Fear for our body - but those who would wish to kill us and our bodies cannot kill our spirit

The body is almost everything to us,

so we fear those who can harm and kill the body, precisely those whom Jesus commands us not to fear.

— Miroslav Volf (@MiroslavVolf) January 26, 2016

Living Reconciliation, Creation and the Environment

In this Living Reconciliation video, the Revd Margot Hodson, vicar of the Haddenahm Benefice in Buckinghamshire, UK, referring to Paul's letter to the Colossians, speaks about the responsibility of all Christians to care for the Earth as God's creation. Mrs Hodson was meeting with other Christians at the conference “Reconciling a Wounded Planet” held at Coventry Cathedral 18-19 September 2015 to consider stories of hope in the face of the growing global environmental crisis.

Bible reading - meditating or eating without swallowing

Reading the Bible without meditating on it is like trying to eat without swallowing. (Anonymous)

— Rev. Bosco Peters (@Liturgy) August 30, 2015

A word or three from the AbC: Justin Welby preaches at the service for the new British Parliament - 15-06-09

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, preached at the Service for the New Parliament, St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, London, 9 June 2015. 

To read what he said in its entirety, please go here. An extract is published below.  

There are many different emotions here today. That is why the readings today have deliberately been chosen to pick up two moments in the Bible that have much emotion attached.

The reading from Jeremiah speaks of the consequences of God’s judgement – and the reading from John’s Gospel of what it means in practice to be a community of values with a moral vision. 

Jeremiah was a prophet of the sixth century BC in the kingdom of Judah. Judah had survived for half a millennium, more or less. But in the end, a combination of political miscalculation and other factors meant that the kingdom was overrun, and after a long and horrific siege (if you want to see what it feels like read Jeremiah’s Lamentations) the city fell. In two great waves the leaders of the nation – those who had survived – were taken on a death march to Babylon. 

Jeremiah had prophesied the defeat because the nation had fallen away from God’s standards.  Once the exiles were in Babylon they wrote to Jeremiah, asking what they should do now. One of the key parts of his answer is in that first reading. 

The essence of those verses, and those around them, is writing to the exiles at this moment of the deepest possible blackest despair that we can imagine. His answer was this: you’re going to be there a very long time (that’s bad news), settle down and bless the community in which you live. (‘But these are the people who massacred us,’ you can hear them think.) The circumstances in which you find yourselves are not a cause for despair, but for reflection on the past and a renewal of confidence in the God who is greater than all of history. 

And in fact, in due course, virtually uniquely among the people of that area they were brought back from exile.

The people of Judah suffered the consequences of their turning away from God to other gods, of seeking to find alternative values not based in truth – the absolute truth of the revealed God – but in what was convenient and easy.

Their society had been corrupted by materialism as the ultimate aim of existence, and by injustice and neglect for the poor. 

Let me be absolutely clear. I am not hinting or suggesting in any way at all that anyone here is guilty of such things. One of the privileges of my role is getting to know so many people in politics, and the more I do the clearer it is that almost everyone I meet seeks to do what is right, to make just decisions, and to serve their country with integrity. Views to the contrary are mere descents into cynicism.

Yet the best intentions can lead to the wrong conclusions. First, Jeremiah says, we reap the consequences of our actions – and thus those actions must be based in a moral vision and in an ideal that is founded on eternal values that do not change. 

Throughout the Old Testament, time after time after time, from Genesis to Malachi, these values include justice for the poor, reaching out to the stranger, integrity without partiality in government, and a dedication to the flourishing of the whole community. 

Secondly, God is also saying through Jeremiah that even when things go wrong, which in all societies they will from time to time because we are all human (and let me say the Church of England is not one to lecture others on how to be perfect), God is greater than our greatest failures.

We have to seek to do right, but we can trust in the providence and salvation of God for the future. That is the promise made to the people of Judah, and thus they were to settle down amongst their enemies; to make the best of their situation, to bless the communities in which they lived, and look to the moment of their redemption. 

There is no coded political message in this, but there is a very un-coded theological one: God can be trusted, but we must do our part. And I know that is the belief and desire of the vast majority here today. 

So pragmatism does not really work. Yet all politics is in the end about delivery, not merely policy. Stating policies is the easy bit; making them happen is the deepest of skills.

Pragmatism in the sense of short cuts to avoid difficulty is not a good solution. It had taken Judah to defeat and exile. But pragmatism in the sense of being practical and down to earth – of making sure that delivery happens – is essential. 

In the reading from John 13 we see the greatest moment of holy pragmatism in history. The Son of God Himself, Jesus – knowing confidently who He is, what He is intended for, and that God can be trusted – sets aside His pride and washes the feet of His disciples. 

The truest leadership is about service. And note that He even washes the feet of Judas Iscariot, knowing as He does that this is the man who will betray Him to torture and agony within twenty-four hours.

This truly is holy pragmatism. It is the pragmatism of love without limit, of unconditional love that reaches with generous, almost absurd grace to every person. 

Such pragmatism costs more than we can imagine and gains more than we can believe. And yet it is the pragmatism to which we are all called, as human beings, but especially those of you here, as national leaders.

So we have two moments: in the first of them a nation in despair is told that God can be counted on despite all their failures. The failures matter. Actions have consequences. But they are never the end of the story: God is.

Wants, needs and responsibility in the light of the #ACOSS report and what is required of us

I have discovered to-day a blog called The Thin Bread Line whose author is David Mansfield.  He has written here ...

We had family around for lunch the other day.
My three year old grandson went straight to the freezer and helped himself to an ice-cream. Helen intercepted him in time and told him to wait until after lunch, only to have him plead, ‘But Grandma, I NEED it now!’
Whoever invented the refrigerator with the freezer section at the bottom has a lot to answer for.
Of course, we can easily mistake our needs for our wants and justify our wants as our needs and in the process accumulate piles of unnecessary baggage, both around the girth and in the garage(s)!

As I was driving home from preaching at a Sydney church last Sunday I heard on the news about a report just released by ACOSS (Australian Council of Social Services). There are now one in seven Australians living below the poverty line of $400 per week. The statistics are grimmer for children and grimmer still for people from non English speaking backgrounds.
My work brings me into daily contact (mainly via email) with Christian leaders who serve communities in Africa and Asia where people live on less than a dollar a day, where children, in frighteningly large numbers, suffer from water-borne diseases, malnutrition and starvation. Some of these children don’t reach their next birthday.
While the famine in South Sudan deepens, the predictions of another Horn of Africa catastrophe are gathering pace and frequency.

PLEASE READ FURTHER AT THE THIN BREAD LINE

A SABBATH THINKING PIECE #2 ---- I want #justice—oceans of it. I want #fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

Amos 5:24The Message (MSG)

21-24 “I can’t stand your religious meetings.
    I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
    your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
    your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
    When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
    I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
    That’s what I want. That’s all I want.