Archive for

November, 2012

...

November 25, 2012 5:01 pm

Pray for your pastor

no comments
by    in Calling,Lists,Prayer

As you will know if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I delivered my first sermon last Sunday. I am incredibly grateful to all who prayed for me on that occasion; and I’ll reiterate that it went really well.

Photo taken from christmasstockimages.com, reused under CC License

Up until last week, whenever I read or heard “pray for your pastor”, I would never think much of it. I’m not sure what my excuses were; but I think that deep down I was thinking a combination of the following four things:

  • The preacher is more qualified than me. He will pray before preaching. That prayer will be better than mine.
  • The preacher will get the inspiration of the Holy Spirit anyway. There’s no need to pray.
  • That’s his job, for which he has been trained; he does not need any prayer in the first place
  • That’s for Sunday. Pleeeeeeenty of time.

These are the most insidious of arguments, because they each hold a tiny nugget of truth. That makes them ring “true-ish”; and makes them all the easier to use as excuses. But each of these arguments is also twisted. Let’s go through them again:

  • The preacher has some level of qualifications; and yes, he will pray before preaching (as well as, hopefully, through the week!). It does not mean that his prayer is better than yours. On the contrary, writing a sermon is no easy task; and it comes with its burdens, stresses, and feelings of low self-esteem. These may impede the preacher’s prayers for his own sermon: for instance, he may feel like he should have done a bit more preparation and he can’t present that work to God (that would be stupid, but stressed people do stupid things). Then your prayer is truly needed; and the knowledge that he is prayed for makes the preacher bolder in his own sermon-writing.
  • The Holy Spirit will inspire the preacher. But that does not supersede the need for prayer (or preparation). There is a famous joke about a young curate who, every week, spent hours preparing his sermons. He was mocked by a very Pentecostal colleague who told him “I only wait to hear from the Spirit”. Enthused by the idea, our young curate decides to try it out. The  next week, when they meet, the Pentecostal colleague asks: “So, did the Spirit speak to you? What did He say?” The curate answers “Yes. He said ‘you’ve been very lazy this week’.”
  • Hopefully, the preacher has undergone some form of formal training. It will generally be the case; and where not, he should receive some form of support by those who are trained. But no training can fully prepare for the sharing of the living Word – or else, that Word becomes dead; and preaching merely a mix of manipulation and of teaching of old doctrine. Only through prayer can we ensure that what the preacher says will genuinely touch the hearts and minds of the congregation.
  • The sermon will be delivered on Sunday. It will, generally, have been written beforehand. Especially in the case of someone preaching for the first time, this will take place days, nay, weeks in advance. Prayer is necessary at all stages of the sermon-crafting, up to the delivery and even beyond that. Additionally, as I’m sure you’ll find, Sunday isn’t that far around the corner.

So pray for your pastor. Pray for his health, his energy, his drive, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – through the week. Pray that he may be a true imitator of Christ, and that he inspire you to be, in turn, imitators of Christ. Pray that he may move you, challenge you, and speak words relevant to you and to the rest of the congregation. Pray that he may move himself, and be once again reminded with great awe of his own nature as a beloved child before God.

What’s your excuse? What will your prayer be?

—

Note: given recent news about female episcopate, it might be worth saying that, in the above article and, I’m sure, in many places through the blog, I have used the masculine as a generic term. It is not a theological statement! In this case, the preacher is a “he”, but might as well be a “she”. I find dual writing “he or she” tedious and cumbersome for the reader as well as for the writer; and abhor the abbreviation “s/he”. The plural sometimes works, it felt very odd to use it here. So if your pastor is female, I will leave it to you, reader, to make the appropriate substitutions!

tags: , , , , , , ,
No comment?
November 18, 2012 7:14 pm

Drawing near the throne

4 comments
by    in Bible,Sermons

Today, I gave my first sermon ever, in the university Chaplaincy at Warwick. A fairly daunting experience, but I’ll get back to that later (probably next week), but ultimately an amazing one. So this week, I thought I’d share the sermon here.

The readings it is based on are Mark 13:1-8 and Hebrews 10:1-14 and 19-25. Here, you can find a downloadable version of my notes, and you can also listen to the recorded sermon here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

At 1,200 words, it is a relatively short sermon (by evangelical standards if not necessarily by Anglican standards), but it would be an exceptionally long blog post, so here is a quick run-down of what I said.

—

It is easy to focus on what we do: on the fact that we go to church, that we pray, that we hang out with friends, etc. Regardless of the type of action that we focus on (even if it’s the action of others whom we  identify with), that becomes what we boast in, but also what we rely on: it becomes the temple that the disciple is telling Jesus about in Mark 13:1.

In doing that, we are, in some way, choosing what God should be well-pleased with. We are coming to God, yes – but on our own terms, isolating certain areas of our lives that we wish to show off to Jesus. And, as he retorts, this is all vanity.

Thankfully, our actions are not what give us salvation, or what makes the Father well-pleased. That means that, equally, they do not condemn us. Thinking that we are doing things in order to please God in our own strength; or that if we sin or, worse (!), do not show up at Bible study, we will be bringing shame to the name of Jesus – thinking that is futile. And it flies in the face of Jesus’s continuing work of intercession.

See, in the same way that, because we are in Jesus, we can ourselves call God “Abba”, “Father” – in that very same way, because we are in Jesus, when God looks upon us, it is his Son he sees. Therefore, in him, God is well-pleased with us. And we can therefore draw near the throne, not trusting in our own righteousness or in our own strength, but knowing that God sees Jesus in us.

When we come to Jesus, we can stop looking at the past to justify us, we can stop trying to show ourselves up to God. We can do like Zacchaeus, and allow Jesus’s transformative power show in exclaiming all that he will do. That’s how the “Therefore” in Hebrews 10:19 works: because of the sacrifice made once and for all, we can draw near the throne.

But drawing near the throne without listening would be pointless. We need to consider, as Paul says, how the work of Jesus transforms us. We need to reflect on how our lives have been changed; to feel part of God’s family; and finally, to look to Jesus as our perfect reflection, which keeps on spurring us on to good.

And we need to remember that it is not only ourselves who are allowed to draw near the throne in Jesus, but also anyone who believes in him. We must see Jesus in others, and see that they have just as much justification to draw near the throne as we do. Then, let us reflect that unity in keeping on meeting together, and loving one another.

tags: , , ,
4 comments!
November 11, 2012 5:39 pm

Praying is testing God (sometimes)

no comments
by    in Bible,Prayer

Being bold in prayer is tricky.

Don’t get me wrong: boldness in prayer and a faith to move the mountains are good things. There are also practical ways to increase boldness in prayer. But in all of that, there is a difficult balance to strike, between expecting our prayers to be answered and considering that as a right that we have come to acquire.

The danger is there, that we start demanding things from God, as though he were indebted to us, rather than the opposite. The Israelites did:

They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”

Psalms 78:18-19 (ESV)

And God got angry at them for it.

I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss this as God being angry at some form of lack of faith on the part of the Israelites. Or to think that the Israelites wanted to make sure of God’s power before they went on and trusted Him. After all, they had all left Egypt on the basis of that faith, the power of God had just been shown them when they were thirsting for water.

Yes, their prayer was a test; but one that we can be led to put God to in our own prayer life, without noticing that we do. We test God in our prayers when we allow our faith to depend on the outcome of the prayer.

Expectant prayer becomes tricky, then: we want to both be  bold in the assurance that God will provide, but we need to not let our faith depend on it. Prayer, and our relationship with God, cannot become a utilitarian thing. How do we achieve that, though?

In remembering that our prayer comes from faith and relies entirely on that faith. Yes, answered prayers can feed a little into faith; and both may grow together. But we must not allow ourselves to turn to a system where faith relies on answered prayers.

The Lord’s prayer, rightly, starts with a statement of praise of God. This is not only a statement of what is the most important, but also a way of giving us the right state of mind for prayer: one that looks at God first, and  then allows us to respond and ask for our daily bread expectantly.

To conclude, though, let us remember that after being angered, God still provided the manna. He still answered the prayer, even when it did not rely on faith alone. Prayers born out of necessity, prayers born out of strife, or those where we doubt our own worth in God’s eye and therefore God’s answer – these are all acceptable. But let’s not make a habit of them ;-)

tags: , , ,
No comment?
November 4, 2012 10:19 pm

Ecumenism matters

3 comments
by    in Uncategorized

Ecumenism is a big, scary word. Like predestination. Like transsubstantiation. Which means we can hide behind it. In an infamous Father Ted episode, Father Jack is taught to say “that’s an ecumenical matter” to stop him from answering any question. At the heart of ecumenism, though, is a very important idea: Christian unity.

Photo: E Gammie, reused under CC license

At the heart is the idea that there is one catholic (little c!) and apostolic church. Any church that adheres to the Nicene creed should adhere to the idea of ecumenism.
Any organisation that holds to the Bible should adhere to the idea of ecumenism. Because if we don’t, we are creating a culture of “us and them”, a culture where the others are not in communion with us.

But here come a difficulty: ecumenism is generally understood as bridging the Roman Catholic/Protestant divide (at least in the West). But where do we draw the line? What’s to stop us from being ecumenical with, say, Christadelphians, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses? Aren’t we drawing the same sort of line when we’re considering some as non-Christians?

To answer this, I like to look at the liturgy used for the induction of a Catholic chaplain last week. It goes:

Will you acknowledge the richness and diversity of your individual Christian traditions? Will you seek to be more fully united in faith, communion, pastoral care and mission, only doing apart what cannot be done together? Will you, in obedience to the Word of God, pledge yourselves to seek and make visible the unity intended by Christ for His people?

The stakes appear to have been raised. It is unity “intended by Christ”. No, Christ did not necessarily suggest there should be only one church organisation – the prayer in John 17 is that all Christians be one in Him. But what the liturgy says is that this unity needs to be made visible.

Indeed, one of the most mind-boggling questions people ask about Christianity is “why are there so many different denominations?” The multiplicity of churches to go to, the multiplicity of the details in doctrine, etc. impedes mission quite heavily. Because it means people look at the details* rather than at what is at the core of our being.

Don’t get me wrong, ecumenism should not be just in order to show that we are together – it should stem from a real desire for Christian unity! That unity is between individual Christians, who are all one in Christ – and then moving up to organisations; rather than the opposite. But ecumenism does have a visible part. It is, beyond a nice fluffy feeling, something that we “do”. The rest of the liturgy tells us more:

  • it is not an erasing of differences between different denominations. It is not being “non-denominational”. Rather, it is embracing those differences and celebrating them – and beyond that, celebrating our unity around these differences.
  • it happens in all we do: mission, faith, communion, pastoral care. Only things that cannot be done together should be done apart (basically, holy communion rites or celebration of the saints). But in that way, ecumenism looks no different from what we normally do. That’s probably what throws people who try to “do” ecumenical things – they are not special things to do; just normal things to do together.

This is where we can start to answer to the question of where ecumenism stops. Because in all we do as Christians, God is central. We do all these things not in our own strength, but relying, giving thanks and worshipping God. In order to be able to do so, we need to be worshipping, basically, the same God: the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As long as this happens, ecumenism is possible – more than that, it should happen and be visible. Just because we do things a bit differently, is no excuse for not being ecumenical.

“That would be an ecumenical matter” becomes, then, no excuse – rather, it turns into an impressively important matter, but also one that should flow naturally. After all, we do things together with people who believe in predestination – why not with Catholics too? ;-)

—

* Details can be important. Far be it from me to play down the importance of free will, or of how we see the Bible, etc. But doctrine is not at the centre of what we do – God is. (And yes, I realise that sentence is doctrinal in itself :-P )

tags: , , , ,
3 comments!