Anna: An Advent Meditation

In Luke's gospel we're told (chapter 2) that there was a lady called Anna who was a prophetess. Luke goes on:

she was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Now, why should Luke bother to include a mention of this elderly lady? Honestly, what does this add that we don't already get from what Simeon said? Back then ink, paper and copying was an expensive and time consuming business. Is this merely a frivolous little cameo of life in first century Jerusalem? One that makes charismatics go "Hurrah!" and everyone else go "Well she was a bit intense!" Is he ticking his diversity box, making sure every sub-group gets a mention?

No!

Anna's life tells a story that echoes the great story of history. Her story brings that great story into sharper focus and helps us to feel it more keenly. She's a symbol of the Old Testament Church. She is a matured (elderly) Eve.

Back at Eden, in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, Eve, symbolically became a widow. If you read what the LORD says towards the end of the chapter, He has no promises for Adam, all his promise of redemption is addressed to Eve. It is the seed of the woman who will crush the Serpent's head. Adam will not contribute anything. All he gets is judgments. Whilst Adam carries on living, and he will bring forth biological life, his ability to give spiritual life to Eve and through Eve to creation is gone. He is dead and buried as far as Salvation's story goes. (Notice that in Genesis 4. Eve get's all the airtime of the two, Adam is just a detail.)

Eve will hold on to that promise of a serpent crusher miraculously going forth from her womb as she ventures out into the wilderness beyond the temple mountain garden of Eden. Though Adam and Eve were never let back into the garden, they would come to the entrance to offer sacrifice. It's most likely where Cain and Abel offered their famous sacrifices of Genesis 4.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and we see the echo of Eve in the face of Anna the prophetess. Anna was married seven years to a man who then died, echoing the seven days of creation that culminated with Eve's marriage to Adam. He then spiritually died.

Anna, no longer the soft and tight-skinned fresh-faced virgin of Eden, but a tired, wrinkly worn out pensioner, who despite all the trials and temptations, all the joys and sorrows, all the false starts and hopes of life, held fast to God's promise of Messiah all her life long. And even though her eyes were failing and her strength fading, she finally saw the hope that she had long been waiting for when she looked into the face of that baby Jesus.

The Serpent Crusher of her youth was finally here.

True Israel, the Eves, Noahs, Abrahams, Sarahs, Jacobs, Josephs, Moseses, Samuels, Davids and others of the Old Testament who had waited and hoped through times of flood, famine, wealth, slavery, apostasy, warfare and anything else you care to mention, who had seen so many false starts in their people's history, finally in the face of this little baby, saw all their hope culminated.

The Serpent Crusher of their youth was finally here.

This widow would be married once again to a truly life giving husband.

#trending 6: Identity - Sermon Notes

In this final sermon on identity, we aren't looking at the best of what our culture has to offer in helping us to understand ourselves, rather, at a handful of the, sometimes unspoken, assumptions and slogans that fly around in the mainstream of popular culture. Here are a few to get you thinking:

Identity in Popular Culture

• I have no essential identity – bodies are accidental - Our culture's story of evolution is one which tells us that nothing is fixed - we can become whatever we want.
• My desires and their fulfillment are my highest duty - How often have you heard the phrase, "Whatever floats your boat…" "Whatever makes you happy…" This is fine when it comes to the colour we want to paint our living room, but as a compass for making moral decisions, it is deeply flawed.
• I express myself through consumption - Think about the way you dress, and the way you decorate your home - it's all about expressing to the world what you want them to see of you. We are all about image management.
• My achievements are the definition of my success and self worth - Whereas in other parts of the world, people define themselves by their ethnic / tribal ties - in our culture we define ourselves by what we do. If you haven't "achieved" anything much, you're written off as a nobody.
• Public responsibility is dead, long live me - whilst we talk a good game about how concerned we are about the environment or human trafficking or other such causes, how many of us have done anything significant about it for any significant length of time.
• Judgmentalism is the new unforgivable sin - clearly there are some very unloving, ignorant and plain stupid things said by people who have never (or not for a long time) experienced a particular way of life / circumstance, but to then say that we are never allowed to pass any kind of judgment on the choices and / or actions of each other will only serve to further lock us all up in the prisons of our own self-righteousness, suspicion, fear and prejudice.
• Self-esteem is the new moral currency - Right and wrong is less and less rule based and more and more located in what helps me to feel good about who I am and what I am doing.
• Government exists to enable my rights & choices - we expect them not to rule over us, but to help us fix our problems and realise our dreams - the obvious destination of this philosophy is anarchy.

Popular Culture in the Church

• Genie Jesus - God has a beautiful plan for my life - In the survey I did most people said that the one thing that would significantly improve their life right now was money, a partner or a change of job, suggesting that God's "beautiful" plan is to bolster our sense of who we think we are rather than seeing that when he says beautiful, he means sacrificial - in the sense of soldiers at the D-Day landings.
• Greasy Grace - Biblical commands diluted down into encouragements - We often pick and choose which commands we listen to and ignore the others saying they don't matter or God didn't really mean it.
• Our public voice is lost – we retreat to the shadows for fear of being labeled - No one who wants to be part of civilised society wants to be labelled a bigot. So we either shut up or retreat to the irrelevant shadows.
• Success & technique trump faithfulness - Christian bookshops are full of techniques on how to be a better…[fill in the blanks]. We have many manuals about how to be a better spouse, parent, leader, how to grow a ministry or church successfully, but not so many about how to be faithful. In his closing address in the Bible, Jesus in Rev 2-3 says he's not interested in success, but in faithfulness.
• The world can go to Hell so long as I and my loved ones are alright - Through a twisted desire for self-preservation we have a shrivelled sense of our calling to the world.

The Bible and Identity

The Bible talks about our identity, not as a set of "truth statements" but as a story. The True Story in which all our little stories take place (see Genesis 1-4):

• Wonderfully made - God carefully made man out of the dust, and breathed life into him. He then went one better - he made woman. Woman is man glorified.
• A Reflection onto Eternity - Through the family unit (diversity in unity) multiplying and spreading out across the earth, the human race would reflect the joyful, abundant, spreading, outgoing love of the Father, Son and Spirit.
• The Dark Exchange - But rather than God, Adam and Eve chose to listen to a different voice. Rather than reflecting God, they chose to reflect the serpent, they still wanted all God's benefits, just none of the loyalty those benefits entailed. They wanted to be their own gods.
• The Irreparable Loss - After that Dark Exchange, Adam and Eve don't repent, they blame everyone else and lock themselves into a place where before God they don't, can't and won't do what is right.
• The Orphaned Wandering - Adam and Eve, and the human race that would flow from them are exiled from fellowship with God to wander over the face of the earth - as a covering for their shame they build great civilisations over history, with great cultures, but at the centre of all these manifestations are dark, orphaned and rebellious hearts.
• But…

In Christ, Our Identity is Transformed and Glorified - 1 Cor. 15

• The Man From Above - Jesus stepped into history 2000 years ago. He was a miracle birth, not born with the same orphaned, corrupted heart that you and I have.
• Jesus is True Humanity - We are ghosts of our former selves alienated from everything and everyone, but Jesus was and is the true human - relating perfectly to God his Father and all creation. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, but Jesus is the reality of God.
• The Death that Swallowed Death - Eternally - In Christ's crucifixion, God takes into himself all the effects of the curse that we brought upon ourselves when we locked ourselves into our orphaned and rebellious hearts and threw away the key. God has made his peace with us for all the offence we caused him, the question is, will we make our peace with him?
• The Life that Pours out Life - Eternally - Jesus, now ascended to the right hand of his Father pours our his life and likeness to all who respond to the call to make their peace with him.
• True Life is found in Death - True life is when we give up trying to be the controller of the universe - when we die to the way of life which puts us at the centre and instead, puts us in submission to God. We then receive his life to blossom as he intended.
• Transformed Sameness - Christians may not look any different on the outside, but their whole reality changes when they put their trust in Jesus, in a similar way to the way life changes when you get married, have kids, turn 18 etc. In one sense everything is the same and yet, everything is different.

Some of the "Identity" Survey Results.

Here some results from the recent Identity survey I did for a sermon of mine:

Setting that in context, according to our membership directory we are about 45% men and 55% women and, currently, on average, we gather a bit more than twice our number of members across our three Sunday meetings.

I think that the following two are fairly self-explanatory, but if you have any interesting observations, do mention them in the comments.

This last one is interesting and if I was better at writing surveys (hindsight is a wonderful thing) I would have framed the question differently. Instead of saying "rank the following in order of which stresses you out the most" I think I should have said "rank the following in order of which you think about the most."

As a consequence, with God's expectations ranked 4th overall in the stress stakes, I don't know if this means that we have a mature understanding of our identity in Christ e.g. Matt 11:28-29 or if it means that we are far too worldly in our thinking e.g. 2 Cor. 10:12 and don't really care about his expectations.

Hmmm…

Once again, many thanks to all who filled in the survey. It's also great to get little messages like these two:

I hope, with God's help, to measure up to the expectation that I have created. :-)

RFC Bible School 2015 - Open for Registration

2015 will see us running our Bible School for the second time. It's open to anyone at RFC who wants to know the WHOLE BIBLE better, but has either always felt daunted by the task or could never quite mobilise themselves to do it alone.

The nine session course will take place at the RFC Offices on the third Monday of the month (not including July, August or December). We'll start each evening with a pizza buffet at 7pm followed by two taught sessions delivered by one of the Bible School teaching team and finish around 9:30pm.

Whilst we, the team, plan to cover a lot of material, and there are some hard bits, we aim as best we can to pitch that material academically at GCSE / O-level standard. The sessions are as follows:

19th Jan: Approaching the Bible - What do we need to know about this book before we open it?
16th Feb: What's the point of the Bible? How the whole Bible points to the supremacy of Jesus Christ
16th Mar: Starting out - How Genesis 1-4 sets the scene for everything that follows
20th Apr: Leviticus - How the Law brings God near for both death and life
18th May: The Psalms and their Friends: How to learn wisdom from music and poetry
15th June: How the Prophets called the people back to Christ, their first love
21st Sept: How the gospels show us the glory of Jesus from different angles
19th Oct: Reading the New Testament letters in the shadow of Acts
16th Nov: Understanding Revelation - The Last Word, The New World and the Triumphant Love of the Living God

To whet your appetite, here is one of the sessions we (I) taught last year.

There are no formal written assignments in this course, but anyone who wishes to write something to consolidate / build on what they have learned is welcome to do so and will get feedback on it. But it goes without saying that the best way to understand the Bible beyond this course is to read it.

The cost of the course is £70, which is to cover the cost of our food, drink and course handouts over the nine sessions. However, we don't want cost to stop anyone from attending, so if you would like to participate, but finances are tight, bursaries are available - more information on request from the church office.

Book in via Eventbrite http://rfcbibleschool.eventbrite.com, but payment needs to be made via the church office.

Ideally we would like at least 20 people to sign up (it feels like a "proper" class size then), but will happily run it for whoever we get. Due to space issues, the maximum number we can take is 35.

Would love to see many of you there.

Jesus prayed the Psalms, what did that look like? What does it look like for us when we do the same?

Down history, the church across the world has prayed the Psalms of the Bible. Not in a sugar-coated, fridge magnet Genie Jesus give me nice things way, but in the same way that Jesus used them - to strengthen their hearts.

As a good Jewish lad, he would have learned the Psalms, but when it comes to Jesus, there's more to it. He is the focus of that Psalm's fulfilment. The Psalms are a prophetic echo of Jesus prayer life.

So the next time you pick up a Psalm, ask yourself:

• What would have been going through Jesus' mind as he read and prayed the Psalms? 
• At what point was he in his ministry when Psalm [insert no. btw 1 & 150 here] would have come to mind?

So if we applied that principle to Psalm 3, what does it look like? No doubt, Jesus saw A LOT more depth and life than I do, but here's a starter for 10.

Firstly, Jesus tells his Father that he is falsely accused by his enemies.

Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,“God will not deliver him.”

Then, he entrusts himself to his heavenly Father  to protect, sustain and vindicate him.  He also looks to the Father as his glory - Jesus was not interested in promoting himself, but that everything he was and did in life would honour the Father and he looked to the Father to order his steps and deliver him from evil.

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
I call out to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear though tens of thousands
assail me on every side.
Arise, Lord!
Deliver me, my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
From the Lord comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people.

So then, those who are united to Christ, who are in Christ and are now his hands and feet on the earth can pray these words with the same confidence that Jesus did when he prayed them, knowing that Jesus and his Father, through the Spirit will be just as faithful as the Father and the Spirit were to Jesus, for it is their heart to share all they have and are with us.

Dreams: A Picture of our Final Awakening

Last week, I awoke in the middle of the night and heard Elli fretting in her sleep, it sounded like she was having a nightmare so I gently called out her name. She awoke and told me that she had, indeed, been having a very distressing dream. We prayed God's redeeming love over the dream and both fell back asleep again until morning.

The Bible speaks of our transition into the next world as an "awakening." That this world, as solid as it feels, is a dreamworld compared to the reality of the world beyond the veil where God lives:

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James 4:14

Jesus says:

Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. John 5:25-29

Whether your life feels more like a fantasy or a nightmare, a time is coming when we will all hear his voice and be awoken to the greatest reality.

It's all about Jesus Christ

In the introduction to Christ our Life, Mike Reeves writes:

Once upon a time a book like this would have been utterly run-of-the-mill. Among the old Puritans, for example, you can scarcely find a writer who did not write - or a preacher who did not preach - something called The Unsearchable Riches of Christ; Christ Set Forth; The Glory of Christ or the like. Yet today, what sells? What puts a smile on the bookseller's face? The book that is about the reader. People want to read about themselves. There's nothing necessarily wrong in that, of course; but that is not primarily what life is about. "For me to live is Christ," said the apostle Paul. "What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 1:21, 3:8). Startling words, all too easily dismissed as religious overexcitement. But Paul was not raving; he was speaking plainly, the deepest wisdom; that life is found in Jesus Christ, the author and source of it, and if we know him rightly, we will find nothing so desirable, so delightful as him.

It's not just our self-focus though; we naturally gravitate, it seems towards anything but Jesus - and Christians as almost as much as anyone else. Whether it's the 'Christian Worldview,' 'grace,' 'the Bible,' or 'the gospel'; as if they were things in themselves that could save us. Even 'the cross' can get abstracted from Jesus, as if the wood had some power of its own. Other things, wonderful things, vital discoveries, they so easily edge Jesus aside. Precious theological concepts meant to describe him and his work get treated as things in their own right. He becomes just another brick in the wall. But the centre, the cornerstone, the jewel in the crown of Christianity is not an idea, a system or a thing; it is not even 'the gospel' as such. It is Jesus Christ.