Category: My Scribbles

Isaiah 58:1-14

Carl preached on this chapter this morning at Slaugham. This is mostly my responses written as he preached. Sometimes when I make notes during a sermon they are just notes, like those made in a lecture. Here they are much more my interpretation, although some bits of this are Carl’s words.

The chapter was read in a sad and reflective mood, but I feel the first half of the chapter is passionate, even angry. The second is loving and reassuring.

The significance of justice in our parish “statement of becoming” cannot be underestimated- these words from Isaiah hold up a mirror to our own failings – they are hugely challenging.

“Seeming” to be upright and godly, eager for all the right things, is not what God desires, unless your life reflects these attitudes.

This is about values that you have embedded in your life, not those that you profess with your mouth. That is what pleases God.

Treating God’s creatures with disrespect disrespects God himself. No relationship can be maintained without respect.
Praying and hoping for justice is not enough. Working for justice is necessary, not simply desirable.

Your own particular passions are where your focus should be – you cannot right every injustice, you have to pick your battles. But the passion places an obligation upon you to act. The passion also makes you the right person to act. Lots of people approach their pastor to force action in a particular area, and then are put out when the response is to put them in charge of the church’s response to the issue. They want someone else to take responsibility, perhaps seeing the issue as being too big for them. Because of this, we cannot act alone – corporate actions spread the net wider, cooperation strengthens action, mutual encouragement magnifies it.

After the sermon, as we listen to Tim Hughes singing “We must go” I realise that “Must” is not an external compulsion, it is an internal response to gratitude, to the love of God, to our sense of equality, of justice. These things are inbuilt, but our response depends on how effectively we bury our feeling of injustice beneath the selfishness of living our lives for ourselves.

 

We cannot (not may not) be part of someone else’s relationship with God. There is no player 3 in this game. We might be like the pilot who guides a ship out of harbour to the open seas, but once there, he then relinquishes control. That ship’s journey is not ours.

I look at Chris and still see the girl I married. I remember thinking how God might see my dear departed friend Ruth dancing in church, a slightly plump, very short woman with an effervescent personality. I had the sudden vision that God saw her as I see Chris – like her husband Ron, God saw the young girl, full of life and love, dancing with joy in her relationship with Him.

This should always give us pause for thought when we are embarrassed or ashamed on behalf of someone else, or find ourselves judging their spirituality, their relationship with God. What we see is not what He sees. We are not player 3, we have no place in their relationship, we are outside it. We can TRY to imagine what God sees, we can even ask him to show us. But until we can see past the superficial things, we can never succeed.

We can look at others and try to imagine how He sees them, but I imagine Christ sees people in an entirely different way from how the rest of us do.

(Barbara Brown Taylor – People in church we won’t sit next to?)

 

I’ve had an interesting three years since my last post. Coronary Care, abdominal surgery, atrial fibrillation.

My wife told me today to get off my backside, stop thinking of myself as an invalid, and get a life. Not to let my state of health define me.

So I’m going back to the things I stopped doing during lockdown, and I’m looking for new things too.

I’m going to post some scribbles made during the last couple of years first, and maybe then I’ll feel the need to start again properly.

Bless you all!

J

So, today is the beginning of Lent. 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter. Six Sundays that are always feast days, not fasting. Isaiah 58:6-7 reminds us that God’s view of fasting might be a little different from ours: it’s not about me giving something up; it’s about realising that our blessings are meant to be shared. So we consider feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, releasing the oppressed. “What you did for the least of these you did for me”. There’s more about this in last Sunday’s sermon.

We look at the world, and are easily overwhelmed by the scale of responsibility God places upon us. We can never hope to make a significant difference. That’s where we stay humble and focus on what we can do. Random acts of kindness, the most underrated of virtues.

I’ve signed up to follow Stewardship‘s 40 acts during Lent. 40 daily reflections, 40 challenges to respond to Isaiah 58. If I can do it, I’ll post a daily response.

 

When I prepare, I like to leave lots of time and space. Time to turn things over, to mull and let thoughts come to fruition. Space for God to work in me, and I know he does, and will again. He surprises me again and again, bringing a different thought, a new perspective, occasionally a completely different angle on the passage or theme. I love these.

When I was training, my first year tutor was Peter Kefford. Peter’s churchmanship was (I think) very different from mine, but his love of Christ shone in everything he did and said. And one thing he said to us was:

“Every time you open this book, you will find something that excites you or moves you. If that isn’t happening, why on earth do you want to preach?”

And you know, all these years later, it’s still true. I open the book, and I find something, every time. I just don’t open it often enough!

Bless you.

Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten,Daß ich so traurig bin;

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?

Psalm 42, 43

These must be separated by thousands of years, yet speak of the human condition as unchanging. We have our ups and downs, and quite often we have no idea why. Maybe we learn things that trigger our own changes, maybe we discover tricks that break us out of the spiral. Music, long walks, activity? Maybe just finding some purpose, even in the very short term.

We somehow feel this transcends mere brain chemistry, yet that is so often the approach to therapy. Surely it can’t be more than a tweak, addressing the symptom rather than the cause? I remember a film from my youth “Morgan – a suitable case for treatment” where the treatment for manic depression left Morgan strangely inanimate, bereft of all his artistic talent, a shell of what had been before. Was he any better off? Was he happier?

Contentment is a great thing. Where does it come from? For me it started with self-knowledge, with recognising the sources of some of my deepest desires. It started with discovering personality type and realising I wasn’t the only one like me. With understanding that it was OK for others to be very unlike me, and vice-versa. I was OK the way I was. I might want to change or be changed, but the essential ‘me’ was OK. And other people were less irritating when I knew that their deep-seated desires were different from mine, their nature and history moulding them to something I could accept, even if I couldn’t understand.

“Love your neighbour as yourself” – this contains the presupposition that you love yourself. Lots of us might not! And if we don’t, then that’s where we have to start. Christ didn’t say Despise others as you despise yourself, he didn’t say Disparage others as you disparage yourself. We have to learn to love ourselves, otherwise all we see in others is a reflection of ourselves.

There’s a place to start. Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Love languages. Find yourself; only then can you begin to appreciate others.

Bless you!

During Sunday morning’s service, I felt isolated from everything going on, so I scribbled down some thoughts.

How to praise when we just feel like being alone?

How to be the people of God when we don’t feel like being around other people?

How to go to church when we just want to go for a long walk by ourselves?

How to open up when we just want to shut down?

What is it about being together when we worship or praise that is significant? Christians, Jews, Muslims all gather together for prayer and praise.

It is often said you cannot be a lone Christian, yet the hermit has a special place in church history. The desert fathers lie firmly in our spiritual history. Why?

No man is an island: yet we all are. We have to establish our bridges and boats, to communicate ourselves to others, and to let them into our lives. No one truly knows us, and we are fearful of letting others see the person we perceive ourselves to be.

Yet God knows us thoroughly, better than we know ourselves – a great part of spiritual growth lies in coming to know and understand ourselves, and this can be a hard journey. Often, I think, we scarcely know ourselves. We are shaped so thoroughly by our early experiences that we can fail to recognise their influence, even to the point of not really understanding what we are now, let alone starting to comprehend how we came to be like that.

When we pray aloud, it is not because God needs to hear what we pray – he already knows what is on our hearts. It is because of what speaking something out loud does in us, and what it means to those who hear us. We are making bridges, launching boats. We are telling each other what lies on our hearts.

But what is it that happens within us when we pray (or praise) aloud? What happens when we take inchoate thought or desire, and mould it into words, and speak them out? Something changes. What is it?

Singing in a choir, or playing in an orchestra is somehow significantly different from playing or singing by ourselves. Why? How?