BST

I am always very relieved when the clocks go forward and the past couple of days the Hosier Clan have been enjoying the weather forecast being wrong and the bright sunshine we have had rather than the predicted rain. Last night we had our first sundowners at Evening Hill. This is a beautiful viewpoint overlooking Poole Harbour and a great place to sit and drink hot chocolate as the sun dips below the hills.


Today we had a fantastic walk from Swanage to Dancing Ledge. We saw three adders out enjoying the sun. Two of them were at Tilly Whim caves, which is a well known snake-spotting-spot. The third was further along the coast path, and I managed to pick him up, which amused the children (although not my wife). Everything had that "first really sunny day of spring" feel about it, with life practically oozing out of every plant. The smell of the freshly sprouting nettles was so intoxicating that all the kids tried eating some, and didn't even get too stung in the process!

We have also had the perverse pleasure of getting into conversation with holiday makers and, to their question of where we are from, smugly responding with "We live here."

Its tough in Dorset!

FACEBOOK SUICIDE

I always knew Facebook was a passing fad, and today I deactivated my account. Life is full enough without another e-box to check. So now I am among the ranks of smug ex-Facebookers, only slightly less smug than those who have never Facebooked at all. Its probably time for another computer fast as well, to really test the limits of my freedom. I can feel those e-shakes coming on...

MONEY 8: DEADLY SIN

Six years ago I preached a series on the Seven Deadly Sins (Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust). It was fun!

Recently I picked up a book called Sinning Like A Christian: A new look at the seven deadly sins by William H. Willimon. Willimon is one of those now all too rare things, an American Methodist bishop who actually believes the gospel. He is also a cracking writer, with a nice ironic touch and long pastoral experience. He is good at identifying the human dilemma, and in his chapter on Greed does a nice job of describing the knife-edge on which we teeter between “needs” and “wants”:

We really do need clothing that protects us from the cold, but we also appear really to need clothing that adorns the body and is attractive. Something about us needs a beautiful space in which to praise so beautiful a God. The line between need and desire gets thin.

I certainly do not need the computer wherewith I write these words. For nearly two decades I wrote well enough without one; maybe I wrote better, for all I know. I didn’t need to give Bill Gates this much money just to enable me to write books.

What am I saying? Of course I need a computer! And a fast one with lots of memory, too. And wireless Internet connections. My life has changed considerably for the better because of this machine. Just let it go on the blink and you will find me out pacing back and forth in front of me neighborhood computer repair shop, begging some computer nerd to save my life by fixing this machine, no matter what it costs.

I have known Christians who take great Pride (yes, that’s the word for it, Pride) that they wear old clothes and, even though might afford better, drive old cars without air conditioning. That they make such an effort to live a conspicuously “simple lifestyle” demonstrates we human beings are incurably symbol-making creatures who need to adorn ourselves with signs and symbols that make us human. When does our need for that ever expanding “more” of life become too much? When does the desire for the abundant life become the life that is jerked around by grubby Greed? I expect that you know better when I cross that line than when you trip over it.

It is this knife-edge difference that makes hypocrisy and pharisaism constant threats when we try to eye-ball greed. But eye-ball it we must. Willimon goes on to describe how our limitless capacity for Desire quickly becomes a bottomless sense of Need, and that in our democratized, rights-based culture our Needs soon become Rights. It takes real courage to at some point say, “No.”

There have been a steady stream of reports about the damage unchecked consumerism is doing to our children, the most recent of which was a warning from teachers of the difficulties of teaching a generation who have never been told “No.”

I guess for each of us the question is at what point we say “No” to ourselves (or to our children)? And how good are we at letting others help us see when we are tripping over the line?

WAR & PEACE

After several months of off-and-on reading I have still not quite finished Karl Barth’s volume on baptism, but the section I read this morning was a good one. I like this paragraph:

Confirmed in baptism are God’s No and God’s Yes to man: God’s warfare victoriously conducted in Jesus Christ against an old, corrupt humanity under sentence of death; God’s conclusion of peace with the new humanity which has come on the scene in Jesus Christ, which serves God, and which is destined for eternal life.

I like the strength of that statement. It is far too easy for us to sanitise the cross and forget that it was an act of warfare. Without this war there could have been no lasting peace. This lends a significance to baptism that takes it way beyond a mere social convention – it is the point at which we publicly declare that God’s war has been won for us and that in Him we have found our eternal peace.

Easter is a great time to get baptised! We had five baptisms at Alder Road on Sunday and it was a beautiful thing to hear each person being baptised testify to the grace of God in their lives – God’s victorious warfare and conclusion of peace.

Phil and Adrian have also got encouraging Easter baptism reports, so check those out too.

RACIAL POLITICS

The US Presidential election is fascinating to observe from this side of the pond, revealing that despite our many similarities there are massive cultural differences between America and the UK/Europe. While the tone of the oft-repeated clips of Jeremiah Wright might seem shocking, the sentiments are very commonly expressed in the British media, so it is a shock to us that it should so shock our American friends.

Anyway, whatever your views on Obama and Hilary and McCain, I think this speech on race by Obama is about the best political speech I have ever heard - it is a brilliantly paced brew of personal story, cultural dissection, emotional appeal, and proves that politics doesn't have to be boring:



Perhaps the most surprising thing about this for a British "we don't do God" audience is that a politician should speak so openly about his faith. This clip lasts 35 minutes, but is worth the time.

EATING THE WORD, 7

I will make this the last post on the Bible for a while. Rather than blog about it, I need to go and do it! And that is the thing about the word – it demands a response. Perhaps that is the reason why many of us find the Bible so difficult to read – we prefer things that don’t make demands of us. Generally speaking books are easier to handle than people, because books don’t make the same demands of us:

Many of us prefer words written to words spoken. It is simpler, we are more in control, we don’t have to deal with the complexities of difficult, neurotic, or insufferably boring people. If we don’t like what we are reading we can shut the book and pick up another – or go shopping, or take a walk, or spend an hour or so in the garden.

The trouble with the Bible is that when we shut it and try to ignore it, we are not merely putting down a book. In a real sense we are shutting ourselves to a person, to God.

Peterson says that we have been taught the “hermeneutics of suspicion” by the likes of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. We are sceptical and cynical about everything and everyone. We might never have read a word of Nietzsche, Marx or Freud, but their teachings permeate every aspect of our culture. Rather than feeding ourselves on the toxin-laden bread of our culture we need to eat the word, because what the Bible teaches us is a “hermeneutics of adoration” – it enables us to “see how large, how splendid, how magnificent life is.” In the Bible we see God and the largeness of his story; and we are compelled to worship.

Eat the word!

EATING THE WORD, 6

The world of the bible is staggeringly large. We are mistaken when we try and get the bible to fit the world, making it “relevant.” Rather, it is the world that needs to fit the word! I like this statement by Peterson:

What we are after is first noticing and then participating in the way the large world of the Bible absorbs the much smaller world of our science and economics and politics that provides the so-called world-view in which we are used to working out our daily concerns.

So often what dominates our thinking are things of the briefest significance – things that really are “here today, gone tomorrow.” And even the largest things going on in our world are temporary and passing. On the 17th March last year the news was dominated by the cash for honours controversy – but I wouldn’t have remembered that without googling it. In contrast, the world of the bible is eternally relevant. It supersizes any story the world tries to tell. It teaches us to see the hand of God working through history and through our lives.

We see this most clearly in the Easter story. The religious and political powers thought they were controlling the shots, but really God was in control:

In this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place (Acts 4:27-28).

I love the news, but it won’t feed me. I need to eat the word, and allow it to shape my world.

EATING THE WORD, 5

This week we have been moving the church office into what used to be the manse. I now have a desk to sit at and the staff team has a massively improved working environment. It also means that I have at last been able to unpack my books, which have been languishing in boxes the past three months.

While going through my books I found some notes I wrote for a talk at my house group thirteen years ago about the Reformer Nicholas Ridley. Ridley was one of the Oxford martyrs, burned at the stake in 1555. Alongside him was Hugh Latimer, who uttered the famous words: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out!”

Shortly before his death, Ridley wrote a Farewell, which included memories of his time at University: “In thy orchard (the walls, butts, and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness), I learned without book almost all Paul’s Epistles… Of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof, I trust, I shall carry with me into heaven: for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my life-time ever after.”

Scripture memorisation has always been an area of “selective sluggardliness” for me. It is not something that I have applied myself to with sufficient discipline. Always having a bible to hand can mean that memorising chapter and verse seems unnecessary. But when we face the fires – whether literal or metaphorical – having instant recall of God’s word will feed us like nothing else.

In our family devotions the past couple of days we have been trying to memorise Psalm 46. It is hard work for me, but so much easier for my kids. Daughter No. 3 is especially brilliant at it. She seems to be able to get things down at the first attempt – the advantage of a young brain. But whether we are age six, or 37 (or 97!), we need to feed on the word, and carry its sweet smell into heaven.

EATING THE WORD, 4

Reading the Bible isn't meant to be easy.

The Bible is a big mouthful. It is full of answers, but it throws up just as many questions. It is comforting, but at the same time discomforting. In John’s Revelation an angel instructs him to eat a scroll containing words of prophecy, “about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” When John does so, “It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.” The bible often does taste bitter in the stomach. It unsettles us. We can’t domesticate it. Eugene Peterson says, “Eat this book, but also have a well-stocked cupboard of Alka-Seltzer at hand.”

EATING THE WORD, 3

As we approach Easter we should be reminded of the story of our faith. It is a vast story! The greatest story! We are caught up in an amazing narrative that explains why things are as they are, and points to how things will be. The story of Jesus is the story of creation and sin, of rebellion and reconciliation, of redemption and inheritance. How tragic when we read the Bible not as a window on to this story but as a rule book or lucky dip.

Eugene Peterson puts it like this:

Unfortunately, we live in an age in which story has been pushed from its biblical frontline prominence to a bench on the sidelines and then condescended to as “illustration” or “testimony” or “inspiration.” Our contemporary unbiblical preference, both inside and outside the church, is for information over story. We typically gather impersonal (pretentiously called “scientific” or “theological”) information, whether doctrinal or philosophical or historical, in order to take things into our own hands and take charge of how we will live our lives. And we commonly consult outside experts to interpret the information for us. But we don’t live our lives by information; we live them in relationships in the context of a personal God who cannot be reduced to a formula or definition, who has designs on us for justice and salvation… I want to hold out for travelling widely in Holy Scripture. For Scripture is the revelation of a world that is vast, far larger than the sin-stunted, self-constricted world that we construct for ourselves out of a garage-sale assemblage of texts.

I want to live in this vast world, in relationship with a personal God, by the truth of His word.

MONEY 7: TITHING (AGAIN...)

I have been around churches for a long time, Do you know what the most frequently asked question about tithing is? "Do I have to tithe on the net or on the gross?" Translation: "How little can I give and not get God mad at me?" The implied question is: "How much of my stuff can I keep and not get into trouble?" This is like going to your mom on Mother's Day and saying, "Mom, what's the least amount of money I can spend on your present without severing our relationship?"

King David once said to God, "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?" He doesn't ask, "What's the least amount I have to give and not get God ticked off?" He says, "Who am I, that I should be able to give like this? I want to use my stuff to build your kingdom, not my kingdom."

From When The Game Is Over It All Goes Back In The Box by John Ortberg

EATING THE WORD, 2

The Bible was written by real people, inspired by a personal God, to be read by real people. It is not an abstract rule book or mechanistic manual. However, we often depersonalise the text by reading it for the wrong reasons: intellectual challenge, moral counsel, consolation, etc. Not that these things are always wrong, but (as Peterson puts it) they are wrong when we fail to “deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you.”

It is too easy to read the bible as a chore – something we do because we know we should and have a vague sense it will do us good, like cleaning our teeth or ironing our shirts. Reading like this is reading just to tick reading off our to-do list. But God wants to get up close and personal with us through his word.

But then we start to read the Bible personally and quickly fall into the trap of viewing it as a promise box that exists simply for our personal benefit. We replace the Trinity with an individualised trinity: “my Holy Wants, my Holy Needs, and my Holy Feelings.”

God wants to encounter us through his word, not to massage our egos but to transform us. We eat the word to become like Jesus.

EATING THE WORD

I have been skewered this week by John Piper’s comments to pastors about how they should approach the Bible. This comes on top of recently reading Eugene Peterson’s magnificent book, Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading. Peterson is brilliantly insightful about the Bible, and brilliant at describing the “Why” of reading. Reading the Bible is a problem for many Christians. It is a big book, and often complicated, daunting even. Often we don’t know how to approach it, or end up approaching it in a way that is less than helpful. As a preacher, one of my most important tasks is to exalt the God of the Bible, through explaining and expounding the Bible, but so often I feel inadequate for the role.

Feeling this fresh mixture of conviction and excitement I am planning a number of posts about reading the Bible, drawing heavily from Eat This Book.

One of the problems facing us in our approach to Scripture is that our culture has taught us that personal experience is the definitive authority for how we should live. We are all existentialists: What counts is this – what I want, what I feel, what I think. In response to this Peterson says:

I want to confront and expose this replacement of the authoritative Bible by the authoritative self. I want to place personal experience under the authority of the Bible and not over it. I want to set the Bible before us as the text by which we live our lives, this text that stands in such sturdy contrast to the potpourri of religious psychology, self-development, mystical experimentation, and devotional dilettantism that has come to characterise so much of what takes cover under the umbrella of “spirituality.”

Put the Bible at the heart and centre of all you do. Don’t just read this book. Eat it!

MONEY 6: PIPER ON PREACHING

Last week John Piper preached a sermon on preaching. The whole thing was brilliant, and challenging, but having been blogging about money recently I was particularly struck by this:

The pastoral need to raise money for budgets and missions and buildings makes its way into preaching from time to time and my aim is always to put such immediate needs in the larger context of the greatness of God and show how the main issue is whether Christ is your treasure.

Tithing is a middle class way of robbing God. The aim is not tithing, but radical, risk-taking love for the advance of the kingdom.

MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY

Having been at a men's breakfast at church this morning I was amused to come home and read this brief report in todays Telegraph:

Minister hurt tackling burglars
A church minister was left with a broken nose after he fought off two burglars in his home.
The Rev Jon Morgan, 49, a minister of the United Reformed churches in Cheltenham, punched and kicked the two men when he returned to his home on Feb 20. The former rugby scrum-half said: "One of them thumped me three times in the face. In defence I kicked the guy in the balls."

This reminded me of the occasion when Don Smith, who at that time was leading King's Church Eastbourne, happened upon someone robbing a shop. Don (who was in his 60s) intervened and the thief came at him with a broken bottle. Don knocked him out.

Enjoy Mothering Sunday tomorrow!