Advent - week 1

Yesterday morning at CBC we lit the first candle on our 'Advent wreath'.

For those of you who were not there yesterday - this photo looks nothing like our 'wreath'. It's more of a five pronged candle holder. But as I grew up in churches that hardly acknowledged Advent at all - this is clearly progress!

Given that I have no history with Advent it is perhaps ironic that this past week I spoke at a mixed group of Baptists, Anglicans and Catholics on the subject of Advent and will be taking an Advent assembly next week at a local C of E primary school.

So what is Advent?

Advent is traditionally a time of waiting and preparation for Christmas. It is recognising and identifying with God's people of old who waited for the coming of the Messiah - and it is also a recognition of the fact that as God's people today we wait for the Second Coming - and we prepare our hearts in the light of this truth.

Many of these Old Testament prophesies looking forward to the birth of Jesus are providing hope for a better future - things will not always be the way they currently are. God is going to intervene in history. He is going to rescue his people. But there were still hundreds of years of waiting.

In many church traditions the first candle on the Advent wreath is the candle of hope and is linked to the OT prophets. 

For hundreds of years the faithful lived in hope that God was going to intervene - and then he did - in a totally unexpected and surprising way.

And we continue to live in this sense of expectation. For although we have the promise that God is with us now, and that we do experience God working now, and that lives are being transformed now - there is also this longing, this expectation, this hope that things are not always going to be the way they are.

There were many times in Israel's history when they were comfortable and therefore there was no need to look ahead to a better future. These were often the times when the people turned their backs on God and went their own way. During Jesus' life he repeatedly came up against those who wanted to maintain the status quo rather than embrace a new future. 

As we wait for Christmas are we filled with a longing and an expectation and a hope for the future?

Yesterday morning our young people did a great job of taking the service and one of the songs that we sang was new to me a few months ago but is rapidly becoming one of my all time favourites (i.e. songs that are on the list to be sung at my funeral).




I believe in the resurrection - that we will rise again - for I believe in the name of Jesus.

The Joint Service

Last Sunday around 400+ local Christians came together to meet, to pray, to sing, to listen... About 20 churches in the area west of Cambridge closed their doors and joined together at Comberton Leisure for a combined morning service - officially known as the West of Cambridge Ecumenical Service - unofficially knows as the Joint Service.

This is the second of these annual services that I have been to and once again it was a brilliant experience. There is something significant about doing things together with other Christians and other churches. The New Testament has a lot to say on unity and working together. This is particularly relevant in small rural villages where working together enhances our witness of God's love for us.

Planning the service takes a number of meetings throughout the year as representatives from Baptist, Anglican, Catholic, LEP (Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, URC) and independent churches seek to shape a service that will have some points of familiarity for everyone but will also bring something new from other traditions in a way that does not exclude anyone from taking part.

This year our guest speaker was Rowan Williams who had chosen to speak on the topic of 'Engaging with Post Christian Britain'. He was great and here is my summary of what he said.

Engaging with anyone can only properly happen after we have engaged with God. If we're not engaged with God there is no point trying to engage with anyone else.

Rather than thinking about post-Christian Britain we should be thinking about a Britain that half remembers - and this brings with it both positives and negatives. We have a story to tell - the story of Jesus. And as you read the gospels, whatever else this story may or may not be it certainly isn't boring. So how has the church managed, so often, to make this story seem boring? How do we try and communicate with the world?

Bigger or Smaller?
When we talk about our Christian faith does it come across as something that makes the world bigger or smaller? Because our faith should make the world bigger. Our faith enables us to see more, to love more, to rejoice more, to make us more human. It enables us to see the thing in us that needs to be dealt with. 

The tragedy is that so often our presentation of the gospel makes the world smaller. We want a faith that defends us from the real world, that keeps us safe. But Jesus says that reality is grounded in God - and therefore we need to move into a bigger world. Being a Christian gives you more resources to look at and make sense of life.

Beginning or Ending?

Hearing and responding to the gospel is a beginning and not an ending. It is the beginning of a new life, it is not something that now achieved marks a conclusion. But sometimes the church can think of it as an ending - all our effort is focused on getting someone to that point and then there is nothing else. But there is a whole life ahead and so much to be done. The NT talks about new creation and new life. It's about being released into something, from something into something new. Being release into a world where we discover and grow. It's an endless pilgrimage towards God - not an endless loop. Do we present the faith as a beginning or as an end?

Harder or Easier?
The world often thinks that we have a faith because it makes things easier. But the truth is that the gospel makes things harder. If you're after anything for an easier life - then don't start to follow Jesus! The gospel is not about an easier life. Jesus says follow me and take risks. Take up your cross and follow. It's hard and it hurts to let go of the things that we need to let go of if we're going to follow Jesus. Rather than a comfort blanket our faith is a call to take risks.

Jesus gives people a bigger view of the world, he gives them a new beginning, he tells us that it is going to be hard but he promises to work with us and be with us.

In our presentation of the gospel and our engagement with the world do we find the stories and the faces that bring this to life? 

This is what faith looks like...

We all need good stories to tell of our faith. We need to be able to point to lives that show what Christianity looks like. These lives will not be boring they will not be small.

When we know these stories then we have something to talk about. We point to Jesus and the fullness of life that the gospel points to.

When engaging with post Christian Britain it is good to remember what kind of book the Bible is. It's not a book of strategy or theory. We start with the story. The act of God in opening up and transforming life. That's the Bible we've got. The Bible we need to be sharing. The strategy matters in its place etc but the lever that starts a shift in a person's life is the story.


Let us be alert to the lives where this makes a difference - and learn to share these stories.

Vision Evening

Over the last few weeks here at CBC we have been asking God to guide us as we consider what is next for us. This evening, as a part of that process, we're meeting to listen to what we believe God has being saying to us.

I know that a few people are a bit anxious about the idea of a 'Vision Evening'. If you've never been to this sort of thing before you may have questions: 'what is it?', 'what's going to happen?', 'what am I going to have to do?'.

Even if you have been to this kind of thing before I have no idea whether this one will be anything like your previous experience. 

We're going to come together and we want to worship God and to hear him speak to us. No one is going to make you do or say anything you don't want to. We will come together to worship God and to pray, and then we will move into smaller groups to share together about what we believe God has been saying to us over recent weeks. As I said last week – you may have been praying but you’ve not heard God say anything – please can I encourage you to come along. Maybe God will speak to you tomorrow. 

Our conversation will be focused around three main questions:

Who is God calling us to be?

Who is God calling us to reach?

How does God want us to do this?

The focus of the first question is who we are and the focus of the other two questions is what we do.

This evening is not going to be the end of this process. We will take away all the written feedback and read it through and pray about what we find there to discover the common threads and the direction that God is leading us in.

I’m looking forward to a great evening as we wait expectantly for what God is going to do.

Here's one of the songs that we're going to be singing which may be new to a few of you.

To ban or not to ban

Depending on where you get your daily doses of national media you may or may not be aware that the Church of England released a short advert to promote a new website - JustPray.




The plan was that this short ad would play in cinemas before the new Star Wars movie - along with ads for new cars, clothes, hotdogs and popcorn. But although cleared by all the relevant bodies the ad has been banned by the Odeon, Cineworld and Vue chains.

This has promoted a backlash amongst some parts of the media who have taken the opportunity to get on their usual soapboxes and bang their predictable drums. But here is one of the best pieces I have read a response by the Bishop of Sheffield who reminds us of the power of the Lord's Prayer and why we shouldn't be surprised that those involved in the media business should want it banned.

Day of Prayer and Fasting 5

Tomorrow (19th November) will be the last of our days of Prayer and Fasting before the Vision Evening on Wednesday  25th November. So as we continue to ask God for wisdom and guidance concerning his vision for CBC it will be good to reflect on how we hear from God.

In Acts 15 the church leaders in Jerusalem are wrestling with the new phenomena of Gentile Christians and how they fit into the church alongside Christians from a Jewish background. How do the freedoms we read about in the gospels fit with the traditions of the Old Testament faith of Israel? How are these Jewish Christians to make sense of the clear acts that God is performing in and through Gentile Christians? What about circumcision or eating pork? And so a council is called for the church leaders to come together, to pray and to discuss this exciting development in the life of the early church and how best to respond to it.

‘What has this to do with us at CBC?’ I hear you ask. The letter that was sent out from the Jerusalem church uses the phrase (verse 28) “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …” rather than phrases such as ‘God has said…’ or ‘God has told us that…’

As we look forward to meeting together next Wednesday you may:

• feel certain about what God has been saying to you over these last few weeks,
• have some idea about what God has been saying, but you’re not sure how much of it is God and how much of it is you,
• not feel that you’ve heard from God at all but you’ve got some good ideas about the way ahead.

One of the things that this verse in Acts 15:28 shows us is that all of these responses would be expected within a church, and is valid within a broader context of prayer and a desire to obey God.

Sometimes God does speak clearly leaving us in no doubt as to what it is that he is saying. For example, this might be through a vision, or through an interpreted tongue, or through an audible voice.

Sometimes we think we hear from God but we’re not sure whether it is God or whether it’s just thoughts that we’re having, generated by our own good ideas. For example, a thought comes into our head as we’re praying, or we have a picture - which we then try and interpret. Over time and through experience we might get a better sense of what is God and what is me - so we’re fairly sure it’s God but not 100%.

And sometimes, even though we’ve been praying, we don’t feel we’ve heard anything from God but that doesn’t stop us thinking about things and discussing them together.

One of the things that we should always do as individuals and as a church is to test and to weigh what we believe God is saying. And that is what we’ll be doing next week as we come together. We will spend some time praising and worshipping God and praying together and then we will split into smaller groups to listen to what we believe God has been saying over recent weeks concerning who we are and what we should be doing.

Hopefully each of us will feel able to feed into this conversation and that by the end of this whole process (which is not the Vision Evening) we can say ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…’

Pieces of pottery

Last week my two youngest daughters went on a school trip to a church where they learnt about the parables of Jesus - I think. It was a little difficult to work out exactly what they had done as the excitedly tried to tell me on the way home.

The plant pot in a plastic bag that had been thrust into my hand in the playground apparently contained a mustard seed. And there had been other stories too - there was one about a wedding, another one about a pearl, another one about hidden treasure.

They both brought home a small bag with a few items in that they had collected to remind them of the different stories. And they both had a piece of broken pottery. I never did learn what the piece of pottery was for, because it was at this point in the trip home that they descended into a full scale argument over whose piece of pottery was the biggest.

Want something to talk about this Christmas?

Some of you may have come across the Ugly Duckling Company - but if you haven't they exist to stimulate conversations around the big and the not so big questions of life - at least that's what their website says. One of the ways they do this is through Table Talk - for the iPad or as a pack of cards.

They have just released their Table Talk for Christmas advert - which you can watch now, and then pop over to the relevant app store and download for free. Click on a card and answer the questions. A few of the Christmas eve questions include: if you could change one thing about Christmas, what would it be? What would you like help with in the next hour? Can you name any of Santa's reindeer?

Day of Prayer and Fasting 4

Matthew 28:19-20 - Teaching

As we continue to pray and fast today (12th November) regarding God’s vision for His church here at CBC let’s spend one more week thinking about Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew’s gospel.

We’re asking God to guide us and show us who He wants us to be and what He wants us to be doing. The call in The Great Commission is to go and make disciples - and a part of this involves ‘teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you’.

Teaching in the first century certainly involved the discipline and structure associated with the learning of Old Testament scriptures off by heart, but when it came to disciples and their rabbi / teacher it was very much a case of learning by example. The disciple followed the rabbi as closely as possible and learned through watching and listening. The disciple would learn by watching their teacher in action, listening to what they taught and how they answered questions… Whether it’s an urban myth or has any basis in fact there is the reported saying amongst disciples about ‘being covered in the dust of your rabbi’s feet’ - where within a first century context, the closer you follow your rabbi the dustier you are going to get. 

Discipleship will mean learning a new way of life - particularly for those who have had little or no previous church contact. Some of this comes through traditional learning contexts - we might think of sermons or Bible studies or reading books - but much will also come through sharing life together with those who are already on this journey. 

As we pray and think about the kind of people God wants us to be and what God wants us to be doing, how and where are we being those who teach and learn what it means to be a follower of Jesus?

Standing in the gap

On Sunday we were looking at Numbers 16. It's a passage where Moses and Aaron repeatedly faced human opposition and three times they fell on their faces before God to intercede for the people - so that the whole of the nation would not be wiped out by God's judgement.

At the end of the chapter a plague breaks out in the camp and Aaron runs into the middle of the camp and stands in the gap between the living and the dead and makes atonement for the people. The plague stops but not until 14,700 people have died.

One of the roles of the High Priest was to stand in the gap between God and the people. To offer the sacrifices and to make atonement for the people. Atonement means restoring a broken relationship - in this case the gap between God and the people - the consequence of their sin.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that this is the sort of passage that we find hard because God's actions seem so out of proportion with what has come before. And yet this is only the case when we don't recognise the seriousness of sin, and we downplay certain characteristics and truths about God - e.g. God's holiness and judgement.

If you're anything like me you read these stories in the Old Testament and come to the conclusion that we wouldn't last three weeks before being wiped out by God's judgement. But we're not - instead we can know forgiveness, grace and atonement because Jesus stands in the gap for us. Jesus is the one who stepped in between God's judgement and the people.

In Aaron the High Priest we have a picture of Jesus - standing in the gap to save us from the consequences of God's judgement.

Rebellion

On Sunday we looked at one of those Old Testament passages which we find very difficult  because we find it hard to justify or defend God's actions. Of course God doesn't ask us to do this, and God doesn't need us to do this either. But still we feel we have to.

We were looking at Numbers 16 - a story in which about 250 of the community leaders within Israel stand in opposition to Moses and Aaron. As a result - some get swallowed whole (along with their families) as the ground opens up beneath them, some are consumed in a ball of fire, and then 14,700 of the people die of plague because they grumble about Moses and Aaron.

We're going to think a bit more about this during the week - but I want to start with this video.



One of the reasons the people rebelled was that they were not secure in who they were. They had been given an important role within the life of the community but still they wanted what had been given to someone else.

When we a confident and comfortable with who we are because of Jesus then we will truly be able to serve.

Day of Prayer and Fasting 3

Matthew 28:19-20 - Making and Baptising

Today is the third of our days of prayer and fasting - focusing on God's vision for CBC and reflecting on Jesus' words at the end of Matthew's gospel we see that Jesus calls us to go and make disciples.

In Matthew 28 - we see that being a disciple involves making disciples.

Last week we were thinking about being sent out into the world, about existing for the benefit of those who are not a part of the church. Jesus calls us to be people who are characterised by love -people who see a need and who will want to respond, to help - in practical ways.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make in our lives as disciples of Jesus is to separate out the ‘spiritual’ from the ‘practical’ - because this distinction leads us down lots of roads that ultimately prove to be dead-ends. We don’t meet a homeless person’s need for a warm drink in order to earn the right to try and convert them. We love them and therefore meet their need - needs which go deeper than what we can see on the outside.

Human beings are complex - the physical, the spiritual, the mental, the emotional…it’s all tied up together. And our needs are often complex too.

I wonder how often we see a need - let’s keep with the homeless person - and thought “if only I had £100, a £1,000 … if I won the lottery and had £1,000,000 - just think how much I could do”. But what do we have?

We can introduce people to Jesus. Surely one of the things that we believe is that until a person encounters and follows Jesus their ultimate needs are never going to be met. Therefore whatever else we may be able to offer - nothing comes close to a relationship with Jesus.

And that means bringing a person to a place of decision. In terms of the Discipleship Scale it’s about moving from B to C.

And so whatever else we may be doing as a church - where and how are we providing people with that challenge and opportunity to make this step?

Numbers - first Leviticus and now this...

This coming Sunday (as with the past two and next week) we're going to be in the Old Testament book of Numbers. This term we're going on a journey with the people of Israel 'From Sinai to the Promised Land'. A journey that should have taken a few weeks ends up taking 40 years...

If you've never read Numbers, or would struggle to provide a summary of what the book is about - then you're in good company. But here's another helpful video from The Bible Project that gives a short overview of the whole Book and where it fits in the Bible.