Theology

Day fourteen of forty…Freedom

Posted by David Ward on 23/02/2016
Posted in: Lent, Personal thoughts, Spirituality, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

 Back in the days when I was invited into schools to talk about Christianity from a personal perspective I sometimes challenged someone in the class to pay a game of noughts and crosses (I think some people call it Tic Tac Toe). The only thing was…there were no rules. It didn’t take long for moves to become increasingly creative as each player tried to outdo the opponent. It also became increasingly frustrating as the realisation dawned that no-one could ever win and the game dragged on.

Religion can be a terrible thing. Rules and laws are put in place to help us, to keep us safe and to make the world run the way it should. A world without laws would be a scary and uncertain place.

But it’s all too easy for rules to become weapons in the hands of those who seek power or of those who are too afraid to be free and allow others to be the same.

10] On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, [11] and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. [12] When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” [13] Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. [14] Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” [15] The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? [16] Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” [17] When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Luke 13:10-17 NIV

Jesus loved the scriptures and lived out the Law of God, but when it came to living he drew from his relationship with the Father and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. He knew only too well that if we cling to the laws rather than the one who gave them we swiftly run the risk of becoming set in our ways, judgemental of all who disagree, and using the very laws that God gave for our good and our freedom to enslave, label and exclude.

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, [13] and to observe the Lord ’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?”

Deuteronomy 10:12-13 NIV

“What Jesus had done for that poor woman was what he longed to do for the whole of Israel, to set her free from her rigid rules, her exclusiveness, her oppression of the poor. His message of the kingdom was the great explosion Israel needed to free her from her slavery to conservatism.”

John Pritchard, “The Journey” p 36

Today Jesus still longs for Israel’s freedom, so that they may truly represent the God who loves them…and I suspect that may have extended to the church and the whole world too!

Day thirteen of forty…Grace

Posted by David Ward on 22/02/2016
Posted in: Lent, Personal thoughts, Poverty and debt, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

In Jesus day the prevailing opinion was that if something bad happened to you it was because you were a bad person. Whilst it is true that sin always has consequences…often for the victim, the innocent party, as much as the perpetrator…it is also undeniable that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

[1] … Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. [2] Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? [3] I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. [4] Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? [5] I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

[6] Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. [7] So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ [8] “ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilise it. [9] If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

Luke 13: 1-9 (NIV)

Even today we often find a leftover of that old attitude. I remember that once my wife and I became aware that Jesus was warning us, in our prayers and our reading of scripture, that we were about to have a rocky time in our lives, but assured us of his friendship through it all. Wendy, who used to be a canoe instructor, had a dream about us going over a waterfall in a Canadian canoe. At the bottom all our stuff was in the water, floating away down the river, but there was a man on the bank who was intent on our rescue, and although the dream ended there, she woke with the assurance that everything would be OK.

Before too long, a set of circumstances caused us to lose income, our rented home, to have to give up our dogs to a rescue, to sell most of our furniture and to begin a time of living with another family, who kindly gave us a place to live.

Some people in our church could not believe we had done nothing wrong because the bad things happened. The idea that God had warned us in advance, and was with us in it was a bridge too far for their theology. There had to be some hidden sin that we hadn’t come clean about.

After six months everything turned around. We both had secure, well-paying jobs. We were able to get a mortgage and buy our own house and replace our furniture. Jesus had kept his promise.

Among the many lessons we learned was this: without the assurance of the dream it would have been so easy for us to slip into the mindset that says, I’m a good person. I’ve done nothing wrong. Why is this happening to me…I don’t deserve it!”

Good things, bad things…ultimately they are all a consequence of living in a world that has turned it’s back on a God who loves and longs for a reconciliation. God’s patience gives us multiple opportunities to acknowledge our need of forgiveness and help to be the sort of people we were made to be. 

None of us really deserves anything good…it’s a wonder we get so much.

That’s grace.

Remember!

Posted by David Ward on 20/08/2015
Posted in: Community, Personal thoughts, Prayer and liturgy, Spirituality, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Communion bread and wine

Today I shared in the special “Remember me” meal that Jesus told us to share in for the first time in a very long time.

Although I haven’t been completely ‘church-less’ since the last time, I’ve shared in worship with the Salvation Army, who, for very understandable historical reasons, don’t celebrate communion, and although the small group that we meet with regularly loves to share food and drink together, as far as I can remember we’ve never shared that meal.

I joined the celebration at the home of the Northumbria Community, of which I used to be a very committed part, and to which I have been drawn again in the way that our life’s journey so often takes us back to places where we started out.

The tiny chapel was filled with members of the house team and people on retreat for a week or a day (like me). Many of us were complete strangers to each other, our state of grace, our joys and our struggles an irrelevant unknown as we shared a hug or handshake of peace and muttered words of blessing, some polite, some intimate. We ate from the same loaf and drank the same wine. Together we remembered the same Jesus, whatever our relationship to him might be.

Rachel Held Evans writes about the many and varied ways that we celebrate communion/Eucharist/the Lord’s Supper/Mass/the breaking of bread, with bread, crackers, special wafers, using wine, grape juice or squash from ornate chalice, Styrofoam cup or miniature plastic cups. The atmosphere, she says, may be celebratory or somber, with organ music, guitars and drums or Gregorian chants.

Then she writes:

“But in every tradition I know, someone, at some point, says, “Remember.”

Remember how God became one of us? Remember how God ate with us and drank with us, laughed with us and cried with us? Remember how God suffered for us, and died for us, and gave his life for the life of the world? Remember? Remember?” From “Searching for Sunday”

I also remember other communions I have shared in…standing in a circle in a prison chapel (I was a visitor!) drinking from the same cup as violent criminals, thieves and sex offenders (When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”)…the climax to rowdy, fun-filled youth weekends…in a black township church in Zimbabwe where the local white Christians never went…with people I’ve been leading on retreat, where suddenly the work that God is doing in a life comes together in a moment of challenge and resolution as the body and blood of Jesus are shared in that oh so familiar but ever powerful meal.

What a graphic demonstration of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ…

“See his body, his blood – know that he has overcome
Every trial we will face.
None too lost to be saved, none too broken or ashamed;
All are welcome in this place.”
Matt Redman “Remembrance”

There’s something very special about this very physical act of remembering Jesus…with food and drink, taste and smell and being together as the body of Christ.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, [Jesus] did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself . . . ‘Do this,’ he said—not believe this but do this—‘ in remembrance of me.’ ” From “An Altar in the World”

The early followers of Jesus took this command very seriously. They made this special meal a central part of every gathering together, large and small in homes and public buildings.

As I sat in the tiny chapel of the Northumbria Community, listening to the sounds of nature and the crackle of the wood-burner, and studying the faces of my fellow celebrants by the flickering light of myriad tea-lights and candles’ I was almost bursting with anticipation as I waited for communion to begin. I deeply regret having been absent from the ‘remember me meal’ for so long.