| Deanery Newsletter - February 3rd, 2010 |
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Last weekend Magic moments: For those who celebrated Candlemas on Sunday I'm sure most of you used candles in one way or another. In Gainford we ended up gathered around a huge wooden cross on which we had all laid candles - and ended the service with the Nunc Dimitis. This was quite special in its own right, and people enjoyed it, but the best bit came after the service during coffee. A man with his two young sons, who I'd never seen before, came in and wanted to pray for Granddad. It was a special moment when I could take them to the front of the church to light some candles and add them to all the other flickering candles on the cross and when they'd done that they all knelt in front of the altar to pray. Little magic moments like that are to be treasured. Next weekend Not all of us use the OT reading but if you do, the one this Sunday from Genesis (2: 4-9) is very interesting because of how different people in different ages have interpreted it. For instance St. Paul takes part of Sunday's offering, Genesis 2:22 where a woman is formed out of one of the man's ribs to argue in 1 Timothy 2: 11 - 13 "Let a woman learn in silence in all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then eve". This is despite men and women being created at the same time in Genesis 1. And Genesis 2:24 "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh" This sentence has often been used in the current debate about homosexuality to argue that God only sanctions heterosexual relationships (grandly called a creation ordinance). But to me, the verse says no more than that humans reach a stage in life where they cease to be dependent on their parents, and enter into new relationships with new responsibilities. In revelation chapter 4 you will be plunged head first into dense and pretty impenetrable imagery that is part and parcel of apocalyptic Jewish writing (I have covered this ground before). Fasten your seat belt and hold on tight as John takes us on a tour of his vision that owes so much to Daniel, Ezekiel and Jewish apocalyptic literature. As you digest it you slowly discover why the lectionary compilers have placed it alongside the gospel story of the calming of the storm though. In the context in which revelation was written, generally agreed to be a time of great persecution there is trouble in the present and there is also trouble ahead but in the midst of all these problems John has a vision of the eternal God who transcends all these current difficulties. Cue the calming of the storm in Luke's gospel and you then see the connection - the constant faithful peaceful God at the centre who transcends life's current difficulties, like a rock or an anchor That's interesting! The derivation of names is fascinating. So as we were looking briefly at Genesis; ADAM means ground, dust, or of the ground (Adamah) and EVE means "living" or life. Humanity is both material and spiritual - body and spirit, animated matter. Adam and Eve is an apt description of all people, which I think is what the authors meant in the first place. A faith forum. The following was sent to me by Alistair Macnaughton the Diocesan "Developing Discipleship officer" In the last few months, a project has begun across the region, to encourage faith discussions between people of all faiths and none. The discussions take place in an online forum and are open and free to anyone who wants to join in. The project is part of work being done by the Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership, based at Church House. The forum was developed for several reasons, one of them was to allow people from across the region to interact with each other, and open up opportunities for informal learning to people who might not otherwise get a chance to talk to others about matters of faith. In order to get the project working, some help and support in the form of a grant were provided by the Department of Business Innovations and Skills who were happy to fund this sort of learning, along with some book and discussion groups that will be held in face to face settings. The government is keen to support various faiths as they try and work together to create community cohesion where possible. Though essentially Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership is here to develop Christian learning, part of Christian learning is to consider how to work with people of all faiths and none. In the modern world we need to know how people of various faiths relate to the things that happen, not simply what our own faith says. For example; doctors, nurses and policemen all need to have some idea as to how the various faiths deal with illness and emergencies (for example Hindu cremation customs- a major issue in the news at time of writing) It is possible to understand where people of different faiths are coming from without abandoning our own beliefs. In fact many people find their own faith is strengthened through dialogue with others. That being said, the forum now has a number of very interesting and stimulating topics including a faith response to the Haiti disaster, plus a place where any questions about any faith can be asked and answered by various faith representatives. I would encourage any person interested in faith and ethics to visit the forum and participate in these discussions. It can be found by going to: www.lindisfarneforum.org where you will be asked to register, then log on to the site. Please do go along and have your say. Alastair Macnaughton Director of Developing Discipleship The lighter side! The wit and wisdom of Steven Wright * All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand * A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory * If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you even tried. * Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now. * What's another word for Thesaurus? * A conclusion is usually the place where you got tired of thinking The heart of prayer I wrote a couple of weeks ago of my understanding of God as being non-interventionist, especially in natural events like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the like, which are neither good nor evil, they just are. They have to be. If it wasn't for the natural growth processes like volcanoes and earthquakes, this world would not exist in the way it does and human kind would not have evolved in the first place. This led one person to make a connection between God and prayer. Does God answer prayer? More to the point, if God does not intervene, what is the point of prayer? And what do we mean by intervention or answers? Let me start by saying that I nor you nor anybody else understands all the mysteries of the universe or how the complex tapestry of existence fits together, so I will always leave a gap for mystery. There is always more to life than is apparent to us. That said, with the evidence of our eyes and using some discernment, and with the benefit of experience I have come to my own conclusions which you can agree with or disagree with, or use as a basis for your own thinking and discussions. Let us examine what we might mean by a God who intervenes. For example, if I pray to God that such and such will happen. What I am I doing there? Am I informing God of something or a situation that he doesn't know about perhaps? Unlikely. Am I twisting God's arm to do something that he wouldn't have done unless I had prayed for it to happen. Bending God's will to my will? That is a possibility perhaps, but it still means effectively that If someone is in pain, God is willing to let them suffer unless and until someone prays for them. Again, unlikely I think, and contrary to my understanding of a God of love. Last but not least. If we say that God answers prayer, why some and not others? This leaves God open to the charge of being fickle and partial, again not something that I would be comfortable with. Note: I used to belong to a church where people even prayed for parking places and would swear that God had answered their prayers and would recount their experiences of such things. The skeptic in me always used to think (I was too browbeaten to say it) that maybe that was why God had no time to help the starving millions as he was too busy helping rich, white, middle class Christians negotiate traffic congestion in Guildford. Or is something else entirely going on? Is our way of looking at prayer primarily as God intervening on our behalf, the old requirement/reward paradigm I've referred to before, one that can really hold water, or is it time to reconsider and see the primary raison d'etre of prayer in terms of relationshipand transformation of our character? When you think about it, understanding prayer primarily as asking God to intervene on our behalf is strange and dangerous ground. If that really is what we believe then we have an awful lot of explaining to do in relation to every Haiti, every Auschwitz, every life cut short, all suffering and every atrocity that has ever taken place. Consider a different approach - what if the change in the situation looked for is a change in the one actually doing the praying? What if the point of prayer is not twisting a reluctant God's arm to do something that we want, but is about building a close relationship with our Father and through that growing relationship we ourselves are changed - transformed into willing instruments of the kingdom. And what if the point of communal prayer was that a group of individuals - a community - were changed and transformed though communal prayer. What if several communities galvanised and transformed by prayer interacted with each other. The possibilities expand in all directions as people are transformed, by their growing and deepening relationship with God. Building a relationship with our father means we naturally want to share our deepest desires, wants, needs. Expressing this natural urge is what I see as intercessionary prayer and is entirely natural. Sharing our deepest longings with someone we trust is part of a growing relationship. But in sharing my deepest longings and desires for friends, family, neighbours and the world, I personally don't feel that God then, feeling a bit guilty, then goes off and does something for us. My cousin Michael has been paralysed from the chest down for 25 years after a car accident. He is now diagnosed as having malignant cancer in his neck and tonsils. A tragic accident may well end in a very painful premature death. Michael has been prayed for for many years, but those prayers are not invalidated because God did not intervene and "do" something as in miraculously cure him. God comes to Michael through his loving parents, through doctors and specialists and through a wife who needs to turn him three times every night to stop him getting bed sores. That is God's love in action. I think we tend to look for "results" in the wrong place. The changes we look for, the "something that must happen" is in us. The place where we should be looking for change and answered prayer is primarily in the person or people doing the praying and then through what we achieve as a result of this change. Being close to God, not because of what we can get out of Him, like a cosmic slot machine, but out of love which is its own reward. When our deepest desires that we share with God do actually happen, then that to me is answered prayer, but I don't think that those things would not have happened without prayer. A good analogy is that the church spent centuries killing each other arguing over whether a piece of bread and a cup of wine changed, completely oblivious to the fact that God wants us to change, not the bread and wine. I'll finish how I started. I, you, nobody knows how all the mysteries of the universe fit together. But using a certain discernment and knowing how the world roughly works, if we are looking for God's intervention, perhaps we need to start looking a bit closer to home, in fact, we need to start looking inside ourselves and then corporately at our churches. That, I believe, is where the results of prayer happen. The Prayer for today is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and opposition to tyranny were a true answer to prayer and an intervention by God. He was hanged by the Nazis in 1945. His letters from prison in the year before he was hanged are for me no different in stature than Paul's letters from Rome and are part of a continuing revelation of God's relationship to humanity. Lest we forget, the overwhelming majority of German protestants supported the Nazis. The now famous "confessing church" which Bonhoeffer started was a tiny minority. Always question the status quo...... O God, early in the morning I cry to you. Help me to pray and to concentrate my thoughts on you; I cannot do this alone. In me there is darkness but with you there is light; I am lonely, but you do not leave me; I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help; I am restless but with you there is peace. In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience; I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me. Post Script:
The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God. Love and peace Martin |