Parish AGM 2009

2 Corinthians 5:11-6:2

It has been a very busy last 12 months. We have celebrated the 150th anniversary of St Peter's, and we have had the CL mission. Not to mention the pantomime.

One of the events that I found extremely helpful was Clive Paine's lecture on the history of St Peter's. The church was founded on the desire to further the mission of the church and the proclamation of the gospel. And the gospel has been preached at St Peter’s, and from St Peter’s for the last 150 years.

And that has continued: which is why it was appropriate to have a mission in 2008 - to declare the historic truths on which St Peter's was established, but their continued to relevance to people today.

And we need that.

We live in a lost world. The economic foundations in which we put so much trust are being shaken. People do not know how to think or feel anymore. So many of us are controlled by fear.

Lilly Allen: The Fear


The passage that I have chosen for this evening is from 2 Corinthians 5. It tells us why Paul and the early Christians put so much emphasis on spending time with other people preaching, urging, persuading them that we do not need to live this way

'We try to persuade others (v11) .. be reconciled to God (v20)'

And Paul gives four reasons for trying to persuade others


1. We know the fear of the Lord (v11)

We have been entrusted with faith and the message of The Faith.

We know, says Paul, that we will be held accountable for what we have done with the precious gift of the message of the good news about Jesus Christ.

And as a parish and as individual churches we have been entrusted with so much: our people, our buildings, our gospel heritage, and our resources. And we will be held accountable for what we have done with the things that God has given us.

The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) is a parable about what we do with what God entrusts to us. We can use those things, or we can sit on them and lose them. The one who does nothing excuses himself by saying that he is fearful of the master. But the master rebukes him for being lazy. Paul in 2 Corinthians (and he is talking explicitly about what we do with the message of reconciliation) writes that fear of God will make us do something with what we have.

That is why I think that we need to do something with what we have.

It is why I am grateful to St Mary’s committee for having the courage to take the risk and appoint an Events and Visitor coordinator. At St Mary’s we have an amazing building, with about 11000 visitors each year. I think that we can build on that, not simply to increase visitor numbers at St Mary's and revenue, but to see how we can better promote the message of the gospel to visitors. There is a phrase that is doing the rounds of mission focussed churches: how to turn tourists into pilgrims

It is also why we need to do something about the Hyndman Centre. It is a great resource, but at the moment is mostly being used by groups as a venue. I would love to see us taking hold of our centre and using it to initiate community projects: so that what goes on is owned by one or more of our congregations, and is used as a way of both serving our neighbourhood and of building bridges with people in the community.

So the fear of God, the fact that each one of us will have to appear before the judgement seat of Christ, should drive us to seek to persuade others – not, in this case, because they will be judged but because we will be judged.


2. We are compelled by the love of Christ (v14)

We are talking here about a two-fold love

At an objective level we are talking about Christ’s love. Because Christ loves all people, I am compelled to persuade others. I do not try to persuade someone to be reconciled to God because I love them, but because Christ loves them. It does not matter if I do not get on with them or think they are beyond the reach of God - Jesus died for them.

That is why when we entreat people to be reconciled to God, we do so not on our own behalf. I do not urge you to be reconciled to God on my own authority. I do so, v20, on behalf of Christ. He died for you and he urges you to be reconciled with God.

Nevertheless, this love of Christ is also subjective. This love is the first of the fruits of the Spirit that will grow in the garden of the life of the Christian. It is this love that controls how we use the gifts of the Spirit. Paul in Romans talks of how God pours his love into our hearts, and in Ephesians, how he will fill us with his love.

We need to pray that God will give us this love: this love for him and this love for people. It is much easier to go out of our way to persuade someone to be reconciled to God if we love them.

And it is this twofold love: the objective love of Christ for all, and the love which Christ gives us - which I pray will drive us out to persuade people.

It is what drove people to found St Peter’s; it is what has driven people to preach on street corners (‘hell-fire corner’ – although that title should be a warning to us. We do not wish to be known as ‘hell-fire’ people, but as gospel ‘good news’ people). It is what drove people to faithfully serve, witness and preach in this place, to set up mission churches, to use innovation to promote the good news (magic lanterns).

And we need that drive, faithfulness and, at times, that innovation: film evenings, 5 o’clock services, dinner parties, fireworks, displays, exhibitions (LIFE exhibition, labyrinth), websites, twitter. We need to have the courage to try, even if we fail. But more than the innovation, we need the love


3. We look at people in a new way.

This is a central theme in these few chapters of 2 Corinthians. Paul contrasts what is seen with what is unseen.

Ch 3: we are people who are being transformed into the glory of Jesus because we are looking on him.
Ch 4: the people of this age are blinded by the god of this world. The only reason we can see is because God has shone his light into our hearts.
And Paul goes on to draw a line between the outer visible and the inner invisible. The outer is wasting away. But the inner will last (2 Corinthians 4:18)
Ch 5: continues and states that we walk (live) by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
And in our verses Paul says that he is not interested what people think of him, but what God thinks of him.

We do not look for the visible but for the invisible.
We do not look at the outer but at the inner.
We do not look at the outward appearance but the heart (v12).

By visible, outer standards Christ was a failure. He was crucified.
But from God's viewpoint, from a faith perspective, Christ crucified is the fullest expression and greatest demonstration of the love of God, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Through Jesus death on the cross, men and women were reconciled to God, evil and death was defeated.

So, Paul goes on, we don't look at people from a human point of view (v16). We are not interested in how attractive they are, how old they are, whether they are male or female, rich or poor, black or white, educated or uneducated. We look at them with the eyes of faith.

People in Christ are new creations. On the outside nothing has changed, but they are new people. The tiny seed of eternal life has been sown deep within them. You'll never see it, even with the most powerful microscope, because there is nothing visible to be seen. But by faith we believe it is there. They are resurrection people.

And we look at other people, at our neighbours, at our colleagues, at the people who use the Hyndman Centre with new eyes. Maybe they are successful or failures in the world’s eyes. But Christ died for all. Each person, young or old, is a potential new creation, a potential child of God.

I am so grateful that we are able to look at things through the eyes of faith!

Humanly speaking we are a dead loss. We might have nice buildings, but they are dwarfed by the towerblocks of our multinationals, and shopping centres. Christianity is being rapidly sidelined. Despite the spin, the reality is that the churches that are declining in numbers (even our own figures show a decline of 1 person). Even those congregations or churches that are growing in numbers are often growing at the expense of others, not at the expense of non-Christians.

And yet – looking at it with the eyes of faith – we see a different picture. A God who transforms lives; A God who provides; a God who builds relationships; a God who gives hope.

And even if we do live in a time when it seems that the god of this age has all the trump cards, the light is still shining (2 Corinthians 4:16). Nothing can stop it. And we do not need to give in to despair, or to simply give up. God is still God.

4. We try to persuade others because 'we have been given the ministry of reconciliation'. (v4)

It is significant that v20 is written to the Corinthian church and to all the saints in Achaia. Paul writes, ‘We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God’.

I suspect that this is one of those places where Paul is saying to believers, 'live out this reconciliation'.

Don't talk it. Walk it.

We can say, 'Jesus died for me, and I have been reconciled to God'; We can say, 'I was an enemy of God, but now I am a friend of God'. We can say it, and the words will be meaningless. You may have been baptised; you may remember when you prayed 'the prayer'; you may have always come along to church; you may speak the right language - but if we continue to live for yourself and not for him (v15), we are not living as people who have been reconciled to God. We talk about it, but we have not received the reconciliation on offer.

So before we urge others to be reconciled to God, we need to examine whether we are just talking the talk, wearing the badge – or are we living the life.



Next year we look forward to two major events: the LIFE exhibition and the PASSION FOR LIFE mission. Both are great opportunities for helping us as we persuade others to be reconciled to God. But before we do that, we need to know that we are living as people who are reconciled to God.

The world needed to hear that message 150 years ago. And it needs to hear this message today. It is our task as a parish and as churches to live the message and to proclaim the message

Easter Sunday 2009

2 Corinthians 5:14-6:2

Easter Sunday 2009

Happy Easter: Christ is risen!

So what? John tells us that John goes into the empty tomb, and that - although he does not yet realise that the scripture talks of Jesus' resurrection - he believes. And then it tells us that he and the others 'go home'.

The most significant event in human history has just happened in front of their noses, and the disciples look at it and go home.

I guess that they need time to work out the implications of what has just happened. And I also think that John is making the point that the event on its own will not change anyone. The thing that changes people is the coming of the Holy Spirit.

But Paul, writing between 15 and 30 years after the event has had time to think - and he is writing to the Corinthian Christians urging them to live in the light of the resurrection.

And for Paul in these verses, it comes down to how we view other people.

V16 is key: So from now on we regard no-one from a worldly point of view
Instead we regard people with resurrection shaped glasses

That is how we now look at Christ.
V16, ‘Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer’

Jesus disciples regarded him at the crucifixion as a major let down
Jews would have looked at Jesus on the cross and seen him as a man cursed by God
Paul had regarded Christ as an imposter, a fool.

But for those who look at Christ through resurrection shaped spectacles, they see love instead of powerlessness, victory over sin and death instead of failure, God’s wisdom instead of foolishness.

For society today it is not much different.

We look at people and what is important is your status, wealth, job, title, charm factor (Nigella Lawson's mother: told her daughter, 'People do not wish to be charmed, but to be charming. Your job is not to charm people, but to make them think that they are charming'.)
What is important is the amount of good or harm that you could do me. What is important is how attractive you are, how influential: and that depends on your age, your sex, the colour of your skin, your cultural background, your education, what you wear (Mark Twain, 'Naked people have had very little influence on society).

But for the Christian, the person who looks at people with resurrection shaped glasses, it is different.

Just as we do not regard Jesus Christ as the world regarded him, so we do not regard people as society regards them, but in view of the death and resurrection of Jesus:

So what does that mean? How do we regard other people in the light of the resurrection

1. WE REGARD THEM IN THE LIGHT OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
Paul writes that he is compelled by the love of Christ.

That means that we look at people as beloved by Christ:

That is the challenge. At the meeting about homelessness: one lady asked about the people who were legitimately excluded by existing hostels. What were we going to do about them?

The person who we would dismiss as worthless is beloved by Christ. Remember the sheep and goats of Matthew 25 (although that is talking in the context of the Christian community)

That is made clear in the emphasis that Paul puts on the fact that Christ died for all people (v14). This is dangerously close to the language of universalism – but v15 does talk about people who choose to no longer live for themselves but for him

So when we are tempted to dismiss someone, to consider them as worthless because they do not further our well-being or interests, or the well-being of others, we need to remember that nevertheless, here is a person for whom Christ died. Here is a person for whom God the Father was willing for his Son to die.

2. WE REGARD THEM WITH THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
When Paul says that he is compelled by the love of Christ, I do not think that he is just talking about something that is outside of him. I think he is talking of his own motivation. Christ's love has been poured into his heart, and so he looks at people as Jesus would look at them.

I guess the real challenge for me is to regard people with the same sort of love.

Sadly, the main reason that we do not wish to go out of our comfort zone to serve others or to tell them of the God who loves them, is because we do not actually love them ourselves.

And the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit and the pouring out of the love of God in our hearts are all connected. It is because Christ died and rose, that he can send the Spirit. And it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit among us and within us that we can begin to love with the love of Christ.

But we need to stay close to him, to spend time seeking him, to continue to be obedient to him, to allow his word to dwell in us - so that his love grows in us. We've been looking at the fruit of the Spirit. It is fruit; it grows. And the first of the fruits is love.

3. WE REGARD PEOPLE IN CHRIST AS A NEW CREATION
v17: 'Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!'

The old has gone: The life of death, with the old motivation and the old behaviour and the old desires and the old fears and the old destination has gone.

The new has come: the new relationship, the new family, the new motivation, the new power for living, the new ambitions, the new pattern of living, the new hope.

We are to regard ourselves in Christ as new people
The old you died with Christ.

When the Spirit made you alive in Christ, the new came.

So at one level, you are a dead person. At your baptism service you were united to Jesus in his death. Your baptism service was the funeral service of the late and very unlamented old you. It was the funeral service of the you who sought status, security, comfort, satisfaction for physical desires – before anything else; it was the funeral service of the great big 'I' that would put itself in the centre of each of our lives.

And we are to live as dead people - dead to ourselves: v15: 'And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again'.

So when selfish ambition rears its head; when lusts start to control; when fear begins to say obey me rather than do what is right, say to them, 'You are dead. You have no power over me. You died when Christ died on the cross'.

And we are to live as people of the new creation, as resurrection people: as people whose home is not here, but in the future resurrection.

So we do not seek the honours of this world but of that world - we look to see how we can please the one who loves us. And we are to live as people who are reconciled to God, who have been forgiven, who do have the Spirit - even when we do not feel it!

And we are also to regard others who are in Christ as new creations.
Recently at a meeting, where a man started grilling me about what I believed. I got the impession that he was trying to suss out if I truly was converted. I found that quite sad - fully understandable, I am an Anglican vicar - but still quite sad. I really do think that as Christians our default position should be that of trust. It is what I would call a hermeneutic based on 1 Corinthians 13 - a hermeneutic of love. 'Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres'. We take people at their word. If they profess Christ, we receive them as brothers and sisters.

So we are called to treat people in Christ as part of the new creation. They are part of the body of Christ, they will be transformed, they will be there in the resurrection

4. WE REGARD PEOPLE AS PEOPLE WITH WHOM GOD LONGS TO BE RECONCILED.
That is why we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. The task of the church, the people of God, is to bring people to God and God to people. We are the priests of the New Testament. And we do that by declaring the message of the cross and resurrection, the message of God’s love and of sins forgiven and of the gift of God’s new life to us (‘the righteousness of God’).

We urge people to be reconciled to God. We implore people to be reconciled to God.

But this is not just for non-believers

One of the things that struck me about this passage is that Paul appeals to the 'you' to whom he is writing, to people who he addresses in the next verse as 'fellow-workers'. He speaks to non-Christians and to Christians alike, and he urges us to be reconciled to God.

We have been cut off from God. We cut ourselves off from God, and as a result we were under the condemnation of God.

But God longs for reconciliation. And in sending Jesus, his Son, God has done everything necessary for us to be reconciled with him.
Christ 'died for all' (v14); 'God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them' (v19), 'God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God' (v21)

And so Paul implores us, 'Be reconciled to God'. Live it. Live 2 Corinthians 5:15

Don't take your conversion or your baptism or your right knowledge or your one-time experience of the Holy Spirit for granted. Don't presume on your role or your reputation in the church. It makes no sense claiming to be reconciled with God, if we are ignoring him. He does not want people who wear the marks of Christianity or speak the language of Christianity, but who do not live the resurrection life. He longs for people who know him, who love him, who long for him, who trust and obey him, who are growing in him, who praise and thank him - not because they ought to, or because words are put in their mouths, but because they choose to.

So even if you are a Christian, even if you received Christ many years ago, may I urge you to live as people who are reconciled with God. We need to learn to live the life of the new creation (story of girl who was deaf, who at age 12 received a cochlea implant and heard perfectly. But she needed to learn to listen)


Jesus Christ is alive.

We do not look at him as the world looks at him.

We do not need to look at people as the world looks at them.

Instead we can learn to look at people with resurrection shaped glasses

We look at people in Christ as part of God’s new creation, as resurrection people
We urge all people – including ourselves - to be reconciled with God, to live as friends of God and as resurrection people.

Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.

Good Friday 2009

Luke 23:46

[the final of seven meditations on the Seven last words of Jesus on the Cross]

And so we come to the end.

Jesus died as he lived.

The phrase, 'Into your hands I commit my Spirit' is a phrase that comes in Psalm 31. It was a Psalm that Jesus would have known well and would have prayed many times. The words would have sunk right into him, and become a part of his language and of his thinking – and so now, right at the end of his life, words that he has prayed so many times come through the pain into his mind.

Just as an aside, there really is a value in soaking ourselves in Scripture - in speaking verses and re-speaking them; in learning verses and re-learning them. In one convent where they recited the entire Psalter every week, someone asked one of the nuns, 'But isn't that boring'. She replied, 'Of course it is boring. But that is not the point'. The point is in letting the Word of God go deep within us, to live deep within us – so that we live it in our life, and at our death.

And Jesus lived this prayer in his life, and also in his death.

But Jesus adds something to the phrase from Psalm 31. He adds the word, 'Father'

Jesus calls God Father

He knew God as Father. He was aware of that from at least the age of 12 when Mary says to him, 'Your Father and I have been searching for you'. He replies, 'Did you not realize that I would be in my Father's house'. And Jesus is conscious of the presence of his Father, of the purpose of his Father, of the love of his Father. He says on one occasion: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him," (Luke 10:22). Jesus prays to his Father in heaven, and when he comes to the garden of Gethsemane, even there he prays 'Father'.

And so now, right at the end of his life, he once again calls out to God as Father.

It is said that dying can be very lonely. Many people wish to have their family around them, but that is not always possible or desirable. Jesus was surrounded by people who were laughing at him or crowing over him. But now, right at the end, he is not on his own. He calls out to his Father.

Jesus entrusts himself to God

Some of you will have seen one of the programmes about the plane that crash landed on the Hudson River. The passengers who were interviewed talked about what it was like thinking that they were certainly going to die. Some said that that experience has changed their life. And it is a good spiritual discipline to face the reality of our own death, our own moment of death and what comes after.

Jesus at that moment entrusts himself into God's hands. It is what he has done all his life. This was a prayer that Jesus prayed now, but it was a prayer that he had lived. He lived in total dependence on God (even when it meant he had to go to the cross and to be crucified) and he died in total dependence on God.

This is not the end: this is a cry of hope

The pain is almost over. The task is finished. The job has been done. Jesus mission is accomplished.

Because of Jesus death, sinful human beings can be reconciled to God. There is the possibility of forgiveness, fellowship and a future in paradise. In Luke, we are told that the curtain in the temple was torn in two before Jesus dies.

So this is not the end. And it is not the end for Jesus. There is no reason to entrust ourselves into God's hands if there is nothing more.

There is a future: The Psalmist says (Psalm 31:14-15): "But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God'. My future is in your hands; deliver me from my enemies" (New Revised Standard Version).

And so we conclude:

Because of the events we remember today we can

1. Call God 'Father'. That is an immense privilege. The force that is behind the creation is not something that is blind. It is not someone who needs to be appeased, or who is completely arbitrary. It is not fate. It is someone who loves us, who has given himself totally for us and who invites us to respond to that love. And he is there for us whenever we choose to turn to him, in life and in death.
   
2. Entrust our lives to God. Obey his commands; receive his promises; trust him – even when it seems the last thing that humanly we wish to do.
   

   Jesus invites us to trust ourselves into God's hands – not just at the moment of death, but each day. He teaches that we need to die to ourselves each day. Luke 9:23, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me". And in Luke 11:3, Jesus teaches his disciples to have that daily dependence on God. He teaches us to pray, "Give us each day our daily bread".
   

   I suspect that one of the reasons that our lives can feel so shallow is because we do not trust ourselves daily into God's hands. We try to play safe; to plan for all contingencies. And yes, following Jesus may well lead us to the cross, but the more we do trust ourselves to him, the more we live. In Hebrews 12:2, we are told that Jesus went through with the cross 'for the joy set before him'.
   
   That is why people are prepared to live for him and to die for him:
   
   I often quote the story of Polycarp who was on trial for his life. All he had to do to save himself was to swear by the emperor. "But the proconsul was insistent and said: "Take the oath, and I shall release you. Curse Christ." Polycarp said: "Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"" (The letter of the Church in Smyrna to the church in Philomelium)
   

3. Know there is a future – whatever the situation – even when it seems that everything has come to an end. Remember the thief on the cross. It was pretty hopeless for him, and yet he called out to Jesus.
   

So here, we come to the end. It is the end of our meditation, and it seems to be the end for Jesus. But it was not the end. And for the person who says 'Yes' to Jesus, who calls on God as Father, and who entrusts themselves into God's hands - whatever the situation, even when we are literally struggling for our last breath - it is not the end.

It is, in fact, the beginning. It may be Good Friday today, but Easter Sunday is just round the corner.

Gentleness

Gentleness

Opposite of violent - cf 1 Tim 3.3, 1 Cor 4.21, and it is the opposite of self-assertion
Not a great quality today: don't see it with in the Apprentice; it is not recommended as the way to get on in business or in life.

But gentleness is not weakness. It is very close to meekness

Paul writes, 'by the meekness and gentleness of Christ' (2 Corinthians 10:1)

AND IF WE LOOK AT JESUS WE SEE WHAT THAT MEANS

Jesus says: Matthew 11:29 – 'Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden…'
And we see how he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 11:29)

He is making a very political statement.

But John explains this in John 12:12-16. The 'great crowd' (this is the crowd that wanted to make him King in John 6) are now acclaiming him as Messiah. Jesus does not refuse their acclamation. Instead he finds a donkey and sits on it. In other words he is saying, 'I am King, but I am coming not as a warrior, but in peace').

Someone said, 'People want to be lightly governed by strong governments'. I don't know whether that is humanly possible. But it is possible with God.

He is strong – the creator of all that is. He could demand absolute obedience and perfection from us. But he does not. He woos us, he grows us, he waits for us, he rebukes us, he sacrifices himself for us. He could be like a master with a slave, a ruler with a subject, a general with a private, a manager with an employee – but he chooses to be like a parent with a child. And he is so patient with us: we fall and we fall and we fall and we fall – and he still forgives and he still trusts. Love is ..

Paul starts to get this when he talks about his ministry among the Thessalonian Christians. He says, 'We were like a mother with her children ..' (1 Thess 2.7), and then goes on to talk about being like a father to children.

And in Galatians 6:1, he urges the Galatian Christians to restore the sinner 'gently' (Galatians 6:1 cf 2 Tim 2:25)

Of course being gentle with someone does not exclude discipline. Ask any parent or teacher. And there is a place for discipline with God. But the reason for the discipline, and the purpose of the discipline, is to restore and to heal. But the way that God exercises discipline is incredibly gentle:

Story of woman caught in adultery.

It is a great way to get things done.

That is why the bible says that we are to be gentle with non-believers (actually the one time Jesus was violent was not with outsiders, but it was when insiders were stopping outsiders from coming inside!).

Share the gospel: but do this with gentleness and respect.
We really need to hear this. Some go overboard and compel others to come in – and it puts people off. Others go the opposite way and say we must never try to proselytize.
"Civility, which I take to be a strong virtue and not simply wimpishness, requires that we not try to cram our beliefs down anybody's throats, whether we be Christian or non-Christian or even anti-Christian. But that we all try to articulate as persuasively as we can, what it is that we believe, of course in the hope that others will be persuaded."

Richard John Neuhaus in Rutherford magazine (Feb. 1993). Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 1

 

And so the bible commands us to be gentle (Ephesians 4:2); it calls us to pursue gentleness (1 Timothy 6:11); and it calls us to put on gentleness (Colossians 3:12)

 

So how can I grow to become gentle?

1. Spend time with God. It is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). We will become like the one who we spend time with.
   
   
2. Trust God, that he is in control: Phil 4:4-5.
   Remove the I in our Christian service:
   
   Helen Roseveare, a medical missionary in Africa, was the only doctor in a large hospital. There were constant interruptions and shortages, and she was becoming increasingly impatient and irritable with everyone around her. Finally, one of the African pastors insisted, "Helen, please come with me." He drove Helen to his humble house and told her that she was going to have a retreat—two days of silence and solitude. She was to pray until her attitude adjusted. All night and the next day she struggled; she prayed, but her prayers seemed to bounce off the ceiling. Late on Sunday night, she sat beside the pastor around a little campfire. Humbly, almost desperately, she confessed that she was stuck. With his bare toe, the pastor drew a long straight line on the dusty ground. "That is the problem, Helen: there is too much 'I' in your service." He gave her a suggestion: "I have noticed that quite often, you take a coffee break and hold the hot coffee in your hands waiting for it to cool." Then he drew another line across the first one. "Helen, from now on, as the coffee cools, ask God, 'Lord, cross out the "I" and make me more like you.'" In the dust of that African ground, where a cross had formed, Helen Roseveare learned the master principle of Jesus: freedom comes through service, and service comes by releasing our ego.
   
   I hate saying this, but God does not depend on you. His kingdom does not depend on you. My nightmare re church falling to pieces.
   
   
3. Trust God's timing: pressures to impetuousness, forcefulness is the sense that we have to do everything now.
   
   
4. Know who you are in God: So often I lose gentleness when I feel that I am being belittled, taken advantage of, walked over, treated like a statistic – not treated as I deserve to be treated. Things that make me very angry are waiting in a queue (and the official is having a conversation with someone else), girl at desk of swimming pool (completely my fault!). I get angry with children when they fight each other – but it is a very different kind of anger. I know what I am doing. It is the difference between being angry and seeing red.
   
   But actually I need to realize that my identity is tied up with God, with who he thinks that I am – and not here. We see that with Jesus as he kneels down and washes his disciples feet. John 13 says: 'Knowing that he had come from the Father and was going back to the Father, and that the Father had given him all things ..'
   
   
5. Know your weakness, because it gives you compassion for others: Hebrews 5:2 talks of the priest. And Hebrews goes on to talk about how Jesus can show compassion to us because he was human and because he was tempted just like us.
   
   Gentleness in Gal 5:23 comes in between faithfulness and self-control. It is very easy to be faithful to Christ and to lose gentleness. It is very easy to be self-controlled and to become harsh with others.
   
   

Questions

1. How would you define a gentle person
   
2. What makes you see red?
   
3. How do you react when you are angry?
   
4. How do you react to someone who tries to compel you to do something?
   
5. Can you think of a gentle person who has influenced you?
   

Look at Philippians 4:2-7

How are joy in the Lord, gentleness, prayer, thanksgiving and peace connected?

6.  It may be possible to be a minister and to strive for gentleness in your job, or to strive to be a gentle husband/wife/parent. How can one strive to be gentle if one is a lawyer, business woman, politician, soldier?

 

 

God, men and sex

Story of vicar giving talk on sex at school. Couldn't write 'Talk on sex at school' in diary, so wrote 'Talk on sailing at school'. His wife was looking through his diary. Received phone call from head teacher: 'Your husband gave a very good talk.' Wife: 'Yes, I saw that in his diary. I am surprised. He has very little experience. He's only done it twice. The first time he was sick, and the second time his hat blew off'.

Important topic:

Society has a great deal to say on the subject of sex. 

Sex is very much in the public sphere. Scenes that I suspect would never have been shown late at night even a few years ago are now shown well before the 9pm watershed. And as for the 9pm watershed, you-tube and I player now make that nonsense.

And I guess that the dominant view of society today is 'the four wedding and a funeral' attitude to sex: if you're married you ought to remain faithful (unless you have what is called an 'open marriage'); but otherwise it does not matter how many sexual partners, of whatever gender, you have (indeed it is a virtue to have had several), and it does not matter what you do – so long as both of you are consenting adults.

Indeed I would go further and say that in modern society to suggest that a particular sexual practice is wrong is in fact perceived to be an infringement of another persons' rights. And Christians have tacitly bought into that by retreating from talking about sex in the public sphere – partly because of the way that someone like Mary Whitehouse was slaughtered by the media.

And the main thing that society teaches about sex today is that you can have sex with whoever you want to, but if you are going to have sex, you need to have safe sex – wear a condom; and if you are going to have children you really should be in some sort of committed relationship. 

If society is always talking about sex, in Christian circles we rarely talk about sex. 

Within churches, particularly those which uphold the teaching of scripture and of the historic Church, we teach that the place for sexual intimacy is within marriage between man and woman, and we teach celibacy outside of marriage. But beyond that we are silent. We do not often speak – for very good reasons – about sexual desires – both positive and negative, masturbation, sexual practice, pornography, affair-proofing relationships, or dealing with singleness and celibacy.

And I will try not to be embarrassing, but I do wish to lift the curtain of silence just slightly on some of these issues

This is an area which destroys Christian lives. 

Sexual sin destroys Christians. The New Testament is full of injunctions to keep ourselves pure, to keep the marriage bed 'undefiled' (Hebrews 13:4), to avoid even the hint of sexual immorality (Ephesians 5:3). There are 20 references to 'sexual immorality' in the New Testament.

It is not the only sin, it is not the biggest sin; but sexual sin destroys ministries and churches in a way that other sin does not; and it destroys partners, children and individuals in a way that other sins do not. It is one of Satan's favourite weapons.

In sinning sexually (1 Corinthians 6:18) we sin against others and we sin against our own bodies. 

Sex is so powerful that when we have sexual intimacy with someone we become one with them. We might think that it is a casual one night stand, and after all we are men with desires – nobody will know – we're not getting it elsewhere - and she wants it – but it is not a casual one night stand. When we have sex we are united to someone, physically and spiritually (and that is not an excuse to have 'sexual relations' in the Bill Clinton sort of way). In any form of bodily penetration you become one with the other person. 

If you have sex with someone, then that person has become part of you and you have become part of them – and the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, has less space to work in us. 

Sexual sin shipwrecks Christian lives. But so does the guilt that comes from sexual sin, and to be totally honest, the false guilt that hangs around sex.

The Church has not been great talking about sex. The fact that monasticism became, after the 4^th Century, the ideal form of Christian life (and that most bishops came from the ranks of the monks) meant that the people who were the main teachers of the church had a very low view of sex. It existed, if it really had to, for procreation only. Otherwise it was wrong.

And many Christians have laboured under the burden that sexual desire is not good – and needs to be suppressed – and that we need to restrain ourselves from sexual activity.

1. SEXUAL DESIRE

We have been made as men and women and we have desires, including sexual desire.

1 Timothy 4:4-5 is key here. "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God's word and by prayer." Everything is right in its rightful place.

The desire for sexual intimacy is the desire to be fully part of someone else. It includes the desire to belong to someone else and to possess someone else, especially when that someone else is physically desirable, and is beautiful.

At its best, the desire for sexual intimacy is the desire:

1. to be free from ourselves. 'Hell', says Sartre, 'is the other person'. No. 'Hell', to quote Timothy Ware in The Orthodox Way (p35), 'is myself, cut off from others in self-centredness.'
   
2. to be profoundly creative. Sexual intimacy, can be, humanly speaking, the most creative thing we ever do.
   
3. for ecstasy: for the physical ecstasy that comes from the releasing of tension, for both men and women. But for more than that: for ecstasy at it's most profound, spiritual level. And the word 'ecstasy' comes from the Greek 'ek – stasis' (away from – movement), again reminding us that at the heart of ecstasy is a movement out of ourselves. True ecstasy comes when we let go and give.
   

The problem is that we live in a fallen society.

And the result is that our desires get mixed up and confused. 

a) We desire each other and not God

Our first desire is meant to be for God: 'to love him and worship him for ever': to be part of God, to be possessed by him and to possess him; to be profoundly creative in him and to experience true ecstasy.

And yet straight after the fall, our desires are messed up

Genesis 3:16: "To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.""

So rather than desire for loving intimacy with God she desires her husband, who rules over her. 

And this does not just apply to the woman, but also to the man: he desires her. We look at the Song of Solomon. 

It is not wrong to desire another person; but it is second best to desire for God

b) Our desire for the other is perverted

Romans 1:24-27 applies to every person and is not just about homosexual practice:

"Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Romans 1:24-27, NRSV)

This is not saying that it is wrong for a man to love another man. It clearly is not. Jonathan's love for David and David's love for Jonathan was clearly very deep: (1 Samuel 18:1; 20:17; 2 Samuel 1:27: "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.")

What it is saying is that love must not give way to the desire to commit 'shameless acts', to the 'degrading of our bodies' or to the abandonment of 'natural intercourse'. Love needs to triumph over, what the Church Father's called, the passions

And if we are honest we can see how our desires are mixed up: and in particular how the desire for physical gratification of our sexual urges overwhelms the desire to love – and that leads us to give in to our lust (the desire to possess and take for myself) 

And the result is that one of the most precious and healing gifts that God has given us can become one of the most self-centred and most destructive things that we ever do. It becomes a playground for the abuse of other people, for domination over other people, for the turning of other people into objects to satisfy myself; and it leads to the awful story of the concubine in Judges 19 – or to just take two stories that have been in the press this week – the taxi driver who has raped literally hundreds of women; or the man in Austria who turned his own daughter into a sex slave.

But just because sexual desire and sexual intimacy is abused, it does not mean that it is wrong. It needs to be received 'with thanksgiving and sanctified by the word of God and prayer'. In other words, it needs to be kept within the boundaries that God has given: marriage between man and woman.

But let us look at some of the other issues that I have mentioned. 

2. MASTURBATION.

Masturbation is probably not ideal. It is a very individual thing and I think it is about the release of sexual tension: it is interesting how people talk about men having some form of cycle. Leviticus 15 talks about emissions of semen, with the result that the person is unclean until the evening when they should take a bath.

But it is not a big thing. Many Christians, especially young Christians, can get very hung up about this. I remember having a series of phone calls from a young man, who I never met, who was really hung up about the fact that he was masturbating regularly. Actually, by taking the pressure off him, by saying that it was not such a big thing, and not to be so hung up about it, really helped him to get the compulsion under control.

Of course there are the problems of the fantasies which come with it, but it can also be a release of the tension when no other 'legitimate' way is there (whether that is because one is single, or married but with little sexual intimacy in marriage)

However, it must not become controlling, and it must not take the place of physical intimacy if you are married.

Luther, I believe, spoke of masturbation as a 'puppy sin'. The only time that it is really condemned in the bible is in Genesis 38:9, where Onan 'spilled his semen on the ground' in order to avoid his responsibilities. Why for that? Because it affects other people. 

3. PORNOGRAPHY 

This is a much bigger issue, particularly today with internet pornography being so accessible – with absolutely no seeming accountability.

There is a real problem with pornography, because the images stick with us, and it effects how we see other people and particularly women

Some guidelines that have helped me:

1. If something is giving you a real problem, get rid of it. Your soul and your mind are more important than your laptop or PDA
   
2. Use passwords – Jesus Christ – although there is always a way around this  
   
3. Remember that even if you go onto an incognito window, there is someone somewhere who is able to look at a list of all the sites that you have visited.
   
4. Remember that there is someone who is looking at what sites you visit
5. Be accountable to others
   
   
   Pray for a Godly sorrow – so that what you see actually makes you feel physically sick and defiled. 

 

Please, if this has become compulsive, if it is in danger of destroying you, do talk talk talk to others.

4. THE AFFAIR 

If you are there, stop

If you have not been there, don't go there

If you have been there, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Of course it is exciting. Of course the sex is fantastic. Have you ever heard of an affair where the sex was not exciting? 

It can only be for short while: one, two years. After that, it becomes normal.

The affair now was beginning to have some of the longueurs of marriage, but with none of marriage's reassuring safety and comfort. It wasn't only that the excitement had gone. It was difficult now to recall those first heady weeks when their affair had first started, impossible to recapture that mixture of sexual enthralment spiced with danger, the exhillarating self-confidence of knowing that a beautiful and successful woman found him desirable. Did she still? Hadn't it become a matter of habit for them both? Everything, even illicit passion, had its natural end. (PD James, A Certain Justice, p104)

It has nothing to do with love

About Dalgliesh's lovers: 'What, he wondered, had those carefully spaced encounters, both participants groomed for pleasure like a couple of sleek cats, to do with love, with untidy bedrooms, unwashed dishes, babies' nappies, the warm close claustrophobic life of marriage and commitment' (PD James, The Black Tower, p5)

It destroys your partner, your children and yourself

We need right thinking in this: we need to be led by our mind and not by our genitals. I like the story of the man who sees a woman walking down the street. He gapes. His friend says, 'Married with three children'. The man replies, 'I don't believe it. Not with that figure'. 'No', said his friend, 'not her; you'.

We need accountability to each other – and especially to your partner. I've had three occasions when people have come to me and said, 'I'm married – I want to be faithful to my marriage – but I'm in love with someone else'. I said very little, although did suggest that if at all possible they should talk it through with their partner. I don't know whether they did. But I do know that all three marriages survived, and I suspect that part of the reason was that the person was prepared to be honest.

We need the grace of God. Please do not presume that you stand. Gordon MacDonald, a well known Christian leader in the States, who wrote, 'Ordering Your Private World', said that he was asked, 'How would Satan destroy your ministry'. He answered – in all integrity - with the words, 'I don't know. But I know that it would not be through my private life'. Within a year, he was having an affair with his secretary.

Having said all of that, the affair is not the end. It was not the end for David in the OT; it was not end for MacDonald. It might seem to be the end – it might throw you into the pit – that is the judgement of God – but by his grace it does not need to be the end.

5. THE PRACTICE OF SEX 

I have heard it said that with consenting couples, in the privacy of their own home, whatever they do is OK.

I do not think that is true. As I spoke earlier, our desires are mixed up. Some of our desires are good. Others are destructive.

For example, in my previous church in Holloway we had a shop opposite which sold bondage stuff. It offered to satisfy the desires of those who wished to dominate or to be dominated. But I do not think that that is healthy. The desire to belong to and be part of someone else is good. God made us to be in Christ and to have Christ in us. He made us together to be in Christ. But the desire to dominate and to be dominated is I suspect a consequence of the fall.

What we do in the bedroom needs to build up the other and not destroy; it is about growing the other and not shrinking them: it is about treating the other person as a human being made in the image of God and uniquely precious to him. .

So rape in marriage (the forcing of the other person to have sex) is wrong

Bondage is out – certainly if it goes beyond very mild fantasy play

And buggery is out: because it is abusive: one person dominating the other, even if it is with the consent of the other. 

Sexual intimacy is about doing something that builds up both partners as children of God – which is why it has to be between man and woman, and why it really has to be face to face. 

6. LOVING OUR WIVES 

As a young curate, only just married, we ran in our house one of the Rob Parson's marriage enrichment courses. There were a quite a number of people who came. In it, Rob or Diane talks of the couple who could not make love because whenever he touched her she wanted to turn over and be physically sick. Suddenly one lady in the quite large group who was there with her husband said, 'that is how I feel when he touches me!'

Those of you who are married do not need me to tell you that there will be times when there is no sex in our marriages. That might be for many reasons: the birth of a baby, illness, change of life; it might be because there is something deeper going on; or it might mean that we have to look again at our relationship.

Those are the times when we need to really work out whether we are spending enough time with our wives, giving them quality time, showing respect and gratitude; There are times when we need to ask whether the romance or the vision has gone out of the relationship. If it has, it does not mean that it is time to trade her in for a younger model, but it means that it is time to work hard at your relationship.

And the physical stuff is important: the touching, the hugging – without the idea that there must be sex, however much we might desire that.

And there will be times when there is no sex – but it is not the end of the world, it is quite normal – and as the single person might say, 'Welcome to our world!'

7. BEING SINGLE/MARRIED  AND CELIBATE

Sex, and sexual desire, is an amazing gift that God has given. But, despite what the world says, it is not what life is all about.

It is quite possible to satisfy those three deepest desires: for release from self into another, for creativity and for ecstasy, without sexual intimacy.

Jesus managed to do so; Paul managed to do so (he talks in 1 Corinthians 7 of singleness and celibacy as being a gift, indeed a gift that is greater than the gift of marriage, because it means that there is nothing in your way to making the first desire of your life – God); many many women and men of God through the ages have managed to do so. I think more recently of people like Mr Theresa or John Stott. 

If we are single or if we are sexually frustrated, we do not need to be stultified human beings – even if society and the church might make us feel like that.

There is, of course, great cost in singleness, but also great opportunity.

Stott writes in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:4, "An additional paragraph is needed for those of us who are single and therefore lack the God-given context for sexual love. What about us? We too must accept this apostolic teaching, however hard it may seem, as God's good purpose for us and for society. We shall not become a bundle of frustrations and inhibitions if we embrace God's standard, but only if we rebel against it. Christ's yoke is easy, provided that we submit to it. It is possible for human sexual energy to be redirected ('sublimated' would be the Freudian word) both into affectionate relationships with friends of both sexes and into the loving service of others. Multitudes of Christian singles, both men and women, can testify to this. Alongside a natural loneliness, accompanied sometimes by acute pain, we can find joyful self-fulfilment in the self-giving service of God and other people" (John Stott, The Message of Thessalonians, p84f)

And I think that the bible hints that there will not be sexual intimacy, at least as we know it, in heaven.

Luke 20:27-40 states that there will be no marriage in the resurrection, and Galatians 3:28 talks of how there is no male or female distinction in Christ (in the same way as there is no slave/free distinction or Jew/Gentile distinction).

This is speculation. But if there is no sexual intimacy in heaven, it is because heaven is a place where our desires are rightly ordered, and where our desires are fully satisfied in the best possible way.

And so the desire for ecstasy in the richest sense of the word, to be creative in partnership with others, and to come out of ourselves and to be part not just of one other but of all others, will be fulfilled in heaven in a way that sexual intimacy can never offer. Because those desires are ultimately fulfilled when we are in God, when we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Those desires will find their richest fulfilment in that place where 'eye has not seen, or ear heard, or the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him'.

Life

John 1:1-14

LIFE: What is life?

I make no pretence to be a scientist. Gave up on science when I realised I would have to learn the periodic table, and that there was no system to help me! 

Wikipedia gives one definition of life: "A characteristic of self-organizing, self-recycling systems consisting of populations  of  replicators that are capable of mutation, around most of which homeostatic,  metabolizing organisms evolve".

Is that all? I heard on Friday of a 12 year old boy who has just become a father with a 15 year old girl. Is the life that has been produced simply the product of unprotected sex or is it something more? And if it is nothing more, what right does that particular baby, that bundle of cells which sleeps, eats and cries have to exist? And if it ceases to exist, so what? We do not grieve a leaf that falls from a tree, and yet the biological process that worked within the leaf – of cells separating and reproducing - is exactly the same process that grew the baby within the womb of the 15 year old. 

Dawkins, our favourite atheist, argues that there is no purpose in life. It is just one of those things that has emerged. It once was not; while it is, it is about the reproduction and survival of individual DNA; and one day it will not be. As Ernst Hemingway once said, 'Life is nothing more than a dirty trick. A short trip from nothingness to nothingness'

And yet I suspect that there is a voice in each of us which rebels against that. If evolutionary processes are the only and the final answer to the existence of life and of human beings, we need to ask ourselves why evolution has produced a creature that is able to ask, 'Why do I exist?' and which feels that it has in some way responsibility for all the other creatures? 

There is something within us which says: 'That baby of the 12 and 15 year old really matters'. 

John's gospel uses two words for life: psuxe – physical life, literally: the breath of life, and zoe – eternal life, life in all its abundance. I guess it is the difference between life, existing and real life. 

Oscar Wilde: "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all".

Well our passage from John talks about the one who not only has real life, but who is real life. It speaks of the Word who was with God and who was God. And it goes on to say, 'in him was life'. 

So what is this LIFE?

1. This life is inseparable from God. 'The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning'.

Real life is God and is in God. Real life cannot be separated from relationship with God

That is why we are invited to become children of God. (John 1:12). 

We are invited to come into the same relationship with God that Jesus Christ had. Although he has always been with God, and there has never been a time when he has not been, He called God Father. He is the 'One and Only Son of God'. 

And through him, we are invited to become children of God. It is only as children of God that we can know, participate in this life

It is when we are united to God that we live. 

It is when we are most like Jesus Christ, not only in what he did, but in who he was: the Son of God, that we live. Real life begins when we call God, Father.

We are most fully alive when we are in a right relationship with God, receiving what God wishes to lavish on us; delighting in doing what God wills in order to delight God. 

That is why real Life begins on its knees

2. This life gives life to others: 'Through him all things were made; without him nothing was that has been made'.

Life gives life. That is true physically.

A cell that reproduces is alive. A cell that doesn't reproduce is dead.

And the Word is Life because he created all things: 

The writer to the Hebrews states (Hebrews 11:3), 'By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible'. We call it creation ex-nihilo, 'creation out of nothing'.

This does not tell us how God created matter. It is stating the fact that God did create all that exists.

There will be a great deal about Darwin and the theory of evolution this year. Did any of you see the Attenborough programme on Darwin? It was brilliant. It is very hard to argue against that sort of evidence. But throughout the programme, Attenborough argued or implied that if Darwin is right, God does not exist. 

I simply cannot buy that argument. Even if Darwin is right in everything, and we all come from a pre-historic protoplasm that lived in the sea – where did it all come from in the first place? Why do cells divide? Why do cells change and mutate? Why don't they break down instead of becoming more complex? 

As I said, I make no pretence to be a scientist. But I do know that if I have a particular scientific theory of why the world is as it is now, of the scientific processes that are in the world, it does not exclude God. Even if the theory of an infinite number of parallel universes could be proved, it would not exclude God. God is big enough to work through any process we can possibly conceive

I am a creationist. Not in the sense that I believe in a 6 day 24 hour creation: I don't, and I am not persuaded that the bible asks us to do that. But I am a creationist because I believe that this world is a creation. It has been created. It has been – and continues to be shaped – by a creator, who gives life.

And God not only gives psuxe, physical life. 

God also gives zoe, eternal life.

And we live when we share in that work of God. 

Physically we are most alive when we give or preserve human physical life – even if it means sacrificing our own physical life. That is why so many people find that life without love is meaningless: and by love I do not mean that self-centred seeking for an experience to solve all my problems, but the willingness to lay down my happiness, my comfort, my life for another. To love really is to live. To give really is to live. 

Spiritually we are most alive, when we present or preserve real life. Actually only God can give zoe, real eternal life, but we can pray for people; and like John the Baptist we can be a witness to this life, and we can share with others this amazing offer that Jesus gives: 'that to all who receive him, he gives to us the right to become children of God'. 

It is one of the reasons why involvement in some form of evangelistic ministry, which can be incredibly costly, is also so life affirming. 

Charles Spurgeon said, "Even if I were utterly selfish and had no care for anything but my own happiness, I would choose, if God allowed, to be a soul winner, for never did I know perfect, overflowing, unutterable happiness of the purest and most ennobling order till I first heard of one who had sought and found a Saviour through my means."

And I think it was CT Studd, who chose to give away his entire inheritance (and he inherited the family estate which was pretty significant) and who went as a missionary to China with CIM, who said: 'For sheer enjoyment and pure self-indulgence, give me soul winning any day'.

And we can and indeed are called to nurture each other in the faith. That is what two thirds of the New Testament is about: Paul, John and Peter urging the Christians to support each other in their Christian faith, to encourage each other, to build each other up, and to grow in faith and in understanding and in love. The church really is called to be the community of the living, of the really alive. 

3. This life brings light. 'In him was life and that life was the light of the people' 

This life is illuminating.

When Jesus came into the world he was the light. He made clear the truth about God, about life, about living, about our human situation and the human heart, about God's laws and the purpose God has for us and for this universe. 

He made it clear not just in the words that he spoke, or the things he did, but in the very person who he was. 

There was no confusion or darkness in him: no hidden motives or agendas, no dark side. He was Ronseal. What you saw was what you got. 

And we are most alive when we are light in Christ. We are called to shine as children of light.

When we live the life, there will be no darkness in us: We are called to be transparent - to be onions and not oranges. When you take off the orange peel, you get something very different inside. When you peel an onion, you get onion. Of course, we – unlike Jesus - are sinful and mixed up. We are full of doubts, fears and inadequacies. I'm not suggesting that we wear our hearts on our sleeves at all times – but I am suggesting that we need to be honest with God, with each other and with ourselves. It's not the fact that we mess up that is the problem. We all mess up. It is the fact that we mess up and then cover up. We pretend to ourselves or to others that we are OK. I was told that John Stott, having been publicly praised before he spoke, replied by saying: 'If you could see into my heart, you would spit in my face'. 

We are called to do the things of the light: to put away the deeds of darkness. There is no place for lying or cheating, for using or abusing people. There is no place for pride or envy or self-centredness. There is no place for greed or lust – which wishes to seize other things or other people for myself, to satisfy my desire. 

And living the life means speaking light: speaking words that enable others to see the truth. And that can be the truth about God, about reality or about something that they are doing. 

But before we all go off and tell each other a few straight home truths – may I remind us that we are called to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). That means I look at others as God looks at them. I look at others in the light of the truth that they are beloved by God, that God desires for us to become his and to grow as his children. And we need to treat people as adults, especially in our society today – not simply standing above them and telling them that they are wrong (it just doesn't work) - but standing alongside them, asking them questions, getting them to think.

When we live there will be light.

4. This life is often rejected: 'He came to the world and the world did not recognise him; he came to his own but they did not receive him'

And here is the mystery: Why should anyone choose to reject God?

The reason that the bible gives is very simple. It is the same reason that Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. It is the same reason that the people of Israel rebelled against God. It is the same reason why we choose to silence God.

It is about sin and rebellion and pride and the putting up of false things in the place of God. 

The awful truth about you and me is that we prefer darkness instead of light. 

Why should I listen to God, why should I do what he wants, when I think I can be god myself – or at least think I can choose my god?

And when we do live the life, there will be times when we are rejected. 

It is easy to point to Christians suffering in totalitarian countries

It is easy to point to where political correctness has gone mad

It is easy to point to how, in a nation of xenophobes, someone declaring God's love for all people will be persecuted.

But individuals here and now find that they are rejected when they recognise the reality of Christ. 

We will be accused of betraying our family, or of trying to improve ourselves, if we start going to church

We will be accused of religious fanaticism if we start to read the bible on a daily basis, or join a homegroup

We will be ridiculed, or told that we are selfish, when we give our money away

We will be condemned as intolerant if we say we believe sexual intimacy outside of marriage is wrong

We will be accused of betraying our community if we welcome or befriend gypsies, homeless people, those with severe psychiatric needs, people on the child protection register or immigrant neighbours

We will be charged with being a hypocrite if we withdraw from something that friends are doing that is destructive and wrong

We will be charged as being inadequate or of needing a crutch if we pray

We will be accused of being eccentric and irrelevant if we become vicars (which is probably true!).

Jesus warns us that if we live for him, we will be hated.

This life is real life, but it is a life that is so often rejected. 

5. This life is glorious: 'We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth'

Glory, light and life come together in Jesus. 

Real life takes hold of ordinary life, physical life, grips it and transforms it into glorious life. That glory was seen in the life of Jesus Christ on earth. It was seen in his grace and his truth; it was seen in his relationship with his Father; it was seen in his love for men and women; it was seen in his works of power; it was seen in the cross and resurrection. 

And we are invited to share in this glorious life. 

    To become children of God

    To give life to others

    To be light

    To be rejected

    To know the cross and the resurrection

Irenaeus, one of the very earliest bishops wrote, "The glory of God is a human being who is fully alive with his face turned towards God".