God Bless America

To my American friends and all those affected by the events of yesterday on Capitol Hill; my prayers go with you.

Democracy has never been perfect; America has never been perfect, but yesterday both received a shocking blow to their fragile sense of order.

Democracy is fragile, but it is made strong by those who are committed to it.

Democracy is not perfect, but it is so much better than the vacuum that is left in its absence.

Yet there is hope, I believe, in the small but significant majority who know what happened was wrong; there is hope in the knowledge that even during this dark day, a black pastor and a Jewish son of an immigrant were voted into the Senate from Georgia, a southern state. There is hope that what we see in this moment is the fever breaking; that the last throws of this disease of anti-democratic, self-delusional denial of reality, in breaking to the surface in this moment, is finally burning itself out. This is the hope I cling to in this moment.

I cling to the hope that there will be a renewed commitment to honesty and truth. Though America’s democracy clearly needs to move to a place of forgiveness and reconciliation, that place needs to be reached by holding the truth to account, and this can only be done if those individuals and groups who have sought to abuse and abandon the truth are also held to account.

For the first time ever I will say this phrase, and I say it not with the nationalist triumphalism with which it is normally said, but with sadness, and sympathy, and the genuine hope that people of faith will take seriously the gravity of responsibility that is on their shoulders; I say it with the knowledge that it is not about a privilege received, but a covenant that American Christians should promise to uphold, in solidarity with the work of God throughout this world - may God bless America.

What do Flat Earthers, scientists, and the Bible have in common?

 

In a recent online conversation about biblical views on creation, I was struck by an interesting and almost paradoxical truth. And the truth  is this: There is a strange point of agreement between current thinking in science, the Flat Earthers, and the text of the Old Testament - And the connected truth is that none of these viewpoints see the Sun as the centre of the universe.

OK, perhaps it seems like a false point of agreement. After all, the Bible and Flat Earthers talk about a Sun and Moon that go around the earth, whereas science talks about a solar system where the Earth goes around the Sun. However, I think there is a deeper sense of agreement to be found, particularly between the Genesis account of creation and our modern scientific understanding. Genesis does not discuss a centre of the universe as such, rather it simply describes the Moon, stars and Sun as lights in the sky. It has no point to make about absolute position, only the position relative to the ground we walk on, relative to the viewpoint of the human observer.

In addition, it makes no comment about the Earth being specifically flat. this is partly because Hebrew has no language to speak of a ‘planet’ Earth: It simply speaks of the ground beneath us and the sky above. But it is also because the specific notion of 'flatness' is absent from the description.

As we read the text of Genesis 1, we might interpret the ground as being flat or level, because that is a traditional interpretation. The language of flatness was available to the writer, but that language is not used in Genesis 1. In fact, we are far more likely today to use idioms like ‘get my feet back on level ground’ or ‘lying flat on the ground’ than the scribes of the Bible ever did.

Genesis speaks of waters above and below, and it speaks of expanses, vaults or as some translations suggest, perhaps a dome, but nothing flat. It is only when we are battling between a universe with the Earth as its centre, and a universe with the Sun at its centre, that the text of Genesis feels out of place.

There is a tendency these days to seek conflict, even when that conflict does not exist. It is easy to forget, when people argue about the disagreements between science and religion, that we no longer live in a world where scientists see the Sun as the centre of our universe. That was only a brief and passing step along the way to where we are today. 

Now we know that our Sun is just another star, like all the other stars in the sky; like all the other lights that fill our night sky. Yes, we have moved from the Sun moving around the earth to the earth moving around the Sun, but in the vastness of the universe, that is a minor detail. Once we take on a universe where the earth beneath our feet is like the earth of any other terrestrial planet, spinning around any other star, in any other galaxy, that conflict should begin to dissipate.

We stand on ground like that of any other rock at any distance from the centre of the universe and at any moment since the big bang. In this light that view of a universe in Genesis 1, seen by humans standing on the ground with their eyes fixed upon the mysterious lights in the sky, seems as true now as it did, thousands of years ago when Genesis 1 was first written down.

14 Ways to Embrace a Fractal Theology

Some suggestions for applying a Fractal Theology to our congregations and our lives.

A fractal tree based on the sending out of the 12 & the 72

1. Always ask why.

Never plan anything just on the basis of ‘what are we going to do?’ Always include the question ‘why are we doing this?’ Ask if the two parts fit together. This is how we keep root and branches connected and how we know if the pattern of our actions reflects something of God. (John 15:1-11)

2. Recognise that we teach by our actions

We teach by our actions, so the way we share our message speaks as loudly as the message itself. The Church we grow will learn all the good and bad habits of its leadership, and probably more deeply than the words that are spoken. So always compare the message being shared with the method of sharing – if the two are telling a different story then the message will be affected. (John 15:12-17)

3. Check if your message is true.

If the message of faith being shared is at odds with the world around, then ask why? It may be because the world around needs to change to respond to the message or it may be that your message needs to be corrected. If the created world reflects God, then it is not all sin out there, and all good in here. The message we share may well challenge the behaviour of people around us and how people see the world. Yet it should not be at odds with reality, and should equally offer challenge to ourselves. There is only one creation and all its internal patterns will be self-similar, not made from separate designs. (Romans 1:20)

4. Make actions as specific to the context as possible, but make the reasoning universal.

Presume that if something is true in one place, then its reason for being true is true everywhere. If it is true at one level of organisation, it is true at all levels – even when it does not appear so. God’s plans are universal, but they may appear very differently in different situations. Where there are things that seem true in one place and not in another, it is because we are looking at the outward expression of that truth, not the inner reason. If the inner reasoning does not match, then a mistake has been made. Contrary to the beliefs of most congregations, every village, town or city is both equally unique in outward expression and equally similar to the others in terms of the underlying reasons. (Acts 17:22-34)

5. Recognise that nothing is complete.

Fractal patterns can never be perfect in this world and even within the biggest computer, its shape cannot be calculated to an infinite level. So everything we do is moving towards that perfection, but never gets there. This is not a mistake; it is part of God’s design. Therefore, we should neither despair at our lack of perfection, nor should we pretend that anything is as good as it could be. Being incomplete reflects creation and shows that we are alive. (Heb. 7:19)

6. Recognise that the Bible contains fractal patterns.

The scriptures offer stories, parable, sayings and instructions that speak about God’s inner reasoning. These outweigh the importance of Biblical rules based on the outward behaviour of people, or the outward expressions of those inner ideas. The outward behaviour rules are more tied to the situation, they are less perfect and less universal. This idea is clearly expressed in Matthew 22:37-40. In these verses, Jesus talks about our love for God, and our love for others as if it should be the central fractal pattern for all our theology. This is also what God seems to be telling us through the prophets when we hear about a law that is written on our hearts. It is also at the root of many disputes between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees are able to twist the rules of outward behaviour to their own advantage, whereas Jesus wants them to look at the inner reasoning that is true and just for all people. (Jer. 31:33, Rom. 2:15, Heb. 8:10, Heb. 10:16)

7. Recognise that numbers tell a vital part of our story, but we need to learn to read that story properly.

 Congregations should never simply be measured on the basis of how many turn up on a Sunday morning. Small numbers do not necessarily mean a congregation is failing, but stagnation at any scale is self-similar to death. Sharp decline may tell us that there is a problem, but not what the problem is. It is an outer expression of an inner issue. Not all growth is good; a congregation that grows rapidly from, a flawed message, a message shared in an unethical way, or an organisation that is not prepared, can become like a cancerous growth. Good growth is about the transformation of individuals and communities towards being more Christlike. Measuring this is not simple and cannot be done by just adding up numbers of people. Rather it is done by recognition of patterns and counting the ways in which those better patterns are being expressed. (Ex. 33:13, Job 21:14, Psa. 67:2, Psa. 139:3)

8. Events work well with big numbers, but discipleship only works with small numbers.

(feeding the 5,000 Luke 9:12-17, calling the 12, Luke 9:1) Luke’s Gospel shows Jesus to be using a pattern of leadership with a ratio of 1 or 2 to 12 (sending out of the 12 and 72, Luke 9:1-6 & 10:1-20). 2 to 12 as a ratio for discipleship keeps relationships close, stress low and keeps leaders safe in pairs. That ratio can be repeated at many levels of scale in our organisations.

9. Put things in perspective.

Fractals have levels of scale or iteration and in Fractal Theology it is sometimes useful to think about how we might break information up into useful levels of iteration, such as local, national, global. As a Methodist, I often think about the levels of Connexion, district, circuit, congregation, member. It is useful to ask whether the fullest iterations of church coincide with those levels or somewhere in between them. Also, this method might help us to put bits of theology into hierarchies of iteration. Not necessarily to say one is more important than the other, but to ask which ones are dependent on others and how they relate to each other. It is for example useless having a theology of how we treat church building assets if we don’t have a theology of the environment. A well-maintained chapel on a dead planet is of little use to anyone.

10. Put things in Balance.

Congregations can easily get out of balance. It’s easy to spot when a congregation is mostly elderly, mostly young, mostly women etc. It may not be so obvious just by looking that a congregation may have become mostly introverts, mostly practical workers, mostly evangelists. There are several ways of making those kinds of division, but it is useful to pick some categories and find a method of assessing a congregation’s balance. Knowing that there is an imbalance doesn’t solve the problem, but it will help explain some problems and will help a congregation to look for ways to reset those imbalances.

11. Learn to be embrace the abstract.

Christians are often committed to a life of practical service, and rightly so. But in any healthy Christian community there needs to be people who can think about the ideas behind the practice; to think about the underlying reasoning and ask the questions that busy practical people don’t have time to ask. More importantly, we need to give them time to be heard. Those who struggle with the abstract often mistake simple for simplistic. Simplistic is easy but often wrong, simple is usually the result of much deep thought and observation. Avoiding elitism and being accessible to all is deeply Christlike, but mistaking that for wilful ignorance and reverse snobbery is dangerous and disturbingly common. Not everyone can process all the information and ideas needed to be able to map out fractal patterns. However, we can all train our instinctive sense of what is beautiful, to recognise the shape of patterns that echo God’s call to love and justice for all humanity.  (John 1)

12. Be prepared to adjust your thinking.

Sometimes we encounter people from other cultures, religions and even from our own, who see the world differently. It is the same created world and its truths are universal. Others may have seen something from another perspective that may help enrich our view. The question should not be ‘who is right and who is wrong?’, but rather ‘what underlying truth connects these two differing perceptions?’. (Luke 10:29-37) (Matt. 2)

13. Be prepared to adjust your plans.

Sometimes the results of what we do, are not what was planned. This may be because our pattern is wrong, but it may also be because there are many variables that we don’t understand. People tend to assume that the connection between a plan and its results is a straight line. Fractals remind us that most things exist in a far more complex state of chaos, but if we are paying attention, we can see patterns within the chaos. It would be impossible to understand how every variable affects the outcomes of our plans, but what we can do is observe the effect of adjusting little things. Perhaps more importantly we should become more aware of the difference between surface adjustments that suit particular people’s preferences, and changes to the underlying reasons. (Josh 6.)

14. Be prepared to expand your Universe.

Not only are there people out there with different religions and ideas, but there is also an entire universe out there with a vast amount of stuff that we don’t yet understand. There are many scientists working to better understand our universe and it is vital that our theology does not deny science or try to create divisions between these aspects of the truth. If Christ was there from the beginning of creation, then our view of salvation and our understanding of the universe should also be understood as part of one single pattern of action by God. A good Fractal Theology should be one that prepares us to live way beyond the narrow traditions of our past, but knows how to learn the universal wisdom gained from those traditions. (John 1)

Fractal Theology - A Simple Definition

People often ask me if I can give a simple description of what Fractal Theology is. This is the most simple version I have managed so far:

What is Fractal Theology?

• Fractal Theology recognises that, if the universe is God’s creation, and creation is better described using fractals (patterns that repeat at many scales), then God’s actions and intentions in general will be better described in a fractal way.
• Fractal Theology explores how the created world, how our actions as believers, and how our religious organisations follow patterns that are similar to descriptions of God and descriptions of God’s instructions to us.
• Fractal Theology asks if these patterns are repeated in various ways, in our lives, in our Churches, and in the way we treat each other.
• Fractal Theology challenges us to question why these patterns don’t always match up; does our image of God need correcting, does our response to that image need correcting, or is it a little of both?
• Fractal Theology sees the Kingdom of God, as spoken of in the Gospels, less like an earthly kingdom, and more as people and creation, ruled by good patterns of living that are rooted in patterns of their creator. 

What is a Fractal?

A fractal is a shape, a pattern, an idea, or a thing that has self-similarity. Self-similarity means it has parts that are similar to the whole of it. Fractals can be self-similar to many levels of scale. Fractals are a useful way of describing things in the world that don’t look like squares, triangles, circles, etc. They are a relatively simple way of describing very complicated things more accurately. A tree might be described as a green sphere on top of a brown cylinder, but that would be a very poor description. We could describe a tree far more accurately in terms of how its twigs and branches divide and sub divide at each level in a way that is similar to the whole tree. All we need to know is where the shoots come off of the branch, the angle of the divide and the relative change of size at each division. From these bits of information, we can build an image of the whole tree. In theory, a fractal can be infinitely self-similar and perfect, but in the real-world, fractals are limited to the number of levels that are possible in the situation and are affected by variables and imperfections. However, those imperfections can also be fractal in nature and so very realistic theoretical models of real world situations can be made by applying several fractal formulas to each other.

What is Theology?

Theology is the study of God. It is the exploring of ideas and the conversations that people have about God. It is often, but not always, a word used to describe conversations about God as seen by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. However, theology is not just a subject studied in schools and universities. Theology is what happens every time somebody makes a decision based on what they believe, which in some ways, is every decision that is ever made.

14 Ways to embrace a Fractal Theology...

Why delivering Brexit has nothing to do with democracy

There are many people shouting about the current state of our democracy in Britain. A common theme is that in the referendum, the people decided on Brexit, and therefore either failing to deliver Brexit or seeking a second referendum would be a betrayal of that democratic process. But there are a number of problems with that notion. Primarily, it fails to understand the reality of our democracy as it exists today.

Democracy is a great source of stability and justice in our world. The benefits of any democratic system are considerable; amongst other things, the poor have a voice, dictatorships are far less likely to occur, and a broad breadth of issues are brought to the attention of those in power. Yet no democracy is perfect; there is no country in the world where all the people’s voices are heard all of the time and on all matters. No system is perfect in converting all votes into exactly proportionate public representation. And even if a democratic system was perfect it would still face the problem that democracy often involves people voting on the basis of their opinions about complex situations they don’t fully understand. Our democracy is not built on the basis of referendums on specific subjects, it is based on the principle of representation. We vote for a representative and the representative makes the decision based on their expertise. This is how we reduce that problem of opinions about things we don’t understand. Referendums are a useful an addon to that system, but one that comes with a significant risk, the risk that we are not sufficiently informed, to make a decision on the matter in hand. As Winston Churchill is reputed to have said; “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

All that aside however, here’s the bigger point that we always seem to miss. Our democracy, like all democracies, works on the basis of having a defined group of people of whom we can ask the question; ‘What do you collectively want?’ It starts with an already defined set of borders and social groupings. These are groupings that we did not choose. For the most part, the national borders of this world have been decided by war, by dictators, by empires, by long forgotten quirks of geography, by the availability of resources and the half-forgotten arguments of history. For better or for worse, they have been decided by committees, leaders and experts behind closed doors. Even our current local boundaries such as wards, unitary authorities and parliamentary constituencies are decided without our vote. And even if this weren’t the case, it would still be true that none of us get to decide what nation we are born into. 

Our relationship with the EU is about matters that go beyond the simplistic boundaries of nation. It encompasses complex and subtle matters of international law and commerce in the here and now, but also begs questions about our collective relationship to the future and the past. These are questions that even the most highly trained academics struggle to answer. The 2016 referendum took those matters and co-opted public emotions about what constitutes nationality into the impossibly simplistic arena of a yes or no question. A question based on arbitrary national boundaries that no longer define the nature of who we are in the way they might have done fifty years ago. And even if that were not the case, while our external UK borders have not changed in the last three years, over 5% of the UK population are different people to the ones who constituted our population in 2016 as a result of births, deaths and migration. In addition, our representatives in government have changed by a massive 18% since the referendum. In so many ways we are not who we were. The EU has given the younger generations of this country a far softer sense of boundary than we had in 1973 when we joined the EEC. In reality the referendum was partly asking us as a nation to define who we were, and we were not equipped to answer that question, because, for better or worse, that is not and never has been how nations are constituted. Neither the definition of our nation nor our relationship to other nations can be defined, much less redefined by a single binary vote. There are currently at least 67 million different versions of what it means to be British.

One of the primary reasons that Brexit has been a mess from the start, why the original referendum is now practically meaningless, is that it goes beyond the remit of what our current democracy was designed to do, but in order to move forward without significant constitutional reform, a second referendum is probably the only reasonable option. At the very least, if the referendum was ever democratically valid in 2016, it could only be more valid, not less, to ask a better educated set of questions based on what we have learned and how we have changed over the last three years.

Greta Backlash: 7 things you should know.

I have heard a lot of criticism of Greta Thunberg in recent days, many claiming she is hypocritical and should still be in school. All the adults who are turning their criticisms against Greta at this time should know this;

1. You are throwing abuse at a child who shouldn't have to know better than you - but clearly does.

2. She has acknowledged her privilege and is not speaking just for herself, but also those poor and uneducated of her generation around the world, who do not have the privilege of either having a voice or knowing what is being done to them by their elders; people you should have been speaking for, so that she didn't have to.

3. Even if she were being hypocritical and even if she were entirely wrong about all of this, which she is not, this would still not be the right way to treat our children. We do not mock them or abuse them or ridicule them for their beliefs, and we do not stamp on their enthusiasm to do good in the world. We encourage them to do better than we did. Why would any of us think it OK to do otherwise?

4. Yes she should still be in school, she herself has said so, but instead she is out doing the job that we should be doing on her behalf and on behalf of all generations to come.

5. If you were listening to her words - you would already know all of this, so why aren't you listening? I suspect because you are afraid. Well guess what? So is she, and she needs our reassurance that something will be done, not more excuses and accusations.

6. There are many jokes going around the internet about the protests. One of them is; "A million kids want to clean up the Earth. A million parents would love it if it started with their bedroom." Humour is important, never more so than when we are dealing with adversity, but it should never be at the expense of those who are suffering, never to undermine those who want to make things better. Those posting such flippant responses should be embarrassed and ashamed of their disregard for the genuine fear of young people for their future, especially when young people looking for genuine solutions are already being met with such a huge backlash of online abuse.

7. When the time comes to account for yourself before your children, your God, or even just yourself, about how you responded to climate change and to those who sought to make a real difference, "that 16 year old girl was hypocritical" and "she should have been in school" will not absolve you, it will ring out as a poor and hollow excuse. I am rarely a fan of shame, but here it is right, if we have shamed Greta, to feel the full force of that shame back upon ourselves.

Instead of criticizing, we should be seeking to move, to stand alongside the young people in their protests and put the real issues first. It's time to act like the grown ups in the room.

Falling out of love with strategy: A fractal theological word crisis

A fractal tree based on Luke 9 & 10

I love a good strategy game, whether it be chess, Risk, Stronghold or StarCraft. But the thing that bothers me about most strategy games is that once you've won, all that you've built and all that you've worked for is of no further use. The winning strategist never gets to live in the world they have conquered. My strategic relationship to the Kingdom of God is different to that in so many ways.

Today, I had the joy of engaging in a challenging conversation with Rev Tom Stuckey (Former president of Methodist Conference) after hearing him talk about his new book ‘Singing the Lord’s song in a strange land’. He suggested that the Methodist Church had too many strategists. Even though I agreed with him on pretty much everything else he said, I have always felt that we have too few strategists. I have for some time considered myself a strategist. After some discussion, Tom suggested that perhaps we had a different idea of what strategy meant - and I think perhaps he was right.

The trouble with the word ‘strategy’ is that it implies that there is a top down plan to put into action. Strategy suggests to many people that someone is in charge; a captain, a general or perhaps a business manager. It is a word with its origins in ancient Greek military talk and has at the core of its meaning the deployment of troops to the battlefield. Whether for military or management speak, it is largely a word that is about taking control of the situation.

In addition to the usual problems with deploying military speak in a theological context, the more specific problem here is that strategy can be heard as something too practical, too linear and too hierarchical. It is too much about the straight line between where we are and where we intend to be. It has the potential to make us sound like we know where we are going – which we certainly do not.

Tom’s suggestion is that we need to stop domesticating God and trying to fit God into a neat box that fits our expectations; that we need to stop trying to be in control of what is, after all, God’s mission. Tom pointed out how the Methodist Church has become weighed down with bureaucracy. I agree to a great extent and I realise now that we need to find a language to speak more specifically and with more discernment than simply talking about 'strategy'. We have more than enough people pushing the metaphorical troops around the map.

Where I differ from Tom is that I think we need to be strategic about how we structure church. The one to one engagement between people is great and to a certain extent that is where the great moments of faith happen. However, when things are going well things will grow and systems will develop as they always have. In order to do the corporate, connexional thing well, we need to be able to engage with and discern how God is calling us to act together. When the systems grow so the imperfections of humanity become immortalised in the structures of our organisation.

I think we need strategy, or something with a different name, that speaks more of the abstract and the aspirational. We need patterns that help us to embody a more Christ-like nature and enact the Gospel narrative within our structures. I still want a strategy, in as much as I want a plan, but I have no intention of setting the destination, or of putting myself or anyone else in charge of getting us there. I want a plan that contains the essence of all we have learned collectively as ‘Church’. I want a plan that gives space for the diversity of humanity within the body of Christ. I want a plan that brings fluidity and life to our structures, and structures that reflect the living Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want a plan that admits we know nothing and frees us to fully submit to the mystery of God. 

This is why I believe we truly need a fractal understanding of God’s creation and of God’s plan for us. We need to be a fluid, organic system, growing in the image of our creator. We need to be bold enough to be more Christ-like in our corporate, collective, connexional way of being – but we need to do that in a way that leaves space for us to turn around when we’ve got it wrong. We need to be able to implement the theological learning we do on a daily basis, simply by being one of God’s creations, in the way that we function together as Church.

The fractal theological way of thinking is to see the patterns of God’s love and justice, echoed in us as individuals and at all scales of what we call Church – at all scales of human community and in our engagement with creation itself. The fractal theological way of thinking is not about a commander setting a destination for the troops, but about setting Christ-like patterns at the heart of who we are as community and as individuals - and allowing those patterns to shape who we become – allowing them to guide us to unknown destinations.

The only word I had to describe this kind of planning was strategy, but I suddenly feel like this word is no longer enough. So, what is the word I am looking for?

(N.B. I’ve not had time to read all of Tom’s book yet but what I’ve read so far looks very good – he describes it as dropping pebbles in the pond of the conversation and watching the ripples, rather than a book that gives the answers.  More about the book here: www.tomstuckey.me.uk/ )

Word Burglars

Much of my work involves trying to inspire people through words. Part of the difficulty of that task is it's not always easy to know if the language you are speaking holds the same meaning in the mind of the hearer, both in the basic meaning and in the subtle nuances. You may think you know what the word simple means, but do I mean easy or unintelligent? Do I mean that distilled simplicity that can only be the result of long experience or the naive simplicity of youth?

It's often good to adjust your language to fit your audience, but you also need to retain your authentic voice, because nothing sounds worse than a forced attempt to mimic the language of your audience. Perhaps the greatest struggle is when the morphing and transforming of language over time makes it impossible to pin down meanings and some ideas become almost impossible to express. Anyone involved in Biblical translation will be familiar with those moments of elusive meaning. But it happens today and it's happening increasingly within the many variations of the language we call English. I have much affection for America and have many good American friends, but the Americanisation of the English language sometimes causes me some frustration.

However, few things in the Americanisation of the English language bug me more than the invention of the word 'burglarize'. A burglar is someone who burgles. The noun burglar is a role derived from the verb 'to burgle', in the same way that beggar is derived from the verb 'to beg'. Of course these days, there are many more examples of this where the ending is 'er' rather than 'ar'; a runner runs, a singer sings and a fighter fights, but the principle is the same. You can't then turn the role back into the verb by adding yet another suffix. A runner cannot runnerize, a preacher cannot preacherize and a beggar cannot beggarize.

The ize ending on burglarize is particularly problematic as it seems to be treating burglar as if it were an adjective like secular, familiar, regular, popular or vulgar. A regular is not someone who regs, to popule is not a thing and secular folk do not go around seculing all over the place.

Some Americanisms are simply nouns being used for different objects in a different world. Language always moves on and the meaning of words will always change, but burglarize signals a potential failureization of language. A demeanification of words and a chaosing of the landscape for the worderizers of our generation. There are many funs you can have with language (depending on how many languas constitute the full measure of your language) but if you're going to mess around with the grammatical construct of the English language then you really need to understand the elements with which you are messing. No one has ever burglarized a house because that would mean turning the house into a burglar.

OK, so I should say that most of my rants about small details come from a place of humour and affection, both for the subject and the people on both sides of the argument. This occasion is no exception, but it holds within it a serious point. We live in a world that is increasingly bound by not one, but many languages of division. Though the truth of the arguments are important, people are rarely that different on one side of an argument from another. Yet it is increasingly difficult to communicate across the divides, because the nuances of language remain untranslated. More than that, the subtleties of the language we hear day in, day out, can begin to reshape the people we are through the ideas that our language equips us to express.

When an American says 'our house has been burglarized', they probably mean something that belongs to them has been taken from them and the safety of their home has been violated. What I hear is that they have been made into burglars; thieves of culture and language, by the very culture and language they have inherited. I am reminded of the irony of people who rightly feel violated by someone invading their house, yet it's a house built on land taken forcibly from the indigenous people who once lived there. I am reminded of how the language carried with their ancestors to this new land can on the one hand be so poorly treated as to invent nonsensical words through misunderstanding, yet on the other hand can often be used as a test and a cultural stick to beat others who would choose to come and live there.

It is easy to pick on the visible inconsistencies of American culture, but every culture is made into thieves by its history; we are all 'burglarized' by our cultural past, we all speak nonsense that feels like it makes sense to us and misappropriate bits of culture we don't understand. But true meaning only comes when we stop and ask ourselves what we really mean by what we say - and where do the words of those who seem to be our enemies, actually mean the same as our own words?

GE2017 - Some initial thoughts on how to approach the election

First up...

Should ministers of religion get involved in politics?

Some people think that ministers shouldn't be political. I think that's entirely wrong - Jesus responded to the politics of his age and we are called to follow him. I think what we shouldn't do is be partisan; what we shouldn't do is be party to the personal attacks and character assassinations; what we shouldn't do is shackle ourselves to one party for life, regardless of the flaws of our chosen party.

However, I think we should get involved with the conversation, talk about the issues and the policies, the morality and the ethics. We should challenge and debate and dig under the surface of the popular reactions. We should perhaps offer some wisdom that goes beyond national boundaries and things that look good to me and mine in the here and now, towards those things that are for the good of humanity, the good of all creation in the long run. We should challenge people to look under the surface of the sound bites and the quick slogans to the complex interconnectedness of people, ideas and resources around the globe. When a party's policies or tactics offend us we should say so - and when a party offers a better choice we should feel free to say so too, even though that party will no doubt have other points with which we disagree. That's me, but what about you? ...

Advice for Voters

There's likely to be a lot of toing and froing about who the contenders are for this election and what Theresa May's motives were for calling it now. For now I want to concentrate on the notion that we put too much blame on the quality of our politicians - and not enough on the quality of our own voting or our engagement in the process before the day. The electorate are both the strength and the weakness of democratic systems. I'm not going to say who I think you should vote for at this point. Partly because political landscape of the election is, as of yet, far from fully established, but more importantly because it needs to be your choice. That is the intended nature of democracy. What I would like to do is suggest some ways in which I would like to see people approaching this election.

1. Don't just leap to the defence of the people you like - or attack those you don't. Hear what they are really saying and respond to real policies.

2. Don't just vote on the basis of how it affects you, remember that if a policy hurts someone else, even if you don't have an innate moral sense of responsibility to all, ultimately one day that someone else might be you - and even if it's never you, the world that you live in will be populated by people you decided were less important than you when you voted. And they may not thank you for that.

3. Question everything, get the other side of each report and hear the voices of those whom the policies effect. Question the 'facts' as well as the motives - and get independent confirmation of each story.

4. Understand that economies are never static. It's right when somebody says 'we will invest in...' to ask where the money will come from - but whenever somebody says 'we will save money by...' - ask yourself what the flipside is. What is the long term effect of not investing in this or that; what is the cost of not spending? (Think education, health, small businesses, infrastructure etc.)

5. Avoid the politics of character assassinations, but do look for leaders who have personal qualities that go beyond the policies. Ultimately policies will need to be adjusted to fit the reality of the situation. Those with a strength of character, with compassion and an understanding of the real needs of real people will adjust those policies in a direction that serves all the people - not just the ones that hold the power.

6. Understand that while we might hope for a level playing field for the opportunities of all people - and whilst for many in Britain, prospects are more equal than they might be in other parts of the world, no such level playing field exists yet. Don't judge the decisions of people whose lives you have not lived and whose experiences you haven't experienced. And be deeply suspicious of any politician or policy that does try to make such judgements. Any policy that considers someone as other, not our problem, or unworthy because of poor life choices is stepping beyond the bounds of what good politics are meant to be. Government should be for the benefit of all, not just those that the current government deems worthy. I think this understanding should be true for all people, it certainly ought to be true for any of us who would claim to be Christian.

Voices in the Crowd: Part II

A couple of years ago I posted a bit of raw biblical analysis and a hymn, relating to Palm Sunday. The following is the sermon that went with those two items...

I think that we often miss the point with Palm Sunday, we think of it as a story for the children, we think of it as a simple story, a story of celebration, a story with humility, a happy story before the tough times leading up to the crucifixion. It is a moment of affirmation before the trouble starts, but it is perhaps not quite the story we think it is.

There is politics and complexity in the mix of this story.

There are four versions of this story in the four Gospels, but more than 4 voices being heard within those stories. The four gospel versions aren't simply four different people's accounts of the events. There are places where the versions cross over, places where they are identical and places where they are completely different. And in these variations perhaps we may be hearing echoes of the voices from the crowd who were there on that day.

These days we get used to the idea that even if you weren't at a particular event you will hear about it. It will be on the television, in the news paper, it will be posted on the internet, and someone will have taken photographs. If it was a big enough event, then there will be a record of the event somewhere, there will have been live coverage so you can probably buy the DVD. But back in the days of Jesus the only people who experienced that event, were the ones who were there. So the versions of the story that we have are very interesting. And they are interesting as much for how they differ as how they are similar.

 

Luke and John start their versions with a little introduction, but unlike all the others, John starts with the crowd and not with the disciples. John is interested in the public viewpoint.

Matthew, Mark and Luke spend a fair amount of time talking about Jesus sending the disciples off to find the donkey, they seem particularly interested in the fact that Jesus knew where to find the donkey, this is one of several slides that would have covered that aspect of the story had I included them all.

John doesn't talk about how the disciples are involved in this elaborate plot of finding the donkey, he is more interested in the quote from Zechariah 9:9, which is also quoted slightly differently by Matthew, who for some reason that I don't know about is set on there being both a donkey and a colt, but Matthew always wants to root his account in Jewish history and the inclusion of the prophetic words make sense in that light. I suspect that John was less interested in the idea that Jesus knew where the donkey was, and more interested in the thought that he would have known that quote before he chose to enter the city in this way, and the crowd would have known that too - and the temple priests would definitely have known that quote and the implications of these actions. This may have been a humble entry to the city, but it wasn't a naïve one. It was a calculated and dangerous move by Jesus, the eventual outcome was inevitable.


As for the bit about the palms, the reason why we call this Palm Sunday, the strange thing is that with four accounts we only have one mention of the palm branches. Matthew mark and Luke give us the spreading of cloaks on the road, Matthew and Mark also give us the branches, but only John mentions palm trees. None of that is particularly significant in itself, but this section in particular shows us the diversity of voices that seem to have contributed to this story and what that tells us about what draws those voices together.
 

It is Luke alone concentrates on the disciples praising God for the miracles, which is interesting because it is Luke who later picks up the political thread and runs with it.

 

And so we then turn to psalm 118 that we heard earlier. Matthew, Mark and John quote the Hosanna from verse 25, which translates as 'save us' or 'save please' and it is the only place in the Old Testament that the word is spoken. It is a cry for help but it is followed by the words blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and so over the years between the writing of the psalm and its being quoted in the accounts of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, the meaning has shifted from 'save please' to something more like - 'salvation has come'.

Matthew of course wants to put Jesus into the context of the Old Testament narrative, so we have the hosanna to the son of David, whereas Luke interestingly offers no hosannas at all, perhaps because its meaning would have been obscure to his non Jewish readers.

 

They all follow with the next line of psalm 118 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. John's opening line about the crowd suggests that they were at least partly aware of the political impact that this arrival might have. When we realise that the crowd is quoting Psalm 118 we cannot avoid the probability that all four writers are believe the crowd was all too aware of the political overtones to this event, and Luke further emphasises that here by putting 'the King' in the place of the 'he' from the psalm.

Mark keeps the politics slightly more ambiguous by talking about the Kingdom of our father, David, whereas John sticks to the 'he', but then hits that nail with a sledgehammer and follows up with 'blessed is the king of Israel'.


Matthew and Mark give us more hosannas, this time 'hosannas in the highest heaven', but Luke replaces the hosanna with peace and glory, emphasising again his mission to gentiles who would have been unfamiliar with much of the meaning of the psalm.

 

 

Interestingly - each gospel arrives at a different conclusion.

Matthew is interested in the effect this event has had on the crowd, and the idea that they want to know who he is.

Mark - is not interested in reflection, he's onto the next thing. As if to say, you can reflect in your own time - I've got a story to tell.

Luke draws our attention to the inevitable friction that is now building up between the religious leaders and the crowd - at this moment, it looks as if a political revolution might be in the air. But John has moved his attention from the crowd, to the disciples and the fact that they didn't understand what was going on until after the resurrection.

John highlights the fact that the disciples didn't get what was happening, even though the crowd seems to get it, and the Pharisees, from a very different angle, also seem to get it. Matthew Mark and Luke concentrate on the inside story of the disciples and they get caught up in the tale of the finding of the donkey. Luke hones in on the political unrest but it's only John who begins with the crowd and it's only John who realises how much the disciples have missed the point.

This story is full of complexity, politics and it paints a picture of a potentially really dangerous situation. And what we see in this moment is Jesus laying his cards on the table. He is saying I am not here to be subordinate to the system, I'm not ignoring the system nor am I throwing it out, I am taking heed of the scripture, the tradition and the power structures, but I'm also declaring myself as leader, as bringer of salvation - humble, yes, but in charge.

Yet the thing he does next is to allow himself to be arrested. He doesn't take on that leadership, not in the way that our earthly political structures would expect him to do. There is no revolution, there is no political uprising - what comes next is something for us to reflect upon in holy week, but for now I want us to reflect on the way that the disciples eyes were fixed inwards on the activities within their group. They lacked the understanding of the politics, the way that the scriptures interacted with the political powder keg of 1st Century Jerusalem. They didn't get the way that the tensions between the Roman Empire, the Jewish religious leaders and the crowds in Jerusalem were likely to explode at any moment. They didn't see that the world was changing around them and the at Jesus was giving them salvation not just for eternity but also for now, not just salvation for the next world but also a plan of how God's people ought to move through the complex changes that were happening around them.

I wonder how much that might be our problem today, are we so focussed in on our churches and the way we do things, that we are unable to see what God is teaching us through what is happening out there in the world. Are we concentrating on how we get the donkey and missing why the donkey was there in the first place. Do we come and celebrate our God but fail to see what our God is doing? Do we see the miraculous wonders that God has done for us, but miss how those things fit into the bigger more volatile and complex picture of the world around us?

This is God's world, and we are God's people. We should perhaps from time to time, just like John did, look first to the crowd outside in the streets, to listen to the voices in the crowd, to find out what it is that God is doing and plans to do with us.

What do we mean by Church?

What do we mean by Church?

This was the subject of a recent lent group meeting I led. It might seem like a simple question with an obvious answer, but nothing could be further from the truth. Let's think first about some of the different meanings that we attach to the word;

1. The whole people of the Christian faith: "The Church of Christ, in every age..."(F. Pratt Green), "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Jesus).

2. A specific group of Christians: "Our church is growing", "I've been part of/going to this church for most of my life"

3. The people of the Christian faith in a particular place: (often coupled with the name of the denomination, the name of a saint and/or the type of area ): e.g. Somewhereton Methodist Church,  'Somewhereton Parish Church', 'Saint Somebody's Church of Somewhereton'

4. A specific denomination of Christians: e.g. Methodist Church, Anglican Church, Baptist Church, Pentecostal etc.

5. The gathering of Christians for the purpose of worship: "On Sunday I am going to Church"

6. The building in which Christians gather. "This church is a good example of neo-classical architecture", "the church roof needs repairs" 

7. The room or sanctuary within that building where worship is normally held: "Shall we have the meeting in the hall or the church?", "After a series of conversations in separate rooms we will gather again in the church for prayer."

8. The distinction between established and free church congregations: "Are you church or chapel?"

9. The leadership, clergy or governing body of the Christian community, either locally or globally: "The Church has decided...", "You are under the discipline of the church", "After many years working in business he decided to enter the Church"

• How many of these meanings do you use? 
• How many have you heard in conversation? 
• What meanings are missing from this list?

It's easy to differentiate between some usages of the word 'church', others may need some clarification; 

We can talk about local 'church' and global 'Church' - that's no problem. 

'The Baptist Church' is the part of the whole Church that call themselves Baptist. However if you are standing in a particular town and you say ' I like the Baptist Church', someone might think you mean the specific Baptist Church in their town as opposed to the Methodist or Anglican etc. rather than the Baptist Church globally or nationally. 

If we talk about Somewhereton Methodist Church, we know that we are talking about the congregation of Methodists in Somewhereton. However we might mean the building rather than the congregation.

'Church or chapel' could refer to buildings, but really it is a historic hangover from a time when the Church of England was seen as the proper church, and Methodists in particular were seen as for the lower/working classes. There are benefits for Methodists in being seen as the rebel, as sticking up for the working class, as not being the posh or established Church, but really it's an unhealthy and confusing distinction that in my opinion needs to be retired. Is this something you encounter much and how do you feel about it?

There are many other areas we could explore further, but I want to concentrate for a moment on the distinction between church as building and church as the people - and in particular the hidden dangers of maintaining the confusion within our language. Most Christians will tell you, if pressed for an answer, that the church is the people not the building, would you? Knowing that is one thing, but our language often betrays the truth that we are still confused about the issue. Our use of words also feeds our theology. We say the people are the Church, but we still talk about 'going to Church', we still talk about 'going home from church' at the 'end of church'.

Part of the confusion comes from the notion that the church is not just people, but the 'gathered people'. As we gather in a building so the building get's muddled with the notion of the gathering. There is a subtle but important difference between 'going to church' (by which we often mean worship) and 'going to the church' (by which we are more likely to mean going to the building).

Either way, the directional nature of our language implies that the community of believers only exists as the church when they are in the building.  If we mean the community of believers then it is not somewhere we can go, but something of which we are constantly a part. If we mean the community of believers then it is not somewhere we go, but something we are constantly a part of. When we speak of going to church It denies the missional, called out and sent out nature of the Church and it denies the importance of house groups, groups that meet in pubs, cafés, open fields and office buildings. When we speak of Church as the calling, sending, transforming community that engages with the deepest issues of the world - when we truly believe that to be the case, that deeper understanding of what Church is, makes the notion of 'going to' it nonsensical. 

There are some ironies about how we got to this place of confusion. The first irony is that the Greek word, Ekklesia, which we translate from the New Testament as church, literally means 'called out'. Yes, there is a notion of people being called to a gathering within that word, but the direction is 'out' - called out from our homes, called out from the mundane and the ordinary, called out to something special. The second irony is that the word 'church' doesn't originate from ekklesia itself but from another Greek word, 'kyriakos' - literally 'the lord's thing'. Some early communities of Christians started calling the places where they met kyriakos, which over time and translation into different languages became church. The translation of ekklesia to 'church' has not always been standard in English. Whilst, Wycliffe, Geneva, Douay and the KJV all translate ekklesia as 'church' or 'chirche', Tyndale, Coverdale and Bishop's translated as 'congregacion' or 'congregation'. There are more language questions to explore, like what 'words are used in the Old Testament for assemblies?' and 'what does synagogue mean?' but for now let me leave you with these more general questions;

• What effect does these language problems have on our discipleship as congregations?
• How does it affect the way that non Christians view 'the church'?
• What do you mean when you say church?
• What words might you use to clarify between building and people?
• Should we change the words we use and what different words might you choose?

An Alternative Covenant Service with Small Groups

Covenant Service With Communion and Small Groups

With small groups - based on the sending out of the 72 (Luke 10)

First used at Thornbury Methodist Church 11am on 15th Jan 2017

Introduction

This service combines covenant, communion and small groups.

It wraps the communion elements around the service and seeks to weave the biblical text, the liturgy, the singing of hymns, our conversations about faith and the story of the last supper, into one coherent narrative.

The room is set with a communion table in the centre, surrounded by chairs in six petal like groups. Each group has an opening towards the centre of the room to give access to the table. There is also a gap for people to enter and exit the space.  

Each petal has one of six focus themes;

A&P:    Assets & Presence group

D&L:    Discipleship & Learning group

E&E:    Engagement & Evangelism group

R:         Resourcing group

S&C:    Service & Care group

W:       Worship group

The above colour coded abbreviations will be helpful later in the service where each group will have the opportunity to make different contributions to the covenant liturgy.

People may select their focus group based on their interests in specific aspects of church life. This choice may be made prior to the service or on arrival. It is more important to have a balance of people in the different groups than to worry too much about being in the right group. No doubt we all have at least some interest in all of the six focus themes.

The bread is in the form of three rolls and the wine is in small cups set in bowls that can be handed to the six groups to share.

 

The Covenant Communion Small Group Service

Welcome to this covenant service, communion and exploration of our new vision.

Hymn: StF 401 Come Sinners to the Gospel Feast - Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

Presider: This is our covenant service - A covenant is a promise, a binding together, a commitment to the work of God's eternal kingdom. It is a contract without clauses.

Reader 1: With Noah the rainbow served as a sign of a covenant that God made with all life on Earth

Reader 2: With Abraham God made a covenant to make him a father of nations and make his descendants as numerous as the stars.

Reader 3: With Moses that covenant was upheld in the exodus from slavery and the sharing of God's law on Mt Sinai - Moses marked the renewing of that covenant in the offering of a sacrifice. He took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the LORD has said; we will obey.”

Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” And seventy or so Elders went back up the mountain to meet with God.

Presider: In the years that followed, many prophets spoke of a time when God's law would no longer be in a book, but in the hearts of God's people and of a time when the sacrifice of God's creatures would no longer be required. A time when a new covenant would be made between God and God's people.

Many year later Jesus and his disciples came to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover festival - where they remembered the time when, through God's guidance, Moses brought them out of captivity in Egypt. The sacrificial lambs were brought to the temple in memory of the Exodus.

As part of the celebration Jesus and his disciples joined together in a traditional meal in an upper room that they had hired for the occasion; a meal of thanksgiving for their freedom.

Raising a cup, the presider says;

And so today we proclaim good news to the poor;
Freedom for prisoners
A vision for those who have not seen,
And a lifting of the burdens of the oppressed

Amen - thanks be to God

The Israelites celebrated their freedom, but their freedom was not complete; it was temporary and rooted in earthly promises.

A new covenant was to be made there in that room by Jesus. Moses, was a man, speaking the words of God. But Jesus was God in human form;

Here in this [upper] room, just as Jesus did there in that upper room on the night before he died, we break bread together.

Jesus said "This is my body which is... (The bread is broken) ...for you"

This is said three times as the three rolls are broken into six halves.
The bread is received by one person from each of the six groups and shared to each person.

In the breaking of this bread; we are broken;
Like the body of Christ; we are broken
And as we share in his self sacrifice; so we are remade in the image of God Amen

We eat the bread together

As we submit to be broken and remade as a community in the image of God, so we find ourselves more deeply rooted in Christ than we were before.

Jesus said  “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

These were more than just interesting words, or disconnected theory. This connectedness was a central part of how Jesus worked out his ministry.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke we hear that;

Reader 1: First Jesus went around teaching from village to village calling the twelve to him. After this he appointed seventy-two others and sent them ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He sent them out two by two  and he gave them power and authority to drive out demons and to cure diseases,

These were his instructions:

Reader2: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.

Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. First say, ‘Peace to this house.'  If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.

Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."

Reader 1: So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.

Presider: We seek to echo that pattern of discipleship in the way we  share in worship today.

A prayer is said, leading into conversations within the groups

The following or another topic is discussed in the groups;

'What does covenant mean to you?'

·       Is there a line or section of the covenant service you find particularly important/challenging?

·       How might you relate the covenant to your group focus?

Presider: As we enter into our renewal of the covenant, let's first share together in our prayers of confession;

Lord we make our confession and we ask for your forgiveness

A&P:    For when we have squandered the gifts you have given us and hidden our light from the world - forgive us

D&L:    For when we have been reluctant to learn more of you and allow you deeper into our hearts - Forgive us

E&E:    For when we have been hesitant to share your Gospel and afraid to hear your truth in the context of people's real lives - forgive us

R:         For when we have held our ownership of things above our love for you - forgive us

S&C:    For when we have been slow to carry and lighten the burdens of our fellow human beings - Forgive us

W:       For when we have been resistant to come to you and rest or have lost the passion of our worship in the busy work of ritual - forgive us.

Forgive us lord and show us mercy.
Re-graft us into your vine
that we may be truly one with you.
As we have broken bread and received its nourishment,
so we have been broken
and are ready to receive your forgiveness.
Amen. Thanks be to God.

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

let us renew our commitment to this covenant which God has made with us and with all who are called to be Christ's disciples.

We are valued as individuals and part of the body of Christ.
Each of us have God given gifts which we are called to put to use.
We are called to celebrate and nurture each other's gifts
without jealousy or the expectation
for any one person to be the same as another.
We are called to bear the burdens of each other's weaknesses,
as well as to live with and learn from our own.
Some parts of God's mission call us to work at the rock face
of our own fears, failures and limitations;
to work against the current of our own river.
Some call us to go with the flow, to be carried like a leaf on the wind. Some call us to go with the flow of the ways of life that surrounds us, others call us to stand defiantly like a dam across the water or to wade upstream against  the flow.

And all this can be done if we are rooted in God through Christ, the true vine and nourished by God's holy spirit.

So let's make this covenant with God our own.
Let's give ourselves to God
as individuals and as a community of faith,

A&P:    As good stewards of God's earth and representatives of God's kingdom.
D&L:    As lifelong learners about God's ways.
E&E:    As bearers of Christ's message and people who listen with prophetic ears.
R:         As people who know that all good things come from God.
S&C:    As servants to those who are in need.
W:       As the people who long to gather in your name.

trusting in God's promises and relying on God's grace.

All who feel able, stand

Eternal God,
in your faithful and enduring love
you call us to share in your new covenant
made through Jesus Christ.
In love we seek to do your will;
We are no longer our own but yours.

I am no longer my own but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,
wherever you may place me,
in all that I do and in all that I may endure;
when there is work for me and when there is none;
when I am troubled and when I am at peace.
Your will be done
when I am valued and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfilment and when it is lacking;
when I have all things and when I have nothing.

 I willingly offer all I have and am
to serve you, as and where you choose.

Glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
May it be so forever.
Let this covenant now made on earth
be fulfilled in heaven. Amen.

all sit

As we have entered this covenant not for ourselves alone,
but as part of God's witness throughout the world, let's pray for the
Church and for the world.
Loving God, hear us as we pray for your Church throughout the world:

make us all one, that the world may believe.

Inspire and lead all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world:

establish justice and peace among all people.

Have compassion on all who suffer from any sickness, grief or trouble:

deliver them from their distress.

We praise you for all your saints who have entered your eternal glory:

bring us all to share in your heavenly kingdom.

Let us pray in silence for our own needs and for those of others...

Silence

Lord our God,
We have made our promises and you have made yours,
you know when we will uphold our part
and when we will fall down.
We have made our prayers and you have heard us.
Only you know how best to answer these prayers,
but grant that we may know what our part should be
in putting into action your answers to our prayers.
And may we remain in you through all eternity,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Presider: From the days of Leviticus right up to the time of Jesus, when the priests made sacrifices, they said that no one should drink the blood, because it contained the spirit of the animal, which was poured out for the sins of the people. It was thought that the life force from the fire on the altar would carry the spirit of the creature back to God.

When Jesus offered himself as sacrifice on the cross, he declared an end to this kind of sacrifice because his spirit was to be poured out for the forgiveness of all sins for all time. This was not the spirit of one of God's creatures, but the spirit of God himself being poured out for all people

The wine is poured from the central cup into a Kiddush cup

and there in that upper room he poured out the wine as his spirit would be poured out to all people.

The wine is received by one person from each of the six groups and shared to each person

Knowing what was about to happen, at the end of the meal he took the cup gave thanks and gave it to his disciples, asking them to drink from it, as he asks us to drink from it today - and as we do, let's imagine that this is his life force which is about to be poured out for us, to seal the new covenant which God is continuing to make with all people.

This is God's spirit poured out for all for the forgiveness of sins. Amen

We all drink from the cups.

Jesus told his disciples to do this whenever they meet to remember him.

John's Gospel tells us that after the meal Jesus washed their feet, and insisted that they washed each other's feet, a humble act of service. It is above all things our call to serve each other as Christ has served us and to serve those who have not yet known Christ, just as once we did not know Christ.

We can serve each other and the world in the breaking down of things in our lives, churches and communities that have become stuck in wrong ways, or become unable to move and grow as they should. And in that breaking down, God's spirit is once again free to be poured out to all people.

This is what we are called to do in remembrance of Jesus.

Prayer

We say together

Lord God we are bound together in you and with each other;
we have been fed by you and are ready to take this life giving sustenance out into the streets.
As Christ sent out the twelve and the seventy two,
so send us out today, broken and remade in your image.
May your spirit which has been poured out to us,
flow through us that she may be present to those we encounter.

Amen

The offering is taken up during the following hymn

Hymn: StF 415 The Church of Christ - Fred Pratt Green (1903–2000)

Presider: It may well have been customary to end such a meal with the agreement to meet again in Jerusalem next year at the Passover, but having previously told them that he was the vine and they were his branches, Jesus said 'I won't share in the fruits of this vine until I see you again in the Kingdom.'

So, until we meet again, we do this in remembrance of Jesus who awaits the opportunity to share this meal with us in the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen

Go with God's blessing out into the world which God created

We share the grace;

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with us all evermore.
Amen.

 

Main Bible passages referenced in this service:

Genesis 9:8-17

Genesis 17:1-5

Genesis 26:1

Exodus 2:23-25

Exodus 24:3-11
Leviticus 17:10-12

Deuteronomy 29:9-15

Matthew 10:1-16

Matt 26:17-30

Mark 6:6b-13

Mark 14:12-26

Luke 9:1-6

Luke 10:1-3

Luke 10:1-12

Luke 22:7-38

John 13:1-17

John15:9-101

Corinthians 11:17-33