It's the end of the world as we know it

Daniel 12:1-3                           Deliverance in Daniel’s apocalypse

(Hebrews 10:11-25)         The new covenant in Christ blood

Mark 13:1-8                             The beginning of Mark’s ‘little apocalypse’

Psalm 16

The Third Sunday of the Kingdom - Mark's Little Apocalypse

It's the end!  

I remember the cartoons in the newspapers that had a man with a sandwich board that read the end of the world is nigh.  And as I grew up with the third millennium approaching, I was certain that the world would end – I think that it is something about growing up – worrying that our time on earth may be cut short by nuclear war, a meteorite or a plague of aliens (something like that).  I used to think that as soon as I got a house, I would build a bomb shelter and buy tons of tinned food so that I could survive the disaster that was certain to happen.

It is, I think, part of human nature to worry about the future, and it is no surprise that although I was certain the game was up and the world would end, this (I think) has happened in every generation since time began.  It is only natural that we worry about plans that we are making – what is going to happen – will all our plans come to nothing?

And today, films and books still reflecting this part of human nature, Harry Potter fights the evil Voldemort – who is going to take over the world – the fight of good and evil fills the cinemas and our imaginations.  Judgment, good versus evil, the end of the world, and the sending of a messiah to save us all – these themes pass down the generations.  It is no accident that the Bible readings for this morning are set against this concern of the world falling apart.

Yes, thousands of years ago, people thought the world was going to end then too…

In Daniel and Mark we are told that this is the case, although we are not told when, we are told that we must change our behaviour to be ready for the judgment that is to come. 

Every generation who has read these passages has looked around at the world – perhaps seeing people and dying with poverty, war and disease, imprisonment and torture, injustices throughout the world, and then against this suffering have decided that things can’t get worse, this must be close to the end of the world.

In the book of Daniel though, rather than seeing the end of the world as a bad thing it is seen as positive, because finally all the suffering will stop and justice will reign.  Daniel longs for a time when wisdom and freedom are a common sight in the world.

Even today, people tend to argue about what is right and tend to bury wisdom in the process.  The biblical dream is of a time when WISDOM will be COMMON SENSE – a time when we won’t even argue about what is right, because it will be plain to see.  We will all agree, and see what needs to be done in the world. 

Sometimes my children as me questions, like can’t we just stop wars? Why don’t’ we fairly distribute the resources of the world?

I find myself saying, Well, it’s not that easy…and then I realise that it is that easy, but in the difficultness of the here and now people have made it complicated.

And that is the important meaning of the reading from Daniel.  One day a time will come, when people realise that it isn’t difficult…it is what must be done.

Back in Jerusalem two thousand years ago the Disciples of an upstart revolutionary from Galilee know this also.  They are sat listening to Jesus on the Mount of Olives – they are looking across the valley to the temple.  Jesus looks across and tells them that all those great buildings will be destroyed.  “When Lord will this be?” they ask? 

At this point Jesus does something quite typical.  He completely ignores them and starts to talk about how they should watch out for those who claim to be acting in His name when they are doing nothing of the sort.  Jesus is not interested in their speculation about when the end of the world will be, he is just telling them to do their best until the time is right. 

Jesus is telling them to be ready.

This part of the Gospel is usually called “Mark’s little apocalypse” - A term I rather like! 

However, unlike most apocalyptic literature, chapter 13 is NOT concerned with signs that provide clues to the timing of future events.  When the disciples ask Jesus for "the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished," (v. 4), Jesus tells them of wars and natural disasters, but then says, "but the end is still to come" and "This is but the beginning of the birth pangs" (vv. 7-8).  In other words, these are NOT really signs of the end but are simply events that they must endure before the end comes.  He cannot help them to know when these events will occur, because "about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father" (as he goes on to say in verse 32).

 

Jesus is saying – Do not worry about the end times, but thank God for the harvest of good works taking place every day – extraordinary acts by ordinary people.

This is a great theme in the run up to Christmas – extraordinary works by ordinary people!  I think that I will write my Christmas sermon on it.  Throughout the history of Christianity, it really has been the small things that have made a difference, the individual kindnesses that make links between people.

As Advent approaches and we prepare for the Great Feast of Christmas. I have been thinking a lot about these words of Jesus –

·      How do we judge the health of a church community? 

·      How do we ensure that we are looking to the future, not with trepidation and anxiety, but with hope? 

·      How do we continue being a beacon of joy for our communities?

There is no better way of finishing this sermon other than by repeating the last few verses of the reading from the letter to the Hebrews and think about our own church as we hear the words.  I have used the old translation…

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised faithful.  And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Remembrance Sunday 11.11.12

Remembrance Sunday 

The world had been plunged into war when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on the 28^th June 1914.  Germany knew that they would need to meet their enemies on two fronts.  When the conflict started, the German military commanders knew that the Russian Army would need to at least six weeks to mobilise their forces, so they concentrated on their enemies in the west by launching a strong offensive in France.  The French, Belgian and British forces couldn’t stop them, eventually in France they forced a stalemate and dug in for a long winter.  Trenches were dug a few hundred feet apart. Soldiers spent most of their day dealing with mud and cold, guns jammed and illness was rife.  If this wasn’t bad enough, the trenches were little protection from sniper fire, and the machine guns on the battlefields were making this conflict one of the bloodiest in history.

On 17^th December 1914, the first Christmas of the war, Pope Benedict XV called for a temporary truce and ceasefire on the battlefields.  Germany agreed, but the other powers refused.  The war had been raging for barely five months. 

Families had sent packages filled with cigarettes, warm clothing, gifts and medicines to the soldiers.  Some of the German soldiers had also received Christmas decorations from loved ones.  On Christmas Eve 1914, the German soldiers put candles in Christmas trees and decorated the edges of the trenches.  Eventually, hundreds of Christmas trees appeared all across the front-line.  British soldiers were told to watch closely, but not to open fire.

Eventually, the soldiers from both sides joined each other for football and singing carols.  A British soldier Private Oswald Tilley commented in a letter to his parents;

“They finished their carol and we thought that we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang 'The first Noël', and when we finished that they all began clapping; and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, 'O Tannenbaum'. And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up 'O Come All Ye Faithful' the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words 'Adeste Fideles'. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”

Tilley continues his letter;

“This experience has been the most practical demonstration I have seen of ‘Peace on earth and goodwill towards men.” Tilley even empathised with the German soldiers, “We hated their guts when they killed any of our friends; then we really did dislike them intensely … And we thought, well, poor so and so’s, they’re in the same kind of muck as we are.”  He concludes his letter “It doesn’t seem right to be killing each other at Christmas time.”

The singing from the trenches eventually turned into something completely different, as soldiers disobeyed their superior officers and fraternized with the ‘enemy’, along two-thirds of the Western Front, the 450 mile line of trenches, machine gun nests and barbed wire between the sandy dunes of the borders of Belgium and the Swiss border.

When news of this reached the high command it was decided that action needed to be taken.  Popular urban legend would have it that the soldiers stopped fighting to play football, returning to battle the next day.  This was not the case, soldiers declared their solidarity and refused to fight.  On both sides, generals declared the spontaneous peacemaking as ‘treasonous’ and ‘subject to court martial’.  It did however take until March 1915 to fully suppress the fraternization.  The War continued, and by 1918, fifteen million people had died.

Then 93 years ago - On the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918 the guns fell silent and the First World War officially ended.

There was great rejoicing, and celebrations began, but for many people their lives had been devastated seemingly beyond repair.  Eventually in 1921 after many calls for the dead and seriously injured to be remembered the first Armistice day parade was held.

So where was God?

In St Paul’s 1^st letter to the Thessalonians he wrote, "The day of the Lord is coming, when the heavens will open up and we will see Jesus Christ descending through the clouds to be with us once again, for evermore. He will come to gather us up to be together - the living and the dead - and to be in God's Kingdom. Until that time, take heart, have hope and never stop encouraging one another."

In other parts of the Bible the kingdom of God is spoken of as a place of peace and justice. We are told that God's kingdom will be one in which there will be no war and no suffering. It will be a place where everyone has enough to eat and drink and a roof over their heads. No one will be a slave to another. There will be no subservience. No one will be oppressed, persecuted or marginalized.

That is the time toward which Paul and the early Christians were looking. In the face of pain, the coming Kingdom was the image that gave the people hope, and reminding people of that image encouraged the people of Thessalonica to carry on in the face of great suffering.

In an odd kind of way, I like to think that the Kingdom of God, was with those brave men in the trenches at Christmas 1914.  They, through the death and destruction, the suffering and the pain, had created a little piece of the Kingdom of God, and it shone like a beacon to justice, compassion and forbearance.  It was created in the simplest of ways, sharing the little they had and enjoying company.

As we reflect on the suffering and death caused by wars, and give thanks for the freedom for which so many have died, I like to think that in some ways those who went off to war believed in a vision of the Kingdom of God.  It might sound odd, but I like to think that those who were lost in the great battles of the last century, and in the conflicts that have marred this century, haven’t died in vain, they paid with their lives for the vision of a God’s Kingdom.  A vision of a world that is a better place for all God’s children

But, as wars continue to rage, and sons and daughters are sent to war the world is a very dark and bitter place. 

This Festival of Remembrance each year puts an enormous amount of moral responsibility upon world leaders, those who make the decisions about sending people to war, but we have responsibilities too, albeit on a much smaller scale.

That is why we must never forget, and that is why it is inevitable that sometimes people will have to go off to war to fight to preserve these things, but war is never good, and we must pray constantly and act positively to ensure that peace prevails in our hearts and in the hearts of people everywhere.

As we remember those who have died or suffered trying to build a better world, may we seek the Kingdom of God in the smallest things.

Don't forget out church council on Thursday.

Sermon for the Eve of All Saints' Day

A young man once came to a great rabbi and asked him to make him a rabbi.

It was winter time and a rabbi stood at the window looking out upon the yard while the rabbinical candidate was giving a glowing account of his piety and learning.

The young man said, "You see, Rabbi, I always go dressed in spotless white like the sages of old. I never drink any alcoholic beverages; only water ever passes my lips. Also, I perform austerities. I have sharp-edged nails inside my shoes to mortify me. Even in the coldest weather, I lie naked in the snow to torment my flesh. Also daily, the shammes [a synagogue sexton] gives me forty lashes on my bare back to complete my perpetual penance."

And as the young man spoke, a white horse was led into the yard and to the water trough. It drank, and then it rolled in the snow, as horses sometimes do.

"Just look!" cried the rabbi. "That animal, too, is dressed in white. It also drinks nothing but water, has nails in its shoes and rolls naked in the snow. Also, rest assured, it gets its daily ration of forty lashes on the rump from its master. Now, I ask you, is it a saint, or is it a horse?" (from A Treasure of Jewish Folklore, page 109)

Today is All Saints’ Day in the Christian calendar - As early as the second century, Christians gathered for worship at the tombs of the martyrs, celebrating the power of God’s grace in the lives of these faithful men and women who did more than roll in the snow and abstain from alcoholic drinks.

 From this came the early understanding that the phrase ‘the Communion of Saints’ referred to the bond between the faithful on earth and the faithful who had gone before, especially those who were killed for their faith.

The word itself ‘communion’ suggests a link, between us and the Saints – that link may be that we think of their lives, the challenges they faced and the terrible treatment they usually got from a world that was intolerant and unjust.

There are thousands of churches dedicated to ‘All Saints’ and this church is too, and this evening is the start of our patronal festival.

In our faith, the word “saint” became a title of honour referring to exemplary lives among the faithful.  The celebration of All Saints as we know it comes later, about the 7th century. Egbert of York brought the festival to Britain and by the 9th century it had become a major feast in the church calendar.

Today, we continue to celebrate Saints…

Of course we have our very own Welsh saints – generally they have fought dragons, or swam from Ireland.

Many people have favourite saints, those who we admire or seem to think would understand the difficulties we have in our own lives.

Many years ago, I had a neighbour who was dying, and I did what I could to help, we spent time talking about her life, and I think she wanted to give me some wisdom.  She was Polish, and in her life had seen some hard times and experienced many upsets. 

She told me that she had favourite saints, those, she imagined, would understand her own life, and share the journey with her, they brought her great comfort, and as soon as the valley’s chapel boy got over his natural reticence about even thinking about Saints, I have too.

When we have challenges, we need to believe that we can

We all need to believe that there is someone there to understand what we are going through. And in the saints there are these two threads that run through them all – they are both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.  Human and filled with grace, all at the same time.

The Greek word usually translated saint is hagios. Literally it is an adjective meaning: "holy" It can refer to "holy things" or "holy people". The word "holy" means "to set apart".

I frequently paraphrase it to mean "special".

·     Holy Eucharist is a "special" fellowship between God and us and each other.

·     The Holy Bible is a "special" book.

·     The Holy Spirit is the "special" breath or wind from God. God said, "Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy" means to make that day "special".

·     A form of that word is used in the Lord's prayer: "Hallowed be thy name." That means to make or treat God's name as holy -- to make it a "special" name.

And today, on this special day, we remember those who have been ‘set apart’ for God’s work, and pray that in some small way we can be too.

In the name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

Prayers for Sunday and the week ahead

For all the saints who went before us,
Who have spoken to our hearts and touched us with your fire,
We praise you,

O God

For all the saints who live beside us,
Whose weaknesses and strengths are woven into our own,
We praise you,

O God

Who challenges us to change the world with them,
We praise you,

O Lord, in every age you reveal yourself to the childlike and lowly of heart, and from every race you write names in your book of life, give us the simplicity and faith of your saints, that loving you above all things, we may be what you would have us be, and to do what you would have us do. So may we be numbered with your saints in glory everlasting.

Lord in your mercy  Hear our prayer



Father God, you have brought us near to the spirits of those who have been made perfect, and to an innumerable company of angels; grant us during our earthly pilgrimage to abide in their fellowship, and in the heavenly country to become partakers of their joy.

Lord in your mercy  Hear our prayer



Lord God, we thank you for calling us into the company of those who trust in Christ and seek to obey His will. May your Spirit guide and strengthen us in mission and service to your world; for we are strangers no longer but pilgrims together on the way to your Kingdom.

Think of a hundred concert pianos

Think of a hundred concert pianos. 

If you tune the second piano to the first, and the 3rd to the 2nd, and the 4th to the 3rd and so on until you have tuned all 100 pianos, you will by the end have discord and disharmony – but if you tune each piano to the same tuning fork, you will have harmony.

And that is true of the Church – when we tune ourselves to other people we will so often have discord and disharmony, but when we tune ourselves to Christ, and him alone, then we will have unity, unity of love and unity of purpose

#justsayin

Bible Sunday

 We are coming to the end of ordinary time in the church calendar. This week is the last Sunday after Pentecost.  Then it will be All Saints’ this Thursday, All Souls’, Kingdom season for a few weeks, and then the Feast of Christ the King, in Glory enthroned, then the new church year will begin on Advent Sunday, when we start again, with anticipation as we prepare for the birth of the child destined to be the king of kings.

It’s a tense moment – because today is also BIBLE SUNDAY

This annual Bible Sunday gives us a chance to step back and look at the Bible as a whole.

·    The Bible is great – it tells us important things, and gives us a clue about Biblical characters – for example, we know that Moses wore a wig.  It says that sometimes he was with Aaron and sometimes he wasn’t.

·    We know that God created Adam at teatime.  It tells us he was created a little before Eve.

·    The shortest man in the Bible?  Nehimiah (knee-high-miah)

Here are some facts about the Bible:

·    The Bible contains 66 different books – it’s like a collection.

·    They are divided into the Old and New Testaments – Testament means promise or agreement.

·    The Bible was written by over 40 different authors from all walks of life – shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, fishermen, priests, doctors, philosophers and kings.

·    Moses wrote more than anyone else in the Old Testament – the first 5 books

·    Paul wrote more than anyone else in the New Testament – over half – 14 books

·    It was written over 1,500 years from 1,450 years before Jesus was born, to about 100 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

·    It was written in three languges – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek

·    The books in the Bible weren’t decided on until 375 AD – this is called the Canon of Scripture – Canon means Standard basically.

·    The Bible was first translated into English in 1382 AD

·    The Bible was translated into Welsh less than 200 years later.

·    The longest book is Psalms

·    The shortest is 2 John

·    The Book of Esther doesn’t mention God

·    The oldest man in the Bible lived to 969 (Methuselah)

·    The Bible originally had no verses or chapters, just one long text!  Imagine finding a reading on a Sunday morning!

·    There are over 500 verses on faith, 500 on prayer, and over 2,000 on our relationship to money and possessions

·    There are 49 different foods mentioned in the Bible

·    The Bible has been translated into 2,018 languages – in comparison, Shakespeare has been translated into 50 languages.

·    It is the best selling book in the world

It’s a massive topic for one sermon – so I’ll try to paint a picture of how fascinating the Bible is.  Understanding a bit more about the Bible can really help us with faith, it’s also really quite a good read.

Someone once said….

"Who is silly enough to believe that God, like a farmer, 'planted a paradise in the east at Eden'.  
Or put in it a visible, real 'tree of life' and if anyone eats the fruit with his teeth they gain life. …
And when God is said to 'walk in the paradise in the cool of the day' 
and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, 
I don't think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions.  
They indicate certain mysteries not actual events."

You may recognise these words.
 They're not mine.  
They sound very modern, but they come from the brilliant 3rd century Christian scholar called Origen. 

Origen believed that there are different ways of reading the Bible, 
that the Bible has different levels of meaning.  
He was not alone.  
In fact, his view shared by many Christians.  Origen spoke about 3 levels of meaning:

Literal, moral and spiritual.  


A good example is the exodus – the people of Israel leaving Egypt.  
On one level we can read it literally, as a story about Moses and the people leaving Egypt.

On the moral level, we can see it as a story about conversion from the slavery of sin to the freedom of grace.

On the spiritual level, it can be read thinking about our redemption in Jesus – we have this reading at Easter…being set free.

From the earliest days of Christianity, we have understood that the richness and diversity of the Bible needs to be explored.  It speaks to us in all chapters of our lives, it challenges us, it supports us, it comforts us and it tells us off!

The four Gospels even, are written for different audiences, giving people a chance to see the stories from different perspectives.  The Old Testament was the only Bible that Jesus had, he didn’t have the New Testament, it hadn’t been written.      

The origins of the New Testament as a bit of a mystery!  Our version has 27 books or letters, but why were they chosen?  This was towards the end of the 2nd century with characters like Bishop Irenaeus, But exactly how that happened we don't know. 

There is the Gospel of Thomas, building on the idea of Jesus being the Light of the world, and the Gospel of Mary, where the apostles question Mary about why Jesus should talk to her and not them.

But the Bible is what it is!  If you read the Bible in South America, you might be a liberation theologian, who believes that the Bible encourages revolution in the hearts and minds of people, so that the mighty might lose their thrones, and the poor might be lifted up. 

Wherever you read the Bible, it’s God talking to you, your family, your community, you’re nation!  And it speaks to us today, here in Cardiff, in the midst of our trouble and upset, but also in our celebration and our thankgiving.

I commend it to you!  The greatest library of books, with stories fascinating, frightening, fantastic and fabulous.

Finally,

·    Solomon is credited as being the wisest man in the Bible, Ann tells me this is because he had 700 wives to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

·     A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. He read, "The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt."  His son asked, "What happened to the flea?"

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

21^st October 2012

Trinity 20 (Pentecost 21)

We are coming to the end of ordinary time in the church calendar. Next week we have Bible Sunday, the last Sunday after Pentecost.  Then it will be All Saints’, All Souls’, the Feast of Christ the King, Kingdom season for a few weeks, and then the new church year will begin.

It’s in four weeks time it’s Advent Sunday, when we start again, with anticipation we prepare for the birth of the child destined to be the king of kings.

As the end of each liturgical year approaches, we have a few weeks being asked what we’ve learned.  All those readings, all those sermons, all those questions! 

The first mistake we make is to think that we come to church to get answers!  Well we don’t.  To quote Hamlet;

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

We are given clues about the direction in which we should be pointing.  A bit like the way in which plants turn towards the sun, to get a bit more of precious sunlight.  But answers don’t always just appear when we come to church!  We are more likely to be leaving with questions…about ourselves, our faith, our direction in life and what is really, really precious to us.

So here we are!  Waiting to find out what we’ve learned from coming to church and enduring…sorry listening…to the sermons about the readings we’ve had.

It’s a tense moment.

Throughout the Gospel according to Mark, we are given many examples of Jesus attempting to get the Disciples to understand power and true humility. 

·     He has sat a child on his lap and told them that they must become like the child. 

·     He has told them off when they judged someone for doing the work of Jesus, just because he wasn’t like them.

·     He has spoken about the personal cost of discipleship, and we hear of how his followers must become the servants of others, and expect persecution and hardship.

So, it’s quite shocking to hear that the disciples in the reading today are discussing power and who can sit at the left and right of Jesus in his Kingdom.

He had tried to settle the disputes about greatness with the child and the woman and after this event he talks about his coming death to the amazement of the disciples.

Matthew’s version of this story has the mother of James and John asking Jesus about their seats in glory, but here they are asking for themselves. 

And in answering, Jesus reverses all the normal things about greatness. 

The same happens with the servant song from Isaiah.  Written 400 years before, it foretells the coming messiah.

In the topsy-turvy world of Jesus, the innocent servant is suffering – and cut off from the world.  This is far from what the brothers were expecting!  But because of this Jesus becomes the one who sits alongside the grieving, the sad, the lonely, the poor, oppressed and destitute.

So why is it that we always search for glory?  Why is it that we always need to value what we have in human terms?  Why do we come to church for answers?

So why go to church if we are doomed to fail so badly in being a good Christian.

Now, at this point in thinking about my sermon, I made the mistake of typing a question into the Internet.  I typed Why go to church?

And do you know what?  My screen was filled with the most self-righteous nonsense I’ve seen for a very long time.  Mostly telling us that church attendance is required for us to declare we are right and somehow better than other people – set apart from the sinners for an hour or so.

It might be difficult for some to imagine but in the ordinary difficultness of now, we are here to turn a little bit more towards the light, and to try to learn a little more about ourselves and the God who loves us.  We are not here to instantly turn into modern day saints; we are not here to show the people out there how good we think we are.  We are here in the words of Sri Lankan Christian leader D.T. Niles:

‘As one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread’.

To be fed, to be recharged and to be sent out…to tell others where that bread may be found.

This isn’t about making ourselves great.  It isn’t about choosing our thrones for the world to come, it’s about true humility and honesty.  Someone once said that the church is;

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

This is reflected perfectly in the post-communion prayer that is set for the day – we rarely use anything other than the ones that are in the book, but it goes like this.

God the Father, whose Son, the light unfailing, who has come from heaven that he may deliver the world from the darkness of ignorance: may the eyes of our understanding be opened through these holy mysteries that we, knowing the way of life, may walk in it without stumbling.

This isn’t a prayer for a throne, riches or knowledge.  It’s a prayer that the world may be freed from the darkness of ignorance and that we may walk without stumbling.

Should we ask for anything else?