thykingdomcome ian's musings: Brothers and sisters in Christ

thykingdomcome ian's musings: Brothers and sisters in Christ: A small group of us from Trinity recently made a trip to Rwanda. We were looking at water harvesting projects and visiting various potenti...

Brothers and sisters in Christ

A small group of us from Trinity recently made a trip to Rwanda. We were looking at water harvesting projects and visiting various potential recipients. We also went to monitor a micro finance project.

The thing that really stands out for me is the warmth of welcome that we always receive and the depth of friendship with anyone we have met before. The great gift which we are always given is that of welcome into their community.

What was really noticeable on this occasion was that the poorer the community in material wealth the more generous was the welcome and hospitality. While in the West there is the cult of the individual in Rwanda life is lived in community.  

How do we form Christian community? It is a group of loving individuals mirroring the mutual self-abasing love which is expressed between the persons of the Trinity. We see this perfectly expressed in the person of Jesus and His relationship with His Father and the Spirit. Our Christian relationships should have the same mindset as Jesus; Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, Phil 2:6-7.

When we become Christians, we are united with Christ in His death and resurrection so we are all adopted into the body and family of Christ. As we submit our wills to the gentle wind of the Spirit blowing into our lives we are slowly changed into the likeness of Christ.  We learn to walk in love with one another just as Christ loved us. We submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. As we advance in our walk with Christ we learn that we must become lower as He becomes higher, the road on which we walk is the Calvary Rd , as we are reminded in a little book by Roy Hession with that title.

The Christian community should be made up of individuals all submitted to Christ and submitted to each other in mutual love. As we are all sinful individuals then this only becomes possible through mutual confession and forgiveness. As we eat our communion meal regularly together we are reminded of the completed work of Jesus in dying and rising for us, and His action in washing His disciples’ feet, that we are able to wash one another’s feet. This is the miracle of the love we should show for each other that we have been learning about in 1 John

   ¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:16

   

Materialism, the opiate of the people?

You say; I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realising that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. REV 3:17

We live in a society where we are bombarded every moment of the day with subtle often unnoticed inducements to buy stuff. Our every whim and desire can be purchased with a few key strokes of our computers without us even venturing from our armchairs. Our lives are spent earning enough money to buy everything we feel we need.

Our idols are our possessions and our pride in them; also, our need for endless connections on social media.

The question we must ask ourselves is where is our first love? Do we spend more time in front of a screen than we do in prayer, worship and bible study?

Recently we have been studying the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation.

Each letter highlights the good points and the often-hidden problem areas which characterises each church, I think the largely unrecognised problem in the Western church is our reliance on wealth and not on the faithfulness of God.

What we forget however is that any idol is of no use in eternity, Jeremiah wonderfully lampoons idols when he describes them as worthless as scarecrows in a cucumber field.  

Jesus underlines this problem on the sermon on the mount when he tells us that we can either serve God or money. Matthew 6 19-24

The sad reality is that we no longer just own our possessions but they actually own us. For example, two lovers sitting across a candle-lit table and staring into their mobile phones instead of each other’s eyes.

Another good example is the story of the rich young man who wants to follow Jesus, only to go away sorrowful unable to fulfil Jesus’ request to sell all that he had and give to the poor. Jesus commentary on the story is another wonderful hyperbole. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. Luke 18:18-30

So how do we avoid the traps of materialism which are very powerful always waiting to ensnare us. For us it seems nigh impossible but as Jesus says with God everything is possible.

It can only be done through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives to help us to focus on the love of Jesus. All our desires have to be on Him, as the old hymn says,

 ” Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.”

As many of us have found a trip to a third world country helps us to realise that money does not buy the wonderful blessings of a loving community which we see and helps us to have compassion for the poor, and the evils of hoarding wealth for ourselves

 when so much could be done with our money to bring real benefits to the poor. Love of money will be replaced by compassion for the poor, as Scrooge discovered in the well-known Dickens tale.

So as Jesus says, let us store up treasures in heaven.  

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