What Kind of King?

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#ChristKing #BookofEli

Last Sunday night I watched a film on the television: The Book of Eli.  The film is set in some future post-apocalyptic time, following a great disaster when a sun burst burnt everything up on earth, including most of the paper, most of the books.  The central character is Eli, who has one of the few books left in the world.  It is a Bible, and he has had a vision that he must walk west, carrying the book.  So he has been walking for 30 years.  The world has changed greatly since the catastrophe, and the people don’t read any more.  They can’t read.  There is very little water and not much food. Everywhere is a desert.  Life is tough, a dog eat dog world. 

 

Eli passes through an area where the local baddy, Carnegie, is looking for a book, not just any book.  He wants a copy of the Bible. And he wants it not so that he can study it for himself or get closer to God, but because he wants to use it to control others.  If he controls access to the wisdom of the Bible, he will have the key to the hearts and minds of all the people, and he will be able to milk that for his own profit.  After considerable difficulty, Carnegie manages to get the Bible that Eli is carrying, leaving Eli for dead, very hurt and broken. 

 

Eli struggles to continue travelling.  He goes west until he comes to a great river.  When he crosses the river by row boat, he and his companion are taken in by a community of scholars who have collected the books that remain and plan to print them again, so that people will be able to read, and there will be culture and civilisation all over again.  In the meantime, Carnegie opens the Bible that he has stolen from Eli and finds that it is a Braille copy and he cannot read it.  Out west, Eli starts to dictate the whole of the Bible, verse by verse.  He has memorized the whole thing.  He is the book. 

 

Today is the last Sunday before Advent, the day when the theme is Christ the King, and we think about what it means for Christ to be our King. 

 

Carnegie, the baddy in the film, wants to control the people, he wants to rule them – if you like, he wants to be the kingpin, and he is prepared to use faith, the bible, to do that.  He wants the power of the Bible to use against the people  He wants to be a sort of Messiah-figure, but for all the wrong reasons. 

 

That is not the kind of king that Jesus is. 

 

In the Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah is raging against the bad leaders, the shepherds who haven’t cared for the flocks.  He pronounces the Lord’s promise that good shepherds will be brought in who will tend the sheep properly. 

 

Carnegie is like those bad shepherds.  The bad shepherds look out for their own interests, their own pleasure.  They treat the sheep like objects, tools to be used.  For them, the sheep are disposable.  There was another bad shepherd in the news this week in the former Chairman of the Coop Bank, the Methodist minister Paul Flowers. 

 

The Gospel reading shows us what it means for Christ to be king.  It is the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus dying on the cross to save us all.  He gives himself up so that we might live and thrive. 

 

In the film, Carnegie is all for killing others so that he himself can thrive.  But Jesus loves us so much that he is prepared to die for us. 

 

Pilate mocks the crucified Jesus by putting a sign on the cross “This is the king of the Jews”.  The Romans knew about kings.  Their emperors were gods. Who was this little man going round talking about God’s kingdom, preaching love and claiming to heal people.  He was nothing!  The Romans had the power to obliterate him, and that’s what they tried to do. 

 

But God has the last laugh.  Jesus was the king of Jews, but not in the way everyone expected.  Jesus rose from the dead three days after the crucifixion.  That was the real power, God’s power. 

 

In the film, Eli sacrificed himself for his dream, for his vision.  He remained true to his calling to go west and carry the book.  Even when he lost the physical book, he was still carrying the book because he had learned every word by heart.  And fulfilling the vision meant that everyone would have access to the sacred text once again and would be able to get to know God for themselves.  The faith would be shared, not exploited. 

 

Christ our King has given himself up for us.  Every week, we share the cup of his blood and the bread that is his body.  He becomes part of who we are, as individuals and as a church.  And he invites us to respond, to put others first, to care for those around us, the strangers as well as close kin. 

 

The middle reading, the Epistle to the Colossians, talks about what this all means for us.  It tells us how we have been rescued from darkness and brought into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son where we have forgiveness of our sins and can share in the inheritance of the saints in light.  That gives us strength, and we should endure everything with patience and give thanks to the Father. 

 

Christ is our King, but we have to remember what kind of king he is, a king who gives himself up for us.  And we are called to be like him in everything we do, in the way we do business, in our attitudes to money and possessions, in our relationships, in the way we treat others.  And when we do that, he can say to us: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.?

Panel from the south window at St Chad’s Bensham, by Percy Bacon brothers

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Through the Keyhole

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#2b4Advent #Imagine

On Wednesday, I went to a concert at the Sage. Before it began, we were looking around the shop.  They have a lovely shop, selling all sorts of arty-type gifts.  One book I was looking at was trying to inspire your imagination, getting you to draw things. On one page, it said: “Here is a keyhole. Imagine you are looking through the keyhole. What do you think you would see.” And then you had to draw whatever you think you might have seen looking through the keyhole.

 

I want to invite you to do something similar, but different.  I want you to imagine what you would see if you were to look through the keyhole in order to see the future, the future for yourself, for the world, for the church. 

 

In the Gospel today, in the story as Luke tells it, Jesus is looking through the keyhole into the future.  And he tells the disciples that the future is going to be tough.  Politically, the world will be in chaos with wars and rebellions.  There will be more chaos in the environment with earthquakes happening, famines and plagues.  And it’s not much better for the church: Christians will be persecuted, betrayed and martyred.  But not to worry about all that, Jesus says, just persevere and stick with it. 

 

There are a number of places in the Bible where it talks about the terrible times ahead, the bad times that will happen before Jesus comes again.  People have often said to me, ‘it’s like that now.  We must be in the end times.  Jesus will come again soon.’ And one day, Jesus will come, certainly he will. 

 

In every generation, people have looked around them and seen really bad things happening, and they have said, ‘this must mean we are in the end times!’ and they expected Jesus to be with them in a matter of months. Imagine what it must have felt like when the First World War began in 1914. And then in 1918 the great flu pandemic in which thousands of people died – they have must have experienced this as a tremendous plague.

 

But the waiting has continued.  So until Jesus actually comes in clouds of glory, we must persevere and keep faithful, do our best to relieve suffering, witness to Christ wherever we are, and show the love of God to all those around us. 

 

Even in our own times, we have seen disaster after disaster, tragedy after tragedy.  There was the Boxing Day Tsunami, the earthquake in Haiti, and now Typhoon Haiyan.  Over the last few years, there has been violence and conflict in Egypt, Libya, Syria and the whole of the Middle East is like a tinderbox.  There is so much distress! Ordinary people whose lives are turned upside down, deprived of the means of survival, deprived of hope.  It is tough out there, and it doesn’t seem to get any easier. 

 

The Christian church throughout the world is also beset with problems.  Christians are persecuted in many countries, deprived of opportunities for education and employment, and sometimes injured and killed.  Churches have been burnt down in Egypt.  Our brothers and sisters in Christ are standing up for their faith in the face of great opposition.  We have it so easy!  We may battle against the forces of secularism and apathy, but we can worship freely, and that is such a privilege.

 

One thing is certain when we look through the keyhole into the future: things will change.  Some things will change for the worse, and we pray that some thing will improve.  There are signs of hope.

 

The concert I went to at the Sage was the Soweto Gospel Choir.  The choir was formed in the black township of Soweto in South Africa ten years ago.  They sang Gospel songs and other songs with power and energy, singing and dancing for all they were worth.  There was so much energy.  It was a performance full of faith and hope.  By the end, everyone was standing and clapping and dancing in their places.  They shared their faith and hope with us, and we over a couple of hours, we blossomed. 

 

We had the Annual Meeting of St Chad’s Community Project last week.  The Project for me is a great sign of hope in this area.  They do such good work with children and families. 

 

Each week, we go into St Aidan’s School.  There is another sign of hope and of faith in action.  They take in children from families who are struggling and given them boundaries and stability and the opportunity to learn.  The results they get are brilliant with children that schools in other areas would find unpromising.

 

I spent an afternoon this week at Eslington School, which is just behind St Aidans.  This is a school for children with emotional and behavioural problems.  They are the most damaged kids in Gateshead, and the school does absolute wonders with them, living out the love of God.  It was a real privilege to work with a couple of classes, looking at pictures about the birth of Jesus and thinking about darkness and light. 

 

And yesterday afternoon, we had the Fun @ 4 Family Service.  Our theme was the story of the Prodigal Son, and we did various crafts and activities to get into the story. 

 

All of these are signs of hope, of faith in action, of Christian love shown to people in great need.  We need to find more ways of making that happen.  It needs to be part of our dream for this church and this community. 

 

So if you look through the keyhole into the future, what do you see?  What do you hope for?  What do you fear?

For All the Saints

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#AllSaints #Blessings

Who are the people who have been a blessing to you over the years, the people who have prayed for you and looked out for you and guided you?

 

Key people for me are:

My godmother, Kathleen Peach – who gave me a book of saints when I was 5 years old, which truly inspired me.

George Gill – who taught me RE A-level at school, a man full of faith.

Joy Grieves – who invited me to the prayer group at the House of Prayer at Burn Hall, and who believed in me.

 

They are the saints in my life.  Yes, I admire and have been inspired by the big saints, but I have also been hugely influenced by the little saints, the everyday saints.  They have been a real blessing to me.  Today is for remembering all the saints, especially the little ones. 

 

I love the way that the Chapel of All Saints behind the high altar has brass plaques to remember the people who died in the first few years of the life of this church, while the first vicar was here.  They are among the saints of this church.  And so many more have worshipped here and worked so hard and witnessed to Christ in so many ways ever since then, though we have lost their names.

 

On Friday, which was All Saints Day, people on Twitter, the social networking site, were naming their saints.  Here are some of them – they are not mine – but come from various people on Twitter:

 

• Trevor who was always pleased to see me and gave the best hugs
• Betty who has prayed for me every single of my life
• my Great Aunt Con who was racked with pain but full of Grace
• Nat who hardly knew me but listened to me when I was full of despair

 

And I am telling you about them because it might remind you of your own saints and the ways that people have ministered to you.

 

And that’s why you were given the star tags with your hymnbooks today.  You can write down the names of your saints on the back and clip them to the tree in front of the altar.  If you have room, write down why they were special to you. There are plenty of star tags, so that you can have one for each person you are remembering.

 

[Let people write their tags and hang them up. Maybe read some out]

 

It is good to remember those who have been a blessing to us. And we give thanks to God for all of them and all that they meant to us.

 

I want to ask you now how you can be a blessing to others.  How are you going to be a saint to the people around you, to the people you come across? 

 

Back on Twitter, Bishop Mark was reminding people what Thomas Merton said, that “For me to be a saint means to be myself.”  He went on to tweet another quotation: “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one…God will make you what He created you to be, if you consent to let Him do it.”

 

So there is something in there about being yourself, the self that God made you to be.  The trouble is, we put a lot of barriers in the way between us and God, and a lot of rubbish creeps in, and what the world ends up seeing of us is a rather distorted picture of who we are.  So we need to come clean about the mess we have made of the beautiful person that God created.  And then turn to God and let him sort things out.

 

But we don’t have to wait for all that to happen to be a blessing to others.  We start by wanting to be a blessing – not just to the people we care about, but also to the people who irritate and annoy us, the people we don’t like very much.  This week, I found a brilliant way of doing this, and I want you try it.

 

Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: “I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.”  If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop polluting; if we said it when we see the ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers; if we said it to small children we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training; if we said it to people, we soul have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us.  Beauty and human warmth would take root in us like a clear, hot June day.  We would change.

Joan Chittister, In a High Spiritual Season

 

To help you, I have a copy for each of you to take with you.  Do try it.  It will make a difference.  It becomes a prayer for each person you encounter.  I tried it the other day, and it did make me feel differently about the people I saw.  The trick now is to keep on doing it.

 

On Thursday when I was trying out that prayer, I went to the hairdresser as I badly needed a haircut.  I prayed silently for her happiness, and we got talking.  It turned out that she is a Christian and she told me how she often listens to her customers in their troubles and ends up praying for them.  That woman is a real blessing, doing her ordinary job, and being a saint.