Pentecost 31st May 2020Our Service today marks the day that ends the Easter season and the birth of the Church here on earth. Today nearly 2000 years ago on this day the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh, it is indeed a day of great celebration. May you all know the Spirit’s breath, and life within you this day, in a new and powerful way.Our reading from the book of Acts reminds us that people had gathered in Jerusalem for a festival.If you go back and read the Old Testament, you will discover that Pentecost was just one of the Jewish feast days, only they didn't call it Pentecost, that’s the Greek name. The Jews called it the Feast of Harvest or the Feast of Weeks. It is mentioned five places in the first five books — in Exodus 23, Exodus 24, Leviticus 16, Numbers 28, and Deuteronomy 16. It was the celebration of the beginning of the early wheat harvest. In Palestine, there were two harvests each year. • The early harvest came during the months of May and June. • The final harvest came in the Autumn. There were also several festivals, celebrations, or observances that took place before Pentecost. There was Passover, there was Unleavened Bread, and there was the Feast of First-fruits. The Feast of First-fruits was the celebration of the beginning of the Barley harvest. Here's the way you figured out the date of Pentecost. According to the Old Testament, you would go to the day of the celebration of First-fruits, and beginning with that day, you would count off 50 days. The fiftieth day would be the Day of Pentecost. So First-fruits is the beginning of the Barley harvest and Pentecost the celebration of the beginning of the Wheat harvest. Since it was always 50 days after First-fruits, and since 50 days equals seven weeks, it always came a "week of weeks" later. Why have I told you that? Well it may be good for a quiz question!But more importantly it tells you that there are times and seasons in our life that we need to attend to. Upon reflection we (I) could say that our life before the Covid 19 virus had become one constant, high pressured way of living, work, rest and play where words we used, but rarely experienced.Pre lockdown we were always busy, with things to do and places to be and people to meet, we could pretty much do as we wanted, when we wanted and go anywhere we wanted.Life for most in the western world was good, we were living the dream.One thing this virus has done is to pause our way of life, it has caused us to do is to think about how, why, what and where we do things.People are calling it a reset, a time to take stock, think again about what life is all about.Let’s go back tot our harvesting analogy - What are the steps of harvesting?Harvesting processes1. Sowing - preparing the group for the seed to be planted.2. Reaping - cutting the mature panicles and straw above ground.3. Threshing - separating the paddy grain from the rest of cut crop.4. Storing - sett aside to produce food to sustain us.Let me ask you a couple of questions;Where would you say our lives are at now?Are we reaping what we have sowed?Can I suggest we are being threshed, a time when our lives are being taken up off the field of life and there is a separation of the wheat from the tares. A time for us to separate that which is good and life giving from the bad, life draining, soul destroying things in our lives.At this time of Pentecost, when we celebrate that the Spirit gave birth to a movement and a moment that shaped our world. We need to revisit, recall and re-envision ourselves, our communities and our nation(s) as to the true meaning of life and living a life before God with fear and trembling.These are momentous days for us all, a time when we need to call upon the Holy Spirit, who is our guiding force, to help us share the good news of Jesus Christ, our risen and ascended Lord. He is our comforter, healer and friend who lives within us and we feel his strength at times of distress. The Holy Spirit is the joy giver, enabling us to be exuberant and full of life.Friends at this time of Pentecost, at this feast of weeks, this first harvest, may I ask you to consider, Where is your life at?What needs clearing out of your life the clutter and the chaos?What needs to be Threshed and taken to one side and burnt?
Psalm 99:1-5 Praise to God for His HolinessThe LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity;you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.Extol the LORD our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!Romans 8:18-30 Future GloryI consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.This morning we will be reflecting on the very last part of the prayer that we regularly pray and say, individually and together. The Lord’s Prayer appears in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, but if you look at these scriptures you will see that this last line of the Lord’s prayer is not there. The final line of the Lord’s Prayer is not part of the original prayer given by Jesus, but was added by the Church. It returns us to the beginning: to praise of God and to the kingdom of God. We seek God’s help in the hard things of our lives and then, at the end of the prayer, the camera lens moves back again so that we see everything against the background of God’s creation, God’s time and God’s purpose.The Psalms were the prayer book of Jesus and they shape the vocabulary of praise in every generation of God’s people. In Psalm 99, we proclaim that the LORD (whose name is holy) is king and his kingdom is founded on justice and fairness.When we are shaken and stirred and our lives turned upside down, the Lord’s Prayer gives our lives fresh focus and perspective. ‘Thine is the kingdom’ is a declaration of faith and hope and victory.Here in the UK we have now completed the ninth week of lockdown. It has been a long haul and looking ahead there is much uncertainty. Many of us are realising and coming to terms with the fact that we will probably not get a summer holiday, something that this year, more than any, seems particularly needed. For church leaders it has been a surprisingly busy time. Preparing for and holding online services has put them on a very steep learning curve, plus there has been the difficulty of doing pastoral work over the phone. For businesses preparing for a safe return to work and schools preparing to reopen, it has likewise been a trying time. Needless to say, those who have been our essential workers and those who have worked from home whilst home-schooling children have given of their time tirelessly and they must be exhausted. In our own country and notably in America, and indeed in other countries, we see that some people are resisting the need to socially distance and are complaining of an infringement of their freedom and rights. Most people however, it seems, are wary of easing restrictions too quickly. As Christians, what are our rights and responsibilities?I recently read a reflection from Canon J John, which I thought was so good that I will quote a large part of it.‘First, I think we need to remind ourselves of God’s grace in our lives. You see, there is the temptation to think of what we have as our own. We think of our time as our own, our property as our own, our lives as our own. But they aren’t. We don’t own our lives; we are merely tenants and the Landlord has a perfect right to give notice of eviction at any time and without warning. Everything we have and enjoy is something that has been given to us. As St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:7, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ That is true of everybody in some sense, but it is particularly true for those of us who have put our faith in Christ. Paul again, writing in Romans 8:32, says, ‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?’ So let’s not focus on the loss of what was never really ours to keep and instead give God thanks for what we have been given and enjoy it. That we have so many rich memories of times with family, friends and freedom is an act of grace from a God who gives freely out of love. Let’s rejoice in what we have, not grumble over what we haven’t. Let’s be grateful!Second, I think we need to remind ourselves of God’s governing over our lives. Psalm 31:15 says, ‘My times are in your hands.’ One of the merits of this COVID catastrophe is that it has been a nudge in the ribs about how vulnerable we all are. That’s no bad thing: whenever we use the words ‘the Lord’ we should recall that it is an acknowledgement that God is in charge of all that we are and have. There are many Bible verses that remind us of this; for example, Job 1:21, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.’ In the New Testament we read, ‘For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it’ (1 Timothy 6:7). In these difficult days, it’s absolutely vital to remind ourselves that God is in control. If you have put your faith in Christ, then you have not been robbed of good things by some evil power, you have instead had your access to them restricted by a heavenly Father who intends good for you. In these days of isolation many parents are wisely limiting the time children spend in front of screens: they are doing it not out of malice or because they want to ‘rob’ their children, but for their benefit. So it is with God. He rules over us in love and acts for the very best of reasons: love. We need to trust him. Let’s be faithful!Finally, I think we need to remind ourselves of God’s goodness for our lives. One of our weaknesses is that we focus on the here and now which, for most of us at the moment, is frustrating. But to borrow a phrase of politics and negotiation, God is ‘playing a long game’. His goals for us who have put our faith in Christ do not focus on providing temporary and limited blessings for today, but on ensuring that we are fit for tomorrow’s unlimited existence in the glory of eternity. Let’s be hopeful!’Ref: May 26th, 2020 J.John BlogThe world does not revolve around us. God is the creator. To God belongs the glory, not to us. As we end the Lord’s Prayer with ‘For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen’ we offer our worship and acknowledge that we are not the centre of the world. We do however, have a glorious hope, that we have been called and justified by Jesus Christ, that all things work for the good of those called according to his purpose, and that we will be glorified with Him. Amen, AlleluiaMary Tynan, May 30, 2020
Morning PrayerFriday 29 May 2020“And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil”Matthew 4:1-114 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.ReflectionI’m going to start by asking you to put your thinking caps on. Can you remember an advert which came out on television in the middle of the 1980s? The camera enters a rather dark room, full of spider webs and illuminated by candles. It moves slowly towards a coffin in the centre of the room. The coffin lid rises and up pops Kenneth Williams, who is dressed up like Count Dracula, complete with white complexion and satin cloak. He holds a tempting éclair. The advertisement finishes with the narrator saying “fresh cream cakes,” to which Dracula Kenneth Williams replies “naughty, but ever so nice!”We experience temptations of all sorts in our everyday lives, and sometimes the publicity machine does not help with them either, especially when it comes to food and drink. Who can forget the power of the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny? This is a cartoon rabbit who tries to entice you into sinking your teeth into a chocolate bar with her ‘Nigella-like’ voice! When it comes to “lead us not into temptation”, is this the sort of thing Jesus had in mind when he prayed the words and instructed his followers to do likewise? Obviously, they did not have chocolate in Jesus’s day. I have, however, always found the line problematic: would God really want to lead us into temptation to begin with? This reminds me of the words spoken by St Augustine of Hippo: “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!” What could be going on here? What does Jesus mean?Not surprisingly, serious theologians have wrestled with this for many hundreds of years. Some believe that Jesus was not actually referring to the here and now, but rather some time in the future. This all tied in with an apocalyptic view people had at that time. There was a belief that, just before the total victory of God and the completion of Kingdom, there would be great trials and tribulations, when evil would be intensified. The prayer, then, was for God not to bring people to this test, and that the faithful be delivered from the work of the ‘evil one’ , or Satan.This call on God’s deliverance is not just an apocalyptic one; there is an immediacy with the Lord’s Prayer as a whole, and this line refers to the present, too. A way into this is to use the word ‘trial’ instead of ‘temptation’, which is considered to be a much better translation by many scholars. There are many trials that we experience in this world; there are situations we have to endure, not just ‘temptations.’ The world throws up problems and impediments, often when we least expect them, some of them truly terrible which might be described as evil. And so our prayer is that God not only deliver us from them, but to give us the strength, wisdom and courage to overcome the difficulties of the world. These might concern personal relationships, our communities and places of work, and even ourselves.One great comfort is knowing that Jesus is aware of what it is like to experience the trials of this earth; he knows what evil can do. As we heard in our reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus was tempted by the devil, but he overcame these trials which centred on power, authority, money and pride. Even when Jesus was on the cross, hanging between those two criminals, the crowd and others called on him to come down from that wooden beam if he was truly the Son of God. “Save yourself!” Even then, Jesus endured that trial, an ultimate trial for us and for the whole of humanity. He could have ended the pain, in other words given into that ‘temptation’, but for our sakes he did not.Our prayer is that God will give us the fortitude, guts and good judgement to battle those obstacles we meet in our everyday lives, the hindrances of the world, which will eventually be swept away when the final victory arrives and Christ returns in clouds descending!
Thy Kingdom Come 2020 No.6 - The Lord’s Prayer – forgive us our sins, as we forgive those that sin against us.Matthew 18:21-2221 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.Forgiveness is outrageous. In our society where might makes right, a society of myriad victims, forgiveness seems crazy. Right here is surely where the Lord’s Prayer is most difficult to pray. Perhaps that’s why this is the longest and the most involved petition in the Lord’s Prayer. As usual, it first asks God to do something for us. Then it challenges us to do something for others. The order is important: before there is any talk in the prayer about our forgiving anyone else, we are made to ask for forgiveness ourselves.Some of us might wish that the prayer said something to God like, “teach us to forgive others, so that we might also be forgiven.” But it doesn’t, because that would put us in control. That would mean that we could be righteous, reaching out in love to those who had injured and wronged us. But the prayer first asks us to ask to be forgiven. That takes us out of control. We have no choice but to recognise that God is in control. We don’t create our lives; we are not the sole authors of the stories that constitute our lives. We are characters in God’s story.If an acquaintance gives you a gift you hadn’t expected, you find you’re in an awkward position. If it’s a gift which, in receiving, you realise that you really want, that you don’t wish to refuse, you feel at a disadvantage. This, after all, is an acquaintance, not a close friend, and this person has given you a gift that you didn’t know you wanted but which you now feel you need. Many of us immediately seek to give something in return because we know that gift giving and receiving is a game of power in our culture, and we fear owing the gift giver. God’s love for us is something freely given. Consider how often Jesus forgives people. They ask to be healed; he forgives them. They ask for an explanation of his teaching, he forgives them. “Who is this who forgives sins?” his critics asked. In forgiving, he showed us that he was of God, and that we are dependent upon God. So, to reach out for forgiveness means that I am not the sole author of my life story. I can’t think of much that goes against the contemporary understanding of our lives more than to ask for forgiveness. So, when we pray forgive us sins, as we forgive those who sin against us, we’re asked to come out from behind our facade, to become exposed, vulnerable, empty-handed, to risk reconciliation to the one who has the power to forgive us.Like so many other parts of this prayer, it’s in the plural. Forgive us our sins. Many of us often like to think of our sins are a very private matter between us, and God if we must, yet the fact this is prayer, all the way through, is plural.The prayer also teaches us that if we’re to be forgiven, then we can truly be forgivers. The one who has experienced forgiveness is the one best able to forgive, which is what I think we heard in our gospel reading this morning. Our forgiveness begins as a response to our being forgiven. It’s not so much an act of generosity towards whoever has hurt us, as an act of gratitude toward our forgiving God. So, forgiveness is neither easy nor cheap.In forgiving us, God is refusing to hold anything against us, refusing to let our sin have the last word in the way the world is moving; and in challenging us to forgive others.Jesus is not saying that the injustice we have suffered is inconsequential, because the pain is real, but rather, Jesus is refusing to let sin have the last word in our story.We can forgive. The courage to forgive one another begins in the humility and realisation that we have been forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift, a gift that is first offered to us, before we can offer it to others. When Jesus told Peter to forgive seventy-times-seven times, Jesus had already forgiven him seventy-times-seven trillion times. In our forgiving and being forgiven, we are made part of God’s kingdom, a part of God’s defeat of the powers that would otherwise dominate our lives.If you’ve ever been forgiven by someone, you know the way in which that forgiveness frees you, releases you, in a way that is close to divine. If you have ever forgiven someone who wronged you, you know how such forgiveness is not cheap and how forgiving someone who has wronged you is a way of breaking the hold of that wrong upon your life. Forgiveness is not natural. That’s why we have to pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” so often, and why we need to pray it so often. Amen
