Reflection 15 - the one with lots of holes

 

On Sunday we looked at the story of the magi visiting Jesus. If you’ve not watched it yet you’ll find it here: https://youtu.be/SAK3JIoqss4

 

This is quite an unusual choice of passage for a Sunday before Christmas, but I wanted to look at it because of the potential link with our Daniel series.

 

The Bible is full of holes – just as every written account of anything is full of holes. You simply can’t write down everything about an event and nor would you want to. If you wrote down everything, the important things would get lost in the detail. So, the bits that were written down are important.

But the holes naturally invite us to try and fill them in. That’s what we do when we imagine ourselves into a Bible scene. It’s what film makers such as the Lumo Project do when they create films of the gospel accounts.

And there are all sorts of holes that have been filled in regarding the Christmas story. So much so that very few of us even realise that the things we think we know about Jesus’ birth are actually holes that have been filled in for us by the Victorians and nativity plays.

 

On Sunday I attempted to fill in a massive hole by suggesting that the magi came to Jerusalem because of their links to Daniel – who was himself one of the magi of Babylon. They’d heard his stories and read his prophesies that put a 490-year marker on the date when the Messiah would come. And so they were waiting and watching.

 

Of course, we don’t know that they actually came from Babylon or that they’d ever heard of Daniel. But I think it is more than likely that they did and they had.

 

I don’t think it’s possible to read the Bible without trying to fill in the holes. That’s one of the ways that stories work. It’s why people have an issue when their favourite book is turned into a film – because someone else’s version of events (even if they don’t change the plot line) is different to the pictures they’d created in their head. 

 

So what things should we watch out for when we fill in the holes?

Our faith should be built on things that are actually there in the text and not on the holes. Nothing that I said on Sunday in terms of the impact the story has on our lives or what it shows us about Jesus was built on my speculation about the magi. The truths that Matthew wants to communicate remain true whether or not the magi had heard of Daniel. Our filling in of the holes should be consistent with the rest of the Bible.

The more we understand the Bible and the cultures within which it was written the better we will be at filling in the holes. If you’ve ever visited a museum or art gallery you’ve probably seen some massive paintings of scenes from the Bible by famous artists – where the characters look more like 17^th Century Europeans than 1^st Century Jews. In European art the magi are often portrayed as elaborately dressed formidable oriental kings. And maybe they were that. But as we saw on Sunday, for Matthew’s audience, they were also a bit of a joke and certainly a surprise. At one extreme they were a bunch of crooks who try and make up interpretations to dreams hoping that they’d come true eventually – and at the other they were a group of people in league with the forces of evil and opposed to God’s kingdom.

 

There’s lots more I could say, but one final encouragement. When we read the Bible and consciously (or subconsciously) fill in the holes we should read prayerfully, inviting God to speak to us through the Holy Spirit. Ask that the Holy Spirit will guide our imaginations as we visualise what we’re reading. Thank God that the Spirit who inspired Matthew to choose this story to be a part of his gospel is the same Spirit who speaks to us as we read about the magi two thousand years later.

Reflection 14 - the one about reading difficult passages

On Sunday, Mandy rounded off our series on Daniel, covering the final three chapters all in just over 25 minutes. If you’ve not yet had chance to listen you’ll find it here: https://youtu.be/olicvR_7pRI  If you prefer to listen to podcasts then don’t forget to check out the Listen Again page here: https://www.c-b-c.org.uk/Index.asp?MainID=26240 You can subscribe so that our sermons will automatically arrive on your listening device of choice on a Monday - as if by magic!

Now that we’ve come to the end of Daniel – how did you find it? Is this the first time you’ve engaged with chapters 7-12? Have you learnt anything through the talks and home group questions? Are you going to miss the Old Testament just a little bit as we head back into the New Testament for the spring and summer terms? If you’ve ever wondered why Holiday Clubs only ever look at the first half of Daniel – now you know. 
 
On Sunday, Mandy started with two New Testament verses: 
 
Romans 15:4 – “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” 
 
And 2 Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”
 
Both of these verses flag up the importance of all of the Bible – not just the nice bits, the exciting bits or the bits that we agree with. That’s one of the reasons why we follow the cycle: Old Testament, Gospels, rest of the New Testament – during the autumn, spring and summer terms respectively here at CBC. The Bible is a big book and we could quite easily have avoided preaching on Daniel 7-12 altogether. 
 
Part of our vision here at CBC is about discipleship – about each us growing as disciples of Jesus, becoming more like him and seeing our lives transformed. Hopefully a part of that process means that we are less intimidated by passages of the Bible such as Daniel 7-12.
 
So, how do you react when you come across passages like these – whether here in Daniel, or in Revelation or maybe something from Ezekiel?

One of the problems we have is that modern life does not really equip us for reading the Bible properly. If you’re anything like me, life is lived far too fast and we’ve been trained, since school, to read as quickly as possible to extract the knowledge that we need in order to answer the question that has been set – in the minimum amount of time. And we fall into this trap with our Bible reading. We scan the verses looking for the nugget of truth that God wants us to know for today – and we may even use Bible notes because they’ll give us the answer without us having to think about it – and we can be done and dusted within 10 minutes. Tick the box. Move on. Repeat tomorrow.
 
Please don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against Bible reading notes. They are incredibly helpful, and a resource that I often recommend people use. And of course, when used properly, 10 minutes is never enough.

Preaching, or offering to lead a Bible study at Home Group, is a great way to get to understand the Bible better. Something about the thought of having to talk about a passage or answer questions on it tends to focus the mind. And the process involves reading the passage through lots of times, writing down lots of questions as you read, praying for God’s guidance and wisdom, finding links to other parts of the Bible and writing down a few thoughts. Then, if you’ve got a study Bible or similar, you might want to read what other people have said. You never know – you might actually find the answers to some of the questions you wrote down at the beginning.

 
So, the next time you come across a passage that you don’t understand, put your Bible down, go and make a cup of coffee, and then settle down with your Bible for a bit longer than normal. Pray – asking to meet God in the passage. And then read it through slowly a few times. I’m not promising you’ll be any the wiser at the end of the process but why not try it and see what happens.

An app that gives the carbon footprint for a tin of beans - well almost

At the end of last week’s post I said that I would talk about an app that gives an indication of the carbon footprint for individual food items you buy in the supermarket. Given that I need to reduce my carbon emissions from about 6,000 kg to 2,500 kg of CO2 a year – a target we all need to hit by 2030 apparently – making better purchasing choices is clearly important. Eating is something that we all have to do and our eating habits have a big impact on CO2 emissions.

As I said last time, I love data. I’m also the sort of person who loves apps that track things. Whether it’s the number of steps taken in a day, the quality of my sleep at night or the calories consumed through eating too many chocolate biscuits - I love a good app. I appreciate that I might not be representative of the whole population in this regard.

Anyway – back to the app. This discovery came through the same Guardian article mentioned last time: ‘Sustainable gin and family-sized crisps! My week eating a climatarian diet’, which you can read here.

When I downloaded the app a few weeks ago it was called ‘Giki Badges’ but I see, through an update, that it has been rebranded as ‘Impact Score Shopping’. Their logo looks like this.

Using the app simply involves pointing it at the barcode on the food item you are interested in and then the app will tell you how many badges that product has been awarded. The maximum number of badges available (that I have seen) is seven but not all badges are necessarily available for all products. One product might be awarded 3 out of 5 badges, another 2 out of 3. The seven badges/categories I’ve seen are: free from additives, healthier option, better packaging, low carbon footprint, plant based, organic and animal welfare.

As mentioned before it is very difficult to work out the exact carbon footprint of the tin of beans that is sitting on the shelf in my kitchen. All tins with that same packaging will get the same score – but their actual carbon footprint will be impacted by things like the distance travelled from the factory to the depot, then transport to individual shops, then whether I walked to the shops, drove to the shops or had my groceries delivered.

The carbon footprint badge comes in low, medium and high categories. For me, the purpose of this whole exercise is to get informed, so that I have a little more to go on than the ‘eat local, in season and avoid cows’ generalisation. 

So whilst working out the exact impact of each individual product is near on impossible, it is possible to get an idea of products that are better or worse for the environment in terms of their carbon footprint.

Another thing the app allows you to do is to view alternative products – products that may be healthier for you, healthier for the planet or even both.

Obviously, for reasons already stated, it is not possible to know the impact of switching from one product to another in terms of kg of CO2 per year. Only a low, medium or high rating is given. But eating less high carbon footprint products and more low carbon footprint products is obviously going to be an improvement.

Next time I’ll have a look at some of the products in my cupboards and see how they rate. I'll have a look at some of the recipes/meals I regularly cook - and see how they measure up in terms of their environmental credentials.

Reflection 13 - The one about Advent

On Sunday we were looking at some very difficult verses from Daniel 9:20-27. If you haven’t yet had a chance to listen you’ll find it at https://youtu.be/p-zVESmU9w4

 

It was great that this passage coincided with the beginning of Advent - it wasn’t planned that way (at least by me).

Most people in our society are probably aware of the word ‘Advent’ in relation to Advent Calendars. That period of time which begins on the first of December and counts down to Christmas Day – usually accompanied by chocolate, although beer, gin, coffee and cosmetic Advent Calendars are all available as companies seize every commercial opportunity they can find.

Hope is often a word associated with this time of year. Small children are encouraged to write letters to Santa Claus giving him a list that they hope he will deliver on. Plenty of musicians since Bing Crosby have warned us to behave and we hope that we’ll be on the nice rather than the naughty list. As the wrapped presents start to appear under the Christmas tree, we hope that the box with our name on it contains… 

I expect for a lot of us though, at the moment, we’re hoping that whatever tentative plans we’ve made for Christmas will still be able to take place. We’re hoping that we’ll still be able to see family and friends. We’re hoping that we won’t have to use Zoom again.

 

Within the church calendar Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day and is a period of anticipation and preparation. Different church traditions focus on different themes on each Sunday in Advent but many will start, as we did, with hope. But Advent isn’t about hoping that you get a PS5 or a new pony on the 25^th December. The preparation isn’t just about making sure that the cake is baked and iced.

 

Advent is about looking at the big story that we find in the Bible. Celebrating Jesus’ first coming and looking ahead to his second coming.

 

As we said on Sunday, not everyone interprets Gabriel’s words in Daniel 9:20-27 the same way. But most will agree that God wants Daniel to see a bigger picture than just the end of the exile. 

 

God is passionate about our here and now and we have his promise that he is with us in it – that’s one of the truths of the Christmas story: Immanuel, God with us. But God also wants us to lift our eyes above the here and now and see that he has an even bigger plan. 

 

Within traditional churches the focus of the first week of Advent is very much on the Second Coming of Jesus – which is why hope is often the accompanying theme taken in less traditional churches.

I don’t know about you but there are times when I find it really hard to know what to pray about what is going on in our world. These are the times when we need to remember that there is a bigger picture which gives us hope. But not in an escapist, it’ll be alright in the end, kind of way. But the encouragement to keep on keeping on in the present, to keep on working for justice and truth and peace, because God’s people will be vindicated in the end, and everything will be put right.

 

Many of us don’t read Revelation for the same reason we don’t read Daniel 7-12. But Revelation is the end of the story. Reading the Bible without reading Revelation is like reading a novel but never getting to the final chapter.

 

For those of you who have never read to the end it says, **SPOILER ALERT**

 

He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen. (Revelation 22:20-21)