Are you alive or dead?

Notes for a sermon to be preached in Rwanda.

Ephesians 2: 1-10
 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 

 Muraho great to be here again.

Are you dead or alive or just luke-warm? Perhaps once you were on fire for Christ but now you are just like the embers in a fire, barely alight.

Do you know what your spiritual destination will be? Alive with Christ in heaven or just a corpse rotting in the ground.

Looking at you all now laughing and singing with beautiful smiles on your faces you look very much alive, but what about in your spirits are you alive or dead.

I want to remind you of what happened in Eden.

Now Rwanda is a very beautiful country the land of a thousand hills; now imagine somewhere thousands of times more beautiful, where there is no illness and no death. A place where there is plenty of food for everyone and beautiful clean water to drink and the most wonderful thing of all, was that Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the cool of the evening just as a friend talks to a friend.

However, the devil was not happy to see Adam and Eve, happy in the paradise of God. He wanted to spoil God’s lovely creation and rule over the earth and have his wicked way over Adam and Eve.

So the devil tempted Adam and Eve, and they ate from the tree that God had told them not to eat from for they would surely die.

Suddenly they were afraid of God and hid from Him knowing full well what they had done.

So Adam and Eve lost Eden, thorns and briars sprang up in the beautiful land, death came into their lives, they were separated from God, and they were spiritually dead.

So we are all descended from Adam and Eve and we are all  still Spiritually dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked, unless we know the new birth of Jesus Christ in our lives.

So down the long centuries man lived in disobedience to God. However God never stopped loving his people like a loving father, with an aching heart wanting them to return to Him.

When they were enslaved in Egypt God sent Moses to bring them back to the promised land. But they were still disobedient even when he sent prophets to give them stern warnings, they would not relent and God had to send them into exile.

However, God loved His children so much that He knew he had to do something that was truly wonderful and also truly sacrificial. Something that would see the entire universe transformed.

Something that would truly transform the hearts of sinful people, something that would totally change their lives and make them once again alive and recreated, sons and daughters of God.

You see God loved every one of His children so much that he sent His one and only son into the world, that all who believed in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus came into the world to defeat the power of sin and Satan. To take back the rule from Satan and establish the kingdom of God on earth as it also has been in heaven.

Jesus came into the world as a little baby just like you and me. However unlike everybody else he lived a perfect life perfectly obedient to the will of His father in heaven. He went about doing good healing the sick and raising the dead as a demonstration of what the rule of Jesus looked like a rule of perfect love. This kingdom was now breaking in to the kingdom of this world and Satan hated it, he did not want to lose his grip on the lives of men.

He tried to plan to destroy Jesus, he entered into the hearts of sinful men who plotted against Jesus, finally having Him condemned and put to death on a wooden cross.

However, the devil did not know that he was playing straight into Gods hands as Jesus was to be the perfect sacrifice which dealt with the sins of the whole world he dealt with the blackest of my sins and the blackest of your sins.   It was not the nails that held Jesus on the cross it was the love that he had you and for me.

The devil thought he had won when in fact he had been totally defeated. Jesus was gloriously raised back to life on the third day.

Jesus is alive, he is here now here in this building, with His arms outstretched in love waiting for His children to repent and come back to Him.

So if you do not know Jesus as your personal friend and saviour I invite you now to come forward.

All you have to do is ask Jesus to cleanse you from all your sins, and invite  Him into your heart as your saviour and Lord.

There is nothing else you need to do because Jesus has done it all.

Jesu is calling you even now.

  

24-7 Prayer:Time to Listen time to adore

Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. Luke 6:12

 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.  Mark 1:35

 From Wednesday 16th May to Pentecost Sunday, Trinity will be hosting a time of continuous prayer. As a community we will be following Jesus’ example of spending significant time in prayer. Jesus never did anything that was not totally in the will of His Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

What a privilege to be able to enter the very throne room of God! Jesus has done everything to give us free access by His death and resurrection. We are cleansed and adopted as children of God.

The children of a king can always run up to Him and sit on His knee. Prayer gives us intimate access to the very presence of the triune God.  Although coming into the presence of the living God, (as John experienced on the isle of Patmos), we may fall in awe before the wonder and beauty of the risen and resurrected Christ and stay prostrate until he says “Fear not - get up “.

    If you have ever been in love, you will know that you want to spend as much time as possible with your beloved, to be alone, experiencing the intimate nearness of the beloved. If you love Jesus a little and want to love Him more, then go into your quiet space, shut the door and pray:

 “Heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him.”

Do not be daunted by having to spend one or two hours alone in silence. The time will go very quickly; once we appreciate the presence of Jesus, we will want to spend time just listening and entering into wonder and adoration. The psalms and Song of Solomon are good resources for intimacy in prayer. For example ,“You have captured my heart, my treasure, my bride… your love delights me, my treasure, my bride. Your love is better than wine.”

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is full of wonderful prayers. Through prayer we can understand how wide, long, high and deep the love of Jesus is, even for us! Although it is too wonderful to be fully known.

Once we have spent some time in adoration and praise, we will experience a closeness to Christ where it is easy to come with prayers and intercessions. Jesus gives the perfect template for prayer in the Lord’s prayer, slowly praying through and hanging all our prayers on each paragraph.

Every time we worship and pray, we are being transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus. We are given power to fulfil our mission as Trinity, to see lives transformed by the love of Christ and our mission is to build wholehearted disciples of Jesus. We will be a people who will bring Christ’s Kingdom in on earth here in Lewes as it is in heaven. Do sign up for an hour or more of prayer.

 https://www.24-7prayer.com/signup/64469b

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is full of wonderful prayers. Through prayer we can understand how wide, long, high and deep the love of Jesus is, even for us! Although it is too wonderful to be fully known.

Once we have spent some time in adoration and praise, we will experience a closeness to Christ where it is easy to come with prayers and intercessions. Jesus gives the perfect template for prayer in the Lord’s prayer, slowly praying through and hanging all our prayers on each paragraph.

Every time we worship and pray, we are being transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus. We are given power to fulfil our mission as Trinity, to see lives transformed by the love of Christ and our mission is to build wholehearted disciples of Jesus. We will be a people who will bring Christ’s Kingdom in on earth here in Lewes as it is in heaven. Do sign up for an hour or more of prayer.

 https://www.24-7prayer.com/signup/64469b

Justice works when it is blended with forgiveness, grace and compassion.

Love, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.1 Cor 13

Using the words of the Sandinista freedom fighter, Tomás Borge.

My personal revenge will be your children’s right to schooling and to flowers. My personal revenge will be this song bursting for you with no more fears.

My personal revenge will be to make you see the goodness in my people’s eyes, implacable in combat always generous and firm in victory.

My personal revenge will be to greet you ‘Good morning!’ in streets with no beggars, when instead of locking you inside they say, ‘Don’t look so sad.’ When you, the torturer, daren’t lift your head, My personal revenge will be to give you these hands you once ill-treated with all their tenderness intact.

_Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy_ translated from the Spanish by Dinah Livingstone

We have just returned from our first visit to Nicaragua it has been a most amazing experience. Nicaragua is slowly recovering from a devastating civil war. The words of Tomas Borge, quoted above reflect a Christian response to the most traumatic violence inflicted on an individual, responding with forgiveness and grace. However forgiveness and grace must still allow for restorative justice as reflected in this story from another part of the world which survived and flourished after the most horrendous genocide, Rwanda.

" After the genocide when  nearly one million people were killed the government court system was unable to deal with the number of prisoners needing to be brought to justice, local  Gacaca courts were set up in communities when the whole community was present presided over by the elders of that community and where the victim took part not just by giving evidence, but also by helping the decide on appropriate punishment. The emphasis was on truth telling and restorative justice. Leniency was given to prisoners who admitted their  guilt and expressed contrition. 

One poor orphan boy, who had killed the only son of a widow, was brought to trial. The boy freely admitted he was guilty saying that he was frightened into joining one of the killing gangs as it was the case of either killing or be killed. He pleaded forgiveness from the widow. The widow replied, " as a Christian I freely forgive you, just as Christ has forgiven me, however you have done a great wrong, having taken my son from me and deprived my of all help and comfort in my old age. Therefore I pronounce this sentence, you will come and live in my house and you  will be my son and I will be your mother."

Turning the other cheek and substituting restorative justice for revenge allows these countries to overcome the evils of cycles of blood feuds based on tribal identity and replacing revenge with creative restorative justice  and rebuilding of communities.  

Creation care in Nicaragua

For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. Isaiah 51:3 NRSV

In February a small contingent from Trinity went with a group from  Amos Trust to Nicaragua, led by Katie Hagley a former worshiper at the then Southover Church.

We visited a charity called CEPAD - a relief organisation started by protestant ministers after an earthquake that destroyed most of Managua the capital. It now works by committing to a poor community for five years and working to help develop that community. They work with the local churches, which are mainly Mennonite, training the pastors. They help to develop the community with training in leadership skills and forming co-operatives, and teaching craft-making skills.

The most impressive part of the work for us is the way they develop the health and nutrition of the villagers by teaching them organic methods of growing food, and by providing water harvesting and simple water filtration, using a bio filter made with local materials, aggregates from the river and activated charcoal from the fire, which people can make and maintain for themselves.

 The land at the start of a project

Year one into the five year program

Villagers have to commit to working with CEPAD, only using the organic methods they would be trained in. At first many people are reluctant to join as they feel they have to have chemical fertilisers and insecticides, but as soon as they see the miraculous change in the gardens of people using the new methods, they are very keen to join. The soil in Teusteppe where we were working is volcanic, very arid, and the area mountainous.     Our job was to provide simple water harvesting ponds for which we had fundraised. CEPAD provided seeds which are germinated in seed beds and newspaper pots, which are then planted into the soil, using home-made composts and natural plant insecticides.

Fruit trees are grown and planted out; this solves the problem of soil erosion and provides shade for the smaller crops. The fruit provides vitamins and varied nutrition as well as a surplus to sell at market. By the end of the five years each participant should have 19 different varieties of fruit tree and vegetable in their garden, also they should have taught another person how to garden using the CEPAD method.

A finished water harvesting pond

In one community we worked in a garden attached to the school, this was enormous fun as we worked with the school children and the local community who all came out to help. Some of the group helped cook a delicious meal for the whole workforce using the locally grown organic vegetables.

Working in the community garden attached to the school

 The local pastor was always much in view, always in the midst of the hardest work, providing love and encouragement to his little flock. The church in Nicaragua is very focused on helping the poor and being an integral part of poor communities. After we had finished our work for the day, it was very natural for us to all troop into the little shanty church for a session of joyful hymn singing, the pastor and various locals passing round a guitar. Our team is now fundraising to provide  waterfilters

Demonstrating a simple water filter

Happy Christmas.: The word became flesh and pitched His tent down our street

The word became flesh and pitched His tent down our street 

Time zero, matter zero, energy zero, a darkness of nothing.

Yet there was everything, an eternal caring community of mutual worship and love.

A pent-up furnace of beauty and joyful creativity, waiting to pour themselves into the dark chaotic meaningless nothingness.

The loving shout of command went out. Light poured into darkness. Rainbow colours of joy creating and illuminating our dark world.

The dark nothingness hated the light, but the light was joyfully triumphant.

So, this light created every one of us but we did not have the loving enlightening knowledge of this light in our hearts, many people had had glimpses; many prophets right up to the time of John the Baptist, but we were still living in the oppressive darkness, unaware of the light.

So that furnace of creative love was hidden as a tiny embryo in Mary’s womb.  We carried on oblivious to the miracle of uncreated light, living and breathing amongst us. We were unaware of the person of the creator, living in the world that he had created.

He was living in our street, just down our road and we were too busy and preoccupied to notice He was there.

Quieten your heart this Christmas you may hear him knocking on your door wanting to come into your life, demanding your heart, reclaiming the life he created to fill it with peace love and light.

Listen carefully He is here, even now, gently knocking.

Advent:waiting to welcome the King

We believe in the "blasphemous" glory of Immanuel; ‘infinity dwindled to infancy’, as the poet once said. We believe in omnipotence surrendering to incontinence, the name above every other name rumoured to be illegitimate. We believe that God’s eternal Word once squealed like a baby and, when eventually he learned to speak, it was with a regional accent. The Creator of the cosmos made tables and presumably he made them badly at first. The Holy One of Israel got dirt in the creases of his hands. Here is our God – the Sovereign who ‘emptied himself out into the nature of a man’,

Greig, Pete. Dirty Glory: Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You (Red Moon Chronicles #2) (p. 3). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

Today we changed the drapes at Southover Trinity. For a month they will be purple, the same colour as for Lent. Advent is a wonderful time when we celebrate the coming of Christ. Not just as a baby in a manger, but as the glorious coming king when he will fully come into His kingdom; to reign over a renewed  heaven and earth, with all His gathered people .  It is the time for waiting with expectancy for the coming of the Lord Jesus into our hearts as Lord and King. Not a time for making dizzy preparations for the commercial orgy of spending and overconsumption which it has become in our land.

As the message version of John 1:14 says," the word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood". So, the same God who got His hands dirty tenderly kneading clay and forming humankind, played in the mud around the well, making mud-pies with His little friends. The same hands that were ingrained with the toil of the carpenter’s shop, made soil into mud to open the eyes of a blind man.  The same hands which broke bread and blessed wine, were blooded and marred by cruel nails which tore into them.   

As we contemplate the two advents of Jesus we see a person who is fully human as well as fully God. Someone who gets His hands dirty in the messiness of our lives and problems. Someone who is always present, always loving, always ready to accept us as we are, always ready to come into the middle of our lives, to save and heal us. He doesn’t just want to come and live in our neighbourhood, He wants to come as our intimate friend.

We do not just celebrate Jesus as a little baby who came in some distant past or a coming glorious king who comes in some undisclosed future; but a king who is here now, wanting to bring his loving burning presence into the very centre of our hearts and lives as our Saviour and King.    

My personal prayer is for more of Jesus in my own life. Without Christ I am powerless to be loving and kind. Powerless to make a difference in the lives of those I meet,

So let us each spend time this Advent in penitence for the times when we have pushed Christ to the edge of our lives and pursued our own desires, wanting to walk our own path rather than walking in Christ’s footsteps.

This Christmas may we know the true meaning of Emmanuel, Christ with us and Christ in us. 

Refugees: Exclusion or embrace?

At the heart of the cross is Christ's stance of not letting the other remain an enemy and of creating space in himself for the offender to come in......“While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son,”  (Romans 5: 10). The cross is the giving up of God's self in order not to give up on humanity; it is the consequence of God's desire to break the power of human enmity without violence and receive human beings into divine communion. The goal of the cross is the dwelling of human beings “in the Spirit,” “in Christ,” and “in God.” Forgiveness is therefore not the culmination of Christ's relation to the offending other; it is a passage leading to embrace. The arms of the crucified are open— a sign of a space in God's self and an invitation for the enemy to come in. As an expression of the will to embrace the enemy.

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (p. 126). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition

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This autumn we spent two weeks walking along the route of the via Ignatia from Thessaloniki to Alexandropolis. It is an ancient route built by the Romans linking Rome with Constantinople.
The superb roads built by the Romans where the means by which the Romans conquered and kept subdued the majority of the known world. Over the years the route has seen armies march , St Paul took the Christian message from Neapolis ( modern Kavalla ) to Thessalonica passing through Phillipi   and Amphipolis on the way. Along it armies of the crusaders going East and the Ottoman Turks going west as they invaded Europe. It has been an important trade route and of late has seen rag tag groups of refugees going west hoping to find safety, homes and employment in Europe.
We met various groups of refugees along the way. It was very heart rending listening to some of the stories these people had gone through. We hear the stories of refugees being cast out to sea in open boats in the media , however they take another dimension when told by a young teenager who has lost family and friends and is alone cast up upon a foreign shore, totally unsupported and alone.

  

We were particularly impressed by a group in Kilkis a little town north of Thessalonica near the Macedonian border which was suddenly closed producing a sudden "pile up" of refugees in camps with appalling conditions near the border. The citizens went in to help even inviting them into their own homes. They soon formed a charity Omes.gr which housed them in empty flats in the town providing education, social and legal support. they were even given the contract to carry on this work by the UNHCR .

On another occasion we met some refugees on a beach near Kavala again we heard many sad stories, one of our group played the oud a instrument of the middle east and sang some of the songs they knew from home, which they loved as they joined in to these songs from home.

We were able to deliver a van load of nappies and sanitary requisites which our group were able to purchase.   

So how should we respond to the stranger and refugee the bible is very clear: Isaiah 58:7-7 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

In this country we see strangers foreigners and refugees as a threat.

We see them as the enemy, the "other", rather than potential friends.

As Christians we remember that: while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son Romans 5.  Therefore we are given a message of reconciliation, 2 Corinthians 5.

As Christians we must speak out against xenophobia and look for ways to love and practically help all those of whom we become aware who are marginalised and suffering.

One of the charities we saw working on the ground was Help Refugees. Get involved choose love.