Tag Archives: grace

We hear to listen

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We are here to listen, to discern the truth, to find a truth to live by. We stand up to be counted, we listen for the voice of God in the whisper, the thunder and love.

In Adam I believe humanity is fallen. Adam is all humanity made in the image of God. Each of us succumbs to sin- we fall, we get up, we learn, we grow. Sin is turning our back on God and walking away from him. In life we are born into the innocence of Adam and grow up into Christ, each without exception. Christ is all humanity restored and redeemed, a new Adam who walked in innocence.

We miss the mark our hearts long for each day; the Light of God’s presence shines in the hearts of every person. This is the revelation of scripture and God restores, forgives and redeems humanity each day, a mystery revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There is guilt: there is shame. When we allow space for despair , it is filled by darkness as we continue the walk away from God, but he stands in our way and calls us back. He reaches out to rescue us. The darkness cannot overcome the light. Every sin is an invitation to the evil one. Sin sits at the door of our hearts as it did for Cain who went on to murder his brother Abel because he was jealous. As a church, we pray, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Why? Because in missing the target we are blinded by our selfish lack, our sense of entitlement obscures the light. The longing God put in our hearts for the good, the beautiful and truth is exploited by the evil one into a sense of lack and we grasp at what is not ours to have. This is the lesson of the garden of Eden where our ancient parents succumbed. Though we choose death God waits patiently to restore us to life.

Not that a sense of lack is necessarily evil. In many ways it drives us to improve our situations,  developing technologies and caring societies. It is when lack becomes driven by disappointment rather than hope that there is a problem, when desires rule.

In Christ is our life and breath; our whole being, our ever-flowing way back to God. In him our being finds its Alpha and its Omega, its beginning and its end: the heart of God to love. In Christ death is no more, there is no longer guilt, no longer shame as we stumble, and surely, we stumble. Jesus seeks us out. Jesus holds us. Jesus is Lord.

Jesus conquers death as a man, by taking his full deity into the death of all humanity and in his deity conquering death for all humanity by rising to new life. Death could not hold him as he shouldered our sins on the cross, perfectly revealing God. Death is defeated for all.

Stir in me, stir in me, Holy Spirit arise in me, new my soul rise-up in thee, clean and pure and Holy, I was taught to sing.

The breath of God creates and forms, restores and heals. From dust we were formed and in common with all, to dust we will return. This is sure. In Christ we know intimately the inheritance of all humanity, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and ever-flowing life. Birth into the glory of God is the way we are drawn along.

Christ is our daily bread, given to all, broken for all, a life poured out for all. Without the drawing of God, we are lost, we are dead in our humanity. The Spirit needs-must invade our reasoning, invade our imagination; we dream and have visions; a vision of one body; one body birthed on a cross; one body begotten in the beginning, revealed as we listen and hear of Christ’s death resurrection and ascension into heaven. All are called into this body, Christ now seated at the right hand of God.

In reading this far, all that has happened is that you have gathered with others to hear; to listen, to sense together with others a longing, a thirst. A thirst quenched in Christ. Jesus is alive, here now ascended to the Father in-the-midst of his people. You can’t follow him on your own, but he meets you as a friend in this shared understanding and experience of good news. There is a hunger to gather; to be together, to know one another. Maybe we have nothing more in common, but we want to hear.

This truth is a powerful truth revealed as we listen. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. To proclaim Jesus is Lord brings ruin in the ways of the world; you become a target. To stand with Christ, to align with him is to make his truth our measure. How can we doubt those who declare Jesus to be Lord; numbered, marked out by their declaration; standing together in an absurd truth; an absurd utterance. Yet you are listening, longing to understand.

Space is created so that mighty deeds of God are proclaimed and enacted, acted upon. from the heart of God as we gather. We prophecy. We know his voice and we no longer call any man our teacher as we know him for ourselves. The Holy Spirit discerns for us and teaches us. We prophecy against injustice and lies. There are all manner of manifestations of God’s goodness and mercy in our midst, and we know his voice. Declaring Jesus to be Lord brings peace and love and not violence; a narrow road to restoration, healing and life. God’s Spirit is given for the common good as we step out into worldly obscurity and trash our reputations. There is one body. There is one Spirit. A body breathed into life by the Spirit that we are invited to become a part of.

The Spirit rests; rests on each one of us: tongues of fire inspire us. Our hearts are strangely warmed as one saint commented. Nothing is ever the same again.

The portion of Christ exceeds that of Moses; not to seventy is it given, but seventy times seventy and more, numbered in Christ, forgiven, restored and poured out, an ever-flowing fount of water for all the world’s cleansing and sustaining.

From his people, from the Church, many thirsts are quenched. The church gathers in many camps, but you can’t be a church alone; no gathering is alone but is complete in Christ; there is only one Church, and we are in it together. The Church is recognised when hearts are gathered, in a death to self, a blessed poverty; a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a heart for peace: two or three who love, who love their enemies. The church brings life.

Humbly we come and draw water from the wells of salvation, we sang, a little flock. But in Christ we are many- a host and one heart, one mind are we, revealed and scorned but empowered.

Maybe in this and in our reading of scripture our hearts burned as they did for the disciples on the road to Emmaus who encountered the risen Jesus in words on the journey but recognised him in the action of breaking of bread at a meal. Maybe as you listen to friends, and engage ideas and experiences something stirs. There are reasons and reasonings, explanations. We can analyse and form rules. But when we encounter God in bread and wine, water, quiet and breath, then we know intimately an infilling of truth. Then we are transformed; 200 years of modern Christianity dissolve and we become church

A young man once asked me to come and speak with him. He wanted to save me from God; he wanted to confound me with his truth, show how I was deceived. I read him a poem I had written for him. It began, The god you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either. Master Eckhart a German mystic of the 13th Century prayed, God rid me of God. This is a stage in the journey all of us must go through, maybe several times as we peel away our certainty, let go the god of our own understanding and creation. God finds a way, through tongues of fire, through babbling tongues. Pentecost heralds dreams and visions, sighs deeper than words that birth love, that flows out for all. As we journey from Adam to Christ all becomes poetry, we appear drunk, in the breaking of bread, in the drinking of wine.

As the poet George Herbert says in his poem Agonie, Love in that liquor sweet and most divine which my God feels as blood but I as wine. Truth is revealed to our hearts and the words become flesh in you and in me.

Grace and peace.

Thoughts on Julian of Norwich, prayer and sin

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Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love: You can find the full text of “Revelations of Divine Love” by Julian of Norwich on [Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52958/52958-h/52958-h.htm)

I

Revelations of divine love, Julian of Norwich teaches (37), God keeps his chosen ones very safely, even though they sin, for in them is a godly will that never assented to sin. (translated by Barry Windeat)

Julian of Norwich sees the believer as in their nature, in their heart, living in a higher place where to sin is not possible but often falling to that  lower or fleshly place where we sin. She sees this as being an opportunity for God to bring honour to God’s name through the grace of forgiveness. Sin becomes a place of compassion and healing grace. The contrition felt by the sinner is an acknowledgement by them of God’s healing purpose and honouring to God. I might have embellished this.

Personally, I see people and myself struggle with goodness and have to frequently examine myself. Healing I find is in being present to my failings and my community; a commitment to live with honesty with others whatever. I don’t see that this comes naturally but is a consequence of being present first in God and present with people, the community he gives me. Sometimes this is the church community but often it’s the people we encounter on a daily basis. God is at work when we become a gift to those around us through compassion. I see this as being the healing choice that, in becoming the kindness that is needed for others, we know wholeness in our humanity and find peace. We forgive ourselves as we first forgive others, aware of our own failings.

And being forgiven is a human need. We need to know all’s well if we are not to be haunted by who we are. The Christ like choice is to prefer the other in a trinitarian dance – giving and receiving forgiveness in God and to others  as we move through our day. We may not receive love back from our community, but receiving the love of God is our foundation for giving love. In our giving and forgiving we know love from God. God brings us into Gods own self and our essential being is raised into the glory of deity.

This is good news as life is mostly thankless. Thankfulness is a gift we receive from God despite this and God receives honour even in our failing as we repent and determine to turn into the flow of love. Truly this brings healing in the face of the daily reality, renewing the gift of an ever-new life as it is exposed to the troubled world. For in Christ we are a new creation. Abiding in Christ, God’s own self abides in us. This is a gift of God as we dwell in this renewing redemption, reconciled as we choose good. Truly our hearts are divided but in Christ we naturally live in that higher place. The promise is that on the lower place of our hearts God has written the law and our hard sinful hearts are transformed by God to hearts of compassionate and humble flesh.

All are called to this and in the mystery of its outworking, we have knowledge of the holy. I do believe this work is exclusive to Christ the only way to God the father. The son dwells in the heart of each of us and his goodness is etched on all our hearts and all are called to respond, moment by moment. In the response to the word in each of our hearts we are set free from sin. It’s our trusting in the steadfast love of God that sustains us, is real food for the journey.

II

When we speak of sin, do we speak of the turning away from the face of God? God’s love is overflowing, God is the destination to which we flow and the source of  the outpouring –  a fountain of love. The spirit within us is an overflow of love –  streams of living water.

Maybe sin is a swimming against the current. Maybe it’s a damming up of the flow of the river of love. Many claim to be without sin and unaware of sin – many have no concept of God and have a dodgy idea of how all things come together. There is no meaning outside experience, no reality beyond our senses.

And yet we have a sense within us a guide that alerts us to broken connections. The breaks maybe with ourselves; who we think we are or suppose ourselves to be. They may be breaks with others; a sense of disconnection with our community, our loved ones, our family and friends. The breaks may be a sense of alienation from what sustains us, our choices, our lifestyle, the earth. The flow of life is disturbed and all is not well. The breaks are exposed as ruptures.

What are we to make of this inner revelation? How are we to be content and know joy? I think we need to find a deep forgiveness. Forgiveness that resonates with us and our experience of the world and causes us to do better, the Julian place of compassion and healing.

There is a prayer practise that begins with a bathing in the light of knowing what is right, the law on our hearts –  a stilling of the soul in a moment that names the moments of contentment and joy. Secure in this grace the prayer moves on to naming the breaks, the barriers. This is a work of a moment and may only be a wordless groan. But then comes a resolve to forgive and be forgiven. The practise can be of the hour, the day, the week; just when we notice. On our own we can rest in God’s mercy and extend our prayer into a time of asking and listening. But first we must be able to pray, forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others against us.

This may take time but will become real as we come to know Jesus. Else it’s an indulgence, a distraction. If our prayer doesn’t lead us to the source of all forgiveness in God’s person and God self we’re lost in the idolatry of a practise. The healing purpose is found in the person of God.

The good news is God is found with us and in us and God’s light shines in all our hearts. God’s presence sets us free and heals as revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the person in whom is the ever-flowing ground of all truth.

III

Galatians 5: The full text of Galatians 5 can be accessed on [Bible Gateway](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205&version=NIV) .

Colossians 3:15: You can read Colossians 3:15 on [Bible Gateway](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians%203:15&version=NIV) .2 Timothy 3: The full text of 2 Timothy 3 is available on [Bible Gateway](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20timothy%203&version=NIV) .

As we walk into God through our experience of compassion and healing of our sin our being will be clothed with an unnoticed loving restraint in the face of frustrations and disappointments that all too easily take us down and set us facing away from the fount of all blessing. God restores us in our contrition.

We will actively need to put on this clothing. In these times of set spiritual discipline we are invited to notice the times of restraint. Galatians 5 calls these the fruits and Colossians 3  gives us the list; compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love. The virtues we inhabit are love, hope and faith. Each drawing us towards the goal of goodness; beauty, truth and justice. So, there is the knowing and the unknowing or maybe the unknowing brings us to the knowing of joy and contentment, an exercise of the will and a noticing of habit, founded on an experience of God in Christ.

We find an encouragement to this in 2 Timothy 3. Surely Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and our worship is in the spirit. We should not be ashamed of this and include all in whom the light of truth shines; all are in the flow of divine grace and all are called to be forgiven as they forgive.

IV

Colossians 3:15 says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you’re called to peace.

This dwelling in forgiveness is what brings peace. Open our eyes to peace, and what brings peace flows through us. Jesus speaks of a bubbling up and overflowing of living water –  a refreshing flow from the fount of all blessing. Forgiveness we discover is in the person of the overflowing, ever being, creator and sustainer, God the father, son and holy spirit.

In much of our sin, we are our own victims; my anger, frustration and disappointment affects me. With my selfish exercise of power comes the ability to victimise and along with chance and time, my choices hurt others. Evil attacks the innocent and systemic powers rule and justice acts in a way so as to create collateral damage for the greater good.

We are given free will and can bless and curse and our neglect or wilfulness can destroy others. Mistakes in high jeopardy situations might kill and maim. With our free will comes vulnerability and the ability to do great damage.

Love does not insist on its own way and in my view, this is the love that has brought about this creation. The creation as we see it is the most loving, meaningful existence a loving creator God could make. That seems harsh and meaningless unless at his heart is compassion and healing in view of all the suffering. Creation, as Saint Paul says is subject to futility for the sake of the one who subjected it. This is the outworking of love! Is this love?

At the heart of love is forgiveness, a giving way. Before each of us and within us is a glory set before us and the glory is, all is made well in Christ. This is what Julian reveals, this is what brings meaning and purpose – there is justice and there is mercy –  a burning of the fire of love.

In Christ, is the eternal final judgement. We know it now on the cross of Jesus, son of God, and it’s forgiving work is open to all in Christ. As followers of Christ, the faithfulness of Jesus works a spiritual new creation in the reformation of our hearts. We are born again into the final judgement of all things, the redemption of all creation. As a people we rest in the peace that comes from the ever-present work of the cross dwelling in us and are priests of salvation for the world –  a resurrection people –  a company of the redeemed.

All are called to participate in God’s self – hands and feet of the living God. The work of God, in Christ is to bring compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love. We taste and we see the fruits in ourselves and others.

Yes, God will work this in all through Christ when all is brought to fruition,  but we who know the final judgement now are privileged to be members one of another, participators in the body of Christ. Our work is to glorify the father and our practise is to forgive as we are forgiven.

V

God is love: God is all powerful. Love is love that does not insist on its own way and keeps no record of wrongs. And so God creates. In us God becomes God’s self –  our experience leads us towards the knowledge of the holy. We cannot trust in the faithfulness of another’s experience of God. We can only know the God who has revealed God’s self to us personally. From this experience we draw strength. Each of us grows from the knowledge of the light within to the knowledge of the holy. Jesus is the way and in Jesus the father is revealed.

Forgiveness is at the heart of love. In creation this love is spiritually discerned in our experience of God. God is love before creation came to be and so forgiveness is our experience of love, as before creation there was no falling away from love to be forgiven. We experience darkness as we contemplate ourselves –  neglect, abuse, jealousy and guilt. As we contemplate God we gaze into darkness, a darkness of unknowing, of dim holiness. As we are transformed by our encounter with love ,we are able to enter further into the darkness –  a comfort, a place of grace and security; a place of forgiveness.

We know the intimacy of God’s gaze as we love. From our knowing forgiveness, we look on others and they are touched by our attention.

Jesus death on the cross opens us up to this resurrection love. The sin of humanity, the standing against the flow of God’s love, is the curse of freewill –  perfected free will is a will that flows with God’s will.

God speaks a word to us and out of the sheer silence of God, we choose life or death. Love is perfected in our choice of life. Each moment; each particle of being; each force of creation; is held by God and yet is free. The creating and forming voice of God directs and draws us in love but at every level creation is free to become and in some way is conscious. Every choice is made one in God though it is completely free.

This we see as chance and time and good seems often unseen in this. God is perceived in our spirit as are his ways. Everything I write makes sense without God where it speaks of our well-being through living reflective lives and meditation. Yet families, regions, government and systems, exert power. Freedom includes death and there is a will to have power that can be malevolent. In many ways we’re collateral in this rule of nature, subject to suffering through geography, history, genetics and disease.

My hope is the suffering is defeated by love. Jesus suffered in this life and suffering had its day as powers took him to the cross. There the sin of the world was put on his shoulders. It is the will of God that even death on a cross would not have victory and we see Jesus powerless –  choosing to die rather than overpower. His prayers of anguish are recorded as he stepped into love, becoming what he had been from the beginning a sacrifice for sin.

Sacrifice in our experience is of giving up something for a greater good. When we sacrifice, we give up what is ours that something might flourish. We see sacrificial love in parents for children, friends for friends. The greatest love we see is when one gives their life that another might live and that one is a stranger. That God and Jesus would remain powerless even to death open us up to the possibility that this sacrifice is for our flourishing as it appears so futile. Only Jesus resurrection makes sense of it else it truly is futile. This is where trust that God in Jesus is the evidence of our forgiveness, the person in whom we hope our forgiveness is enfleshed. In Jesus we trust our forgiveness is secure and we become new creations, redeemed from the sin of humanity.

We continue to fall short as Julian says but our hearts are renewed so that we turn acknowledging our sin and grow in glory piercing the darkness.

Beauty, truth and good

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I am late to Ian McGilchrist but yet another British thinker to be listened to.

In the podcast he reads a poem part of which says,

And in the sea reflected sky,
And in the sky there shines the sun,
Within the sun a bird of gold.

Within the bird there beats a heart,
And from the heart there flows a song,
And in the song there sings a word.

In the word there speaks a world,
A world of joy, a world of grief,
From joy and grief there springs my love.

From there as Martin Shaw says the “Awen” falls.

Kathleen Raine: a spell for creation

Thomas Hardy: at Castle Boterel

Jesus, beyond gender.

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Humanity is created male and female, the Image of God. Jesus is found in the beginning, the beginning where Wisdom is present, divine companion and creator.

Wisdom is one in the same as Christ, the Creator of all things. Jesus the Christ and Jesus our Wisdom are one: Jesus Christ is Jesus Sophia. Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, there from the beginning, the incarnation of Wisdom.

The incarnation of God is the incarnation of Wisdom that forms, fills and holds the world. This is Jesus, enfleshed in us; like us, the image of God but unlike us being God; calling us to become like God in the humanity we share.

The full counsel of God is found in Jesus dwelling in us, fully God, revealing beauty, justice and mercy. We know joy in one another and weep with the oppressed, called to loving action in the world, in acts of kindness and solidarity.

In all circumstances Jesus’s gift is Peace.

Wisdom is personified as a woman. Jesus is beyond gender yet he is woman incarnate and man, the Father, One in God. Jesus, the Son, is Jesus as Wisdom from the beginning. In his humanity he is a male and in his divinity, beyond male and female: fully woman and fully man yet more.

Just as Love is his essential being so is Wisdom, One with the Father. In Jesus we are formed and sustained. We feed on his milk comforted like new born babes, born into a world of light with strength for the day.

The Son and the Father dwell within us. In him and through him we have our being. As we turn our gaze to beyond the horizon of knowing, we glimpse the fullness of both male and female in him.

In him, we find the beginning of all things. Jesus reveals to us God and in him is both male and female held as one. Jesus is as much woman as man and more.

So how are we to name this? As much as we call Jesus our Christ and Jesus our Saviour, we could know Jesus better as we call on him as Jesus our Wisdom from the beginning, Word made flesh: Jesus Sophia. Peace be with you, go without fear, to love and serve in wisdom.

Episode 284: Jennifer G. Bird – The Myth of Biblical Marriage – The Bible For Normal People

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https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-284-jennifer-g-bird-the-myth-of-biblical-marriage/

Jennifer G. Bird joins Jared and Angela Parker to bust the myth of “biblical” marriage. She dives into the ways scripture has been used to enforce traditional gender roles, the cultural assumptions embedded in biblical texts about marriage, sex, and property rights, and how these interpretations have influenced Christian thought.

Us and theming

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Recently, I have been contemplating Matthew 7 with the guidance of Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship. To start at the end, we get the parable of the person building their house on the sand and the one building their house on the rock.

‭Matthew 7:24-27 NRSV‬
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.24-27.NRSV

In a way, it rounds off this whole section of teachings, but for me, it refers quite closely to the way through Chaperer 7.

The chapter begins by warning us not to judge others.

‭Matthew 7:1-2 NRSV‬
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.1-2.NRSV

Bonhoeffer reminds us that the story of original sin was to pick fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To believe ourselves to be the judge is not right as the place of judgement is the cross, and judgment is rightfully the Lord’s. We are to look on Jesus and see all else in relation to his love for all. We are not to judge but to love.

And then this peculiare saying;

‭Matthew 7:6 NRSV‬
“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.6.NRSV

Apt, in that through judging, we profane the holy; we despoil the revelation of truth that opens our eyes to the right way by misapplication of the truth spoken to us to others. In order to speak, we need to be humbled by the realisation of our own needs, else the measure we get hurts.

Jesus says;

‭Matthew 7:7 NRSV‬
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.7.NRSV

We move from judgement to trust. It is in our hearts to be right. In speaking our own righteousness, we get hurt. The true path is prayer, and with our creator, we can intercede creatively and be transformed and sustained and see things change.

The movement continues laying aside our desire to judge, to love prayerfully and compassionately with kindness.

‭Matthew 7:12 NRSV‬
“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.12.NRSV

It’s how we are that leads others to a better way, not our judgement. That way leads only to violence, which is a wide path.

‭Matthew 7:13-14 NRSV‬
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.13-14.NRSV

And here Jesus makes it plain. Only the few will be able to hear this. We are called to be of the few. It is in the twos and threes that Jesus is present. The body of Christ is made up of the few, a community of small communities gathered around Christ. Jesus knows what is in people’s hearts, and Bonhoeffer refers us back to the temptation Jesus experienced in the dessert, to be popular, one leading many.

‭Matthew 7:15-16 NRSV‬
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.15-16.NRSV

The temptations of being popular, gathered around strong leadership, have left thousands on the wrong side of the truth. It’s not the Law and the Prophets that lead us to God. This is death. Encountering Christ leads us to the Law and the Prophets, schooling us in love and opening our eyes to our own pride and arrogance, bringing life. We preach to those we love.

‭Matthew 7:21 NRSV‬
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.21.NRSV

Our distinctive, Jesus teaches, is to love as Jesus loves, self sacrificially and without coercion. If we find ourselves distinct because of our judgement of others then however successful we may appear, we are wrong.

It’s a hard saying, and we are back to where we started; all these sayings are the foundation we build on for the day of trouble. To end at the start, Jesus, before he embarked on this section of teaching, said,

‭Matthew 6:34 NRSV‬
[34] “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.6.34.NRSV

Healing

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God heals. We pray, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Surely, in the healing of minds and bodies and deliverance from oppression, God is healing. In the mystery of God in all things, upholding all things, God is present in a way that wills only good, that brings light and life.
This is the aroma of God, and we see it in the healing ministry of Jesus who says, if you don’t believe in me, believe in the works that I do. Through community, care, and prayer, followers of Jesus embody this. Followers of Jesus are distinctive only because of love, love of God, and love of those around them.
And so in history we see collections for the poor to feed and clothe them, rescuing of the destitute especially children caringbforbthe sick and teaching, and, as medicine develops, hospitals, and in recent times schools for children.
Visiting the sick and clothing the naked is a work of humanity, as is caring for the indigent and those in prison. Jesus calls us to his perfect humanity, accountable to the light he has placed in everyone. He is light, and we are called to be light. God is not divine deodorant. We are his holy aroma recreated and formed by the renewal of our minds. We are called to be holy as he is holy; to be fully human. Kindness and compassion make us truly human.
The place of gathering for those on this journey, the holy place, is a meal, a table where life is shared in its fullness in all circumstances. A meal that encompasses Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection. The mystery of faith is, being in Christ, being fully human as Jesus was and is, resurrected, making all things new. All creation is in Christ from the beginning, and Jesus reveals this truth, as he is so are we redeeming, redreaming, all things.
This is our religion, our worship, that causes us to sing and praise and to enter the quiet place of intimacy with God. In him, we look with the eyes of Christ and in all see Christ.



God is ever healing, drawing all creation to the good. Miracles happen, but the miracle of the human endeavour is to be celebrated. What we see in medicine today should bring us to our knees in praise and thanksgiving. Medicine in all its forms expresses the miracle of the light within. Humanity expresses itself in healing and curing. Jesus is revealed in our care for the sick and oppressed and in the advances of science. This is the life we are called to. He is not revealed in turning away from the goodness of science to a spiritual desert of disappointment. Does God heal in miraculous ways? Yes, look around you.
People experience the extremes of genetic collateral, physical attrition, and just plain bad luck. All is in God’s hands but is not God’s will. Jesus’s answer is to put in our mouths a prayer that asks for God’s will to be done and in our minds a will to cure.
Does God intervene? Only in love. We are to pray constantly, expressing compassion and kindness for those afflicted and in need of saving. Open your eyes, love wins. Do not be put off by the charlatans who profit from your disappointment. It’s not your fault.

Before Moses died on the borders of the promised land, he said,

‭Deuteronomy 31:26 NRSV‬
“Take this book of the law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; let it remain there as a witness against you.

He then wrote down a song, and in it, he sung,

Deuteronomy 32:3-6 NRSV‬
For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation. Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?

https://bible.com/bible/2016/deu.32.3-6.NRSV

To Christians, this sounds familiar. Jesus had come down from a mountain where his true glory had been revealed, but in the meantime, his disciples had not been able to cure a fitting boy, and the disciples wanted to know why.

‭Matthew 17:17-18 NRSV‬
Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.17.17-18.NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/deu.31.26.NRSV

Jesus words seem to say we are at fault when there is no healing, How much longer must I put up with you? I’m not sure this was directed at the hapless disciples.
Jesus has just communed with Moses, who saw how the people had failed and how they would fail despite the law. He had also communed with Elijah, who in the time of Israel’s deep apostasy did many miracles. I feel that Jesus was constantly bringing the people back to Moses; the heritage they were so proud of, what they felt defined them. We see the practices of the way of the law angering Jesus, and here, he reminds them of the prophecy of Moses.
Jesus heals the lad and then teaches the disciples about faith. I believe he was drawing a contrast, reframing the song of Moses, anticipating an end to the curse of the law and healing the lad. I think Jesus words and healing were a parable; the disciples would see Jesus recalling the song of Moses and speaking out frustration at the way of the Law, then there was healing, then joy, a new way that always was the way, a revelation of the true way..
Afterwards, the disciples wanted to know why they were not able to deliver the boy; their expectation must have been that they could, but nothing happened. Had they not healed people and raised people from the dead?

‭Matthew 17:20 NRSV‬
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.17.20.NRSV

Does this mean their lack of effectiveness was their own fault? What was the lesson? Your faith is less than tiny, but tiny faith can alter stuff. You can read this all as a rebuke or as playful teaching. It was the demon that was rebuked, not the disciples.
The whole incident is redolent with hyperbole. otherwise, he would be denying his own faith. We learn there were occasions Jesus himself was unable to heal.
We have been taught to feel bad about our lack of faith, but Jesus is telling us we don’t need much and encouraging us, not telling us off. Read it again, seeing Jesus after coming down from the mountain, and overjoyed that life was coming, acting out the song of Moses, then healing with a huge smile on his face. Keep coming to Jesus and asking.



Does suffering cease? Only through love, and if our tiny faith does not prevail, we can trust in that love and draw on it, as Jesus stands with us in our anguish. We bear in plastic shopping bags a fullness beyond measure, and yet death and destruction stalk our daily lives and evil picks off the innocent. I hope Jesus is frustrated with that, and we see that he is. I am.

We are to seek the good of all in our actions and in our prayers. This is our work. A prayer for healing is an act of love. We can not be other than fully human in our spirituality. Sometimes, our prayer is a groan, and in this groan, the Spirit knows deeper than we can know what to pray. Every prayer drives the cosmos forward in Christ. We need to realise the power of Christ in us, the light we bear and shine out.
Our hope is that all is in God’s hands. We are taught that hope is not what is seen. Hope, faith and love are our virtues; a growing faith that breaks through the wall of transactional childish ways into a deep trust; a real hope which prays with all our humanity, sure that God is love.
Do not become slaves to events, people, and places but worship in spirit and truth. Do not be those who naval gaze, but become those who act to bring unrelenting good into this held but broken creation.
My dream is that we will break through to a place where we don’t hold God to account for not healing: a place where we can integrate all creaturly experience as being held in Christ.
It is good to ask the question and wrestle with it, but don’t give up praying and meeting together, losing hope. God is healing, and our prayers are effective: God is sovereign in and through love and only in and through love. Love is difficult. All creation, the good and the bad, is perfected in love. Wrestle. Imagine. Dream. We should see more healing, and it is frustrating, but don’t give up or concede a vision of a good and powerful God.

My hope is that we will share spiritual practices that deepen the life of service and maybe take a few up. But I think they are best done together and voluntarily. I think they then feed the multiple personalities and dispositions of the gathered who can choose what to do in their daily life. Only do not then leave the table.
To be authentic, the body of believers minister Christ to those around them in eating together, walking together, and listening. We model a non transactional way where people come and do life together because they are being met by Christ. We resist framing people’s experience of God and killing it with practices.
It is enough that they want to be there. Church is voluntary, and leadership in the body is in teaching, facilitating and guiding; providing the fuel. There is also judgement, routing out hypocrisy and exposing harm, which Jesus shows is directed towards the powerful and is uncontroling.


There is a life worth living, and it first draws us inward to the secret place, and we are cleansed. We become in our lives faithful to Jesus, the one who lived died and rose again, revealing God as Father, Son, and Spirit: Christ for all. In this life God is healing.

Seeking God.

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As we seek after God, what we know will lead us. Even if we start with God is Love, our experience of love will form our thoughts. If our confidence starts with the assertion that what is revealed in the scriptures is sufficient for us to trust God and the promise of God found there is true, who we are in our reading will dictate our path to seeking the Holy.

Holy means beyond knowing yet close, a place of presence, an encounter with mystery. Both love and holiness are the exercise of goodness. Love wills the good and holiness is presence of good. Again our culture and experience, our character and history will define our experience.

That is why I believe silence and stillness to be part of our quest after the divine. That’s why I believe that faith begins with the appreciation of beauty, goodness and justice. What warms our hearts in the moment, what blazes unexpectedly, the arresting presence is the beginning and end of faith. The faithfulness of God in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus are my beginning and the stillnes and silence strip away the rest, all other thought is purified by the presence of the mystery of the birth, death and resurrection of God in Christ.

The experience that defines our quest after the knowledge of the Holy begins with encountering the end of experience, declaring, here I am before the person and voice of God speaking into our need to know.

When is now for the church?

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Where are we in history? We are promised that as followers of Christ, we will move from glory into glory. The censuses tell us there are fewer of us declaring ourselves Christian though. What’s gone wrong? The self proclamation of belonging to a church or faith system is diminishing and seemingly the system is diminishing in power and influence.

The picture to me is more complex than the statistics suggest. In history the instituted church has done its work it appears to me, and has served its function. Could it be we are in a new phase that won’t appear in a census and this phase has been quietly fermenting all along.

I see the church as having established a culture, a core understanding of mercy, beauty, selfless giving, forgiveness, restitution as justice, care for the poor, care for the widow, a common commitment to fairness for everyone. Where Christianity has been central to a society, the secular society is different. The incarnation of God in Christ has led to the embodiment of godliness and enabled pluralism and equality. Where the word of Christ has been preached we find the habitual virtues of faithfulness, hope and love as expectations.

By faithfulness we mean, that we rest in the faithfulness of the Divine who is righteous and true to his promises revealed to people close to his heart. There is truth. By hope, we live in the light that all will be well and all manner of things will be well; all is not lost in the troubles of the day. God is with us in trials, in pain, in disappointment, to hold us and sustain us. By love we understand a willing of the good for all in a non coersive, self giving, enemy loving way poured out to all. The rule of God is exercised through communities of people gathered in love.

Society that has this foundation of love born of the words of Jesus, has this root may hedge it around with laws and institutions. Democracy and the rule of law with an independent judiciary and a free press exist where Christianity has been. Christian society’s life blood is the heart of the people moulded by the word of Christ. The estates of nations are instituted by God. Christianity may have moulded these but the institutions are not God’s rule.

Is the new phase where those who draw succour from Christ bring life, without the rod of power? Could it be that in this phase we see the irrepressible growth of the truly catholic church? Is this where the glory increases, where the kingdom of God is revealed to be not of this world, where speaking truth to power is not having power?