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
Jesus Commissions the DisciplesMatthew 28:16-20Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’What does the ‘Great Commission’ mean for us today, in the here and now of our lives in May 2020 and in the near future?Just before his Ascension to His Father in Heaven, Jesus directed his disciples to meet with Him up a mountain. He had spent around 3 years with these men, his chosen disciples, living and sharing his life with them. They had followed Jesus wherever He went and had learned from Him all that was necessary for them to be true disciples and to then be in a position to make disciples for Jesus themselves. They were not perfect and indeed some still doubted, but they would receive and be enabled by the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus could continue to be with them wherever they went.In my reflection, I want to focus on two words as we consider our response to this scripture.Firstly, is the word Commission, which doesn’t actually occur in the reading, but is used in the title for it. It sounds like Co – Mission and that is, I believe, a way we can understand what Jesus wanted his disciples to do. He had completed his earthly mission, his very special part in the overall Mission of God, or Missio Dei. Now the time had come for his disciples to become co-workers in that Mission, to play their part in bringing to earth the Kingdom of God. In order for the Kingdom to be brought to all parts of the world, God needed His disciples to work with Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are also called, as his disciples today, to be an important and necessary part of God’s Mission, despite our faults, weaknesses and doubts. He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us in this task.The second word is Disciple. What is a disciple and how are disciples made? In simple terms, a disciple is a follower of Jesus. It is interesting that Jesus chose just 12 men to become his disciples, plus a small group of women who travelled around with him. In the gospels we read of many times when he spoke to a large crowd, but he could not relate to the crowd in the same intimate way that he did with his disciples. Being a disciple meant being consistently in Christ’s company and sharing life with other disciples in the group. Likewise, for us, if we want to be true disciples of Jesus, then we need to be consistently in Christ’s company and sharing His life within small groups of other disciples. We can have our large church gatherings, either virtually, or physically at some point in the future, when it is good to worship together, to share in Holy Communion and to hear God’s Word being proclaimed, but for disciples to be truly formed, we need to relate in smaller groups also. This was perhaps part of the basis of the ‘House Church’ movement in the 1970’s. When I was at university in the 70’s, I was involved with several churches, some of which focussed very much on large services. In these large gatherings I felt like ’just another student who won’t be with us for very long’. Eventually I joined a church which met in home groups as well as all together on a Sunday. Within my homegroup, my friend and flatmate Gill and I were allocated to a young married couple, Nic and Jenny, for them to disciple us. I knew Nic anyway, because he had been at the same school as me. We didn’t do anything particularly ‘super spiritual’ with them, but they welcomed us into their home and lives and we just learned by spending time with them. I have just recently renewed my contact with them and have discovered that Nic is now the director of Kairos Connexion whose strapline is “TRANSFORMING OUR NATION WITH THE GOSPEL THROUGH A MOVEMENT OF MISSIONARY DISCIPLES”. He is based in Liverpool, working with many churches there, although he is now encouraging churches all over Britain to use the small group model as a means for mission and discipleship. We are not called to make converts, but to make disciples. Sadly, the converts made at large evangelical meetings do not always stay faithful to Christ, because they have not been discipled within a closer setting. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, we read that the early church met in homes as well as in the Temple. At the moment, we can’t gather in homes, but there are other ways, such as in Zoom Morning Prayer sessions, where we can meet together in a smaller gathering. We can be discipled and disciple others within small sub-groups of the church and reach out to those in our locality with love, acts of kindness, service and justice - a demonstration of the Kingdom of God amongst us. Do not think you are small and insignificant and cannot make a difference. Remember the lesson that Pauline brought to our attention, that the Kingdom of God is like the tiny mustard seed that grows into a great tree. I pray that we will each want to be disciples of Jesus who grow into those who can disciple others and also to make new disciples in our Parish, amongst our friends, neighbours and relatives and beyond. During this season of ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ keep praying for your 5, that God may intervene in their lives. By relational unity and powerful prayer, seeking to fight against social injustice and engaging with those in our locality or with those we meet online, may we gain in missional confidence. Lord make us co-workers in bringing Your Kingdom to Earth as it is in Heaven.AmenMary Tynan 27 May 2020
Thought for the Day Thy Kingdom Come Season No. 5. Give us this day our Daily Bread.Does this phrase mean literally what it says?For some people, in some places around our world today it most probably does, think about that for a moment….Repeat the phrase: ‘Give us today our daily bread.’As is so often the case with this and other prayers they are so inculcated within us, their meaning fades from us at times. This season of Thy Kingdom Come helps us to regain, to ponder again the power that is within these simple and most holy words.Jesus teaches us to pray that God would give us daily bread Matthew 6:11. Obviously Jesus was not telling His disciples to pray only for bread. But bread was and still is a staple in people’s diets; bread for the Hebrew people was a powerful symbol of God’s provision for His people in the Old Testament. We remember how God cared for the Israelites when they were in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Life in the wilderness was hard, and soon the people began to complain that it would be better to be back in Egypt, where they had wonderful food to eat (or so they believed, our memory does play tricks on us from time to time, remember the ‘Good ole Days’). When the Israelites were first fed with manna they were in the Desert of Sin, located on the western side of the Sinai Peninsula. The Israelites left Egypt about one month earlier and were traveling 10 – 15 miles per day. In the desert of Sin the “whole community” grumbled against Moses and Aaron because there was not enough food to eat. The grumbling included Exodus 16:3: • ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt.’• ‘In Egypt we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.’ • ‘You have brought us out into this desert to starve the entire assembly to death.’Clearly, the Israelites were romanticising their time as slave labourers in Egypt. The primary foods for slaves were grain, beer, and vegetables such as onions, leeks, cucumbers, and melons. The poor and slaves were permitted to eat fish caught from the Nile River. Rarely, if ever, did Egyptians give meat, e.g., beef or lamb, to slaves. Meat was reserved for very wealthy Egyptians.Responding to these complaints, God promised to “rain bread from heaven” Ex. 16:4. The next morning, when the dew lifted, there remained behind on the ground “a small round substance, as fine as frost… . It was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (vv. 14, 31). When God miraculously fed His people from heaven, he did so by giving them bread.Likewise, we take comfort in knowing that our physical needs are met, that we have food, or “bread,” for our needs.This petition of the Lord’s Prayer, teaches us to come to God in a spirit of humble dependence, asking Him to provide what we need and to sustain us from day to day. We are not given license to ask for great riches, but we are encouraged to make our needs known to Him, trusting that He will provide.If we find that God’s hand seems to be invisible to us and that we cannot discern His presence or providence in our lives, that may be due partly to the way we pray. We have a tendency to pray in general. “Lord bless me and my family” When we pray in general, the only way we will see the hand of God’s providence is in general. As we enter into this season of ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ we have been asked to focus our prayers for 5 other people.Write there names out, place them in your prayerful place and pray that God works in their lives.This conversation and communion with God is specific, your petition before Him is focused and direct. Im sure God will welcome that, He is interested in our lives and that of our loved ones, more than we know, or imagine. By pouring out our souls and our needs specifically, we see specific answers to our prayers. Our Father has invited us to go to Him and ask Him for our daily bread. He will not fail to provide it, remember to ask.Fr Andrew
