Should we still remember?

Here is my sermon from this year's Remembrance Sunday service at Broughton:

It's now over one hundred years since the first Remembrance Sunday took place at the end of the First World War; this year we commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day; next year we'll celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – and very few of those who remember those events are still alive today. So it might be reasonable to ask the question, do we still need to carry on remembering? After all we don't still remember the battle of Waterloo in the same way, and that too was a war to stop a dictator taking over Europe.

It seems to me that Remembrance Sunday is important especially for those who don't believe in God but still want to hold on to the idea that there are moral absolutes – that some actions are right and others wrong; that some actions are good and others are evil. Without God to define what is right and what is wrong it is necessary to come up with another standard for morality and so the moral and ethical code for many in our society is summed up in the golden rule: “Don't be like Hitler!” And so Remembrance events are annual reminders of that secular basis for morality.

This, however, makes our sense of good and bad a matter of comparison: “I may not be perfect but I'm not as bad as Hitler”! As the old joke says, if you're in a place with bears you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear, you only have to be able to run faster than your companions! As long as you're not the slowest, you'll survive. And that's the way morality is seen too: as long as I'm not the worst I'm OK. We compare ourselves with others, even those around us, and as long as we are better than they are, we satisfy ourselves that we are good. And even if we've got no-one around us who is worse than us, we are still good because we're not Hitler.

In our second Bible reading (Mark 10:17-27), a man comes up to Jesus to ask a question and calls him “Good Teacher.” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” In doing so, Jesus was making a point about himself – in calling him 'good' the man recognises that Jesus is divine; but Jesus is also making a point about us – we are not good. Even if we obey a lot of the Ten Commandments like the man had, we are still not good. The man was relying on his good deeds for his salvation, for his reputation of being good, but Jesus reminds him and us that it is impossible for us to be saved, to be good by our own actions.

The problem is our perspective. When we compare ourselves with others we will always find people worse than ourselves: even Hitler thought he was morally better than others – which is why he put so many into death camps. Unlike the Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch, the Nazis didn't look at themselves and ask “Are we the baddies?” - they thought they were the goodies. We may think that morally we are as far away from the Nazis as we are in distance from Australia, but we are looking at it from ground level. Jesus reminds us that the moral standard is God himself – only he is good. And when we compare ourselves with him, we are as far away from him morally as we are in distance from the edge of the universe. And from the edge of the universe, the distance between us and Australia is ultra-microscopically small. Compared with God we are as bad as Hitler.

A film came out last year called “The Zone of Interest” about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp. But what makes this film different to other Holocaust movies is that instead of getting us to identify with the victims, it wants to show us our similarities with the perpetrators.

So while Remembrance events are good for reminding ourselves to not be like Hitler, it is Remembrance Sunday that teaches us the most important lesson: peace will never come through human effort. Because all of us share that inner sinfulness that is only a step away from committing the horrors we see in war. We need to be reminded not to be like Hitler because we are like Hitler. The Commandments Jesus doesn't mention in his list are Commandments about putting God first in our lives, and by failing to do that our inhumanity towards humanity will continue. But the good news that introduces the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2) is that that God saves us not on the basis of our good deeds but on his love for us – which is shown supremely in Jesus' death which takes the punishment for our sins and attributes to us a goodness that we could never achieve ourselves.

Our first reading (Isaiah 2:2-5) tells us that one day those who are willing will learn God's ways and walk in his paths, and that is a good thing to start doing now. But it is only through Jesus that peace will come because he is the good one who will judge between the nations and settle the disputes for many peoples. That is why he is called the Prince of Peace; that is why the peace doves we have here today come out from the cross.

Our imaginary God?

Here's my June magazine article:

What do you imagine when you hear the word 'God'?  Even if you don't believe in God, you will have an idea of who the God is that you don't believe in (and perhaps as Pastor Timothy Keller wrote “Describe the God you’ve rejected. Describe the God you don’t believe in. Maybe I don’t believe in that God either.” !)  This is not an academic question because our image of God (or our non-belief in God) is a major influence on the way we live our lives and the way we view ourselves, others and the world.

Having realised what our image of God is, the next question is where we get that image from.  For example the Greeks and Romans imagined their gods to be just super versions of humans, thus sharing our characteristics of selfishness, pride and ambition.  And different cultures have come up with different representations of the divine leading to different moral teachings. So if God does exist, is there any way of knowing what he is like?

If we try to imagine what God is like by ourselves we will inevitably create a God that is in our own image: venerating the things we like, and denouncing the things we dislike.  As Christians we believe that we can know what God is like but only because God has chosen to reveal himself to us.  He has done this through his Word, the Bible.  The Creation account in Genesis shows us a God who wants to be known by humanity and wants a personal relationship with humanity, even walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).  The Old Testament is full of accounts of God revealing his character and his will to people, but it is in the New Testament that God's self-revelation finds its apex.

There we find that Jesus is the image of the invisible God in whom all the fulness of God dwells (Colossians  1:15,19) and that he is the exact representation of God (Hebrews 1:3).  Jesus himself said that anyone who sees him has seen the Father (John 14:9).  So if we want to know what God is like, we need to look at Jesus.  The disciples' experience of the divinity of Jesus, distinct from both the divinity of the Father and the divinity of the Holy Spirit, lead them to the doctrine that is known as the Trinity: “God is one divine Being eternally existing in three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (“To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism” Qu. 38). This doctrine is particularly recalled on Trinity Sunday, which this year is 4th June.

This complicated doctrine is not one that would be invented, but could only come in response to God revealing himself to us.  And it is no surprise that our finite minds struggle to comprehend an infinite being – as St Augustine said “If you understood him, it would not be God”!  But if we look at Jesus we will get a glimpse of the God who longs for us to know him.

A solid Rock amidst shifting sands

Here's my article for September:

In a world where news is instant and even daily newspapers are out of date by the time you read them, writing a monthly article a few weeks in advance is quite challenging as it's impossible to know what the situation will be when you read it. One thing COVID-19 has taught us is that things can change very quickly. And especially (at the time of writing!) when lockdown is being eased and therefore there is an increased chance that infections will rise.  The guidelines coming from the government can change almost daily.  This particularly affects those who run businesses or organisations but it also affects employees and indeed everyone.  Ever-changing guidelines and regulations can confuse and disorientate us.

In such a world, the way God reveals himself to us in the Bible comes as a great comfort. In Malachi 3:6, God says “I the Lord do not change” and throughout the Old Testament (e.g. Psalm 18; Isaiah 26:4) he is referred to as a rock – an image of security, stability and strength.  When all around us is uncertain and like shifting sands, we can rest peacefully if we are anchored on his unchanging nature.  God is often contrasted with the fickleness or deceitfulness of humanity (1 Samuel 15:29) or the fleetingness of creation (Psalm 102:25-27), which reminds us that everything (including COVID-19) will pass away.  Because he is eternal and unchanging, Peter wrote “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7) and Paul wrote “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).  So by trusting in God we have nothing to fear; neither disease, nor unemployment, nor even death.  As the hymn 'Great is thy Faithfulness' says: “There is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not, as Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be...All I have needed Thy hand hath provided - Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”

Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, confirming that Jesus is God and so his character does not change either.  Instead, Jesus is the demonstration of (as Brennan Manning says in 'The Ragamuffin Gospel') God's 'magnificent monotony', his constant attitude of relentless love towards us.  So not only is God eternal and unchanging, he is also unceasingly loving towards us.  He is not waiting for us to slip up so he can punish us, he is wanting us to realise that our sins separate us from him and repent so our relationship with him can be restored.  That is why the great truth of Hebrews 13:8 comes in the context of moral teachings – Jesus' character doesn't change, and neither do his teachings.

Sometimes we wish his teachings would change, like government guidelines on COVID do, because many of them are so out of step with the values of society.  But if God's character towards us is constant then we can be sure that his guidelines and instructions are for our benefit, no matter how much they conflict with society or our personal preferences.  His instructions are never out-of-date, primitive or not relevant today because they come from his eternal wisdom and love.  And although they may sometimes be challenging and difficult, they are given to us by him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) and who promises us life in all its fullness (John 10:10).

God: despot, genie or Father?

Here's my article for May:

All you have to do is rub the lamp and out will pop a genie who will grant you three wishes (as long as they aren't about falling in love, killing someone or having more wishes!) I wonder how many times you have thought what your three wishes would be?

Of course, most of us would say that we want our loved ones to be safe; or a cure for various diseases; or perhaps world peace. But deep down there is a temptation to ask for power or wealth or beauty, and given the choice I don't know whether I would be able to resist the opportunity for selfish gain – and I suspect I'm not alone!

I also suspect that often we think of God as being like that genie; someone who we go to as a last resort when we can't solve things ourselves and expect him to grant our every wish. The Rogation Days are the traditional days of asking God's blessings on our world and our work. However, if we do think of God as some sort of divine vending machine then we will be disappointed. And that disappointment might be the reason some people don't believe in God. It probably isn't because he hasn't given us a fast car, or the winning lottery numbers, but more likely it will be because he hasn't answered a genuine prayer, perhaps to save a loved one from dying.

When I studied Judaism, the rabbi who was teaching us said that in classic Judaism the answer to the problem “why does God allow suffering?” is “God is God and he can do what he wants”! Although it is not a completely satisfying answer to the the problem it does give a helpful steer, especially if we don't hear it as being “God is a totalitarian despot.” Instead it invites us to see the problem in the light of who God is.

God is neither a despotic God, for whom we are merely playthings, nor is he a genie God, who is entirely at our command. God reveals himself in the Bible as being all-powerful and all-knowing but he is also all-loving. Jesus encourages us to pray saying “Ask and it will be given to you” but qualifies it by going on to say “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7 and 11). The two important parts of that verse are that God is our Father who longs to give us good gifts.

Just as children don't always know what's best for them and can get upset when they don't get what they ask for, so too we don't always know what's best for us and often have imperfect motives. God is perfect and knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:32), so if he doesn't give us what we ask for, we can be confident that it is because he loves us and wants what's best for us, not because he doesn't care for us or we don't have enough faith. This side of death we will never fully understand God's purposes but we should be confident to pray, as Jesus did “thy will be done.” That prayer lead Jesus to the cross, but he went willingly knowing that through his death he “led many of God’s children to be saved and to share in his glory “ (Hebrews 2:10 Contemporary English Version.)

Christmas Playlist. 3: The angels' song – How did God come?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

3: The angels' song – How did God come?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at the angels' song – How did God come?

There are many ways to announce the birth of a child and these days social media seems to be the most popular. The birth of Mary's baby, however, was announced by an angel to shepherds (Luke 2:8-14)! The angel described the baby's job - “Saviour”: Redeemer. He announced the baby's title - “Messiah”: God's King promised for centuries to his people, promises recorded for us in the Old Testament. And he revealed the baby's identity - “the Lord”.

And that word, “Lord,” is making a staggering claim, because it is the word that was used by Greek-speaking Jews to translate the Hebrew word “Yahweh” - the personal name of God. God's name is Yahweh, and it's what he told his friends, his people, to call him. In other words, here's the deal: good news, great joy for all the people, has come because a Redeemer, the Ultimate Ruler, has been born. And he is God Almighty.

On the first Christmas night – and this is the heart of the Christmas story, and the heart of the Christian faith – God took on flesh. The voice that made the cosmos could be heard crying in the cradle. The hands that placed each star in its place grabbed hold of Mary's fingers. Her son was fully human, and fully God. In this man, divinity met humanity.

Perhaps this is where you struggle with the Christian faith. You are prepared to accept Jesus as a great teacher, a religious leader, or a brilliant philosopher. You are prepared to accept that he spoke for God, perhaps. But you struggle to accept that he is God – that as Mary and Joseph peered into the manger, they were looking at the eternal Son of God. You struggle with the idea of a virgin birth and a miraculous incarnation.

God the Son taking flesh is a mystery we will never understand. But not being able to understand how God became one of us is not proof that he did not become one of us. Here is the answer to the human predicament, the solution to our slavery to sin and our separation from God. God bridged the gap by coming from heaven to earth. This is how much the mighty God cares about us.

Then a choir of angels declares what this baby will achieve: “on earth peace”. The peace of God that invades a life is based on the discovery of peace with God. No matter how well we do at trying to establish peace with each other, until we discover what it is to have peace with God, we're not going to discover the peace of God. And since we are separated from God – since we have declared our independence and rebelled against our rightful Ruler – this is a peace that can only be brought about by the intervention of God himself. We may try to find peace without God in our own way – peace through power, possessions or popularity. We may try to find peace with God through our own strength – peace through obeying religious rules or through being “good people”. But the truth is that only God can give us peace with himself.

But it's a peace that so many miss out on because they fail to make room for the one who brings it. Remember why the God of heaven was in a feeding trough? Because there was no room for him anywhere else. He made the entire universe. He came into his universe. And there wasn't a place for him.

Let's be honest; in the lives of many of us, it's no different. We have no room for him either – not if it makes life uncomfortable for us, not if his presence brings any inconvenience to us, not when his actions and words surprise us. But our response does not change the truth. God has visited this world. He has come as one of us, to bring peace to us by redeeming us from our sins. Will you say to him, “No room”?

Christmas Playlist. 2: Zechariah's Song - Why do you need God?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

2: Zechariah's Song – Why do you need God?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at Zechariah's song - Why do you need God?

While Mary's is the first song recorded in Luke's gospel, hers was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described by Luke. That belonged to her elderly relative Elizabeth, whose husband, Zechariah, sang abut his son, John, as he held him in his arms (Luke 1:68-79). The song has come to be known as the Benedictus. The first line of the song (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them”) contains two words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message - “come” and “redeemed”. God has come to visit. If you want to understand the first Christmas – if you want to grasp the purpose of God's visit – you need to understand redemption.

Redemption is the act of providing a payment to free someone. And Zechariah is explaining God's work in his present situation by referencing God's work in the past – in the time of the Exodus a millenium and a half before. This was when God rescued the Israelites who had been enslaved in Egypt by Pharaoh. Now, God is redeeming his people all over again. Not form enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their sin – to our own sin. We need, he says “forgiveness of [our] sins.”

Sin is an unpopular word, but it is a word the Bible unashamedly uses, and it is a word which explains both what we see within us and what we see around us. Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be – in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course. It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don't want you, I won't obey your commands, I will not listen to your word. I will call the shots.

Sin is our greatest problem because it separates us from the God whom we are made to know and designed to enjoy. But in another sense the truth about sin is also our greatest insight because it explains life as we experience it. There is a mighty, loving God who made us – and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness. But we reject that God's authority – and so we are capable of selfishness and evil. We were made to enjoy life with God eternally but we all choose to live in defiance of him. Hence the flatness, the 'blues' that come after Christmas as once again we get beyond the busyness and distraction of the festivities and think deep down, I don't have the answer. None of the gifts, books, music, family or friends can fill the hole in our lives. So, we're really asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen – from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot repay.

At the heart of understanding the first Christmas and why it is such good news is an understanding of the nature of your predicament. And that involves accepting the nature and seriousness of sinfulness – your sinfulness. God did not come down to provide a little religious Energizer battery that would make us nicer people. He came because you were drowning, pulled down by the weight of your sin and miles from the shore. If you're drowning it doesn't help for someone to come along in a boat and say Come on now, thrash a little bit more. Try a little harder. Swim a bit better. You'll be able to get yourself out of that mess. No, you need someone to reach down their hand, grasp yours, and pull you up to safety and take you to shore. And if you know you are drowning, you don't refuse the person whose hand is offered to you. You grab it, and you splutter your gratitude.

And that is what Zechariah is doing. He knows that John will spend his life saying, Hold on. God is coming. And God will rescue you. And so Zechariah sings, just as everyone who grasps what God was doing at the first Christmas sings: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.”

Christmas Playlist. 1: Mary's Song – What is God like?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

1: Mary's Song – What is God like?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here. This week we're looking at Mary's Song – What is God like?

After discovering she is pregnant, Mary goes to the home of Zechariah and her relative, Elizabeth. While she is there, Mary breaks out into song, the first Christmas song in history (Luke 1:46-55), also known as the Magnificat. This is a song not about herself but about God and she describes God using two words: mindful (nothing to do with the Buddhist-based practice of mindfulness) and mighty.

Mary sings that God has been mindful of her even though she seems to be insignificant (v48). She glorifies – focuses on the greatness of – the Lord because although she may be very little in the eyes of the world, she is valuable in the eyes of the One who made the world. Mary also rejoices that God has been mindful of his people, Israel. Around 2,000 years before Mary sang, the God about whom she sang had made great promises to Abraham saying that his descendants would become a great nation who would be a blessing to all nations. Throughout the Old Testament, God reminded Abraham's descendants again and again that he remembered them and would keep his promises. He said he would do this through a son and Mary recognised that it was her son that was the sign that God had remembered his people and would fulfil his promises to them. Here is the God of Christmas, of history. He is a God who knows you, and he cares about you, and he makes promises to you, and he acts to help you.

Secondly, Mary sings that God is mighty, mightier than all the rulers of the earth. But he sometimes also uses his power to take away from us the things that make us think that we are mightier than we truly are, and that make us forget the God who is mightier than we are. He scatters the proud so that they can become humble. And then he lifts them up. He helps those who are humble enough to say I don't actually have it all together. I don't have all my questions answered. I have struggles that I need help with.

So what do you think about when you think about God? Mary might well have answered that question God is mindful of us and more mighty than us. And the truth that God is both all-caring and all-powerful made her heart “rejoice” - and it's a truth that causes hearts to rejoice still today.

God, Guns N' Roses and November Rain

Here's my article for the November Magazine:

 As the nights start drawing in and the air turns from the autumnal crispness to the early winter dampness, I often have going around my head the lyrics “Nothing lasts forever even cold November rain,” from a song by Guns N' Roses.

Axl Rose, the lead singer, explained that “November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of having to deal with unrequited love.” In the song the singer says to his girlfriend “It's hard to hold a candle, in the cold November rain”, in other words that it's hard to keep loving when that love isn't returned, with the 'cold November rain' being a metaphor for that unreturned love. The song is however hopeful that one day she will stop having affairs and love him back; “Cause nothin' lasts forever, even cold November rain.”

It's sometimes said that the whole of the Bible is like a love letter written from God to all of humanity, and to each of us as individuals, to tell us that God wants to be in a relationship with us. Indeed, all the way through the Bible, the relationship between God and his people is described as a marriage. And this marriage isn't always easy. The Old Testament prophets, and particularly Hosea, describe the marriage relationship between God and his people going through a very rough patch. God tells Hosea “like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). Indeed God's chosen people, the 'wife' he loves, is behaving more like a prostitute (read Ezekiel 16:25-26 for a graphic description!) The whole of Ezekiel 16 lists all the things God has done for his people, which only makes their rejection of him more hurtful.

But despite the 'cold November rain' of his people's rejection of him, God doesn't abandon them but still holds a candle for them. More than that he forgives them! “ 'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord, 'I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful...I will not be angry for ever. Only acknowledge your guilt – you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favours to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me' ” (Jeremiah 3:12-13). God also says “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them” (Hosea 14:4).

God doesn't overlook his people's unfaithfulness but he acknowledges it and provides a way for them to be forgiven. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27). Jesus' death takes the punishment for our rejection of God so we can be reconciled, restored and renewed.

As we venture out this month into that cold November rain, let us remember God's longing for each of us to know him and to be in a relationship with him. Whatever your past or present, he holds a candle for you and is waiting for you to return.