Category Archives: Sermons

On Being a Good Neighbour

 

the-good-samaritan-after-delacroix-1890-Vincent-van-Gogh-1920x840Did you realise that once broadcast, TV signals begin an endless journey outward into the cosmos at the speed of light?  That means our earliest TV broadcasts are probably travelling through star systems more than 400 trillion miles from earth. Do you realise that our neighbours living 60 light years away are watching the first episodes of the Lone Ranger in black and white. 50 light years away they are now watching Bonanza. 40 light years away they have moved on to the original Star Trek series. 30 light years away they are able to watch the Dukes of Hazzard. Just 20 light years away it’s the Sopranos. Those only 10 light years away are being blessed by countless episodes of Lost. Scientists tell us that the further away your neighbours live, the more likely they are to hold outdated, inaccurate and stereotypical views of you.

Does it worry you what your neighbours think about you? What impression do you give them? Is it accurate or a distortion? When they see you coming, are they welcoming or do they lock the door and hide? Does it matter what impression you give? What about the people next door? Over the road? Down the street?

The people you meet every day on the train? The people you work with? It may have been questions like this that prompted a certain lawyer to ask Jesus the question, “who is my neighbour?” meaning, “who do I bear some responsibility for and who can I ignore?” We answer this question all the time whether we consciously think about it or not. We answer this question by the way we treat other people. In reply to the lawyers question, Jesus told a story, a parable.

A parable is simply a story with a kick in the tail, a story in which we find ourselves an active if unwitting participant rather than an objective observer or innocent passerby. This parable of Jesus is as topical and controversial today as it was to those who first heard him. Jesus’ audience would have been very familiar with news of hapless victims, robbed or murdered on that very road. Even today the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho isn’t the kind of place to take the family on a Sunday afternoon picnic. So Jesus had their attention. Christ talked about violence and danger – and we certainly have plenty of that today. He talked about crime, racial discrimination, fear and hatred. In this parable we also see neglect and concern, we see love and mercy. We know very well what the parable says, but what does it mean?

The key to understanding the parable is in the wounded traveller’s condition. It is not a curious incidental. Jesus says he was unconscious and naked.  These details are skillfully woven into the story to create the tension that is at the heart of the drama.  The Middle Eastern world was made up of various ethnic-religious communities.

You could identify a stranger coming toward you in two ways. By their accent and their clothing. In the 1st Century the various ethnic communities within Palestine used an amazing array of dialects and languages. In addition to Hebrew, one could find settled communities using Aramaic, Greek, Samaritan, Phoenician, Arabic, Nabatean, and Latin. Not without reason was the north known as the Galilee of the Gentiles. No one travelling a major highway in Palestine could be sure that the stranger he might meet would be a fellow Jew. But a short greeting would reveal their language if their clothing had not already given away their nationality. But what of the man in this story? Jesus tells us he is stripped of his outer clothes and is unconscious. He is thereby reduced to a mere human being. It was such a person that the robbers left beside the road. So who will turn aside to offer aid?

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Sexual Ethics in the 21st Century: Canon Dr Chris Sugden

Does the Church have anything useful to say on this controversial topic? Canon Dr Chris Sugden is an ordained minister of the Church of England. After an assistant pastorship in Leeds, where he also worked in the BBC, Chris and his wife, Elaine, spent 6 years with their children in India. In 1983 they returned to England and helped establish the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. (OCMS).

He is Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream, a network of evangelical and orthodox networks in the United Kingdom, which is part of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) and Global Anglican Future (GAFCON).

Harvest: Investing our Talents for Jesus

Why do we celebrate Harvest Festival? To thank God for our food and drink. How do we thank God?  We thank God by sharing our food and drink with others in need. Like the Food Bank.  We also remember that God has given us our gifts and talents to share with one another – like Tools with a Mission. Who do you want to be when you grow up? Jesus told this story to help us realise that you’ve got talent! God has invested in us. He has entrusted us with gifts and talents. He wants us to develop them to serve. He wants a return on his investment.  God has made each one of us unique. He has given each of us gifts and talents, and skills and passions. How can we find out what talents God has given us?Ask these questions:

  • What am I good at? (Skills)
  • What makes me sad?  (Concerns)
  • What do I like doing? (Passion)
  • If I could do anything, what would it be? (Vision)
  • What has God told us all to do? (Responsibility).

Keep asking these questions and as you grow up, your role will become clearer.  Allow your passion to become your purpose and one day it will become your profession. But it’s not just about discovering my talents. It’s also about discovering how to use them.  I can use my talents to make lots of money for myself or I can invest them for the benefit of others. I can use my abilities to hurt people or to heal people. I can use my talents to build up or tear down. I can use my talents for myself or for God. This glove represents my life or your life. When we try and use our talents for ourselves this is what happens (blow the glove up) – we are just full of hot air and soon wear other people out.

But when we realise we are servants of the King and invite Jesus to live in us, He breathes his life in us so he can use our talents and gifts for his glory. That is why we must daily be filled with His Spirit.

Have you ever watched the programme on TV called The Dragons’ Den?  To help you apply Jesus story and discover God’s plan for your life, I’d like to make an investment in you. As long as your parents agree,

I would like to invest in you by giving you some shoe polish, a cloth and a glove. I’d like you to clean your shoes and the shoes of your family, and maybe of people who come to your house. Please don’t ask for money but if people offer to give you some, say ‘thank you’ and explain it is going to help people in Syria who are suffering. Like the man in Jesus story,

I am going away for a month, but when I come back, I expect you to return my investment in you, hopefully with interest.  Please bring back the polish and any money to the Christ Church December Family Service. We will then give any money raised to help people suffering in Syria.

And when you clean the shoes, put the glove on. It will remind yourself that you are doing it for Jesus and need his help to do it for the right reasons. It will also keep you clean.

Now this is not a competition to see how much you can make with your talent.  What matters is that we are thankful for the talents God has given us and we use them with a servant heart.

The Parable of the Dragons’ Den

There are many ways people differ. Bill Hybels observes there are cat people and there are dog people. There are tennis people and there are golf people.

Some people like to sleep with the windows open and some people prefer to sleep with the windows closed – and they are usually married to each other. Some people keep a pen and notepad by the telephone while other people just have children. There are breakfast people and there are people who don’t remember what breakfast is. There are A type people and there are the rest of you. There are Tigger people and there are Eyore people.

There are blue sky optimist people and there are chicken little – sky falling in people. And every team has at least one of each. When it comes to finances, some are cheque book people and some are cash people. There are Windsor farm shop – John Lewis – Waitrose people and there are Staines market – Poundland people. There are carefully balanced every month cheque book people and there are shut the cheque account down every two years and start over people. And you know who you are. There are people with stock brokers and there are people perfectly capable of going broke without them.

We were all brought up differently. But we all have one thing in common. We have a range of assets, talents and skills that we can invest or waste, use or lose.

In Luke 19 Jesus told a parable – I’ve called it the Parable of the Dragons’ Den, because whether you love or hate the programme, the fact is God has invested significant assets in you and he expects a return on his investment. I invite you to turn to Luke 19 with me.

This is a most unusual parable because it’s the only parable, as far as we know, Jesus told that was based on an actual historical event. What historical event lay behind this parable and why tell it at this moment? The answer lies in our first observation:

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The Blessed Hope and the Marshmallow Test

Walter Mischel was a psychologist working with children on the campus of Stamford University in the 1960’s. In one experiement, he told the children in the pre-school  that they could have a single treat, such as a marshmallow, right now. However, if they would wait while the experimenter ran an errand, they could have two marshmallows. Some pre-schoolers grabbed the marshmallow immediately, but others were able to wait what, for them, must have seemed an endless 20 minutes. To sustain themselves in their struggle, they covered their eyes so they wouldn’t see the temptation, rested their heads on their arms, talked to themselves, sang, even tried to sleep. These plucky kids got the two-marshmallow reward. The interesting part of this experiment came in the follow-up. The children who as 4-year-olds had been able to wait for the two marshmallows were, as adolescents, still able to delay gratification in pursuing their goals. They were more socially competent and self-assertive, and better able to cope with life’s frustrations. In contrast, the children who grabbed the one marshmallow were, as adolescents, more likely to be stubborn, indecisive, and stressed.  Nature or nurture? It really doesn’t matter. Walter Mischel forgot to factor in one further dimension – the supernatural one. God can and does transform us supernaturally. That was one reason the Apostle Paul wrote this short letter to Titus.

 

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Jesus and Amos – Jacob’s Fallen Tent

I know it’s only September, but it’s never too soon to start thinking of Christmas is it? Remember Charles Dickens’ play, A Christmas Carol? It’s the story of how  Ebenezer Scrooge tried to deny a Christmas break to his staff. On Christmas Eve, late at night, Scrooge is visited by three ghosts that night—the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas future.  He sees himself as he really is. He sees the love and kindness of those he has mistreated. He sees the consequences of his wicked life. He wakes up on Christmas morning a changed man. In our passage today we see where Dickens might have got his inspiration. God instructed Amos to preach a lament for the dead, except the people were still very much alive. A lament is a poem of mourning over the death of a loved one. The most obvious example in the Bible is the book of Lamentations where Jeremiah laments the destruction of Jerusalem as they are carried off into captivity. But in Amos, God laments Israel as if they had already died.

Israel was a prosperous country. The economy was booming. The military was strong. They had never had it so good. And here comes this poor, working class outsider, lamenting their death. They probably reacted the same way Scrooge reacted to Marley the first time. This lament is a good example of Hebrew poetry.  God seems to love poetry because Scripture is full of it. This particular poem was written with a common Hebrew form called a chiastic structure. Don’t get hung up on the term. Just put an A next to verses 1-3 and another A next to verses 16-17. Put a B next to verses 5-6 and another B next to verses 14-15. Put a C next to verse 7 and a C next to verses 10-13. Finally put a D next to verses 8-9. This is called a chiasm. The first and last are parallel. The next two are parallel, etc. The beauty of a chiasm is that it was written that way to put all the focus of the poem on the middle. Imagine an Oreo cookie and the way the two biscuit halves sandwich the most important crème filling in the middle. Here’s the outline.

1. Destruction is coming (5:1-3; 16-17)
2. Hope is waiting (5:4-6; 14-15)
3. Evil is abounding (5:7; 10-13)
4. God is reigning (5:8-9)

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Joel and the Day of the Lord

This week the Independent newspaper reports, “A man has been bitten in his sleep by Britain’s most poisonous spider as hordes of the arachnid are reported to have invaded parts of London and Kent due to climate change. Dubbed the “British black widow”, the deadly false widow spider, which is about the size of a 50 pence piece, unleashes venom and can kill those who are allergic to it. However, it will only attack if provoked. The false widow spider has also been sighted in Orpington and in Greenwich, where one victim was 29-year-old glazier Paul Lakeman, who felt something on his shoulder as he lay down to sleep. “I was in bed with the light off,” … instinctively I threw it off onto the floor. “I heard the spider hit the floor and I looked at it – it looked like it meant business.” The false widow spider first came to the UK over 100 years ago in crates of fruit from the Canary Islands. Climate change seems to have caused the population to spread across the South East and they are heading for Virginia Water.

Now I know a cluster of false widow spiders in Greenwich hardly compares with the plague of locusts mentioned in Joel chapter 1. But if we lived in Greenwich and our home was infested with them, you might think otherwise. And that is because the way we read Scripture is shaped by our circumstances.

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Daniel and the Son of Man

 

“Will World War 3, End of Days Begin in Syria?” asks the International Business Times.  “Syrians face ‘Armageddon’ without military action, says David Cameron” in the House of Commons Wednesday. “Syria: Armageddon is on the agenda – again” was the headline in the Guardian.

In the House of Commons, Sir Peter Tapsell apparently asked the Prime Minister, “”If the Americans illegally bombard the Assad forces, and Assad legally invites the Russians in to degrade the rebels, what will NATO do?” If that was understated, I’d hate to hear the full-blown version. It was frightening” writes Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, “…when Sir Peter tells you Armageddon is nigh, it makes the Book of Revelation look like Your Stars with Russell Grant.” “Ready for war? Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin set to lock horns over Syria at G20 summit” was the headline in the Independent on Thursday. “World’s two most powerful men set to face-off over military action in Syria” “Mr Putin warned that Russia would consider any strikes ordered without United Nations backing as an act of “aggression””. And not be outdone Press TV’s headline was ,  “Iran will support Syria “until the end”

“Any US attack on Syria to engulf the entire Middle East” warns Ayatollah Rafsanjani. Providentially today we have come to the Prophecy of Daniel in our series Christ in all the Scriptures. Embedded in this ancient text is a message of hope about the future. Daniel insists, nothing happens by accident. The world is not out of control. God is in charge and to encourage us to trust him, in Daniel, God has forewarned us of what would happen in history. All we have to do is unlock the apocalypse code hidden in the symbolism of the text to discern the signs of the times.

We are indeed living in the Last Days. Please turn with me to Daniel 7 and let’s note three clues that will help us identify whether this passage is talking about the present day.

  1. “As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and defeating them.” (Daniel 7:21). We are dealing with a time of great persecution of Christians.
  2. “The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom” (Daniel 7:24).
  3.  “understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.” … “but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.” (Daniel 8:17, 26). So these visions in Daniel are referring to events close to the end of time.


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Ezekiel’s Vision of Jesus

William was born in Zundert, Holland in March 1853. The eldest of six children, his father was a Lutheran pastor. In 1869, aged 16 he left school and went to work for an art dealer in the Hague. Four years later he moved to London to work at the art dealer’s Southampton Street branch. As a bright young man, he wore a formal suit and top hat, and walked from his lodgings in Kensington to the Strand. He fell in love with Ursula, his landlady’s daughter. But she was already engaged and laughed at his affection for her. He turned to Jesus for consolation and found in him such comfort and strength that he was soon helping the local Methodist minister take meetings in Turnham Green and Petersham. He spent more and more time preaching among the poor. He wrote many letters to his brother Theo. On 13th October, 1876 he wrote,

“Last Monday I was again at Richmond and my subject was, ‘He has sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor’ but whoever wants to preach the Gospel must first carry it in his own heart.”

His avourite hymn was “Tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love”.  His favourite reading, apart from the Bible, were the sermons of Charles H Spurgeon. The conviction grew that he should become a full-time evangelist. So in 1877 he returned to Holland to begin training for the ministry. But he found the academic demands of the theological college in Amsterdam too demanding and moved to a newly opened school for evangelists in Brussels. William lived among the coal miners and their families. He dressed like a peasant and shared their poverty, often going without food himself. William was concerned for their needs. He washed their clothes. He cared for their sick and consoled their dying. And he led them to Jesus. His methods were Christ-like – incarnational. But the church leaders were threatened by his success and would have nothing to do with him. Indeed they eventually hounded him out of the ministry… One of the most fruitful Christian evangelists in the world, rejected by the Church. Like many others, before and since, William took comfort from his Lord,

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

Ezekiel was one of the prophets Jesus had in mind when he promised his followers they too would be persecuted.

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