More Talks

 

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.

​

 

July 24

​

Jesus wept John 11:35

​

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.

 

June 24

 

Here’s an extract of a sermon preached a hundred years ago by Dr John Arthur Gossip, Minister of Beechgrove Church, Aberdeen. Gossip served as a chaplain in the First World War. The early and sudden loss of his beloved wife hit him hard.

Although a Doctor of Divinity, and fairly ‘orthodox’, these experiences shaped his preaching. He talks about life as people find it.  We may find some of his illustrations quaint, but there is no mistaking the challenging thrust of his message.

 

 

May 2024

Should a Christian be rich? A trust fund manager or A pension plan salesman?

It doesn't look it from this passage.

Why Fool?

The way it reads in the old version makes it sound like a bad bargain. God has got his beady eye on you and if he thinks you are getting too big for your boots he will haul you up before him and ask to see the condition of your soul. And if it is not up to scratch then........

It all seems a bit hard. All he was doing was to try and have a comfortable retirement - yet he gets condemned.

Does this mean we should neglect making plans and trying to take care for ourselves and spend our time looking after our souls?

No. And if we look at the new versions we will see that.

The word translated ‘soul’ should be ‘life’. Greeks thought of soul. Hebrews like Jesus thought of life. 

And when Jesus uses the word fool, maybe he means it as a matter of regret. "You foolish man! You're wasting your time". Rather like a child on the beach trying to keep back the sea with a sand wall

Foolish man, Jesus says, how do you think you can guarantee your comfort, when you can't even guarantee your life. Your barns might be here tomorrow morning but you might not be.

Plans & Circumstances

But this isn't just about fat cats with big bank balances. It is about us all. For this reason.

Like the man in the parable, we all want to feel safe. We spend most of lives planning for it and working for it.

We do try to get a decent job, and a decent house. Put a little bit away, get a job with a pension. Make sure we claim everything on the tax or on the welfare that is due to us.

We try to sort the diet out and avoid cholesterol, and sugar and all the other foods that are supposed to do us harm.

We go for our regular screenings, health checks and jabs.

We might even be trying to win the lottery to help us to get through.

And all with one aim - so we can say to ourselves, I've thought of everything, planned it all out, made provision - I'm safe now!

But in our heart of hearts, we know we can never get to that - for the same reason. Apart from the obvious threat of death, disaster can come out of a clear blue sky.

Or disease can strike us down. Our relatives can get into trouble with the police, marriages can break up.

That's why Jesus looks at our anxious attempts to feel safe and says - don't be so foolish - you can't be safe by planning and putting away. Life itself is very uncertain.

There is only one thing you can do, he says, and that is to put your whole trust in God.

Work through the "yes, but". I am amazed at what some people make their lives out of. They have lived the "yes but".

What difference does it make?

   The most obvious thing is that it strikes at the fear and anxiety inside.

   It holds you fast when things start to go wrong. You know that your life depends on the love of God - not on fickle circumstance

   It stops you being self-centred. It amazes me how folk with plenty and who have been blessed bore others about their misfortunes. You are free to help others less fortunate than you are.

   Finally, it gives you the space to enjoy life. You don't spend it all trying to fend off circumstances, or putting in place what you need to enjoy life. You take each day as it comes, put yourself in God's care and take the blessings the day has.

You finally learn that you are safe - not because suffering will not come your way, nor because you can protect yourself from them all, but because living or dying, suffering or rejoicing, God will hold you

 Underneath are the everlasting arms.

 

Easter 2024

The stone which the builders rejected.........turned out to be the most important of all. Luke 20: 17

 

These words come at the end of the parable of the vineyard. The story of the vineyard is the story of how men have forgotten that the world is God’s, not ours. The statement about the stone is that you can't miss out what is important and not come to grief. And it would be very easy to illustrate over and over again the truth of them.

We could show how our planet is being polluted & corrupted, show how one group of people turn against another in Ukraine and Palestine.

We could show in our own country how some are raking in millions and living in blatant self-indulgence whilst others live in cardboard boxes on our streets.

We could show young lives wrecked by drugs and old ones by alcohol. And the same message would well up - you have rejected the foundation stone - and the house is falling down.

Where in the house of our life is Jesus

But I don't want to do the warning bit. I want us to look at the promise It's there in those other words in the text - the stone that is "most important of all". Because I want to talk about what happens in a life when it is built on Christ and his ways.
But before I do let me ask you a question. Where does Christ come in your life.

Are you like the tenants in the vineyard who don't deny God they just don't want to acknowledge that he owns the vineyard. Is that the way with you. My life is my own, I'll lead it in whatever way I want, but I don't mind having Christ around somewhere.

In the lounge, on the occasional table, by way of an interest, something else you interested in apart from the leek club, the golf or the TV.

In the medical cabinet, in case of emergencies, amongst all the little drops of medicine in the bottles, or the fluffy bits of sticking plasters, or the pills - were they for spots, or the bad back, or for wind?

In the hall hanging amongst all the other coats for various occasions, to be put on when we think the time is right, when we need to appear a little better than normal?

Or in the bedroom, along with the hot water bottle so that when life has been cruel to us, and people not nice we can retreat and comfort ourselves that Jesus understands our need for a little bit of love and support.

If we made him the most important, then

All of this shows that we are like the tenants - we regard this world and our life in it as our own affair - to be spent as we like. But the point of the parable is that that is not the case, the world we live in and our life in it is God's. the point of the quote about the stone is that our failure to realise this, to understand what is really important will end in disaster.

But what difference does it make? What difference if we think of our world, our lives as belonging to God - and not ourselves.

     Because we are not on our own we will find that our safety our security rests not with our own devices but with him. Whatever happens we are never outside his love and care.
See how much of our time we spend trying to make sure nothing goes wrong. We surround ourselves with money, property, possessions, position, family and friends, and as much pleasure as can distract our mind. Trying to pretend that we can somehow prevent evil coming to our door. Hospitals (everone else there goes regularly). That we can escape misfortune and disease and death and suffering. And suddenly it is there in front of us and all our schemes and plans, and defences are defeated, and we feel vulnerable and afraid. Like children whose snad castle walls are inevitably washed way by the sea and there is nothing we can do, and we break down in tears. So it is if this world ,this life is wholly our own.
But if we are his, living in his world. then we can move forward trust - and with many down the years we will discover that he will take us through. Like Job sometimes it seems that sometimes everything is stripped from us - so that we will learn the lesson. Ultimately it is only a simple faith that sees us through. That this world, this life is God's vineyard and we are his loved children.

Not life, nor death, nor earth, nor hell,
Nor time’s consuming sway
Can e'er erase us from his heart
Or make his love decay

       It also leads to this - we understand what we are for and what we should be doing. We are not left with a clean sheet trying choose a way through life that is best for us. Not dreading that somewhere back there we made a wrong turning that has decimated our life - ruined it forever (Man who forgot to post his daughters lottery ticket). This is God's world and we are his people, here to serve him. To lift up the fallen, to heal the broken hearted, to feed the hungry, enrich the poor, to cheer the down cast, to draw together those who have fallen apart, to bring peace, & joy and love. I was reading of Sir John Templeton just the other day who has made £350 million, but now says, that is no achievement "What I am doing now is far more important", he is giving it away, seeking to improve the lot of suffering humanity. He has found the most important stone of all.
But there is something much, much more.

       And it is this. That we don't have to grab and snatch and fight for our place in the world. If we are on our own then we must look out for ourselves, try to grab as much as we can, try to defend what we've got, don't share, worry about who is trying to take it away from us.
If the world and our lives are God's then we don't need to do this. We're here by God's good grace. This is our security. We do not need to have a high-sounding name, or to have amassed a fortune, or to have powerful and famous friends. We are the children of the king and the Lord of all. We are his in his world. We do not have to prove ourselves. We are loved and we are blessed. . God made us for himself. We do not have to chase after life, for it is given to us. "Seek first the kingdom", said Jesus "and everything else will be given". With the slaves in the cotton fields we can sing, "If anyone asks you who I am, tell them I'm a child of God" and know the joy of the children of God.

This is what people have discovered over the years. We live in God's world, we are his children, we live the life he wants us to live and in our vineyard there appears the greatest of all gifts, love, joy, peace.

Put Christ at the heart of your life

Do you know what sight appalls me most on television. It is when they show a proud people reduced to begging. The Indians, or  the Aborigines. How they have sold their rich lives for baseball hats, booze and all the cheap and tawdry baubles of western life. And watching them, fat tourists jammed into ridiculous shorts festooned with cameras, mouthing stupidities, their own empty lives filled only with endless travel and boxes of photographs no-one really wants to see. God, what have we become!

Isn't it time we admitted the mess we have made of our lives. We know they haven't turned out the way we meant it to be. It doesn't give us the satisfaction we hoped for. It is just a hotchpotch of activities, a bit of this a bit of that, some occasional pleasure, a lot of boredom, always looking forward to Christmas, or the holidays, or winning £4 or 5 million on the lottery?

It is like the man that decided to build his own house. When he had finished it was a mess, all bits and pieces. He stood looking at it with a friend, who was trying to find something good to say about it. "It's a mess", he finally admitted, "It's not what I had in mind when I started".

 

Once upon a time there was another man who threw away his foundation stone. Thought he knew what was important - went to a foreign land in pursuit of it. Then it began to go all wrong - and he turned his face from the pigs and the husks of life and headed for home- where he belonged.

Will you to-day do the same.

 

March 2024

Not a talk this time but an article I have written on our society’s unfairness and misplaced values.

 

An interview of Darren Jones in The Spectator reminded me of John Cleese and Ronnie Corbett.  Jones, Labour’s shadow Chief Secretary of the Treasury, more or less promised a new office of government should Labour be elected later this year. The purpose of the new office will be to deliver Value for Money. It won’t.

That, however, won’t upset the people who are setting it up. At least, not much, for when it fails. they will nor fail with it. They will have moved on to some new project.  

 

Having said that, I had better state that this article is not about the musical chairs of government office, nor human perfidy; it is much more serious than that.

 

Politicians and their aides will argue that it is their job to establish the office; it is for others to make it work. And it won’t, because the unspecified others will either claim that they are already delivering value for money, or, more likely, that the initiative will distract them from doing so.

 

How do I know all this? Because I have spent the last fifty years watching managers and listening to front-line doers. I have also read Paul Johnson’s recent book ‘Follow the Money’.

Johnson, Director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, has been in and around government for thirty years and knows how it works. Never, he writes, have we been so highly taxed; never have we had such poor public services. Something has gone; is going, badly wrong. Johnson concludes: Must Do Better.

 

But how? By establishing another government office? Our local community mag cheerfully demonstrates what happens when you try that. On the back cover it tells us what to do if we are ill, or think we are ill. No, you don’t toddle down to the GP’s surgery. You must diagnose yourself, then choose from GP, Pharmacy, Dentist, A&E, NHS 24. And, if you are not sure which, there is NHS Inform to help you choose the right one – or do something else, like, help yourself to paracetamol.

 

I am not, however, complaining about bureaucracy; but the mindset behind it. Bureaucracy flourishes when powerful, but remote, executives believe they can solve local and immediate problems.

 Although economists, like J K Galbraith and behavioural scientists. like Likert and Herzberg pointed to this mentality years ago, it has been largely ignored.

​

Recently, however, David Goodhardt has set down this mindset’s malign effect on our fellow citizens. In Head, Hand and Heart, he demonstrates that we live in a grossly unfair society, where those who work with their ‘Heads’ have gathered to themselves the power, wealth, status and respect that should be shared with those who work with Hands and Hearts.

He is smack on. But admits at the end of the book, that all he has done is to describe what is happening. We need to go further, for our society is not only plagued by this inequity; it is being shaped by it.  The Heads take what they want from the pot; others must do with what’s left.

 

Witness a wronged postmaster on TV lamenting that, for all the honeyed words of apology from managers and government ministers, nothing much happened until ITV shone a blazing light on it. That is, until the Head people could no longer deny that they had got it wrong.

 

Or, for something more concrete, take The Berwickshire Coastal Path. It

runs from majestic St Abbs Head to historic Berwick-on-Tweed along lovely beaches, dramatic cliffs, and through charming fishing villages. It is a delight. Or would be, if the path had been maintained. But it hasn’t.

It is rutted and in places, fenced off, or, diverted from the shore to a field, We are told there is no money to repair it, yet swish leaflets, and informative boards along the route, extol its virtue; they even tell you, day by day, how safe the water is for bathing. The Heads have spent the money on what interests them - and they don’t have to turn out on a cold morning to patch what some remote expert has defined as a hole. Planning pays better.

What precisely is it, then, that prevents the path being made good, or postmasters being trusted or the frontline people who provide our services, being given the resources and the freedom to deliver?  

What is this entrenched mindset that is undermining our capacity to fix what isn’t working?

 Professor Reg Revans put his finger on it in 1962. ‘The industrial staff college … remains in the tradition that sufficient knowledge is to be found in the writings and examples of illustrious men, and. that since dialectic is the natural medium of command over one’s fellows, it can also command the economic and the physical world.’

Check out your favourite bitch about government, or any other, services and you’ll find this tradition infecting it.

​

I am not, however, urging decapitation; just that there should be fewer Heads, and they should be attached to bodies.

​

Which brings me to Ronnie Corbett and John Cleese.  In a Management Training film, Ronnie Corbett, in an overall, is running a small supply business; John Cleese, in a sharp suit, is a Management Consultant. Clearly he despises the way Ronnie goes about his work. He decides that if Ronnie can make money, he, John, could make a lot more. For doesn’t he know a lot more about management than Ronnie. He sets up his own company – and is soon in trouble with either too much stock or too little.

​

Thus, confirming what Reg Revans said about management: ‘There is all the difference in the world between knowing what the world pole vault record is, and coming within a centimetre of it at Wath-on-Dearne on a Bank Holiday Monday with a brass band playing’

If, therefore, Mr Jones, you want Value for Money, take money - and power, from the people who talk about it, and give it to the people who value

 

 

February 2024

 

That is how my Father in Heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart Matt: 18:35                                                                               

 

I thought about a text from James, then thought Matthew might be a little less intimidating

The text in James is: God will not show mercy.

Really? Is this the God we worship?

 

GOD WILL NOT SHOW MERCY

If God will not show mercy, how will we fare? If he is only justice and judgement, only requires perfect standards - then how do we stand? Think if we only got what we deserved.

 

Why have we constantly preached that God is love if this is true?

But wait,   maybe there are circumstances - very special circumstances in which it is true that God does not show mercy.

May be to those who have committed a heinous sin, or those who have lived a lifetime of cruelty

No, for these there is mercy and forgiveness - this is our gospel, or maybe it is for those who cannot defeat a besetting sin, an evil temper, a devouring lust, an insatiable, greed. No, for all this there is a free pardon, a full forgiveness.

 

YOU CAN'T HAVE MERCY UNLESS YOU SHOW MERCY

But, there is one thing that the gospel repeatedly says God cannot do.

That is forgive someone who won't forgive others.

It's in Jesus’ story of the angry king,

it's in James "God will not show mercy to the one who does not show mercy". And it's in the Lord's Prayer.

 

This is a hard saying; Can Muslims ever forgive the Jews or the Jews the Muslims? 

The Ukrainians the Russians?

The parents of the stabbed boys forgive his killers?

Harder, can you forgive the slights and hurts and dirty tricks played on you by others? Think of the worst of them, think of how big the pile is and then think of what is being said.

And God drags each one away from us - demands we give it up before we are forgiven - we protest at each one claiming it is right we should hold that against them.

But no, God demands we give it up - if we want mercy shown to us.

Until at last we cry out WHY? Why do we have to forgive all these hurts and wrong, all these debts

 

THE FORGIVING KING

Jesus tells the story of the king who forgives his servants debts until he finds one of them who won’t forgive his debtor.

Think of what that servant is thinking. ‘It’s my money. I saved it; he spent it. He should give it back to me.

He’s right, isn’t he?’

Of course.

 

But what he has forgotten is that nothing that he has had not been given him.

That he is dependent on the king for all he has.

And we too, must live in that light.

We are dependent on the goodness of God

 

As the old hymn says

Dependant on thy gracious breath

We seek thy grace alone

In childhood, manhood, age and death

To keep us still your own.

 

It follows, does it not?, that what we have does not ‘belong’ to us.

It is ours to use – and to share.

Ask whether you want to play your life on an IOU basis or on the mercy basis

 The world is sick of rights, of people claiming and holding on to their own little patch.

Jesus taught differently.

We must seek to bless others as God has blessed us.

To forgive others what they owe us, as God cancels our debts.

To live the Jesus way.

 

​

​

 

​

​

I