Sunday 27th October "Are you a tax collector?"

We continue to follow readings from Luke's Gospel as we are currently in year C of the readings cycle. Today's reading was from Luke 18 vv. 9-14 in which Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Parables are stories based on everyday life through which Jesus teaches a particular truth. They can be Short Sayings:
e.g. “You are like light for the whole world”    Matthew 5:14
Longer Sayings:
e.g. “No-one uses a piece of new cloth to patch up an old coat, because the new patch will shrink and tear off some of the old cloth, making an even bigger hole”
Mark 2:21
or Complete Stories like:
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector          Luke 18:9-14

The Pharisees were Jews who based their teachings on the Pentateuch (the first five Bible books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).
But they added extra rules, e.g.  Fasting twice a week (instead of just on Day of Atonement - once a year) and giving a tythe of extra things.

In the story the Pharisee prayed:  I,   I,   I,    I  ....  really saying "Aren't I good!!
The tax collector, however, knew he was a sinner and asked for forgiveness.

Jesus said the tax collector was the one who went home justified  (just as if he had never sinned).

What about us:
We need to be humble too and make sure that we are right with God, not trying to give a good impression to other people. Our relationship with God is the most important.

Jesus in the Temple Precincts

 

Artist's Impression of the Royal Porticos of the Jerusalem Temple 

 

We enjoyed such a really great morning of teaching, thoughts sharing, maps exploring and breaking open the scriptures.  We thoroughly delved into the shape and structure of the Temple and why Jesus would have been in the Colonnade – (because it was Cold – right!) and which was where all the rabbis would teach their students. We talked about Jesus setting the captives free, looking at his words and deeds; giving sight to the blind, making the deaf hear and the lame, walk, which was how he showed his true Sovereignty, and which comforted the imprisoned John Baptist.

We thoroughly went into the true nature of Christ’s  Kingship, that of Servanthood : “I have come not to be served but to serve …”  Being an outward sign of this, we explored the deep holiness of the foot washing on Maundy Thursday – and indeed why the clergy carry out this simple and meaningful act of Christ’s own ministry.

We looked at Jesus’ promises of Eternal Life, of his presence with us always, the tremendous nature of His trust in us, the nature and the ‘how to’ of Unity. We discussed the two great Commandments he gave us – loving God, each other – and oh yes, obedience always playing a large part, but not forgetting that we always have a choice.

Thank you to all who helped with music, prayers, setting up and everything else –and of course a special Happy Birthday to Toby whose 13^th Birthday it is.

We enjoyed singing:  Jesus is Lord, Meekness and Majesty, Thank you Jesus, The Lord’s my Shepherd (Stuart Townend), Bind us together and Our Lord reigns.  We even heard a poem from the Celtic Tradition all about the Good News that is Jesus.

May God’s blessings fill your week my friends.

Our Lord reigns – indeed He does!

Alleluia – Christ is Risen:  He is Risen indeed – Alleluia.

Dcn. Olivia

This week's reading can be found here.

 

A New Way of Seeing

 

This week in TFG we reflected on the ways in which we choose not to see what is around us.   

Our Gospel reading from John 9 told of Jesus' encounter with a blind man.  The disciples' immediate concern was to ask whose fault the man's blindness was.   By contrast, Jesus' was to heal the man and make him see.  That is where the trouble started.    Because Jesus did not fit into the religious leaders' understanding of who had the power to heal people and when, they refused to admit that the man had been healed.  In the end, Jesus accuses them of being blind because they could not see and accept what he was doing.

We too have our blindspots.  And one of the blindspots we seem to have as a society is poverty.  The recent repoprt from the churches Joint Public Issues Team The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Ending Comfortable Myths About Poverty identifies 6 myths about poverty, which though prevalent in British society, are just not true.   The report itself as well as various additional resources can be found here.   The Applecart Theatre Company's short video which we saw can be seen here.

As I said in the talk, the message of Easter is all about God's love.  Faced with the blind man, Jesus did not see a puzzle to be solved but a person to be loved.   The disciples, however,  saw someone to be blamed  ...  although they weren't quite sure who !   

In much the same way, faced with the poverty we see around us, many of us find it easier to hold on to the things we read in the papers or hear from our friends and work colleagues than  to ask the difficult questions about ourselves and our society.

Thank you to all who contributed to our discussion.   Whether you were with us or not, you are invited to read and reflect on the report itself, or the accompanying resources, and do what you can to speak the truth about poverty.   

The report closes with the following call to the churches (that's us !):

Churches have a special interest in speaking truthfully about poverty. Both the biblical warnings of the prophets and the example of Jesus teach us to pay special attention to the voices of the most vulnerable and underprivileged. The systematic misrepresentation of the poorest in society is a matter of injustice which all Christians have a responsibility to challenge.

As a coalition of major British Churches, we want to create a new story; one grounded in truth, compassion and hope. Part of our calling as Christians is to seek after truth, and that means facing up to our own blindness as well as calling others to account.  Collectively we have come to believe things about poverty in the UK which are not grounded in fact. We need to develop an understanding of the depth and breadth of UK poverty that is compatible with the evidence available. Just as importantly we need to match the language of public debate with the reality of people’s lives. It is a task we must approach with humility; one which puts the lived experience of poverty at its heart, and one which is committed to truthfulness – no matter how uncomfortable we find those truths to be. Please join with us in this challenge.

 

Peter King

All Age Praise

 

 

We had a wonderful time this morning at TFG; we celebrated Jesus is Risen and sang songs of Thanksgiving and Celebration. We also sang ‘We have a King who rides a donkey’ and talked of the true nature of service.

Splitting the story of Thomas in half, we talked about the saint, who was brave enough not to follow the crowd while the children did all sorts of craft activities. Then swopping over, the adults went and made prayer promises while I spoke with the children and asked them how they could help their families. There were some very interesting responses, with one 3-year old promising to help ‘Daddy wash the car’ – while her sister said she would help with the washing up. Another 5 year old would be doing the cooking from now on (which rather worried her mum!) – and all in all we had an amazing and very heart-warming time.

The ‘grown-ups’ took time out to explore each other’s faces; an interesting experiment which showed that people looked at the person and not the superficial - possessions, beauty or achievements. Indeed they looked at the person behind – just like Jesus does, who loves us all for whom we are and not what we have. The prayer promises, finally fixed to the Easter Cross and the children’s poster of ‘helping hands’ have both been displayed in church.

We sang songs of being freed by Jesus, and closed with ‘Thine be the Glory’ with a little impromptu band of children and their instruments.

And so we were finally ready to go out into the world, loving and serving Jesus,  just as he first loved and served you and me.

Happy Easter! 

Alleluia – Christ is Risen! 

He is Risen indeed – Alleulia.

Dcn. Olivia

Sunday 17th February - "Jesus tempted too!"

Who among us has not been tempted at some time?  Very few, if any, I should think.  Today we are surrounded by temptations of every kind - chocolate when we’re on a diet; stationery in the cupboard at work.  But is the temptation wrong in itself?  No, only if we give in to it.  
Jesus was tempted by the devil soon after His baptism. Very often temptation comes when we have had a great spiritual experience.  At His baptism, God had said to Jesus “You are the Son of God”.  The devil set out to make Jesus prove that this was true.  The temptations with which Jesus was presented were those of provision, power and protection.  The devil used Jesus’ hunger after fasting.  He very often attacks at our weakest point.  You might wonder how the Son of God could be tempted at all, but he was absolutely human as we are and he understands our temptation moments because he’s experience all of human life. 

Jesus was then tempted with being King over all the nations but only if he worshipped the devil who reckoned he had power over all things.  We must be aware of the devil’s existence but not give him power and authority because Jesus took that away from him on the Cross.

The devil was not giving up and took Jesus to a high point on the temple in Jerusalem, the most sacred place for Jews.  He suggested Jesus that if he was the Son of God and threw himself down,  the angels would hold him up!

Each time Jesus was presented with a temptation he countered it with a quotation from Scripture (all from the Book of Deuteronomy which underlines the Ten Commandments).  On the third occasion, the devil tried to use Scripture too.

Now realising he was beaten, for the moment, the devil slunk away and waited for an opportune moment in the future to continue his attack on Jesus.  Many times in his ministry, Jesus must have been tempted;- all the demands on him by the people to heal; they were expecting him to become a hero, ridding them of the Roman occupation; demanding signs from heaven to authenticate his authority from God.

So why was Jesus tempted at all?
 

 *Temptation is part of all our experiences.
 *Jesus was human and divine
 *Temptation destroyed Adam but Jesus is the new Adam.

Resisting temptation can make us stronger in our faith and as people. But God, in his mercy, will always give us a way out.   (1Corinthians Chap. 10 v.13) 

Elizabeth Ewen

Sunday February 3 - Candlemass

Candles and lanterns abounded and songs about Jesus being the Light of the world were sung with heart and soul by nearly 70 worshippers - an extraordinary morning.  We sang ‘The earth was dark’ immediately followed by ‘Colours of Day’. We had great fun with ‘Jesus’ love is very wonderful’ and then we made lanterns – yes we added cut out yellow candle flames (which I have to admit looked a bit like rabbit ears!).

We spoke of Simeon by using an interactive version of the story in Luke 2. ,sang ‘Light of the World’ and then made a Giant Candle of Hope to which we added our messages of Faith, Hope and Love for 2013 which will be displayed in church – keep your eyes open, for you can’t miss it when it goes up!

We talked of how we can be mirrors of Jesus’ love in the world and closed our morning by singing ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ while the big people waved (very carefully) their little candles around and the children jumped up and down with their paper lanterns. As we didn’t have our hands free for the clapping bit in our last song, we were all stamping our feet.  What a wonderful time of worship.

Every blessing and much joy to you all for 2013.

Deacon Olivia.

Church Without Walls

 

Thank you to all of you who came out in the snow and contributed to our service on the theme of Church Without Walls.   One of the themes of this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is barriers, and so we took the opportunity this week to reflect on the barriers we erect as individuals, as churches, as societies, and to commit ourselves to break down the barriers that separate us from others.

At the centre of the service was the recognition that God loves diversity because God created it !  

However, it is not always easy for us to do so - and all too easy to act instinctively in ways which exclude.  Even Jesus' disciples were not immune - as we saw in our Gospel reading, they thought Jesus should just go along with the social boundaries of their time ("Send her away !")   But Jesus didn't ... (Matthew 15: 21 - 28)

Group discussion was enthusiastic, and there was much to share from them.   Thank you to all who did.    If you were not able to be with us (or even if you were) you are invited to continue the discsussion here ...

 The world will provide you with stones every day;

what you build out of it,

a bridge or a wall,

is up to YOU!

Anon

 

Should you wish to (re)read it, the talk is below.

 

Peter King

 

¹⁴For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. ¹⁵He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.

Ephesians 2: 14 - 16

²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3: 27 - 28

No outsider shall enter the protective enclosure around the sanctuary.  And whoever is caught will only have himself to blame for the ensuing death.

Temple Inscription (C1 CE)

---

Three statements.   The first two from the New Testament;  the third one from the Jerusalem Temple.

At the time of Jesus, Judaism was very much a religion of insiders and poutsiders. You were either a Jew or a gentile, and the temple was constructed with  a series of walls, preventing outsiders (Gentiles, Women, Laypersons) getting into areas into which they were not allowed.

As we saw from the reading from Matthew's Gospel, the message of Jesus was all about making outsiders (like the Samaritan woman) into insiders (like the disciples) - which is why they objected so loudly.

The New Testament writer to the Ephesians likens it to the breaking down of a wall - perhaps one of the dividing walls in the Temple: Jesus  "has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us".

The writer to the Galatians goes further:  Within the new community "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

·        So what does this mean for us ?

Some years ago the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, not known for memorable remarks, referred to a church he had seen in Papua New Guinea that had no doors and no walls. People were able to go in, stay on the edges, listen for as long or as short a time as they liked, and then move away. The image became the metaphor:  the Church without walls.

http://www.mayfieldsalisbury.org/files/Sermon020809.pdf

Every year at about this time (January 18 - 25) churches throughout the world observe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  What this is about is removing the walls that separate our various church traditions and denominations so that we all acknowledge one another and the importance and value of our diversity.   It's good that we are all different !   God made diversity and enjoys it - so why shouldn't we ?

·        But it doesn't have to stop there !

Perhaps you could turn to the persons around you and think for a moment about the dividing walls that are part of your life:

·        Are there walls that you - or we as a church - or we as a society - need to break down ? 

·        And if so - how do we make a start ?

You each have a piece of paper with (a rather simple) picture of a wall on it.    We are going to play some music and while the music is playing there will be an opportunity to write something on the back of the sheet that symbolises for you a wall which you would like to play a part in breaking down.  

You are invited to take the paper home with you as a reminder of what you have written.   You are also invited to come up to the front and take a brick out of the lego wall we have erected, both as symbols of your commitment to break down the walls.