Miracles

All three of today's readings had some kind of miracle in them. In the gospel (John 6.1-21) the miracle is easy to spot, as Jesus feeds five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and some fish; Elijah does something similar in the Old Testament reading (2 Kings 4.42-44); the challenge is to find the miracle in the New Testament reading (Ephesians 3.14-21).

So, anyone interested can go scurrying to their Bible and see if they come up with the same answer as me.  Meanwhile, I have a question for you: do you think that miracles still happen today?
 
For some people, miracles are something that did happen, when Jesus was walking amongst us, but don't anymore; for others there's still room for miracles in some way; and for yet others, miracles never happened.
    Now we have science to explain so many things, so we can look more sceptically at everything Jesus did.  He didn't cast out demons, he just relieved the symptoms of people's depression or their mental illness.  He didn't heal the blind or the lame, he helped them overcome their psychosomatic disorders. He didn't multiply the loaves and fishes to make enough for everyone, he just encouraged people to share.
    Yet, while there are people who dismiss Biblical miracles, there are many of us who are comfortable with modern day miracles taking place. As an example here are some recent newspaper headlines.

From Doncaster Today (24/7/15): "Miracle no-one died after car smashed into Doncaster shop."
From The Mirror (22/7/15): "Alzheimers' miracle drug has saved my life. Trial Brit's joy as dementia slowed by new cure."
From the Boston Standard (23/7/15) "Dad hits out at health chief Jeremy Hunt and backs NHS miracle workers."
    That last story was about baby JJ who was born 16 weeks early weighing just 1lb 9oz; with problems with his stomach, an e coli infection, septicaemia and hypercholemia, it was a miracle that he survived.

Most people are comfortable with the idea of medical miracles as the result of good care and expert help, but how do these compare with the Biblical miracles?
    Well, first of all, let's consider what a miracle actually is...

It comes from the Latin word (don't they all..?) miraculum which means something to be wondered at, something wonderful.
    "Nobody died when that car crashed into the shop in Doncaster? It's a wonder."
    It's a miracle.

Things that are beyond our understanding are still miraculous, things that are new to us, things that we can't explain.
    But as soon as we can explain them, they cease to be miraculous.
    Take magic tricks as an example: kids love all magic tricks, even rubbish ones; most adults love the spectacular tricks, at least until they know how they're done. Then, when we do know how they're done, the wonder is gone.

I remember the first time I heard the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart's opera the Magic Flute. I was stunned by the voice of the singer; I had shivers and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

    Now when I hear it, I'm still impressed, but I'm not stopped in my tracks because I'm so used to it. For me, that miracle has lost its power.
    But it is still a miracle: there are many people who haven't heard it yet, who will find it wonderful when they do. No matter how I feel it still takes phenomenal ability and breath control.

Now, magic tricks are never really miracles: the miracle is getting people to believe that magic is real, and a bad magician never does that and never gives us something to be wondered at. But a great magician, like a great opera singer or a great medical professional is a miracle worker, in their own way.

So, Jesus the miracle worker: did he feed all those people that day? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
    I prefer to believe he did because he's God so, why not?
    But even if he didn't, something miraculous happened that day.

His arrival wasn't planned.  There was no schedule, he would just turn up, and because he was becoming very well known, people wanted to see the 'signs' he was performing.  When they heard Jesus was nearby, did they stop to bake bread and pack a lunch? Probably not.
    And then Jesus would preach for hours, and the people would stay and listen to him, for hours (that's a miracle in my book, when I get people yawning and checking their watches after ten minutes).
    Some of them might've had food with them already, like the little boy, but we have to remember there was 5,000 men, plus women and children. We're probably talking nearer 20 or 25,000 people.
    About the same number we have here in Workington.

Workington, where there are people who every day have food to spare, and others who have to rely on food banks to survive. Could we get the people of Workington to share out everything equally, so that no-one had too much and no-one too little?
    If we could, why haven't we managed it already? Why are there people throwing waste food in the bin just yards from people who are close to starving?

If the people of Israel in Biblical times are anything like the people of the world today, then Jesus getting everyone to share their food is a miracle, almost as much as multiplying the food he had to satisfy everyone.

Perhaps we've heard the story so often that, like the Queen of the Night, the miracle has lost its power over us, but that doesn't stop it from being a miracle.

So, right back at the beginning I asked what miracle was in Eph 3.14-21.
    It was a trick question, because there are actually two.
    Two miraculum, two things to be wondered at.

"How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."

and 

"He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being."

Jesus loves you and the Spirit empowers you; what greater miracle is there than that?

Herod's vow

If you think about it, Mark 6:14-29 is unusual. The gospels are almost entirely about Jesus, what he did, what he said, but here's a passage that doesn't have him doing or saying anything.  He has sent the disciples out to minister in pairs, and then we shift our attention to Herod and John the Baptist.
    I like to imagine that Jesus took a bit of time off, put his feet up, had a well-earned rest. After all, everyone deserves a rest.

Sniffing butts is exhausting

Even though Jesus isn't directly involved in the story, it's still about him in a way: we see a foreshadowing of what's to happen to Jesus in the report of what happened to his cousin John.
    John is arrested, even though he was innocent; Jesus will be arrested, even though he is innocent. The person with the power to have John killed (Herod) doesn't want to do it; the person who will have the power to execute Jesus (Pilate) won't want to do it.  But Herod's hand is forced by the intrigues of Herodias; just as Pilate's hand will be forced by the intrigues of the Jewish leaders.
    That said, this is still a story about Herod, and it's Herod's actions that I want to look at.
    Essentially, Herod does a very, very silly thing and makes a promise that he can't possibly keep.

To understand the problem, we need to know that although he calls himself King Herod, he really isn't.  His father, Herod the Great, was a king, but the kingdom then gets split into four 'tetrarchies' each ruled over by a member of Herod the Great's family. So this Herod is in charge of only one quarter of the original kingdom, and even then his 'rule' can only carry on as long as the Roman authorities let it.  They are the real power in the region.
    This makes it all the more amazing when we hear Herod offer "up to half my kingdom". Did he mean up to half the tetrarchy? Or was he just talking a load of hot air?
    Either way, the whole thing blows up in his face when Herodias demands the head of John the Baptist.
    It leaves me wondering though, what if she had asked for half the kingdom instead? Would they have argued the difference between a kingdom and a tetrarchy? Would Herod have been willing to share in any case?
    In a way, Herod was probably lucky that all he was asked to do was murder an innocent man and produce his head as some kind of sick trophy.

    Let's consider what his options would have been:

• He could've tried to deny that he made any such offer, but he promised Herodias in front of his guests, so he would have looked pretty stupid trying to deny it.
• He could've admitted that he made the promise but then fail to deliver.  A previous king of Israel did that - Saul (1 Sa 14:36-46). Saul should have sacrificed his son after amking an oath to God, but the people begged him not to, and so he didn't.  It's worth remembering that Saul was not a very good king, and he wasn't very honourable either.
• He could go ahead and do what he promised, much like one of Israel's judges - Jephthah the Gileadite (Jg 11.29-40). Jephthah was honourable, but he ended up having to make a burnt sacrifice of his daughter.

My feeling is that Herod should never have made any kind of vow in the first place, but it was his birthday, and there was feasting, and I think we all know what that means...

Chess: the drinking game of kings

If there's a lesson for us to learn -- don't make promises, especially when there's been 'feasting'

Pentecost: Christmas for the Holy Spirit (II)

As I said yesterday, there have been two thoughts in my mind during this weekend.

The first being the televangelists and their apparent ability to turn on the power of the Spirit at will. The second is much more everyday and normal.

I was in Morrisons last week (other supermarkets are available), and I heard two women talking — one was a staff member, and the other was asking if she had time off this weekend.

    “I’m off Saturday, but I’m back in Sunday and Monday,” said Morrisons lady.

    “Still, you’ve got a day off,” said her friend.

    “Yeah, I suppose, but it’s not like it used to be. You get Christmas and Easter, but every other bank holiday, it’s just like a normal day.”

She’s right, I thought, we don’t make things special anymore.

Christmas is important, because it symbolises the incarnation, God walking amongst us; and Easter is important because it means and end to death and the slavery of sin. But what about Ascension? Surely that’s important too: without it Jesus would still have been walking the earth today, he wouldn’t have returned to the Father and opened the way for us.

    And then there’s Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, comes to the apostles and settles on them like tongues of fire; when the apostles become gifted, able to speak in other tongues, empowered to give the most effective of sermons.

    But it’s like the poor relation to Christmas and Easter.

Christmas: we take two, three or four days off, we give each other gifts, we sing songs that reflect the season and we celebrate with friends and family.

Easter: we take four days off, we buy each other eggs and other chocolate gifts, we sing songs that reflect the season.

Pentecost: we get a day off, unless Pentecost doesn’t coincide with Spring Bank Holiday, in which case we get the day off a week later, or earlier or whatever; and that’s only if we don’t work in a supermarket or in the service industry, then we don’t get a day at all.

Now, I’m not looking for a miracle here: if I was I’d ask Benny Hinn, obviously.

    But wouldn’t it be nice if we remembered why we have Pentecost, remembering a day when a fisherman from Galilee was able to convert three thousand people to his cause by talking to them, gifted as he had been by the Spirit.

If we were going to perform a miracle, my suggestion would be this: don’t go shopping on a bank holiday. Sure the shops are open, but you don’t have to use them, with a bit of planning you can get in everything you need and spend the time doing something nice with family.

    If enough of us did that, we’d show the shops and businesses that being open on a bank holiday wasn’t worth it, and then we’d give staff the best gift we could: time off.

Pentecost: Christmas for the Holy Spirit (I)

As I think about this year’s holy day, two things keep coming to mind.  One was a television programme I happened to catch late one Friday night.

There wasn’t much on that I wanted to see, so I started channel hopping, and I ended up on one of the religious channels.  The programme was called “This is Your Day”, and featured a televangelist called Benny Hinn.

    I’m not sure who’s familiar with Benn Hinn, but he’s got quite a following in America, and across the world actually — he claims to have reached over a billion people through his Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades.

    This particular programme was one part sermon and one part healing service, and it was one of those hugely charismatic affairs where Benny got the congregation (or perhaps audience is a better term) jumping out of their seats, weeping and wailing and falling over as they were ‘slain by the Spirit’.

    There were thousands of people, literally thousands, so that the ones at the back had to watch Benny on a TV screen. A bit like I was doing, except they weren’t in their pyjamas, and they didn’t have a cup of tea handy.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable watching the whole thing; and one of the most discomforting things was the supernatural healings. Not the healing itself: I am totally into healing. I know that it can and does happen. What troubled me was the way Benny Hinn went about it.

He has a staff team and they bring people up out of the audience on to the stage; they announce what the person’s affliction is; Benny puts his hand on their head and throws them backwards, no, not throws, hurls, he hurls them backwards.  There are two staff members standing by to catch the person; they do so and then lift them back up so that Benny can hurl them back down again.

    “Praise Jesus”, he says as the staff lay the person on the ground and leaves them there twitching and thrashing like a dying fish.

    The staff will sometimes pick them up again for a final head slap accompanied by “Alleluia!”, “Praise Jesus” or “Shazam!” or whatever.

    And the whole time that this is going on, Benny and his staff are having a conversation about the person, talking about them as if they weren’t there, or as if they were a piece of meat.

    The thing that really jarred was when Benny’s sidekick announces a woman getting up on stage.

    “Benny, this woman says she has been cured of Coeliacs’ Disease.”

And I was like, “What?”

    “Coeliacs’ Disease?” asks Benny.

    “Yes,” says the sidekick, “As you were talking she felt a warm sensation in her stomach and the Coeliacs’ Disease was gone.” (Pause for dramatic effect) “She had been in constant pain for ten years, and the pain is gone.”

    “Is this true?” asks Benny (he’s good at asking questions).

    “Yes,” says the woman and then Bang! He slaps her on the forehead and she goes down like a sack of spuds.

I had two thoughts at this point:

1.       If she had been in constant pain for ten years, this woman hadn’t been following a gluten-free diet.

2.       She said she felt healed while Benny was giving his sermon, so what were they bringing her up on stage for, and what was the slap on the head for?

Let me be clear. I believe in miracles. I believe that God can do anything.  I believe that God can use us to work miracles. But that doesn’t mean that people can do miracles in their own time to their own agenda: it takes the Holy Spirit according to his timescale. 

This Pentecost, I think it's worth remembering who the real power is, and recognising that we are blessed that we can tap into that power, but let's not get carried away. We aren't the source of the power. The I AM is.

Easter Day 2015

I didn't preach for very long today. That’s not because I didn’t have lots to tell the congregation: I’ve got so many stories from my time at Brigham, Clifton, Dean and Mosser, I could've gone on all day, but I chose to wait for another time.

There was so much to take in this morning that if I'd started going on about what life was like in Jerusalem during a Passover weekend in the year thirty something AD, or what the burial practices were during a traditional Sabbath, or any of that, I think there’d be a risk of overkill.

Instead I chose to take a few minutes and think about resurrection: 

I know that most of us know the resurrection story pretty well, we know the characters and the events, we know quite a few of the lines that people speak: Mary and her declaration of “Rabboni!” when she realises it’s Jesus.

But even those of us who know the story, might struggle a bit to understand it, because resurrection isn’t something that happens very often; we don’t have similar life experiences to compare it to.

Then for some of us this story might be quite new, and that’s brilliant, because it should be, because the whole point of the resurrection story is about newness and about change.

[Look at the way the Gospel writer describes Peter and John’s arrival at the tomb, the two different ways that they respond to something strange; something out of the ordinary; something that’s changed.]

There are two things about change that are certain: one is that change is inevitable, it will happen, it is always happening. Day changes into night, which changes into day; seasons change; our tastes change

Who likes the taste of red wine? And did you like the taste when you were nine or ten years old?

  

Whether it takes centuries to see the effects of change (like global warming, or cooling, or whatever) or whether it happens instantly (like the rain shower that comes seconds after you’ve left the washing on the line) change is always happening around us.

The other certainty about change is that it’s irrevocable, once a thing has changed it can’t change back, not to be exactly the same as it was. Day might change to night then back to day, but it doesn’t change back to the same day, it’s new.

You can freeze and defrost an ice cube a hundred times, but every time it changes from solid to liquid it becomes a new ice cube, or a new puddle of water.

After a big fight, a couple can kiss and make up, but things don’t go back to exactly how they were before the argument, because the things that have been said can’t be unsaid, the relationship is slightly different, it’s new.

With the resurrection, we had the ultimate in newness.  People were going to have to look at life in a whole new way, because death didn’t mean the end anymore; and that meant that it wasn’t enough to see yourself right in this world, when there’s an eternity to come.

The main reason that Jesus died was because the religious leaders — the priests — and the political leaders — King Herod and Pontius Pilate — didn’t want change.  But they’d heard Jesus talk, and they’d heard the stories about him.  He wanted to change stuff.  He wanted people to be nice to people they hated.  He wanted people to forget about the hundreds and hundreds of rules that governed life, and to have just two rules: love God, love people.  He said that people could do stuff on the Sabbath, actually get up and walk about, help each other out.

The leaders would rather kill Jesus than let him change the way things had been for hundreds of years. So they nailed him to a cross, to make sure everything stayed the same.

But change is inevitable, and nothing, nothing that they could do would stop God’s plan for change.

And change is irrevocable, we can never go back to the way things were before the resurrection.

And there was so much newness in this service today that the place was practically buzzing.  It’s so exciting! We’ve got our new paschal candle, lit from the fire atop Shore Hill, a fire that saw the new dawn on this Easter Day. We have a new member of our church family who was welcomed in as Steve baptised Dylan. I’m back in my home church, and it’s a new me, shaped by four months of experiences in different churches.

I want us to remember today what the resurrection really means.

And Stuart Townend and Keith Getty summed it up for us in their resurrection hymn:

Death is dead

Love has won

Christ has conquered

and what that means is that our lives are changed, every day, for the better. It means that we are to step out into the world as bigger, better and stronger people for God.  We are people without fear of death being the end. We are God’s chosen people. We are Sonrise people.

Lent 2015

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ 

[Mark 1.9-15] 

It’s the fifth day of Lent, a perfect time to be nosy. So here’s a quick straw poll for the brave.

Who here has given something up for Lent?

And who has slipped up already?

I have, I do almost every year. Now I know that that might look really bad, only five days in and I’ve messed up already. 

In a way I empathise with Peter, James and John when Jesus says to them at Gethsemane “You couldn’t stay awake for an hour?”

It does look bad, especially when you hold me up against Jesus and his time of testing.

He’s just had his baptism and the Spirit immediately drives him into the desert, there’s no baptism tea, no celebration in the pub. It’s straight up and straight out, and then he spends forty days in the wilderness.

Now I’ve not spent a lot of time in wildernesses, but I know they don’t have much in the way of luxuries.  Food is going to be berries and insects, and shelter is probably under a tree or amongst some rocks, at best it’s going to be a cave.

Sunbeams scorching all the day,

Chilly dewdrops nightly shed,

Prowling beasts about thy way,

Stones thy pillow, earth thy bed.

It’s cold, bleak, uncomfortable, and it’s for forty days.

And then there’s me, who gave up chocolate one Lent and on about day three ate a chocolate Hob Nob, or the year I gave up sugar in my tea but accidently sweetened it on day four, or last year, when I tried a juice fast. But that’s another story.

And even when I get it right, I only have to wait until day five and I get a day off, because I don’t fast on a holy day.

[That did for me the year I gave up cigarettes for Lent.  I was doing okay, but I was hanging on until the Sunday, and then I had about twenty and felt physically sick.]

This is all my way of saying that I’m no shining example when it comes to Lent, but then, are any of us when we compare ourselves to Jesus, to God in the flesh?

No, we aren’t. We’re actually failures. At pretty much everything we do. We’re rubbish.

I should say: please don’t take offence at this.

But we really are pathetic.

So what’s the point of Lent, if it’s not to go without and show our commitment to the faith? Why bother doing it if we can’t get to day forty and say, “hey, I went without food and water this year, so I’m automatically in Heaven’s penthouse suite”?

As I’m sure most of you know, I’m training to be a reader and I’m studying a lot as part of the course. So, I’ve come across this great debate about justification.  Which is: are we justified by works, or by faith alone?

Now I’ll be honest, I don’t think there’s much of a debate here. I reckon anyone who reckons we’re made right with God by what we do is a little bit cracked.

God asking us to justify ourselves by our actions is a bit like me expecting my seven year-old daughter Faith to do the housework.

Yes I encourage her to take part, but the job takes twice as long and I often have to go back and do bits of it again to bring it up to scratch.

So why bother? Why don’t I plonk her in front of the TV and do the job myself, faster and more efficiently?  Parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, you know the answer: it’s because I love her; it’s because I enjoy her company; because even if it takes me longer to get the washing up done, and secretly putting some things back in the washing up bowl, seeing her having a good time with the bubbles is worth every extra minute.

She thinks she’s helping me.

But she is making the job more enjoyable.

The time spent doing the housework with her passes quicker than doing it myself, because it’s fun.

So, let’s go back to the question: what’s the point of Lent?

Lent is about self-denial, it is about going without things, but it’s not about scoring points, or earning anything. Nothing we do can possibly pay back God for everything he’s already done for us.

He came to earth as a human being, he lived among us (in a time before central heating, and the minimum wage, and Wi-Fi), and he died a horrible death.  Giving up chocolate isn’t going to make up for that.

But it doesn’t have to. That’s not why we do it.

It’s about relationships.  Giving something up is a good way to shake us out of complacency and thinking that we’ve got it cracked.  It’s a way to get us to refocus our attention.  It helps us appreciate the joy of Easter all the more.

Lent is for us.

Some of you be like wha?

What did Jesus say in Matthew 6?

 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’

Now I ask you, did Jesus ever tell people to lie?

No? Then he wasn’t say pretend to be suffering.  He was saying don’t pretend that you are suffering.

Lent isn’t about making yourself miserable, if that’s all you do then you’re missing the point.  Lent is about coming closer to God.

I know we’re already five days in, but I would like to make a suggestion, call it a plea if you will. Whether you’ve given things up this Lent or not, as of tonight, or tomorrow morning, can you make a promise to draw closer to God for the rest of this season?

That might mean read the Bible more if you read it daily, can you do it twice daily? Or it might mean to pray more fully — twenty minutes instead of ten.

I don’t know what your relationship with God is like, so I can’t tell you what you should do.

But I know that God loves you even more than I love my kids, and I know that he would love for you to want to spend more time with him.  

Food banks

I'm not one for gambling really. Never seen the fun in it.

In our office though there are a few opportunities to have a 'little flutter', including the 'scratch off syndicate': about twelve staff members pay a pound, buy scratch cards with the money and split any winnings.

They decided last week that if they had a medium sized win they'd split the profits between themselves and the local food bank.

They ended up with £10 spend on food items, and I volunteered to help choose what to buy. Partly because I thought that was the right thing to do, but mostly because I had nagged them into thinking about people less fortunate than themselves, which led to a long debate about the fairness of society (all of which is too boring to go into now).

So, anyway, we chose Aldi as the store to spend the money in, because it's pretty inexpensive so obviously the cash goes further. Or does it?

You see, it seems like a simple job: spend a tenner on food; put it in the foodbank; job done.

But it's not that simple.

First of all you have to think about what people need.  This bit is helped along by the foodbank giving a list of items that they're running low on.  This week it was sponge puddings and instant mash.

But then there's the quantity vs quality debate.  You can buy quite a lot of budget instant mash with £10.  But I wouldn't give it to my dog -- seriously, the stuff looks like it has the nutritional value of wallpaper paste, and that's not good for anyone, much.

We bought the instant mash on this occasion because it was specifically requested by the foodbank, but we decided never to buy it again, instead we'd go with something better.  Even tinned potatoes would be preferable to the stuff we bought.

And the next factor to be considered is ethics: take tuna as an example.

Should you buy cheap tuna, knowing that it is probably net-caught, which is a practice that endangers other aquatic life, including the dolphin?

Source: Observer.com

Or, should you spend that little bit extra on pole-caught tuna, which is considerably more environmentally friendly?

Well, we agonised about it in the shop.  (Seriously, we discussed it for about 10 minutes). Finally we went with the ethical option, knowing that people eating it couldn't care less because they're hungry, but also knowing that we could care less.

The conclusion for me was a long time coming, but actually quite simple: people are hungry and will eat whatever they're given; the cheap stuff is nutritionally substandard; the expensive stuff is preferable; therefore, if you're gonna add to foodbank stocks, spend more money.

In the end, a tenner wasn't enough to buy what we set out to get, and to meet our own standards, so we spent about £12, and that felt right.

In future, when I buy anything for the foodbank, I'll be setting myself some standards:

1. There has to be enough stuff to feed a family of four for a full meal
2. If I wouldn't buy it for my own family, then I won't buy it for someone else's
3. If I think it might hurt our world to buy something, then I won't do it.

Anything else is like a grasshopper: it's just not cricket.