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  • Preaching on 1 John - More than mushy love stuff!

    Lots of people seem to know 1 John for its 'beloved let us love one another' and see it as a nice mushy kind of a letter encouraging us to be nice to each other.  I think I probably did once; preaching on it recently has destroyed any illusions I might have had!  I am currently in midway through a series loosely on Stephen Smalley’s Word Biblical Commentary.

     

    It has to be based loosely – partly because it’s hardly a preaching commentary, partly because it needs to be contextualised and partly because there’s the Holy Spirit factor.  Looking at Smalley’s breakdown of the epistle it all seems quite simple – a nice series of sermons picking up themes of what it might mean to ‘Live in the Light’ and/or ‘Live as Children of God’ which are neatly laid out on the contents page.  It never works out like that, of course, and now, around six weeks after we began, we are half way through a set of six sermons – things like Pentecost and united services make for a lot of interruptions - and I have to confess to wondering how much anyone apart from me sees how they connect together.

     

    So far, though, I have enjoyed working with the themes and allowing them to pose questions that take us beyond a nice superficial kind of Christian doctrine to wondering what does it actually mean to ‘renounce sin’, ‘’be obedient’ or ‘reject worldliness’?  For example, just what is sin? Who or what should be obeyed and why?  What (if anything) is wrong with the things of the world?

     

    One recurring pair of words, or ideas, as we’ve gone along has been ‘attitudes’ and ‘actions’.  It seems to me far too easy for those in the Christian ghetto to say ‘I believe X, Y, Z’ when our attitudes and actions indicate otherwise.

     

    Each week, we’ve begun our exploration with some kind of interactive activity – thought showering ideas about the theme or, this week, I got people to arrange a whole list of things in order of priority.  The answers were fascinating, and I wish I’d written them down before someone removed the slips of paper to use with a youth group elsewhere (though I guess that was some kind of compliment!).  We compared things in pairs before endeavouring to fit them into an overall list.  Which is more important - clothes or hairstyle?  House or car?  Fame or wealth?  To be loved or to be happy?  Friends or success?  To be beautiful or to be healthy?  My rights or justice?  The planet or our comfort?  Employment or holidays?  Helping myself or helping others?

     

    We did not all agree on the order, but it was an interesting (and enlightening!) way in to thinking about the reality of what we claim or believe ought to be our priorities and what we actually devote our time and energy to.  Seemingly the good folk of Dibley think the planet is the most important priority with clothes, hairstyles and cars a long way down the list.  Hmm, I wonder, given how many drive under a mile to attend worship and the corporate hair dye bill for the women!!!

     

    Working with 1 John has been challenging and has made me look hard at my own double standards (that’s polite speak for hypocrisy I guess) and think again about my priorities.  As I reminded my people, God is not a killjoy, but rather an extravagant giver who declared creation good and commissioned it to flourish, but sometimes our attitudes are so skewed that either we deny the implicit value of the material world or we exploit it, or maybe, I suppose, both.  I also made no pretence that real life and our own ideals ever quite match up: it’s amazing how often the urgent ousts the important, and how we need to keep reviewing our attitudes and actions to see how they match up with our aims.

     

    1 John has not turned out to be the break from tough stuff I rather naively imagined it would be; instead it has served as an important reminder of the real challenges that lie behind some of our Christian jargon.  It’s relatively easy to come up with headings for a commentary or a sermon series, much harder to get underneath the waffle words to the questions and challenges they pose.

  • Steep and Rugged Pathways

    Yesterday I was out on a training walk ready for my crazy 200 mile coast-to-coast outing in July.  My walking companion is busily walking 5 miles three times a week to build her stamina for distance; I am trying to get out to walk up steep bits and in the heat of the day as, whilst I can walk the distances, these are my weaknesses.

    For me, walking and thinking tend to go together - it's amazing how many engineering conumdrums or theological queries I've managed to unscramble whilst walking miles and miles.  Perhaps I should have been a peregrinato?

    Anyway, as I pounded the miles across the fields, and literally forced my way through a field where the only signs of the footpath were the way marks at either end, my thoughts inevitably turned to how we use the 'journey' metaphor to talk about faith - and how a 'training' walk has no real place in that metaphor.  My thoughts rambled (how appropriate!) around the theme and an old hymn, rarely sung nowadays, came to mind (and written out below as prose as the formatting does wierd things otherwise!).

    Father, hear the prayer we offer: not for ease that prayer shall be, but for strength that we may ever live our lives courageously.

    Not forever in green pastures do we ask our way to be; but the steep and rugged pathways may we tread rejoicingly.

    Not for ever by still waters, would we idly rest and stay, but would smite the living fountains from the rocks along our way.

    Be our strength in hours of weakness, in our wanderings be our guide; through endeavour, failure, danger, Father be there at our side. 

     

    This hymn seems a bit more honest and tentative than some contemporary stuff; it accepts that life can be tough and that you can end up with scratches and stings when you are walking in the way you believe you should go.  It recognises that we get things wrong - or at least that our best efforts sometimes fail - but still wants to carry on with God's help.

    I might contact the local council about the state of the footpath, I will certainly have to keep up the midday hikes to get acclimatised to them, but at least it got my brain cells whirring into action!

  • Dr Who and the Satan Pit

    Doctor Who and the Satan Pit was one of a few surprise recommendations in this week's Baptist Times TV guide (along with Viva Blackpool, though this one did come with a 'might offend some readers' warning).  Maybe watching Dr Who whilst ironing is not the best way to appreciate the finer points of the special effects or nuances of the story but I thought it almost, but not quite, succeeded in touching on a some ideas about faith, evil, myth and fact and even life before time.

    There seemed a few mismatches - a largely 'post religious' crew and a ship's captain commending his dead crewmate to God being particularly obvious.  Yet on the whole it seemed quite a sensitive approach to its subject, and I quite liked the realisation by the Doctor that you can kill or contain a life-from but not (so easily anyway) an idea.  Probably a bit of amateur memetics going on there too.

    Of course in good Dr Who fashion there was a happy ending, with good defeating evil, at least until next week, and I'm not sure that many viewers would have picked up on the more spiritual aspects of the story line, but at least it made the ironing a little less tedious!

    In the meantime, beware former Casualty actors with strange characters tatooed all over their faces!  (That and Baptists who post blogs on 06/06/06!)

  • Plagiarism as a Method for Reflection

    Today I have been reflecting a little on the events of the weekend, and enjoying the compliments while they last!

    I have put togther a short PowerPoint presentation to use at our Church Meeting this Thursday (we are sooo trendy now!) with images downloaded from the web (clipart, Google, Ebay - not entirely sure about copyright status) and a few I scanned in.  Below is a version of it modified slightly to retain our anonymity (if this site allows it, please don't download and edit it to remove my alterations!).  When I tested it some of the auto animation had gone a bit awry so you may need to press the 'down' button yourself.  If you don't have broadband it's probably too big to view at a reasonable cost (sorry)

    DPP_2006.2.pps

    Enjoy!

  • Good Moos

    Yesterday I wondered if anyone would come to our open air service, apart from our own folk, and possibly not even all of them.  I need not have done, we had a congregation of just over 50 of whom around a dozen had no known church connection.  We had a good smattering of Methodists and Anglicans and a good time was had - the sparklers sparkled, if briefly; the windmills did not collapse, though not all were functional; the doves looked great and the bubbles filled the sky!  It was a good service, people joined in, laughed, smiled and helped each other make the objects - some real community spirit.

    By the end of the afternoon my already sore throat was quite painful, and I'm typing this whilst dosing myself with Beecham's, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

    Two highlights:

    Early in the service the cattle in the next field gathered very close to the fence, pressing their noses through the gaps in the railings and looking as if they were taking in everything I said!  By the time the blessing had been pronounced, after we'd sung 'God's Spirit is in My Heart' they were nowhere to be seen - prompting comments about the fact that they'd gone to take the Good Moos to the other cattle!  Very Francis of Assisi!  It seemed to sum up the experience, we'd had fun, the cows had entertained us and the message had, to some degree anyway, been heard.

    Then praise indeed from one of my people who confessed to having been sceptical about the whole undertaking, and proved wrong, and had enjoyed himself.  He worked incredibly hard all weekend and made a massive impact on the whole thing for good.  It takes a lot of courage to admit that you'd been wrong about something like this and I salute him.  My people worked hard for God, and for the local community - they should be very proud of themselves for what they've achieved and inspired for the next step in mission, as we too share the Good Moos!