Giving the law at Mount Sinai

Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” CS Lewis.

Mount Sinai must have been a very scary place as Moses left the children of Israel at the base of the mountain and slowly walked up into the mountain of noise and fire. Mountains are very awe inspiring, and anyone with any clue about them will tell you that they are places where you can very quickly die, as you become lost as the winds and rain increase and the mists come down. They are also places where we can encounter jaw dropping beauty and have life changing, near mystical experiences.

 How much more where the Holiness of the creator God was manifest in all the noise and light like that in the centre of an erupting volcano. 

However, Moses knew God; he had already encountered Him in the burning bush where he had discovered that God’s flames are not always consuming and that He was a God with a personal name “I am”. He had seen the terrible plagues inflicted on the hardened hearted Pharaoh and his people and cowered under the protection of a house daubed in sacrificial blood, as the angel of death passed over. He had experienced walking to freedom through the dry bed of the Red sea with towering mountains of water on either side pent up to engulf the pursuing Egyptians. So here he was now slowly walking into a maelstrom safe in the knowledge that” I am” had ordered him up into His special protection to meet in person the Living God.    

So, what was the Torah? Just a set of simple rules to get to heaven?  No way.

If anything, it was the start of a personal relationship, answering the age-old question: "how does a weak and sinful human being, approach a Holy and powerful God?" 

The answer lies in the first commandment You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Love is from the Hebrew root “aheb”, used many times in the Song of Songs as the intense passionate love of two lovers in the first flush of desire.

The Torah was the whole set of commands that set up the rules and regulations where God would dwell with His people; first hovering over the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies where a trembling high priest offered a sacrifice for the sins of the people, and eventually in the Jerusalem temple. However, this whole system did not really change people’s hearts, and we witness few people in the old testament with this close-up and personal relationship with God, people like David in Psalm 32:1     You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. Also, some of the prophets like Isaiah, who met with God between two fiery seraphs in the temple.

The demand for holiness only increases with the coming of Jesus. As he stands on the mount delivering His sermon, any wriggle-room we might have imagined in the words of the commandments from Sinai are squashed by Jesus. “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matt 5:48.

Jesus was the only person living who actually fulfilled the demands of Torah, Jesus was the only perfect Lamb capable of  taking not just the guilt of our sin away, but also its power, and only Jesus is the way into the wide-open arms of our loving heavenly Father.  

Advent at Trinity

The darkest and the coldest time

Is also the best time

…….

At the departing times

The coldest times

of our lives;

 At the times of excitement

and the times of expectance.

At the times of intersection

when hard choices

have to be made.

Be with us

Prince of peace.

Kate Mcllhagga

We are now coming to the time of year, when the light disappears from our land. The bright sunlight of summer has been subsumed into the glorious colours of a riotous feast of autumn colour.

Slowly now the leaves are falling from the trees bowled down the streets by strong gusts of equinoxal gales, and as the leaves fall bare branches are exposed and all the colours slowly fade into a uniform grey. Life withdraws into the earth and the very pulse of life slows down.

As a special holy gift for this time of year we are given the fast of advent.

Sadly, this gift has been lost in this culture, as an all intrusive commercialism seeks to extend Christmas ever earlier into a feast and frenzy of consumer spending.

Advent is a time of quietly awaiting the coming of Christ, it is a time of withdrawing our energy from the mad treadmill of busy life and to make room in the darkness to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming king. A time to attune our bodies to the slowing rhythms of the natural world around us, A time to say no to our bodies and yes to the coming Christ. A time to stand on tiptoe eagerly awaiting the time when not only our bodies but the whole of creation will be redeemed and made new.

We wait for a God who does not stay aloof of His creation but enters in to all the mess and chaos we have made of His beautiful world. He enters this world as a weak and vulnerable baby to redeem it, and at His perfect time He will enter as conquering Lamb to overcome everything which spoils our world to remake heaven and earth as the perfect dwelling place where He rules in the midst of His people.

Most of all Christ wants a personal advent into the hearts and lives of each of His children, Christ breaks through to shine His light into our personal darkness to make His dwelling in the very centre of our lives.

If you want to join with others in an Advent fast, then some of us from the 10 o’clock congregation will be joining in a simple meal of bread and cheese, after the service. Advent is a time of special rhythms of prayer so join us in St John’s at 8 am on a Friday as we spend an hour simply listening to what God is saying to us, or read through one of the many excellent Advent mediations which are readily available.

Try out the quiet simplicity of the 8 o’clock congregation and join in that ancient advent prayer:

Æthelberht, Bertha and Augustine of Canterbury

Last week we finished a 7 day Pilgrimage to Canterbury. We thought we had finished when we arrived at the Cathedral for evensong; but we had a little surprise in store for us the next day.
We decided to visit the little church dedicated to St Martin on a little hill just outside the city walls.
What we discovered was the oldest Christian church in the English speaking world with a fascinating history.

Mary outside St Martins church

We had previously visited the underground Roman museum in the town where we saw some the Chi Ro symbol on some of the artifacts

Being a Christian was not a safe thing to advertise as the images are tiny or hidden underneath a cup or in a mosaic.

Certainly there was an active Christian community in Britain by the Diocletian persecution when brave Christians were martyred for example St Alban in about 305AD. Christianity persisted and there were three British bishops present at the council of Arles 314 AD; conditions having improved a year earlier by the Edict of Milan issued by Constantine the Great, which gave religious tolerance to Christians

However things went from bad to worse for British Christians with the retreat of the Romans from Britain and the invasion of the barbarian Saxons, Angles and Jutes about 409 AD.  

So Britain was divided up into smaller kingdoms ruled over by rival kings, including King AEthelbert of Kent. 

Æthelberht

In Kent there were strong trading links with the powerful Franks in continental  Europe, making a strong friend in the powerful Franks helped him gain dominance over other local kings so he could become  bretwalda over them.

So he married Bertha, princess of the Franks, daughter of Charibert King of Franks, the marriage settlement included provision for her to continue her Christian faith . 

Queen Bertha

She brought with her   Liudhard, her confessor and was able to restore an old Roman place of worship on a hill outside Canterbury's walls which is the present day St Martins.

At this point in the story enter Gregory of Rome . 

Legend has it that, before he became pope, he happened to see some Anglo-Saxon slaves for sale in a Roman marketplace. He asked about the race of the remarkable blond men and was told they were "Anglos." "Not Anglos, but angels," he was said to reply. As a result, it is said, Gregory was later inspired to send missionaries to England.

Devout and personally humble he would have happily led a contemplative life in his monastery, but was called by Benedict and then Pelagius II as a very capable administrator and ambassador to the Byzantine court. When a plague and famine swept Rome killing Pelagius he became pope taking the title," servant of the servants of God", for the first time.

 He was an able politician reorganising the Roman administration and releasing papal funds to ease the famine.  He came to the Roman city and church at a very difficult time, Lombards were invading Italy and he faced opposition from the Eastern church in Constantinople. Gaining the support of the German and Frankish tribes was important to him, and he still had a vision for the evangelisation of the Jutes,Angles and Saxon tribes in the south of England.  With the marriage of a Frankish Christian princess to a pagan king he saw an opportunity for the Gospel. 

So finally enter Augustine of Canterbury into our story. 

He was in the monastery of St Andrews Rome when he was ordered on his mission to England. It must have been very difficult to leave the protective walls of a monastery journeying through the Frankish tribes to the fierce kingdom of Anglo Saxon warriors. In fact he only got as far as a boat journey to Lerins in France that the enormity of his task overwhelmed him and he went scurrying back to Gregory. however Gregory would hear nothing of abandoning the mission and sent him back with some reinforcements, letters to various leaders along the way and on they travelled via Tours where they acquired some Frankish interpreters for the ongoing trip.
Finally the little band, of about 40 monks, arrived up the Wantsum channel which originally separated the isle of Thanet from Kent and asked for a meeting with Aethelbert, who was very suspicious of this little group despite the influence of his Christian wife, only agreeing to meet under the open skies of his Gods, for fear of treacherous sorcery. 

 “Augustine sent to AEthelbert to say that he had come from Rome bearing the best of news, namely the sure and certain promise of eternal joys in heaven and an endless kingdom with the living and true God to those who receive it.” Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

AEthelbert was attracted enough by Augustine's preaching and piety to allow him to form a base in his wife's church of St Martin.
As they approached the city they prayed a lament and confession, 

 “We pray Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, that Thy wrath and anger may be turned away from this city and from Thy holy house, for we are sinners. Alleluia.”  (again Bede) 

Confession of sin is an essential precursor for any mighty move of the Holy Spirit.

The little group now with Bertha and some of the local british christians who had persisted and survived from the original pre-Saxon Roman church, settled down to a simple monastic but outgoing life of mission ,again according to Bede:
 "They were constantly at prayer; they fasted and kept vigils; they preached the word of life to whomsoever they could…They practiced what they preached, and were willing to endure any hardship, and even to die for the truth which they proclaimed.”

Image from the Latin Augustine Gospels

 They extended the little church in which the king was baptised after being finally converted.
With positive influence from the Kentish court as well as continuing help from the Christian Franks 
So the mission in the south flourished with the building of a great abbey and eventually the start of the Cathedral in the city centre.

    According to a letter of Gregory to the patriarch of Alexandria in 589 there were 10,000 baptised, surely the first great revival in England.

The just and loving God, who brings us peace and harmony.

"Men simple in wit can be well built up to heavenly living by reading and knowing of the old testament, for in the beginning of Genesis they can know, how God made heaven and earth and all creatures out of nothing, and made man to his own image and likeness, and to have bliss in body and soul without end." From Chapter 3 of Wycliffe's prologue to the bible.

In the mornings at Trinity we have been studying the book of Revelation. One thing that has been plainly obvious is that it is a book that is impossible to understand without a thorough grasp and knowledge of the old testament. 

In fact, one old testament scholar,

JA Motyer would start his lectures by telling us to open our bibles and tear out the separating pages between the Old and New Testaments. There are 933 quotes and allusions to the Old testament within the New Testament. 

Many people's idea of the God of the Old testament is of a vengeful God of hell fire and of the God of the New testament as the gentle Jesus, full of love; this just proves they have never really read or understood the bible at all.  If you do a bible search for “hell fire”, you only get three hits; all in the gospels, from the mouth of Jesus.

As Christians we aspire to love and grow more like Jesus as we live our Christian lives. So how do get to know love and understand Yahweh (Jehovah), the great    "I am" of the old testament.

As always Jesus is a good starting point. Jesus said if you have seen me you have seen the father. John 14:9

In the old testament we see the Fathers heart in the tender love that Yahweh has for the people that He has called, even when they are continually sinning and turning away to other gods. He sends His prophets to call them back; only if they refuse to repent, and turn back to Him are they finally sent into exile so they can learn that total love and dependence on Him is the only way to live. This is particularly seen in books like Hosea: Hosea 2 and Isaiah: Isaiah 40 .

So how we get into the enormous body of writings of the Bible?

 One good place to start is the Daily bible Readings  that we are following as a community at Trinity. They also have a section where you can read through the bible in a year, reading two chapters on the old testament and one of the new. This is a tremendous way of getting a feel for the whole bible and how the books relate to each other.

At New wine this year I discovered a new way of study, that is using Bible hub

This is a tremendous resource, for instance, look up Micah 6:8 click on Interlinear and you find some key old testament words “hesed” (meaning: covenant love, mercy and kindness) and “Mishpat” (meaning justice and right standing before God), click on the words and you get a concordance with a link to every other occurrence of these words. 

Remember that when Paul said that all scripture is inspired by God 2 Timothy 3:16 he was talking about his bible!

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.