strength without the struggle to emerge from the chrysalis and the ministry of Jesus would have been powerless without the trials of the desert.The Wilderness Years of IsraelThe wilderness years of wandering in the desert are often thought of as wasted years in the history of God’s people, yet Israel is told to remember them when they emerge into the ‘Promised land’. It was here they learned important lessons about themselves and their God.Identity: It was there that they learned of their true identity as the ‘People of God’. They had been a bunch of ‘Wandering Aramaeans’ but God called them to be a great nation.Vocation: It was here that God called them out of the slavery of Egypt to be a holy people serving Him alone.Covenant: It was here they received the Law, not as a burden to bear but the promise of a faithful God who would be at their side in all their struggles.They discovered all this in the heat and dust of the desert. When they were tempted to turn back because they had no food, they found God mindful of their needs.When they were tempted to revert to the worship of Egypt’s gods, they saw God’s power displayed in mighty signs and miracles. As they faced empty stretches of desert and marauding enemies, God proved faithful to His promise to be with them. So now as they enter the Promised Land they were called to bring the first fruits of all they produced so that they should remember:Who they were – God’s people, dependent on Him.What they were called to be – A Holy people dedicated to God.How they had arrived – Through God’s goodness and faithfulness. The wilderness experience of JesusLuke sees Jesus as the new Israel, as he prepares for his ministry of deliverance. Instead of the forty years in the desert, Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days, but he is tested in the same way.By hunger:‘Where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during these days, and he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered, “It is written; Man does not live on bread alone.’ Luke 4: 2-4Significantly, the devil begins by saying: “If you are the Son of God” As Israel learned about their identity as God’s people, so Jesus is tested as to his identity as the Son of God.By false godsJust as Israel had been tempted to return to the false gods of Egypt, so Jesus is tempted to turn to a false god as his source of power and authority.“I will give you all their authority and splendour, for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours”Jesus answered, “It is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” Luke 4: 6-8It was not to be through the power and authority of evil that Jesus was to bring deliverance but by obedience to the will of his Father God.By testing God’s faithfulnessIsrael had tested God’s faithfulness at the Waters of Meribah as Psalm 95 tells us:‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.’Now the devil challenges Jesus to put his Father God to the test by throwing himself off the Temple:“If you are the Son of God,” he said, throw yourself down from here.”…Jesus answered, “It says: do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Luke 4: 9-12At every stage, Jesus is tried and tested to take a route to the work that his Father God had called him to, that is not that of his Father, but of the devil. As they say: ‘The route to hell is filled with good intentions’!Our path in life is often testing, but the trials and testing can be a blessing. For if even Jesus had to go through this wilderness to equip him for his ministry, we should expect that our trials and temptations can be used by God to equip us for the journey.Like the butterfly we have no power to fly without the struggle. Without the struggle we will not remember from whom we have received everything. Without the struggle we will not remember that we are held by a loving God. Without the struggle we will not remember to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.Rev. Simon BrignallA Prayer for UkraineGod of peace and justiceWe pray for the people of Ukraine today,and the laying down of weapons.we pray for all those who fear for tomorrow,that your spirit of comfort would draw near to them.We pray for those with power over war and peace,for wisdom, discernment, and compassion to guide their decisionsAbove all, we pray for all your precious children at risk and in fear,That you would hold and protect them.We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.Amen
This year we will again celebrate a partnership between cocoa growers in West Africa and chocolate makers in Britain. ‘The Meaningful Chocolate Company’ is part of the Fair Trade movement around the world working with producers to source cocoa and add value to this natural resource by generating an income for producers that enables them to invest in community projects they choose. New schools, medical centres, as well as freshwater, and good sanitation are just some of the benefits that Fairtrade makes possible. All this may sound a long way from our reading today, but it springs out of a unique Christian insight into the way God works in the world – he works in partnership with us. “Who is this?” the disciples ask as Jesus stills the storm. Luke 8:25. The account of the stilling of the storm poses questions about our world, our God, and ourselves that shape the way we live. Our world: We can read this account as the story of a chaotic world in which natural disaster always threatens to overwhelm us. Or we can read it as an account of a mechanical world in which God has abandoned us to our fate in the struggle for survival. The Church has read it however as the promise of a world in which God is in control over all the forces of nature and works with us to promote the welfare of the planet and its creatures. Our God: These views presuppose the kind of God who might be in charge. Ancient civilizations saw malignant forces behind nature that humans must appease by sacrifice or sympathetic magic. The disciple’s rebuke of Jesus, for example, suggests that they might have held him responsible for the storm. Today we tend to think of the world as a machine working according to the laws of nature without any kind of divine intervention. If there is a God He has left us to our own devices; maybe the picture of Jesus asleep suggests this kind of view. But the bible presents us with another point of view: A God who is present and active in the world, working and suffering with us, and intervening in the person of Jesus to rescue us. God with usOur painting today illustrates this literally. Rembrandt in one of his earliest works (1633, when he was 29), pictures himself in the boat, beside Jesus. You can see him looking directly at the viewer, holding on to a stay that runs from the stern of the boat to the masthead. Unlike the other disciples, he seems calm as if to say, “I know how this story ends. I will be safe with Jesus in the boat.”. The composition of the picture, with the sky brightening up and the clouds clearing, suggests that it is not the disciples’ pleading that produces results, but that Jesus already had command of the situation. Even in a world where God seems absent, we must trust that He is ultimately in control. The way we live: If we see this world as chaotic all we can do in response to the wild and maybe malignant forces of nature is to keep our heads down and hope the danger passes us by. On the other hand, our modern worldview assumes that humanity is ultimately the master of the forces of nature and can control them. Our approach to climate change rests on the belief that technological progress will deliver us from disaster. The Church from earliest times, however, has seen this account as an invitation to faith in a loving Creator. Jesus’ question “Where is your faith” Luke 8:25, asks us to examine where we place our faith. For the Church, God is present with us in the storm and in the calm, working in partnership with us in the project of making the world a better place to live. The Fairtrade project is part of this response to the God who is in control of everything, by working with Him in the improvement of the lives of others we are working to make a better world where all can flourish. Rev. Simon Brignall With the world in turmoil, and storm clouds gathering, we pray for peace with Justice in Palestine/Israel and Ukraine.Please keep our grieving families in your prayers.God of peace and justice,we pray for the people of Ukraine today.We pray for peace and the laying down of weapons.We pray for all those who fear for tomorrow,that your Spirit of comfort would draw near to them.We pray for those with power over war or peace,for wisdom, discernment, and compassion to guide their decisions.Above all, we pray for all your precious children, at risk, and in fear,that you would hold and protect them.We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.Amen
What makes you happy?Happiness surveys come along every few years tracking what makes for a happy life. The latest survey I’ve seen is from the UK, it suggests that we are at our happiest in our mid-teens and mid-sixties.So, that happiness is either about looking forward with excitement or looking back with contentment.It doesn’t tell us much about happiness or how we can find happiness.It would be sad to think that but for these few brief years of our life happiness was beyond our reach!A Swedish survey on the other hand is more helpful as it gives us clues as to how we might open ourselves up to be happy each day.It recommends 6 ways to live well:Start the day with a fresh dip in the pool or if you don’t have a pool a cold shower!Find time to go out into the wilderness to be aloneDe-clutter your wardrobe and live with a few versatile garments.Take breaks during your working day to re-energise yourself.Learn to listen to others as they speak.Perform random acts of kindness. We might want to call this the Swedish beatitudes!Makarios – Happy or Blessed?The word often translated as ‘Happy’ in new translations and ‘Blessed’ in older translations is Makarios. Together these two words capture something of the sense of the Greek word.Makarios was not just a feeling like happiness but the fact of God’s blessing, and as a result of the knowledge of God’s blessing, flows the feeling of happiness, joy, peace, and contentment. It was a word used by the ancients to describe the life of the gods, and it remained in most people’s minds a dream beyond reach, an unattainable ideal, and yet an ideal we all reach for.The Beatitudes of loveThroughout history, humanity has attempted to achieve happiness in two different ways, either through grasping happiness or by going in the opposite direction and turning their backs on earthly pleasure. The painter Stanley Spencer in his attempt to find happiness tried both!From 1937 through to 1938 Spencer charted his sad attempt to find love and happiness. In a series of eight paintings, he records his difficult relationships with women, ironically naming the series ‘The Beatitudes’. In truth, they represent the very opposite, not happiness but misery. Having divorced his wife Hilda he sought out a new partner, Patricia Preece, showering her with gifts of perfume and jewelry, almost ruining himself financially.In this painting, we see two figures of Spencer one kneeling at Patricia Preece's feet in worship and the other facing his former wife, pleading, I think for forgiveness. Despite all his pleading and worship both relationships failed and Spencer was left bereft and alone. From now on he decided to live the life of a monk!Love and happiness could not be bought but are as Spencer discovered a gift we give to each other, a gift that comes with the blessing of God.The Beatitudes of JesusWhen we look at how Luke presents Jesus’ teaching we are confronted with an apparent contradiction. Those who are poor or hungry, weeping or persecuted are blessed and those who are rich or successful in life are condemned to hunger weeping, and woe!Strangely Jesus’ mission depended, according to Luke, on the generosity of a group of rich women. In contrast to Spencer, Jesus and his disciples lived entirely by gifts rather than by grasping, thanks to the hospitality of wealthy disciples.So behind this apparent contradiction, Luke is speaking about our attitudes to happiness: We can be both rich and unhappy or poor and happy depending on the way we live, as Matthew makes clear in his account of Jesus’ teaching by adding the words ‘In Spirit’.A person can be ‘rich’ because ‘blessed’ by God or ‘poor in spirit’ as we recognise our dependence on God’s goodness. Richness and poverty are judged not by what we have, but by what we give to each other. It is our attitude of heart and not our bank account that God looks at!Life in all its fullnessJesus embraced life he said that he had come to bring life in all its fullness. Happiness for Jesus was not cold showers every morning or even isolation from the world. Jesus made friendship, fun, and laughter as well as generosity, faithfulness, and prayerfulness, a priority in the community he created. He neither taught us that we could find happiness through renouncing the ‘Good life’ nor that we could find it by pursuing the ‘Good life’.Jesus's approaches to wealth and poverty in the beatitudes, then, go beyond our understanding of happiness as the outcome of what life brings us, or indeed what we achieve in life whether it is wealth or poverty, persecution or prosperity. Happiness is not something we can find for or achieve for ourselves, happiness is a gift of God. We must read Luke’s account of the Beatitudes in this light:‘Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God’ Luke 6:20We find happiness, Jesus says, when we approach life’s ups and downs in a spirit of humility, knowing that we are nothing in ourselves but rich in God’s goodness to us.Acknowledging God’s mercy and love in poverty and wealth, ‘in sickness and in health’, as the wedding vows express it. Every other road to happiness makes big claims for ourselves. The words used in many Self-help books that talk about self-realisation or self-fulfillment, assume we can achieve happiness through our efforts or indeed be denied happiness because of our needs. Happiness flows from the fact of God’s love for us and not from what life throws at us whether good or bad.‘Happy are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied’ Luke 6: 21Now that we no longer demand happiness as our right but as a gift from God, our desires are redirected to Him. The whole focus of our desires has changed, instead of focusing on ourselves and our needs, we are now God oriented as we seek to honour Him and give him thanks for the life he gives us. This person will be satisfied, Jesus says because the God to whom we turn is faithful and true and desires only what is good for us. This is true whether we find ourselves overcome by adversity as many of God’s servants have been through history or blessed with prosperity as we are.‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh’ Luke 6: 21Adversity and pain, bereavement, and sorrow can bring us to our knees and, as Wesly commented, this is often the best place to start our journey back to God. When in our helplessness we turn to God for strength we find again that He is faithful, He can be trusted with our sighs and sorrows and will give us the strength to take us through.C S Lewis wrote two books on Pain, one an academic study ‘The problem of Pain’ that looked at the theological problems of suffering and a God of Love, and the other after the death of his wife Joy ‘A grief observed’ a cry for the heart as he agonised with his doubts about the God of love.Through his struggle to understand what God was saying to him he spoke of pain as a megaphone. Sometimes God in His love needs to break through our complacency or self-confidence, our pride or boastfulness in a way that helps us to our knees to seek His strength rather than our own. In my mind, the C S Lewis who wrote after the death of his wife, was a more humane and compassionate man who truly understood the problem of Pain.‘Blessed are you when people hate you when they exclude you and revile you …on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy for behold your reward is great in heaven’ Luke 6: 22-23Happiness then is not something that can be found by grasping or lost through misfortune or poverty, happiness is a gift from God to those who ‘Seek first the kingdom of God’.However, Jesus tells us we can also expect to be hated and reviled on account of our faith in God. The truth of these words can be seen down the ages as faithful Christians have faced persecution and death.As Jesus himself knew, a loyalty that seeks first the kingdom of God will confront powers and authorities, of regimes that set themselves up, over and above the Kingdom of God. Powers and authorities, like the Roman Empire, demand our worship, or in the case of modern tyrannies, obeisance to rulers who seek their own glory.We can be grateful that we do not live in such an age or under such a regime but we do confront a world that demands of us another loyalty, whether that be the power of money or the seduction of consumerism. These are gods that the Scripture calls idols, the gods of gold who do not see and cannot speak and who will, as we have seen throughout history, fail us.The Swedish beatitudes!The Beatitudes tell us that Happiness is for everyone at any age even in times of hardship. It points us to an approach to life that leaves space for the divine, for our neighbour, and space for ourselves. Perhaps then we might take time to read again that list of Swedish beatitudes:In the light of what Jesus says an early morning dip to freshen up might be a helpful discipline.That time in the wilderness a chance to wonder at the beauty of nature.That de-cluttering of the wardrobe is a useful exercise in saving the planet.Those breaks in the day may be a time to reflect on your life.Certainly learning to listen to others and practicing acts of kindness are at the heart of what Jesus meant when he spoke about ‘Seeking first the kingdom of God’So then, Makarios, the blessing of happiness, comes when we make time for ourselves so that we might have time for God and others in our lives. Rev Simon BrignallWe continue to uphold in our prayers the bereaved families of our parish.
