The Words of my Mouth

Peter Lockhart

The final words of Psalm 19, if nothing else, should cause us to fall into silence more often than we do. How does one speak in a way acceptable to God?

For about 5 years I have regularly used the words of the Psalm as the opening prayer for my sermon.

A plea to God that the words I say, the words I have crafted, the word I have considered and prayed over may be acceptable to the One who made me.

Yet despite praying these words each week I usually describe my preaching, a little cheekily, as a different heresy each week.

The words of my sermons are limited by my human frailty yet become unlimited in possibilities because of what the Holy Spirit can and might do as I seek to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Whilst this is the way I use the words of this Psalm most often these words are not simply meant to be applied to a sermon delivered by a minister. These words are a plea to God that in all our speaking we might find ourselves using words and language acceptable to God.

Imagine for a moment that during the times of anger or frustration before blurting out those grating and hurtful words you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Imagine for a moment that during those times filled with pride in a personal achievement before shouting out and boasting of your success you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Imagine for a moment that during those times of darkness and depression before moaning about life or degrading yourself you asked yourself, ‘are these words I am about to say acceptable to God?’

Words – spoken quietly or loudly.

Words – full of colour, rich with meaning.

Words – trite or serious.

Words – building up.

And words which destroy.

Words are such powerful things.

Of course the reality is that the words which we speak day by day moment by moment are most likely to be not acceptable to God.

Whether the words are spoken in ignorance or the words are spoken wilfully it is not hard for us to know so many of them, in fact probably most of them, do not give honour to the one who gave us our voices.

So where is our hope?

Paul in writing to the Philippians reminds them of the relationship between the law and faith

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”

What is being suggested here by Paul is that even if we were able to form each word and thought perfectly these would be meaningless in terms of our relationship with God because of Jesus Christ.

Yes, Jesus who walked among us and gave voice to God’s own thoughts in human words.

Jesus: who in his life, death and resurrection made us right with God!

Jesus: who promised the sending of God’s Holy Spirit, to make us one with God and each other.
Whilst our words may not be acceptable to God Jesus words were. To quote Peter in John 6, in the midst of our imperfect and incoherent babblings, we go to Jesus because he has “the words of eternal life.”

It is in listening to Jesus that we can listen to one whose words are acceptable to God and we can learn how to speak again. To borrow a phrase from Stanley Hauerwas we can learn to speak Christian: to speak of the good news knowing that whilst the words we might say will be inadequate expressions of God’s grace to trust that the Spirit will help us in our weakness as we both articulate and listen to the words of hope.

We trust that the Spirit will transform our fumbling attempts to speak Christians and to proclaim God’s love for us in Jesus day by day into a meaningful and purposeful witness. We pray that through the Spirit our words will transform others and so become acceptable to God.

To learn to speak Christian takes time and energy, the same time and energy we would put in to learning another language and another culture.

To learn the language of prayer as we read the Psalms. To discover how to tell stories as we read the parables. To discipline ourselves to prayer and meditation aware that before a word is formed on our lips God knows it.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians Paul compares himself to an athlete pursuing a goal – the prize being the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ.

When I think of the finely tuned machines of modern day athletes with their training programs and rigorous discipline, with their vitamin supplements and diet regimes I think we begin to get a picture that what Paul was talking about was throwing ourselves head long into learning the way of grace.

Disciplining ourselves to prayer and worship, committing ourselves to reading the scriptures and serving others, not to earn our salvation but to pursue with thanksgiving in our hearts the one who has saved us and maybe as we do these things to learn to speak Christian, just as Paul did, who said:

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”

Let us meditate on what God is saying to us on this day. Amen.

Little Faith.

I found myself in a dilemma this week writing the sermon. My dilemma came from a couple of different angles but primarily it arose out of a question of faith and of preaching to a group of people that I do not know that well.

In the passage that we heard from Matthew’s gospel concerning Jesus’ appearance walking on the water the issue of Peter’s faith is raised. Jesus declares that he has little faith. As I read and reflected and discussed this issue of little faith the question arose when Jesus declares that Peter has little faith is he admonishing Peter or is he affirming Peter or is he simple pointing out a simple reality.

It comes back to how he says it:

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (angry tone)

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (caring tone)

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (neutral tone)

Now which ever you decide on the fact of the matter is that Peter is exposed as having little faith.

This is where my problem kicks in – I think people in general, but especially farmers are people who have great faith. How much faith does it take to sit on the property for year after to year waiting for the rains, buying fodder for the animals and holding off planting the crops until the rains come? And then when the rains finally come and the crop is looking good the mice turn up. What faith will it take to harvest a barely average yield and then plant again? In my mind this is an act of faith, not little faith, but strong faith, strong conviction.

So what does it mean to only have little faith?

How do we view Peter and the disciples in their predicament?

So as I mulled over the passage more and more I refocussed myself away from Peter and onto Jesus and what the passage tells us about him. From very early in the church Jesus ability to walk on water was understood in two ways. First, it demonstrates that he is divine. And second, that in walking on the water he demonstrates his command over the threatening depths that lie below. I just want to unpack those ideas a little more.

Before Jesus ever walked on water, other figures in the ancient world walked on water. For example, the Egyptian god Horus walked on water and Orion the son of Poseidon also had the ability to walk on water. In addition to this in both the Psalms and the book of Job we hear that the God of the Israelites walks on the water. I have sometimes wondered whether Jesus did these things because of the mythology associated or whether the gospel writers added these stories in to make the point that Jesus was the Son of God. Either way the focus of the miracle is to declare Jesus divinity.

So, Jesus is divine, what of the second point. In the mind of Israelites the sea was seen as a threat, and was associated with images of the deep and of chaos and of death. In Jesus walking on the water he demonstrates not simply a command over nature but over the chaos that opposes God.

In this case the story is essential about the disciples declaration concerning Jesus at the end “Truly you are the Son of God” which is then accompanied by the disciples worshipping him. In this response we might then conclude that the disciples, Peter included, have moved from a place of doubt to position of clarity in faith.

Yet if this were the case then you would expect that from this point onwards the disciples would get it as the followed Jesus, that they would be clear about who Jesus was and their commitment to him. This, however, as we know is not the case. Despite their declaration the disciples still struggle to follow Jesus with integrity – the question, the squabble, they doubt, they desert. Have they really moved to a place of great clarity in faith or not?

So we return to where I began what do we with Jesus notion of Peter’s little faith and how do we understand our own faith and relationship with Jesus, regardless of the culture of faithfulness associated with living on the land.

To gain some insights into this involves exploring a little more closely what actually occurs in the story as Matthew tells it.

We hear the disciples are in a boat, it is in the early in the morning and there is a storm buffeting the boat – interestingly we are not told whether or not the disciples are afraid as they had been when Jesus was asleep with them in the boat. It is into this scene – in the darkness of the early morning, in the midst of a howling gale, and a rocky sea that Jesus comes walking across the water to them – this we are told terrifies the disciples.

This raises all sorts of questions for me about how comfortable we really are in Jesus presence and why it might terrify us but I do not want to get side-tracked into that issue – I want us to concentrate on what occurs in the story.

Jesus tells the disciples that it is him and not to be afraid but the disciples doubt. It is at this point that Peter decides to test Jesus identity. If it is really you command me to come to you on the water.

The more I thought about this request the more troubled it made me as I considered the scene of Jesus temptation – “You shall not put God to the test!” But Peter’s testing of Jesus involves Peter taking the risk, not Jesus.

This creates a conundrum as Jesus says ‘come’ and Peter steps out on to the water. Now it is Peter who is at risk and as we know distracted by the wind he begins to sink. Peter has set out to test Jesus but what is exposed is that Peter has little faith and that he doubts.

What does he doubt? Given that the question revolves around Jesus identity I would have to say that Peter doubts Jesus identity. Paradoxically this doubt of Peter concerning Jesus is set over against Peter’s absolute trust in Jesus as he calls out, from within what has as his little faith, “Lord, save me!”

So as we think about the story Peter’s little faith causes him to doubt and question Jesus identity. Yet it is also Peter’s little faith that gives him the strength to step out onto the water but despite this he still fears and begins to doubt. Just when everything is going pear shaped and Peter sinks it is Peter’s little faith that prompts him to cry out for Jesus to save him.

Does Jesus fail Peter’s identity test? No, in fact the whole boatload of disciples shifts in their perception of Jesus as they worship him and declare him to be the Son of God, at least for the moment. But as we know this is not the end game – in the story to come in Matthew’s gospel we still have the complexity of the confusing behaviour of the disciples.

To return to my initial line of questioning is Peter’s little faith a good or bad thing, or is it just what it is. Whatever we might think what we do discover is that Jesus’ love and concern for Peter and the rest of the disciples survives their doubt of his identity. We find that Jesus love and concern is such that he will stretch and save those who are full of doubt and only have little faith. And that in his love and concern Jesus will continue to walk alongside the disciples as they follow him.

Maybe this is the lesson that we are meant to hear most clearly that Jesus love for us reaches out to us in the midst of our own doubts and fears; in the midst our little faith. This is certainly a message of hope especially to those of us who may get distracted by the wind or the buffeting of the waves.

To have little faith or great faith is not the issue so much as is the idea that Jesus has love and concern for us regardless of the strength of our faith. So as we cling to each other in the boat we call the church let us find some solace and comfort in the calm that Jesus offers, let us not fear Jesus presence but rather celebrate it and let us worship God together.

Giving it all away.

How completely and utterly must Paul have loved his kindred?

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.

Paul’s people were the Israelites and in these words we hear his heart felt cry that they too would know Jesus Christ as he does.

I want this morning to explore with you the depth of faith from which this cry is uttered and to do so I will begin by describing a little bit about Paul and his faith as well as when the letter was written and to whom he was writing.

Having gained a bit of an understanding of the context of the letter I want to dig deeper into the expression and witness of Paul’s understanding of faith in these words.

And lastly, to seek to listen for what God might be saying to us today in our hearing of this story.

So, first to a little bit of history!

Paul was originally known as Saul, a Jewish scholar and scribe by background. Prior to his conversion he had been involved with the persecution of the first disciples of Jesus within the Jewish community.

In the books of Acts he is implicated in the stoning of Stephen and we are told that from that point on, Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.

Saul’s conversion, including his name change to Paul, occurs when the risen Jesus miraculously appeared before him on his journey to Damascus.

After his conversion Paul embarked on numerous missionary journeys through the Roman Empire. The majority of the letters of the New Testament are attribute to him as communiqués sent to those communities of believers that he had established.

Paul clearly understood himself as a missionary, to bring the good of news to those outside the Jewish community as well as those within.

There had been an issue in the early years after Jesus death as to which Jesus message was for: was it simply the Jewish people or the gentiles as well.

The answer that came through was the Jesus message was to be shared with all peoples. It is clear in the book of Acts and within Paul’s letters themselves that whilst some of the Jews converted and the Jewish communities were often the starting point for sharing the message many gentiles joined the faith.

This was no less the case in Rome and there had been some tension within the Jewish community over the issue. Remember Paul’s own background persecuting the first followers of Jesus.

It is commonly accepted that the account of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in the year 49 by the Emperor Claudius, by the Roman historian Suetonius, is an indicator of this tension.

It is argued that the Jews were expelled because of the emerging Christian movement causing friction within the Jewish community.

The letter that Paul wrote to the Romans is normally dated around 6-8 years after these events and it appears that whilst there were clearly Jews within the community the community also had a large number of gentiles.

This little peek into the history of the situation should help you to understand the position that Paul found himself in. He was a Jewish Christian spreading the good news of Jesus among gentiles and seeing his own people not responding to the proclamation that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

This leads into my second point: to pick up on Paul’s words and what they say about his faith.

Paul’s faith was rooted in a specific and personal revelation of Jesus Christ that changed his heart from being prepared to hold the coats whilst Stephen was stoned into sharing that very same message which Stephen held on to.

It is difficult for us to understand the shift in Paul’s life in this matter: suffice it to say that it was huge.

It was a complete turn around in his life, his view of God, his behaviour.

The message of Jesus and his understanding of God’s love for him were all consuming. Simply reading his letter to the Romans to this point should open our eyes to this.

Paul understood himself as specially chosen and sent messenger of God’s grace – he was an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

Jesus, whom Paul understood, to have given himself, for the sake of the world to make the world righteous in God’s eyes.

There can be little doubt that Paul had personal sense of his salvation in Christ yet such was his faith that he was prepared to give his own relationship with God in Christ away so that others might believe.

For me this is an expression of what is at the heart of the Christian faith, a willingness to give everything for the sake of the other.

Paul so longed that his Jewish kindred would come to understand and know Christ as he did that he was willing to give up all that had gained in Christ for this to occur.

To jump to another of Paul’s letters for a moment this example of faith in Paul’s letter reflects the very action of God sending Jesus into the world.

In Philippians we read:

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Just as God gave Christ into the world so too Paul was prepared to give himself and his new life in Christ for the sake of the Jewish people to know Christ.

To me this is the ultimate expression and understanding of the Christian faith it is not about what I get out of it for myself but what is done that others might enter into the peace of God established in Christ.

This brings me to invite you to reflect on your own faith in Jesus Christ. We tend to be self-centred consumers in all of thinking, including in our thinking about faith. The primary question is what is in it for me?

But is that what being a Christian is all about?

Is being a Christian about getting to go to heaven or getting to avoid hell? Which are two different things, one motivated by reward the other by fear.

Is being a Christian about getting blessings from God day by day?

Paul’s example seems to suggest otherwise. Following Jesus means being willing to give up everything for the sake of others so that they too may know the immensity of God’s love and grace. Even to the point of giving up that very relationship so that others might believe.

Here is a commitment to follow Christ who gives up all for our sake that should cause us to take pause and contemplate. How deep is our faith? How well do we understand that grace given to us so freely? How much are we prepared to give so that others might know God’s love in Jesus Christ?

Paul’s message of grace is the message of the Jesus who looked upon the crowd and had compassion. It is the message of God’s abundant generosity that feeds the crowd and has left over’s. It is the message of God’s love drawing us back into the meaning and purpose of our existence.

So as we give thanks and break bread today let us be drenched in that hope and celebrate God’s generosity in the giving of ourselves for others.

Baptism with Integrity

How do we recover a sense of the central importance of baptism?

Some churches have sought to do so by rejecting infant baptism in favour of adult baptism, yet whilst those adult baptisms I have done have been particularly meaningful, there is something to be said about the wonder of grace expressed in baptising an infant.

The words of the baptismal prayer from the French Reformed Church capture this wonderfully "for you, little child, event though you do not know it."

However, again and again the significance of the event appears lost on people and whilst grace may be proclaimed in that moment the ongoing witness of a life lived in Christ appears so often either obscured from view or simply neglected.

In his book Atheist Delusions David Bentley Hart provides a snapshot of anancient liturgy and the commitment involved in entering the waters of baptism (p111-113).

He describes how, in the ancient world, baptism and the inculsion in the Christian community of faith invovled a clear turning away from other gods, from the realm of darkness and the devil.

It meant turning towards Christ and living following his way.

Whilst I was baptised as an infant, Hart's words nonetheless reminded me of my own conviction that my baptism, is core to my life. Living as a person baptised into Christ's body is the determinative marker of my life.

This means that I view baptism as one of the most, if not the single most, significant events of my life. Through baptism my life has been drawn into Chirst's and the Spirit shapes my life now as a witness to God's love and grace.

Baptism, which signifies for me my life live in Christ and as a disciple of Jesus, shapes me and informs me in my vocation, my marriage, my role as a father and as a friend. The list could go on.

My memory of the event has little importance to me but my living of it is central to who I am, for now I am not simply my own, set adrfit in a universe alone, but I am Christ's.

I find great empathy for Hart's reminder of the central importance of baptism and all that it meant so long ago.

Similarly, I find a great connection to Ben Myer's parable about baptism, and ask are we clergy too ready to give a wink and a nod to those who come askign to have their child christened?

How do we proclaim that uncondiotional grace which has a necessary response without turning grace and faith into judgement and works?

Maybe it is in witness? So I give thanks for parents and for a church who in faith and in trust gave to me this gift of baptism and to the God who has been faithful to me in nurturing and guiding me.

Peter Lockhart

Do you understand?

“Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

We live in an era where the number of voices that want to claim authority of our lives is as staggering as the media through which they use to speak to us.

Voices heard and seen

Broadcasting on Radio & Television
Blogging, Facebooking, Tweeting
Podcasting
Paperbacks, hardbacks, newspapers, Magazines
eBooks, eZines, chat groups
and the list goes on

To locate and listen to Jesus voices in this cacophony can be a difficult task and one that takes commitment and discernment.

Whose voices shall we listen to as Christians? The vitriolic atheists, the passive progressive, the fervent fundamentalist, the mediating moderate, the sceptic, the scientist?

The diversity and complexity that surrounds us can be daunting and confusing and we can be left pining for a simple faith, a faith built on an encounter with God that we have had in our own lives.

Yet naivety in our approach to faith and reading of scriptures or listening to the voices around us can lead us on pathways away from the God that we have encountered in the coming of Jesus into our lives.

Yes experiences of faith are moments of revelation given to us by God and they are given that we might know and therefore seek the kingdom of heaven.

Now what this kingdom of heaven actually is may seem a little obscure as Jesus speaks in parables – mustard seeds, yeast, fields, pearls and nets.

Yet at the end of listening to Jesus telling these stories the disciples collectively respond to Jesus question “Have you understood all of this?” with a resounding “Yes”.

I have to say given the following stories of Jesus and the disciples and their behaviour in Matthew’s gospel I am not entirely convinced that the disciples “Yes” is as convincing as it sounds.

Jesus goes on from the disciples’ response to get them to consider their roles as scribes.

Now a scribe was a leader and teacher within the Jewish community. In the book of Sirach, which is one of the apocryphal writings, not found in the protestant Bible, a scribe is described in this way, “He memorizes the sayings of famous men and is a skilled interpreter of parables. He studies the hidden meaning of proverbs and is able to discuss the obscure points of parables.”

The memorizing and understanding of scribes involved an engagement with history, with what had gone before and how things had been explained.

Jesus as a teacher and in acting as a scribe himself points that a scribe of the kingdom of heaven “like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

So this takes me back to where I started about how we might discern amidst the complexity of voices around us whose voice to listen to.

Ultimately, I believe that the voice we are to listen to is Jesus voice, but which voice of Jesus and how do we listen to it and who is this Jesus anyway.

For me listening to Jesus voice involves a life or prayer and reading the scriptures but also a commitment to listening to those scholars who are able to clearly and rationally articulate what was new about Jesus and how it related to the old. It is also about listening to scholars new and old.

In the Uniting Church in Australia, The Basis of Union points us to scholarly interpreters in every age yet also grounds these scholars in a particular tradition. A tradition of understanding elucidated at the time of the reformation and preserved in the creeds of the ancient church.

What was new about Jesus is found in the tradition which has been handed on to us – the understanding that Jesus was unique in his relationship with God and was God. This unique revelation of God found in the person and work of Jesus, often referred to as the incarnation, is the point in history in and through which reconciles humanity and all things to himself.

The Basis of Union of the Uniting Church in Australia which describes the essence of the Christian faith captures these thoughts about Jesus when it quotes scripture and says, In Jesus Christ "God was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19 RSV). In love for the world, God gave the Son to take away the world's sin.”

So the kingdom of heaven is fundamentally about the reconciling work of God that occurs in and through Jesus. He is the mustard seed from which the tree of our faith grows, he is yeast that makes the dough of our lives rise, he is treasure in the field and the pearl to be sought for when we encounter Jesus we encounter the kingdom of heaven.

One of the issues the church and each us face in this complex and diverse world in which we live is whether we believe this message of hope and good news and how we respond to it.

As I personally sift through the options that are being touted I continually return to those scholars of excellence who are able to read the tradition in which we stand, that is to say the old, taking into account contemporary scholarship, that is to say the new.

For me these are the scribes of the kingdom of heaven of our day and whilst I believe none see entirely clearly they offer a witness to Jesus Christ as the one in and through whom we are reconciled with God.

The Basis of Union whilst a product of the mid to late 20th century I believe continues to express for us a way in which to understand and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ as the church.

This is what it says about who we are together as the church:

The Church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus as Lord over its own life; it also confesses that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church's call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself. The Church lives between the time of Christ's death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come. On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.

If you and I are seeking the kingdom of heaven and so seeking Jesus and are living as the church then the question for all of us is are we being a fellowship of reconciliation and are we using our gifts for the building up of the whole – is Christ bearing witness through us.

This is not just about what we do for ourselves as a community but how we too live as yeast and seed in the world around us because Christ is witnessing through us, through our very lives.

Jesus finished his parables by asking the disciples “Do you understand all this?” Maybe they did, maybe the problem was not their understanding but their commitment to what it meant for them in how they were to live.

Maybe this is an issue for us as well.

Yet maybe there is in the confusing generation in which we live an issue of understanding, an issue of accepting and following and believing.

Yet the good news is that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ and the kingdom of heaven like the mustard seed or yeast will grow and you and I who encounter it will seek it for in seeking it we will live as witnesses to kingdom of heaven which has come near.

I blog therefore I am!

What does it mean to have an online persona?

Is it simply a narcissistic groping for identity? Or is it a genuine avenue through which to build community and witness to the meaning in life found in and through following Jesus Christ?

I have just spent the last week in a Mission, Media and Ministry Course with John Harrison and had time to reflect on a year of blogging on behalf of my congregation.

Recently I have been posting sermons (e.g. here) and have had many hits on the site through links to the text this week. Whilst creating traffic it has raised questions:

"Is this the most effective way to blog on behalf of a congregation?" and

"At what point does my own persona take over to the extent I should just create my own blog?"

Next week I am going to raise the topic with the Kairos Church Council, but I have realised that it is time to rethink how I am doing what I am doing and to get others more involved? Finding answers to these questions is about discovering how to be faithful in the 21st century.

Any tips for this novice blogger as I approach the meeting?

Peter Lockhart

Ascension Day: The importance of names

I was blest on the morning of Ascension Day to attend Morning Prayer and to hear the passage of the ascension read from Acts as a living word from God. It is not always that we hear the scriptures read in such a way but occasionally the words are said with such deliberate love that the simply live for us.

What struck me was the way in which our worship leader, Gerda, named the list of disciples. Each name given the dignity of presence as the reader paused after each one, a moment to savour these people to whom Jesus had appeared and who went away to devote themselves in prayer.

Peter, and John, and James,
and Andrew, Philip and Thomas,
Bartholomew and Matthew,
James son of Alphaeus,
and Simon the Zealot,
and Judas son of James.

It may be that we don’t know these people but the recording of their names and their careful articulation in love continues the witness to Jesus, with which they were entrusted.

As I revelled in their faith the livingness of the scriptures continued in my mind to include the names of those with whom I worshipped and who had inspired me in the faith.

Faithful people like the ones who shared in the Morning Worship: Gerda, Mano, Lynne, Alan & Merle, Jason, Yvonne, Stephen, Harley.

And faithful friends and mentors who have and who continue to witness to Jesus love for me: my Dad, Sandra, Terry, Bob & Grace, David, Gordon & Geoff, Don & Pam, Alan, John, Andrew, Murray & Wendi, Ray, Shirley, Michael.

And people of Faith through the ages whom my contact has been only through texts and stories handed down: Halik, Zizioulas, McGrath, Moltmann, Bonhoeffer & Barth, Calvin & Luther & Zwingli, Gregory of Nazianzus.

Maybe at times we fail to name the influences because we might miss someone out. Maybe we are afraid of the intimacy of declaring our need of others. Maybe we are afraid of pirvacy laws and confidentialites. And maybe at times we simply forget to name those, whose witness shapes and support us, and remind us of the Jesus who ascended in mystery and for whose promised return we wait together in anticipation.

The way Gerda read the names reminded me of how tied our identity is to our own names and how it is important for our names to be said. Yet not only that, but that in hearing each others names in the context of the bigger story of God's love and of Jesus Christ, our faith is affirmed and the witness with which we have been entrusted is shared.

Living Faithfully: Collaborative Consumption?!

Peter Lockhart

“We believe we will look back and see this epoch as a time when we took a leap and re-created a sustainable system built to serve basic human needs... a revolution, so to speak, when society, faced with grave challenges, started to make seismic shift from an unfettered zeal for individual getting and spending toward a rediscovery of collective good.” (p. 224-225 Botsman & Rogers What’s mine is yOURS: The rise of collaborative consumption 2010)

So ends Botsman & Roger's book about the rise of collaborative consumption. The book explore emerging new ways of exchanging and sharing goods and lives. Ways which raise questions about our current preoccupation with personal ownership.

On one level some of the stuff which they explore reminded me of meeting people who still lived in communes near Nimbin when I was growing up at Kyogle, people who had caught a Utopian dream for alternative living in the 1960s. The book also had echoes of some of the emerging church models.

What challenged me most in reading the book was the irony that many who have sought to live differently have done so departing from a culture in which Christian ideals were supposed to be dominant. A culture in which personal achievement and individual success appears to have come to outweight the so called common good.

However, reading the New Testament one gets a sense that the early Christian communities were places people sought to live sharing their lives and goods in a more intimate and intentional way. The question then is how did we lose sight of this aspect of faithful living in response to the good news. Whilst the vision shared in the book is not Christian I believe there are some thoughts about who we are and what our priorities may be that may need revisiting as we consider how to live as Christians.

Pointing away from ourselves

I was in conversation with a friend recently about running a group associated with the church. Whilst he was interested in what I was proposing he made the comment that if he knew it was a church running it he wouldn’t come. He went on to say that he was not alone in holding such a view, not simply because of the bad things that have been done by the church in history but also because if he came to a church group he would not feel safe to express his own ideas.

This conversation is not unlike many I have had over the years which continually remind me that the church has a bad name in the community and bridging the gap means overcoming not only apathy but sometimes open hostility.

I suspect one of the reasons many of Jesus followers are trying to work outside the institutional churches is that they are trying to disassociate themselves from the stigma of being in ‘the church’. This appears to work to a certain extent but whether we want to acknowledge it or now being Christian means being church with all of the baggage that this brings.

As followers of Jesus owning the hurts and pains and doubts that the church has caused in peoples’ lives is not easy but unless we own our imperfection and continually confess it then we deceive ourselves. We cannot sweep our transgressions under the carpet nor can we point at how much we think we love one another as if we are getting it perfectly right.

As followers of Jesus we can only point away from our imperfect actions and at Jesus and pray that in the midst of our flawed witness God’s grace shines through and the kingdom of God come close.