Pray for Kenya

Themes: Forgiveness, Places, Prayer, Sin, St Philip's

This morning I got up early to join the weekly prayer meeting for our Church, we meet down stairs in the Parish lounge. Our Church has all kinds of struggles and difficulties, but it has some wonderfully welcoming and committed people, and, not unrelated to that, it has a small group who faithfully pray together every week. Usually I can’t make the time because I need to be on the train to college.

tangent Just on a tangent for a moment, if anyone is moving to Sydney and looking for a new Church, give a thought to joining us at St Philip’s. We have more opportunities for the gospel than we can handle with our small team. Don’t settle for dogmatic slumbers in the suburbs – go to a Church on the mission field! Having said, that probably every Church feels the same way, and if you have better reasons to be somewhere else, I guess that’s ok…
still, we really need you. /tangent

I happened to hear a report on Kenya on the BBC world service last thing before I dropped off to sleep last night, and was deeply disturbed by one particular interview. I downloaded it and listened again this morning. It is completely heartwrenching.

I’ve extracted a portion of the audio (about 20secs) here.

You can listen to the whole report here:

A number of people were praying for Kenya this morning, we support some link missionaries over there. As we sat there in prayer, I had the realisation that all around the world at the moment there are Christian men and women petitioning God for the lives and safety of the people of that country. It’s very bad, very ugly over there, but I wonder what it would be without the prayers of the saints.
The little philosopher part of me gets anxious about stating propositions that have no conditions for falsification, but as a Christian I only know how grateful I am that He has left some salt in this world.

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See Him Coming

Themes: Personal, preaching, Sermon, St Philip's, Sunday

It’s been a long time since I updated this blog with a post about what I have been doing.
(Emm’s also been updating her blog)

So here goes…

Last week was probably the busiest and most stressful week of College for me so far.

The normal workload for College has been just manageable for me in the past few weeks. But last week I got a true picture of what it will often be like. I had an essay due in at the end of the week (today) and was preaching on Sunday (yesterday). The reality is that there will be plenty of weeks where essays and preaching collide.

It feels sometimes that if you keep pushing yourself for long enough then eventually your brain just says ‘no more!’
Even though I new I had more work to do than usual, I found that I managed to do even less. Everytime I sat down to study or practice my languages, I’d find some way to distract myself.
I think that I just needed a mental rest, the motivation to keep pushing hard at the work just wasn’t there.

Being conscious of preaching on Sunday, and not having completely finished my sermon preparation, also meant that whenever I sat down to read for class I felt that I should be using the time for sermon prep. Rather than being able to stick to a study programme, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I needed to be doing and when.

But that’s life, it’s not neat and tidy – packaged into manageable time units. I’ve got it much easier than people who are studying with families and young kids.

Life at College can be difficult, struggling to meet competing demands is never easy. And, as students, we add significantly to the pressure because we really want to be there, and we really want to work hard. There aren’t any slackers at College, everyone is conscious of the fact that we are for the sake of other Christians, and for the service of God.

The danger, probably the most common danger in any area of Christian life, is letting the work obscure our objective – which is to know God better.

Looking back at the week I can see God’s grace toward me.

The essay I was working on was for a subject called Congregational Ministry. I had to read a book called A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke. I found this reading to be really spiritually refreshing. It is a helpful and pastoral little book, originally presented as a seminar to beginning students of theology. It is all about the dangers faced by Theological Students – dangers of losing contact with the body of Christ, of intellectual elitism, and of having a learning that outstrips spiritual maturity.
Thielicke’s tone of voice is so warm and direct that it feels more like having a Grandfatherly chat. It was a blessing for me to read it, and made me aware of some of the things that I am finding challenging. Particularly the need to keep a real and deep personal relationship with God – reading the Bible and praying – and making sure that my spiritual life doesn’t become merely about teaching other people (what Thielicke calls ‘thinking in the 3rd person).

Without any intention on the part of any of the staff at St Philip’s, the passage that I was preaching on at Church was also the subject of our Old Testament Lectures for the week. (Genesis 4-11). This saved me so much time in preparation and John Woodhouse’s lecture even had quite a few hints towards how this section could be applied in a sermon. This was another great blessing from God.
As I prepared for the sermon, I was struck again by the scope of what God is doing in Christ. The world-wide cataclysm in the days of Noah – by which God wiped the earth clean of all the filth with which humanity had stained it – is nothing compared with the act of new creation and cleansing which he accomplished in Christ.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” (2Cor 5:17 HCSB)

I’ve been trying to have a good rest over the weekends. This often comes under pressure when we are busy, and particularly when I have to preach. The reality is that if you are going to work hard, you need to rest well (otherwise you do just sit and stare at the wall when you should be learning Hebrew). I don’t work from Friday night through to Saturday night – a genuine Jewish Sabbath! I should stress that this is not out of some theological belief that Christians shouldn’t work on a Saturday/Sunday. I do have views on that but they are more complex (maybe another post sometime )
I need to have a good rest, it is important as a way to love Emma, and it is a practical way to trust God with the future…
especially when you’re preaching on Sunday.

We went to a Friend’s wedding on Saturday with Naomi and Russell (my sister and brother-in-law). The wedding was in Camden (on the southern outskirts of Sydney) and we headed off early and had some lunch together before the ceremony. It was good to spend time with some of the family.

The wedding didn’t run too late and we were back by about 8pm. Emma and I went to bed pretty much straight away – we dragged the mattress out into the loungeroom and slept in front of the air-conditioner. I woke myself up every hour-or-so to listen to the scores in the cricket (Australia vs South Africa in the World Cup). With the extra hour of sleep from the Day-Light Savings change and the early bed time, I had a really good rest. The Cricket only added to my enjoyment.

Church on Sunday went well, I felt that the sermon came together well and was conscious of God’s word speaking. I’m a stuttering mouthpiece but he chooses to speak. This is no claim for my ability (remember Baalam’s Ass?) but I learn even when I’m preaching.

Sunday afternoon Emma and I both were studying – Emma for her Diploma of Biblical Studies exam, me writing my Essay. We went down to Starbucks and studied together there. It was nice to be working together. I finished the essay by the end of the afternoon and decided to go down to St Andrew’s Cathedral to the evening service there (St Philip’s doesn’t have anything in the evening). I have a close friend doing MTS there and it has been a while since we caught up.

One of the highlights of the weekend was singing together at the service. Sometime I get so used to our songs that my brain stops engaging with the words, worse I stop singing the words as prayers to God.

We were singing See Him Coming and it struck me that we were taking part in the great Heavenly Court from Daniel 7. We were among the crowd singing out our praise as “one like a Son of Man” approached the Ancient of Days to receive glory, and honour, and power over all the kingdoms of the earth. That’s the song we were singing – it is the highest expression of that emotion you experience watching your sporting team win. Cheering them on and thinking ‘they’re our boys!’
We were singing: He’s our Man! There he goes, on the clouds of heaven, to receive the crown from the Ancient of Days, and he’s going for us! as our representative! He’s Ours!

God blesses us with those moments, when the stress and frusterations build up and I’ve thoroughly taken my eye of what really matters. (Incidentally, that’s the essence of what Apocalytic Literature is about, I think)
Suddenly you See Him Coming on the Clouds of Glory.
Ah, that’s what reality really looks like…

“I continued watching in the night visions,
and I saw One like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.
He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before Him.
He was given authority to rule, and glory, and a kingdom;
so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away,
and His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.”
(Dan 7:13-14 HCSB)

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Sermon Outline: The Vandalised Creation

Themes: Genesis, preaching, Sermon, St Philip's

Following on from my last post. Here’s an outline from my sermon on Sunday.
I not posting this because I think that it’s extra-specially good, but for the sake of sharing ideas, getting feedback, letting people see how I’m going.
As always comments are appreciated.

The Vandalised Creation

Genesis 3-11

Our Stories:
Stories from the News…
Imagine for a moment that we are visited by Aliens, who drop into Starbucks down the road for a coffee and pick up a cheap newspaper…
what would they make of the stories?
What is the story of the world?

Is is basically a happy story, where things get steadily better, the lives of people get easier and more happy, with a few hiccoughs along the way of course.

Is it basically a tragedy? A sorry tale of good intentions gone wrong, great potential snuffed out too young, of the triumph of the ruthless and cunning over the vulnerable and honest?

Depending on which part of the newspaper you’ve been reading, depending on your own life experiences, you could well believe either of these things about our world.

But, What about your story? is your story a good story or a sad story. Do you things are getting better or getting worse?

A story for Israel:
These chapters are a story told by God to a group of people who lived at a time and place far distant from ours.

It’s a story to explain their origins, their relationship with God, their purpose,
and ultimately, how the world got its shape.

The Big question for us is: How does the story told by God to the people of Israel become part of our story? How do we fit into this story from the Bible? How is it part of our story?

Think about that question while we work through this part of the Bible together…

The Story:

a good world…

…gone bad

A world created by God, with order… we read of God seeing his creation and saying “This is very good”. It is a world that conforms to what he intended.

At the heart of this world, there is a garden, and in the garden God created a man and women, to share in his character, and to be his partners in caring for the world he had created.
This was what God intended, this was what he called very good…
but this good world soon went bad…

In the garden was a tree. the one part of God’s creation that was off limits to Adam and Eve. Eve was told by the serpent that if she took some of the fruit of the tree and ate it, she would become like God, knowing Good and Evil. Eve already was like God. He made her, and Adam, in his image. But he had reserved for himself the right to decide what was good and what was evil in his world. As God, the Creator, he is the only one who could properly know what is good and what is evil for his creation. But Adam and Eve, took this right for themselves. They determined good and evil for themselves, and rejected God’s right to decide for them. This is what we call sin.

It broke the world, and it broke the friendship between God and humanity that was at the heart of the world.
We soon see the consequences of this action in the generations of people who came after.
The most terrible for Adam and Eve, must have been what happened to their sons…

Cain and Abel

[I filled this bit in as a narrative overview, i.e. I retold the stories as stories…
One day Cain and Abel came together to offer some of their work to God…

Noah and the Flood

…

The Tower of Babel

Patterns:
It’s hard to tell just from my retelling, but as you read the story there are patterns to what happens…
Sin – speech – mitigation – punishment pattern (repetition)
Spread of sin – spread of grace (development)
Creation – uncreation – recreation

Conclusions:
Well, What kind of story is this story? The story of Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, and the Tower of Babel?

Is it a Sad/Bad Story? about the way that humanity continually makes a mess of God’s good work. God creates, humanity makes it a mess, God’s begins to fix things, he shows friendship and forgiveness, but people still wreak everything in sight. The world is a place of potential unfulfilled, people unloved, creation abused, and God unthanked or acknowledged?

Or is it a Good story? About a God who will not give up on his plan for a good world. Who when ever humanity destroys, he recreates – who shows love and commitment to people, time after time. And who’s love begins to create in people a response, so that some people do turn to God and seek to live in friendship with him.
Is it a good story or a bad story? There is no way to tell just from this section, it could go either way…

But how does this story fit into our world, how does it become part of our story? This is the question I asked you to keep thinking about…
As I was retelling it, you would have noticed that it’s a story about the whole world, which suggests that we must be involved. But how are we involved?

I said that it was originally a story for the ancient people of Israel. It was the story that God told them because it was through that nation that God would send his Son into the world. This story is the beginning of the story about Jesus, it’s the story that makes sense of why he came to the world and what he did.

When Jesus came he had a news-flash from God with the message that God was beginning again. He told people that this new beginning would see God’s original plan fulfilled, and all the graffiti with which humanity had vandalised the face of God’s world would be taken away. And this would be a new beginning for people to.

A new beginning for anyone who was sorry for their old life, with its mistakes, good intentions not carried out, potential unfulfilled, people unloved, a world abused, God unthanked, and unacknoweldged.

The message is this: God is beginning again. Anyone who is willing to trust Jesus enough to follow him with their whole life, will be made able to follow him into God’s new world.

So, this brings us back to one of our original questions: What about your story? If someone was to pick up the newspaper of your life, what would they read? I’m sure it would include good stories, and some sad stories. There would be things that you’d never want read out in public.

But does your story include a New Beginning?

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Preaching from the right Question…

Themes: Genesis, preaching, St Philip's

I’m preaching a sermon this weekend at St Philip’s on Genesis chapters 3-11.

Without any planning it turned out that our Old Testament lecture today was on exactly the same passage…
…Cut and Paste the notes?

Well, I can’t really. At the 9:30am Service probably 70% of the people attending are not Christian, and at least 1/2 have virtually no background knowledge of Christianity at all.
(The reason for this is that we have a group of couples who are currently attending because they are planning to get married in the Church. One of the conditions of using the Church for their wedding is that they become part of the Church community for a few weeks. I really enjoy getting to know these people. They have no Church background or hang-ups.)

So, I’m preaching on Genesis 3-11, which covers the defining event in the history of humanity and a larger chronological time period than the rest of World/Biblical history combined.
… And I’ve got 20mins with people who don’t know a thing about it…

I think that I need to stick as much as possible to simply retelling the story. I can’t possibly have the whole section read out for the Bible reading; the people who are listening won’t have Bibles open; and they won’t know any of the stories. (other than Noah’s ark – they might know that there was a Noah, and that he had an Ark)

I want to start with the questions that I think motivate the original telling of the story:
I have an image in my head of a group of people gathered around Moses to here the story of how they came to be.

How did we come to be the people of Yahweh?

How did we come to be in this land?

How is it that Yahweh claims to be the only God?

There are many other nations who each have many other gods. Why do not all people worship Yahweh?

This world is a place of slavery, battle and privation. It is a hard place. If there are no other Gods, why did Yahweh make this world this way? Is he a hard God? What is his purpose for us in bringing us to this place?

It is very easy to over-read these dense texts from our earliest history. But I don’t think we can read them well without starting with the questions that the story is seeking to answer. I’m throwing out as many questions as I can, but ultimately the one question is:
How did our world become what it is?

‘Our world’ means different things when you are an ancient Israelite or a post-modern Australian. Some of their questions mean nothing to us, others strike a note of resonance – we have a similar discontent with how things are, and a desire to know how they came to be.
But whether our questions are similar or not we should be careful not to simply ask our questions of the story in the place of those Israelite questions.

We are drawn into the story by seeing that the answer God gave to these people, which was an answer for them, and which addresses their questions, is a story about the whole world and all of its people.
We are drawn in by implication rather than identification.

How do I demonstrate sensitivity to this in my preaching?
I’ve got a few ideas but no idea how to keep it simple.
And without simplicity, it will almost certainly be a waste of time.

For your interest, I think the implication of the story for us is summed up by Paul in this:

“Now the Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed in you.” (Gal 3:8 HCSB)

Showing why that is the implication…
now, that’s the tricky part.

Ideas?

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In the News

Themes: Personal, St Philip's

St Philip’s Church was in the news last weekend. There was a brief article in the Sun Herald about a new Service we have been running during the week called Commuters’ Church.

Commuters’ Church is a series of 3 ten minutes Church Services that we are running on Wednesday mornings between 8-9 O’Clock. Each Service consists of a Bible reading, short talk, and a prayer. The idea is to have a gospel opportunity with people who are on their way to work. It is primarily directed toward people who would describe themselves as ‘Christian’ but have stopped going to Church. It plays on people’s curiousity and requires very little commitment.

I’m not particularly involved in this part of our Church’s ministry, I’m at College at that time on Wednesday, but Dave Mansfield has said that it is meeting the objective of engaging people who have become alienated from Church.
St Philip’s is in a great location for this sort of thing. All the Buses coming into the city from Sydney’s North Shore come over the Harbour Bridge and then stop right outside the Church. The train line runs directly under the Church! You can often feel the rumble from the trains during a Service.

The article in the Sun-Herald generated a media frenzy. We received a call from the Today show on Sunday morning asking if Dave would appear on the show the following day. I took the call while I was folding the outlines for Church. Dave was in the middle of preaching. Dave had to turn them down as he was going away. Today we had a radio journalist from the ABC come along to the Service, Dave had to keep her from interviewing people as they came out. It sounds like he had a good conversation and was able to help her understand that Church isn’t a sideshow and that the people who came along are often exploring Christianity – the last thing they need is a microphone in the face.

This strange media interest is intriguing. We were discussing it in our staff team meeting this afternoon. The article in the SMH was reasonable enough. As someone who is a Christian and involved in the Church it is clear to me that the article was written by someone who isn’t a Christian and didn’t really understand what we are seeking to achieve, but it isn’t unsympathetic or unfair.

However, we were speculating that lying behind this interest is the assumption that Churches are desparate and will do anything to attract new people. The media attention is really interested in seeing how far Christians will go. It’s really just another version of watching people do awful things (like eating live worms) for prize money.

The reality is that the world has no idea of how far Christians will go to bring people into Church. Not into St Philip’s or Dunnedoo Community Church, but into the fellowship of all those who trust in Jesus. We will be all things to all people in order that we might win some. We are desparate, We implore people on behalf of Christ, ‘be reconciled to God!’
We won’t do anything, but we may well go to the Cross…
… At least that is our calling, we need to pray for us all that we might be faithful.

“Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; certain that God is appealing through us, we plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”” (2Cor 5:18-20 HCSB)

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