More Talks

 

June 2025

There is no other god like unto you, O Lord

                                                                Micah 7: 18 

 

At the battle of Dunbar, when the Covenanters charged down the hill, Cromwell said ; "the Lord has delivered them into our hands". Both sides believed God was on their side.

So does the prophet in the text. He is wrestling with an age old problem. Who is God - and he's on our side isn't he?

The inglorious history of the church tells the same sad story. God-fearing people have pictured him in various ways - and were so sure they were right they burnt others at the stake for not believing the same thing.

What's he like?

Like when the new minister comes - this new man what's he like? Suppose someone asks that of us of our God. What do we say. We have the same problem - who is this God that we worship - in whose name we are gathered here this morning?

MY little grandnephew was once asked what was his mother like. He replied, asked :’sunglasses and brown curly hair’

I'd like to change the question and ask you another. How do you feel about God?

Maybe you don't feel anything him at all. That he is not alive for you. He's locked away in prayers and the Bible and ancient history and children's story books.

Some people reckon to know him - but not me. Like someone you have never met - just a name - then you get to know them - I pray that will be your experience

God the angry father

Or you do feel something. And it is a sense of inferiority - or fear, or guilt. You are haunted by the fact that God is displeased with you - like a father - but an exacting one - demanding behaviour far above your capability, onto to you all the time, criticising and carping. I don't blame you for feeling like this. the church has been peddling this view of him for the past few hundred years. Look at the prayers - the first thing is to butter him up, and then plead forgiveness, then hopefully he'll listen. 

And when ever you are tempted to feel that way about God again. remember the story of the Prodigal Son - and of the Father's welcome, and of the shepherd who went after the one who was lost until he found it.

God the sentimental old grandfather

But there is another feeling that people have towards God and its becoming quite common. It's the "God on my side" feeling. That is, I can do what I like, but do matter what God will smile on me and will do for me what I ask. Like an indulgent grandfather, he makes no demands, has no view on the way I live. But when I die he will be there to carry me into his bosom. Or when I'm down he'll lift me up.

Or if I hit a bad patch, he'll clear it up for me. This is the God of the sentimental songs like, I believe, the Lost Chord or I'm afraid I have to say it, "The Old Rugged Cross", sung by half drunk men about to go home to beat up their wife or their kids.

If ever you're tempted to this feeling about God, read the story when Christ rounded on the sellers in the temple who forgot where they were and who they worshipped.

Or of the rich young ruler, who turned away when Christ demanded discipleship.

Or of his strong words for those who claimed to love God but oppressed the poor, or beggared their neighbour.

How do we know what he's like?

Of course, we never can.

Any God we can describe, or can put in a box - is not our God. Like Moses we sometimes see the back of Him, sense Him close. Staring up into the night sky to see the stars, seeing a field of poppies, seeing the human spirit rise above poverty and crippling disease; looking down into the sleeping face of an infant; we can hear it in the robust delight of a crowd of young people. We knwo it has something to do with joy and power and beauty and a mighty, mighty love. But it is not for us to know,or tothink that we know when others don't or that God is exclusively ours and not theirs.

Again like when Moses asked him who he was he said "I am who I am". And he might have added, I don't have to explain myself or my actions to you.

Yet we can know him

But if we cannot know what he is like in a strange way, we can know him.  

I once saw a programme about a Joe, seemingly a senseless man - he couldn’t speak more than grunts and sounds. Then another inmate of the institution learned to speak to him and hear him. 

And discovered that Joe knew what was going on, felt the love and gave it back - yet all communication seemed dead - he knew nothing, yet felt it all.

So it is with us; we cannot know with our minds but God has placed in us a heart to love and to reach a knowing far greater than any knowledge. I'm sure a biochemist, or anthropologist knows far more about Mary than I do - but they don't know her as I know her.

Similarly, we can learn to know God by living with him and working with him at his purposes- and only that way. He has shown us what he thinks of us; he believes in us, trusts us, has given us a glorious and productive world in which  to live. He knows we are capable of high and mighty things, and will draw out of us the best that is in us - and more. And he has shown what he wants of us - in Christ. It is very simple - we love our neighbours, we learn from him how to care; how to take what he has given and use it - not for our own advantage but to  their benefit and blessing. He will work with us to overcome the weakness and strengthen the good. and forgives again and again.

And a word of personal testimony - He is an unerring guide, a wise counsellor, an unfailing friend. 

And as we do so we get to know Him.

 

May 2025

You must therefore be perfect. Matt. 5: 48

The harm I done by being me. Masefield

 

What does Jesus want from you?

 It is in this text; ‘you must be perfect.’

 Now before you give up you must learn what it means - it means you must be all of a piece; like the writing in candy rock - you are what you are right through. Jesus asks not for good deeds; he wants good people. That's alright - but what about us and our small insignificant lives?

What's the point?

When my brother celebrated his birthday the other day he got to wondering what he'd done with his life what he had achieved - not much, he thought.

We've all had moments like that. wondering where the time has gone - and what we have done with it.

Hale-Bopp comet like Haley's comet - every 76 years. And what has happened since the last time - or before the next.

We busy ourselves away in our little house, in our tiny street, in the small town on this piddling little planet, round a third-rate sun.

Then we think of the long age of things and short our life is  and our life is over in less than a blink of the eye.

The great sweep of history - the momentous changes - leaving not much more than a pile of disturbed earth. And even in our own life time how things have passed and died.

Then we see all the great problems of our own time - that even in this short life there is little happiness for some - and we can do nothing to help - we stand helplessly by. And feel we are mere spectators; literally flies on the wall.

As my brother said what have I got to show for it?

And yet it is not all like that.

Everything from the smallest to the largest is connected. Did you know that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan might set off a hurricane on the west coast of America. A small change but it sets in train a reaction and that another, until something great and momentous happens.

Jesus has no mention in the great events at the time he was born. We read of the overpowering cruelty of the Romans and this insignificant man preaching we must love each other. A tiny light in a very dark ad dangerous world. The Roman empire has faded but Jesus still wins people to a better kinder way of life.

Life is lived in the details

But Jesus understood something greater deeper than this. He understands that life is lived in the details not in the great scheme of the universe; in the great sweep of history.

Sorry for the man  who had researched the villages of the Borders before settling at Coldingham just in time to have a nasty bus garage built in his back garden. It is not the big things - like suns and galaxies, nor empires and politics, nor the great sufferings of mankind - it's that garage next door. We are all the same; it's the little things that create the aggravation and spoil life.

It is also true that the little things give us great pleasure. When we have lost a loved one - it's the little things - the things we hardly notice because they were so commonplace, that we miss and long for.

Jesus noticed the detail - the cup of water given to a thirsty traveller; the mite the widow tossed into the treasury; the visit when some was in prison, the meal when someone is hungry.

It is our task to supply the detail that helps the people around us.

The harm, the good, I do by being me

But there is something more. In the text we started with and the reading from Everlasting Mercy. It is what we are that counts.

To-day we have a very selective kind of morality. I can do what I like - as long I don't actually hurt anyone - then it's OK. It's my life and I'll live it the way I like.

Masefield understood it. In the Everlasting Mercy he writes of the hedonistic Saul Kane.  

‘For I was strong and given to sin

And welcomed weaker vessels in’

He runs into an old woman whose children’s lives he has spoiled. And concludes:

‘That old woman made me see

The harm I did by being me.’

Paul Eddington the actor understood, "I hope I have done no harm, and that is difficult to achieve".

For us all, there are people who when they turn up in our lives instantly lift us. they are good people - they don't need to say anything or do anything they are just good people - people who bring the grace of God into our lives just by what they are.

 

You can move mountains

Don't need to find answers to the big questions - we must just live the life.

James Barrie remembers tip-toeing round his mother while she prayed for them. She loved them and cared for them and prayed for them and that cast a glow of care over Barrie's life.

You are in the same position. In your life you touch the lives of those around you - the people you live with, the people you meet, the people who look to you and see you.

There is an old hymn which sums it all up - make me a channel of your peace. That's what Jesus wants from you.

 

​April 2025. A talk for Easter

 

There they crucified him       Matthew 27: 35

 

The fact of Evil

Every now and again our complacency is shaken. Just when we've convinced ourselves that this is a canny old world something arrives to shatter our illusion. Cruelty,  injustice, callous disregard.

it happened at Golgotha when they crucified Christ. And every time we scream for an answer. What happened, who's to blame.

If they crucified him - who are they?

No scapegoat to carry it all.

May be there are some people who are particularly evil. And we can heap all the world's evil at their door.

There was an old comforting notion that we in the church haven't got rid of yet - sacrifice. That evil can be got rid of if someone pays the price, so kill a sheep, or a ram, or a human, or Jesus?

Nice idea - load everything onto The Scapegoat and get rid of that and evil has been dealt with. But we don't do that nowadays - do we?

The papers are fond of pictures - like that terrible one of Myra Hindley, the moors murderess. Or Evil Frederick West, or Robert Black.

It is so easy to say, we know what causes it - just get rid of these people and it will be alright.

But it is not true and just as the honest people in the wilderness watched the scapegoat wandering off into the wilderness but realised that all the evil hadn't gone with it - we know that the evil is still here.

People Like Us

But when we look at what happened all those years ago we realise it wasn't that kind of person who killed Jesus. Look at the cast.

Pilate; a politician scared to displease his people; Herod, the puppet king who had to please his bosses; chief priests and scribes - jealous of Jesus popularity; Peter & the disciples, scared for his life; Judas interested in making a few pounds; the crowds, everybody else is doing it; the soldiers and the man that made the cross, only doing the job. And all the others who thought it was wrong but did nothing.

No! in the end we come to the dreadful conclusion that most human evil is done by ordinary people - people suspiciously like us. Everyone seemed to think that James Hamilton was a decent enough person, no signs of terrible evil lurking below the surface. I'm sure if you met the people who are perpetrating horrors you would not be impressed with their evil. Himmler was a quiet man, with a weak chin and glasses; when he walked into a room no-one noticed; he didn't like cruelty to animals. Yet he founded the dreaded SS and sent millions of Jews to the Gas chambers. At the Nuremberg trials one observer noted that all the horror sounded so ordinary. It should worry us that they were a lot like us.

When someone asked Paul Eddington, the actor and Quaker how he would like to be remembered; he said "he has done little harm". I know what he meant.

In the end only we can deal with it

Modern man keeps thinking he has got the master of it - education, arts, get rid of inhibitions, religion. It's all to do with social conditions! But it continues to plague us. I'm afraid evil is like a lot of things we think we have tamed..

But no evil - in the human form, is ever present. How do we deal with it?

The first is to try to pretend everything is all right when it isn't. That we shouldn't talk about sin and evil - it's not nice and it's not comforting. And being religious is all about sweet flowers and golden sunsets and thinking about nice things. But I'm afraid that Christmas is followed by Calvary and the manger gives up its baby to the cross. Don't be kidded - evil is here and it must be fought.

The second is to say it has nothing to do with me - when it does. What about the tele when someone is getting roughed up and everyone backs off until a young woman has a go to help.

Then there is the way of Christ - he saw what was good and did it - and when he ran into trouble he went on ahead. He took it on - when others were keeping their heads down for fear or popularity or because they had too much to lose he went ahead. In spite of everything that evil could throw at Him. He believed in God and that God was good.

On the victory side

But it is not about stoicism and stiff upper lips. It is about believing that we are on the victory side. That in the great struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil we are with God and with Christ.

What we do is what Christ does - face it all - the injustice, the pain, the insults, the rejection, and yes even death - to defeat them all - that none, not even death could defeat the power of the love of God. So, we take up the cause - with the same trust - in his strength; accept that evil is there and face it certain in the knowledge that it cannot defeat us, will not overwhelm us.

And remember just as evil runs through us all and delivers its hurt and suffering through human lives - so does good.

When you read the story of the cross you keep coming across not just the evil but the good. Pilate's wife, Simon who carried the cross, the soldier who gave him something to drink, the women who kept him company when the men had fled. And you must make up your mind Faith (Kennedy) You are on one side or the other - adding to the good or adding to the evil.

Every day there is good to be done and evil to be fought - prejudice, injustice, unkindness. These things wreck people's lives. I have seen people cut down by a harsh word and unkind deed. And people lifted by it.

 

We are here to show love and compassion, to be kind and understanding, to build people and give them hope. To brighten their lives. So that they too begin to discover the greatest of all truths - that in spite of the evil working in people the love of God can rise above it - take it on and conquer it - that is the glorious message of Easter

 

March 2025

What must I do to receive eternal life?  

Matthew 19:16

When the wealthy powerful young man asked Jesus that question, Jesus didn’t answer it.

I suspect that the young man was interested in living after he had died. He  reckoned he had before that sown up.

 

We can make the same ,mistake with Jesus – and God.

But Jesus focussed not on hat, but on the here and now.

Not on guesses about the future but life now.

We live in a world that relegates God to an interest in the strange and distant.  Is our faith marginal - a mere interest, like others, like bowls or growing leeks?

No, to those who have found, it makes a profound difference. 

 

Let’s look at that.

in what way does it make a difference to put your whole trust in God, not to take care for to-morrow; to be a citizen of the kingdom before everything else? ;

    The most obvious thing is that it holds you fast when things start to go wrong. You know that the quality of your life depends on the love of God - not on clever plans or fickle circumstance. Taking a car on a long journey in winter - snow, ice, water everywhere - but you know the car will carry you through. Similarly with a sister, brother wife, husband, friend - you know you can depend on it.

    Then it strikes at the fear and anxiety inside. There is nothing left to fear. Nothing lurking in the shadows, nowhere in your mind you cannot face, nothing in life that you need fear. SAS - only one way to get through count yourself as dead men - if you come through it is a bonus.

    It stops you being self-centred. It amazes me how folk with plenty and who have been blessed bore others about their misfortunes. Give examples; e.g. Cedric Brown - hurt by all the fuss about his pay; Yorkshire water people underpaid; Minister of State - only £15,000 a year. Some people are constantly absorbed with their own trivial health problems. Knowing that God is looking out for you, you can look out for others less fortunate than you are.

    Finally, it gives you the space to enjoy life. It is more than a dour perseverance. You don't spend it all trying to fend off circumstances, or putting in place what you need to enjoy life (what's the matter with him - he missed a good photograph). Worrying about what is coming next. First sign of normality is the little children start to play - on bomb sites, in ruined buildings. You take each day as it comes, put yourself in God's care and take the blessings the day has. The courage of ordinary folk, living with all sorts of burdens, yet pressing on, smiling, overcoming enjoying what they have.

A satisfactory way of living (those who advise it - but don't enjoy it - or hurt others). The greatest advert for Christ is a happy Christian. The greatest blessing is when you finally learn that you are safe - not because suffering will not come your way, nor because you can protect yourself from them all, not because of your carefully laid plans........................but because living or dying, suffering or rejoicing, God will hold you.

There is an old Sankey hymn recently revived by Enya. Written when people were poorer, sicker and often destitute, it tells of that strange ability of the Christian to look at life in all its pain, yes to spend a lifetime seeking to relieve it in the lives of others, yet there is no sense of the battle being fought in vain - above it all is the glorious song of the power and love of God and that we are his children.

My life goes on in endless song

Above earth's lamentation

I hear the sweet though' far off hymn

That hails the new creation

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear its anthem ringing

It sounds an echo in my heart

How can I keep from singing.  

.

​

February 2025

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6:35

 

Jesus makes a big claim, I am the Bread of Life.

What is not being offered.

Picture the scene; they have all flocked to see him.

What have you come for, he says. See if I can do a miracle?

If so I have nothing to say to you - because you are looking for the wrong thing. I am not prepared to offer you a bit of excitement, nor to keep you going supply what you think you need. - so don't pray to me about the lottery, or for more than you need. I am about something much bigger, much better than that.

What do you come to church for?

• Entertainment (wasn't that a good sermon, isn't the choir singing well these days; what a mess Willie made of the notices!). That’s like coming into a treasure house looking for cobwebs.

• To keep you going - to help struggle through a little bit more, provide a relief from the grind, an oasis in the desert you call life. You are sitting at the banquet table nibbling crisps.

 

Hear Jesus speaking, he says, you are wasting your time on things that won't last. Don't you realise that excitement, entertainment will merely distract for a moment then return you to the pain and pointlessness of your life.

And what is the point of keeping going - is that all there is to it. Is that all the dream, the vision you've got left.

I am the Bread of Life

I've told you what we're not offering, what Jesus is not offering. What is he offering

Here it is, he says, I am the Bread of Life

Life!, now there's an offer.

But what does he mean.

You've heard a lot about this from preachers, but seldom do we say what we mean.

• Not the life of the media and the ads, where we are forever young and wealthy and sexy and everyone thinks we're adorable, no, not that, not the self-indulgent bingeing - we know that.

• Norr a bad politician offering to poor people a better life, but not exactly now - once the economy picks up, once the rich have been to the trough, then there'll be something left for you, hopefully..

• Nor is the life he is offering some mysterious religious experience, some mysterious vague thing called "eternal life".

• Nor a life you wouldn't recognise which is all sweetness and light, all perfect, quite another thing from that grubby little life you brought with you this morning,

Your life and mine

No, the life that he is on about is your life and my life. "What this?", we ask, looking into our own hands.

Yes, that's it. Your life as it has turned out, the one you now must lead. Probably it has not turned out the way you wanted, the way you dreamed. There's loneliness there, and disappointment, and failure, and sin and suffering.

 

But that is the life that Jesus is talking about - not something afar off, but something closer to you than breathing.

​

"I am the bread", he says, "of that life. I can feed it and use it. Give it purpose and fulfilment

An address for a Christmas Eve midnight service

 

 

Christmas 24

What do you want at Xmas?

We do silly things at Christmas - things we would not do the rest of the year. Have you seen what some people have put in their gardens? In one shop I saw a Christmas Tree dressed as a Santa that sings carols when you clap your hands. Mind you I have Christmas puddings on my tie. And, would you believe it, some people go to church only on this night.

Why? Thomas Hardy gives us a clue in hi poem, The Oxen

 

Christmas Eve and twelve of the clock,

   'Now they are all on their knees'

Said an elder as we sat in flock

   By the embers in hearthside ease.

 

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

   They knelt in their strawy pen

Nor did it occur to anyone there

   To doubt they were kneeling then

 

So fair a fancy few would weave

   In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve

   'Come see the Oxen kneel'

'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb'

   'Our childhood used to know'

I should go with them in the gloom,

   Hoping it might be so.

He would have gone to see the oxen kneel -  "hoping it might be so". Of course we despise and mock the old superstitions: oxen kneeling, or Shakespeare believing that

"the nights are wholesome and no fairy takes, no witch has power to harm".

We are modern rational people, we don't believe all the old stuff.

Yet we feel the same, don't we? We hope it might be so.

We live our ordinary lives. We pick our ways through the hazards of life, finding our pleasure and comfort where we can. As you look back over the past year no doubt you can pick out the highs and lows. There have been highs, certainly, times of happiness, enjoyment, of love and affection. But they are not many of us whose lives have not been touched by evil circumstance or by human wickedness. We share that with all those people who have gathered for over a millennium in this place. We are no different. And we share something else.

We feel that there must be something more that there is something more than this. Surely there is more to life than keeping healthy or out of debt. More to it than indulgence and filling the attic with useless possessions, more to life than the occasional meal out and an annual holiday. Surely there is more than that.

That is why Thomas Hardy would go to the byre and that is, if we are honest, why we are here. Because here we feel that there is something more - that we are not loose in the world, not on our own, not merely here to fulfil our own desires and pursue own petty and necessary ends. That we feel we are part of something greater, bigger, more purposeful.

Down the years people have gone to church on this night for the same reason. Lords and Ladies in their finery, Bishops and Priests in their pomp, farmers from their ploughs, fishermen from their boats, bakers from their ovens, butchers from the meat, joiners from their wood, clerks and mangers from their papers. Even at the back the landless labourers with only their poverty; they are here too. Like them we have come out of the cold darkness of a winter's night into this bright warm place to catch a glimpse of something better, higher, nobler. To catch a glimpse of what we mean to God.

To be lifted above the commonplace, above our squalid dealings, above our grasping and greed, above our meanness and deceit, above our self-centredness and frail humanity.

Please do not trivialise your presence here, that you have come out of habit, or that it is a fun thing to do at Christmas. Do not pretend you do not know why you are here. You know it goes far deeper than that. You are in touch with things that belong to your peace, your happiness and your salvation. And you must grasp it. Set aside your selfishness and greed. Do not think your life will grow rich through indulgence. Trust God for your life and with your life. Do all the good you can. Follow Christ; the baby in the manager. You are here to seek something better. You were made for something better. And you will find it lying in a manger. The love of God for you and for the whole world. 

November 2024

 

Jesus said to them "Come with Me” Mark 1:14-20

 

You can hardly move nowadays without someone trying to persuade you that their service, their product, is what you need for a better life.

Here is a better offer

WHEN JESUS MET THE DISCIPLES

If you had passed by the Sea of Galilee early on that day - would you have guessed at what was going to happen?

It would all be so ordinary. Even a bit closer; ordinary people - not top-class, important. Just fishermen working at their nets thinking about all sorts of things - what little diversions awaited them, what worries harassed them, what doubts and fears filled their minds - yet they were about to set out on the great, all-consuming adventure of their lives; because that day they met Jesus.

They weren't expecting it - but that day it happened

 

AND WHAT ABOUT YOU AND ME?

What are we going through, now, by our Sea of Galilee, going about our normal life.

Just working away - looking forward to a break, trying to win a competition to relieve the grind? Some little piece of fun, some excitement, a little holiday abroad. No-one could blame us.

Pestered by all those worries, trying to solve to-morrows problems to-day, you've fallen out with your relative, or friend or neighbour. There's a bill coming in you not sure you can pay; you don't have a job. Your daughter is seeing a man you dislike. Your son is drinking too much. Your closest friend ill.

Or life is dull and uninteresting. Getting up going to work, getting fed, slumping in front of the telly - filling in stupid competitions.

 It's all a mess - but more than that it's all so trivial, and we have hope of nothing else, it will roll on until it is finished. If we are lucky, or clever, we may not suffer too much and may have a little pleasure on the way.

Funny the way it has turned out; it's not what you had in mind when you set out - not the stuff dreams are made of.

I like What a Wonderful Life; that film with Jimmy Stewart and Clarence, the angel who came to help him. Someone to help us forward and up..

JESUS PASSES BY

To-day, here, Jesus is passing your way - as he does every day. He comes announcing the Kingdom - offering a new life in the kingdom of God - Come with Me

So, what will you do? Keep on believing that somehow this world will satisfy your deepest longings, that is a matter of being able to solve your problems

Look at those who have tried. Even those who have everything you ever wanted, money to buy it all; can indulge themselves in everything they want. Have turned their back on duty and responsibility, walked away from trouble, and have been lucky to avoid suffering –

What about them? - do they not also spend their lives in trivialities?.

WHAT GOD SEE IN US

When Jesus looked at James and John and the others - he sees children of God. Made by him to be princes of the Kingdom.

And he sees that in you too.

His invitation is Come with me

Not GO, not even follow, but come with me

Through the trivialities of life, through it pain and it worry - facing it. I know you weren't expecting it - not now, some time, somewhere

But it is NOW

Joining with him in the great work of redemption, that all of those others, they too, are his children, lost, wondering, chasing will o' the wisps

Finding faith is Jesus and the way of life he taught feels as if you had been found,

That this is what your whole life has been leading up to.

That this is what God intends for us all

That this is why you were born.

It is!

 

Jesus invites you now, "Come with Me"

 

October 2024

Having found a pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.        Matthew 13: 46

  Text; was a man who knew what he was looking for.

Let's look at the man before and the man after.

Before the Pearl

He was prosperous, lived an interesting life, had a collection of things that he valued and made him feel well off. But he was not content. He was restless, there was something more, something that would cap his life's work, something to make him feel it had all been worthwhile. Most of the time he was happy enough, but every now and again the despair and the frustration would break in on him. There was something missing.

Recognise anyone? Young folk waiting hanging about street corners?

People jetting off to exotic destinations? Scouring the shops and catalogues for something different?

​

​

September 24

Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

John 8:11.

​

Woman taken in adultery. Age-old question.

How do we make people good. It is needed.

The Elephant in the Room

Modern expression: The Elephant in the room. Something obvious that no-one likes to notice.

There is an elephant in the room where:

• the banking crisis is being discussed

• companies are paying their top brass fortunes and their front-line workers peanuts

• neglected children and deserted wives and partners

• gangs roam sink housing estates

• bairns are bullied at school

• politicians fiddle their expenses

• old folk are neglected in homes and hospitals

• people are ripped off by large corporations or on the internet.

• children than ever are born to single mothers

• men and women are drinking or drugging themselves stupid and into an early grave

 

There is no doubt that we need to do something.

Politicians try to persuade us that they have found the answer, with their programmes, their laws, their management of society.

Nothing illustrates this better than the methadone program. The idea is to wean people away from drugs to a healthier life style.

Now they discover that more addicts die from methadone than drugs.

It has become an epidemic.

 

But they ignore the elephant in the room.

They are trying to create a good society without good people.

 

The religious way.

And we know what its is don’t we?

We know anyway how others should live their lives. When combined with religion it is lethal. If everyone would only believe what we believe and follow our moral principles society would be much, much better.

Recently a report came in from Afghanistan, of a woman who had been executed for adultery.

Our Bible is quite clear: Leviticus 20:10

If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, even a neighbour’s wife both he and the adulteress shall be put to death.

And we do not need to go back 3 or 4,000 years to find religious leaders coming down hard on immorality.

John Calvin did it in Geneva,

John Knox did it Scotland.

Here in Eyemouth in 1629 Marion Hardie was denounced as a witch, thrown into a pit then torn limb from limb by an angry crowd. That is not all that long ago.

Robert Burns saw clearly that the religious way doesn’t work. In Holy Willie’s prayer he paints the picture of what happens at best when religion is used to make people better. People didn’t change. They become hypocrites.

 

But for Burns as for our leaders to-day the problem remains – and it must be solved if suffering and chaos are to be prevented, and people are to find their full potential.

Without good people you can’t have a good society, without goodness people will never discover their true role and potential.

 

Jesus taught a new way.

One day when Jesus was teaching, the religious leaders of the day dragged a woman in front of him and declared she had been caught in adultery – the very act. There was no doubt of her guilt. The law was clear she must be stoned to death. What did Jesus have to say about it? Let us hear it again.

Do you see what is happening here?

For we have been ignoring - not the elephant in the room, but the woman standing there – waiting for our judgment.

While we have been discussing morality and society, she has stood there waiting for our decision, waiting for our judgment, expecting our condemnation.

But before we speak, Jesus speaks – not to the woman but to us. And we realize that it is not only the woman that is on trial but us.

And we have much to hide, much to conceal, much that we hope will not be dragged out and paraded before our friends and neighbours.

Let anyone, says Jesus who is without sin cast the first stone.

Then Jesus addresses her not as an adulteress, not as a sinner condemned by law and religion, but as a woman. Not only as a woman but as someone capable of goodness; a child of God, no less,

And he addresses us in the same way.

For he knows we are guilty are worthy of condemnation and punishment.

But he sees us not only as we are but what we might be.

Go sin no more, he says.

This is no soft option. It is a much greater challenge than keeping on the right side of the law or a religious code. That you can be what God wants you to be.

Good People

In Darlington we had a care home; it was run by a Miss Natress. It was meticulously clean - a home from home for the old folk; they were cared for.

Then Miss Natress left. Within days the standards fell, the home became smelly, the old folk neglected.

Nothing had changed; not the finding, not the management, not the lofty statements of intent by the politicians. What had changed was that a good person had left.

You see Jesus did not talk about making people good, but about making good people.

That comes not from programs and schemes and laws and codes, but from within, through the transforming love of God, through his unwavering trust in us and through our daily following in his footsteps.

 

August 24

They must sing better songs ere I learn belief in their Saviour. His disciples must look like the saved.   Nietzsche

Acts 20:17-35

John 15:11-17

 

Don’t recognise the text?  No, it’s not from Bible. It’s from philosopher called Nietzsche who lived at the end of the eighteen hundreds and played an important part in the last century.

It is clear that if some Christians had been able to demonstrate their Saviour  how different our history may have been.

What did he want to see?

What was it that Nietzsche was looking for? What did he want to see?

The same man once said that the thought of suicide had got him through many a bad night. Quite clearly the man was haunted by fear. And he wanted to believe you could be saved from it.

John McMurray the Scottish philosopher once said that he knew that fear haunted most of us. We cover it up, keep busy to stop thinking about it – but deep down there is a dread.

Often we don’t know what it is, what we fear, it grabs anything that happens to be passing and fastens on to it – health, death, war, money, relatives, that we can’t cope.

McMurray also said that he knew of no belief other than Christianity that could overcome that fear.

And that is what Nietzsche wanted to see.

He wanted to see Christians who believed in a saviour who looked like they were saved.

Would he see it in us?

The question for us is would he see it in us. Let me try to say what it would look like.

It won’t be all holy and careful, with correct opinions on everything and with an overwhelming concern not to say anything that might cause offence.

Nor would it be sweetness of nature, a calm quiet way of life as if nothing concerned us -–that is a matter of temperament – we can’t all be Pollyanna.

There would be a joy in living. We wouldn’t be constantly afraid of life. We wouldn’t be always moaning about hard it all is. We would find an excitement in being alive in God’s world.

There would be a grit about it. That when things got tough, we’d cope, because of the strength that was ours in our Saviour – and even though we might be crushed under the load of circumstance – still we would believe and trust and slog on.

There would be a generosity about it. We wouldn’t be harbouring our happiness to ourselves, keeping clear of trouble, protecting what is ours. We’d be in there where people needed us, sure that we were safe in God’s keeping sure of our father.

And all of this would show in our life together as Christians. This was perhaps the greatest let down for Nietzsche – that when they were together they didn’t much look like people who liked each other.

What difference does it make?

First it matters to the world we live it. Nietszche also said “for others do I wait, for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body & in soul; laughing lions must come”. Do you begin to sense the horror of Hitler’s master race.You should. .

He also said “People accept the truth of what is strongly believed in”. And now you know who took that up – and millions upon millions died in a horrendous war, and in the death chambers of Auswich.

Yes Nietzsche found no saviour but went on the convert Hitler into the monster he became – oh it does matter.

But there are other tragedies. The first is with ourselves, ask yourself honestly – what song do you sing?

 

Is it about your own resentments, your own dark foreboding, your own insecurity and nastiness. Do you  feel saved, do you act as if you are saved, or do you scratch a living in the dark of your own fears and resentments, your own unhappiness. Clearly you do not live as if you had a saviour.

But worse. What about all those around us, who are lonely, hurt, unloved, near desperate with fear. And they look to you and would ask if there were a saviour, they want to hear a song about a saviour who took on everything life at to throw at him, who rose above it all, whose love for us transforms our lives and sends us singing into the world. And all they hear is moans and groans, and requests for more money in the plate. There was a song we sang last Sunday night that comes to mind, “Trim my feeble lamp my brother”.

Find the saviour, live the saved life

It is not good to end on a negative so let me invite you this morning to accept the fact that you may put your whole trust in our saviour, and let that trust transform your life. Many have trusted and found it to be so.

Jung the great psychologist was asked whether man could rise above the animal, out of his fears, into happiness and great living. “Yes”, he said, “I am sure of it – I see them walking about everyday”. I trust that will be your experience.

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July 24

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Jesus wept John 11:35

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It's a bit too pat.

Man dies; Women sad; Jesus comes; performs a miracle; women glad; people impressed.

It encourages that formula Christianity,

To hell with everyone else - God looks after me!

That is not life as we know it. We too have prayed desperately, but our loved ones have been taken from us. We don't reckon this kind of ask God and it will be done sort of sentiment.

The God of this story is a cold fish - a fickle, powerful clever magician - completely different from us with our limitations and weaknesses.

Indifferent too, doing what he likes when he likes

But wait, in the middle of the story, like a diamond in the clay there shines one of the most important pieces of news ever recorded. Jesus wept.

Why is this so important? Well we heard many things about God - our god and other Gods - the Greek gods, the Roman gods, the Norse gods. we hear they are powerful, we hear they are different from us, we hear they trick and cheat and treat human beings as dirt, we hear they do what they like and care for no-one, we hear they are untouched by human weakness.

But here, we are told that Jesus weeps, Jesus, the person who shows us what God really is like, weeps.

And not for himself - (there are plenty examples of Gods getting upset because someone offends their dignity)

But even facing the cross, not anger, not lashing out against the people who were killing him, not crying for himself - Father, forgive them. I pray for my disciples. - Is this God speaking?

He weeps for the suffering of others. Of Mary and Martha, his friends. It breaks his heart to see, to know, to understand the pain of what it is like to lose someone who we love, and are powerless to help.

And suddenly we see God beside us; he understands, he feels, he cares. Does what we would do feels as we feel - yet he is God. Touches our lives in a way impossible to those other distant creatures, sitting on their ivory thrones in the clouds or on mount Olympus.

Or more likely in the pages of what we realise is fiction.

And we realise that a powerful god is not much use if he doesn't care . the history of the world is the story of the failure of power without love.

What we want, what we have is a God who cares; a God who weeps.

Why does it matter?

Because of what you expect. If God is a  clever solver of problems you will spend the rest of your life

Either kidding yourself (that it is OK - in spite of the evidence), (Psalms - never saw good man suffer)

Or confused by the contradictions; is God going to solve the problems or not?

A weeping God tells us all we need to know - the God of all this cares about us. That is enough. We'll leave it to him. Trust

The wonder, the hope, the triumph in this story is not the raising of Lazarus

But that we have a God that cares enough to weep.

 

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