Rivers of living water

Water into Wine (John 2:1-11). What does Jesus 1st Miracle say to you?

Celebrations in our life are important; they put a smile on our face and joy in our hearts. Today is a celebration for Isaac and his family and friends as he is baptised and we give thanks for the gift of his life. We celebrate, birthdays, weddings and anniversaries in our lives. Celebrations are important because they enable us to give thanks for a special moment in ordinary lives. They put joy in our hearts and a smile on our face.

Lives, of course aren’t always a celebration, there is the ordinary life to be led, for some this can be a struggle or seem to be superficial, for some there is the busyness of work and looking after children, for some there is illness and old age to cope with, for some there is grief, for some there is simply not enough time to fit everything in, for some there is the question about the purpose and hope in life. There are probably far more struggles than celebrations at times.

Where is the richness of life, where is its purpose and hope? Have you ever wondered where God is in the celebrations and the ordinary and the struggles, does God really want to know us and make a difference in our lives?

Yet here in John’s gospel we read about heaven breaking into earth, God making himself known in a man who is divine, God’s son Jesus Christ. At this celebration the smiles disappear quickly and in the stress and the busyness, the shame and embarrassment starts to rise. The groom is responsible for the catering, the whole village is invited, it lasts a week and the wine runs out leaving only water which is usually used to clean and purify the body before eating. Mary, Jesus mother, asks him to put a smile back on their face. Jesus turns the cleansing water for purification into the best wine. He declares who he is, God’s son, he only brings the best and he brings it in abundance and he declares that he is the one who will cleanse and purify those who follow him.

He puts a smile on the face of his mother and of the master of ceremonies and of his disciples and of the groom and of the guests. He makes them happy.

This is the first of the signs of Jesus divinity that John shows us in his Gospel, the first of the smile moments. There are many that John doesn’t tell us about but he concentrates on Jesus turning water into wine, healing a nobleman’s son, healing a lame man, feeding over 5000 people, walking on water to challenge us to trust him, healing a blind man, raising his friend from the dead and finally his own resurrection after his crucifixion. These are moments when heaven comes crashing into earth in amongst the ordinary and the struggles and they happen through Jesus Christ, they are smile moments, moments of joy and of hope.

We have a celebration here today, it’s a smile moment, and in baptism Jesus calls us to be his own, to believe in him and to know him in prayer. As Isaac grows up we pray that he will honour the promises made for him today and seek to make that commitment himself to belong to Christ. At that point the smile moment at celebrations becomes a smile moment in the ordinary and in the struggle, because Christ comes to live in us and us in him. God sees us through his son Jesus Christ and heaven comes to be with us and give us smile moments in the ordinary and the struggle as well as the celebration. It is through belief in Christ that we come to know the personal reality of God’s love and God’s love transforms our lives, God’s love changes situations, God’s loves removes shame, God’s love heals, God’s love reconciles and God’s love answers prayer, God’s love through his son Jesus Christ brings smile moments in the ordinary and the struggle as heaven breaks into your life and your life is transformed.

Perhaps you are here today to share in the celebrations, perhaps you are here because you are on Church duty, perhaps you are here to gives thanks and to praise God, perhaps you are here because you are struggling. No matter the reason, God wants to meet with you and show you his love, he wants to transform your life for the better, he wants to give you a smile moment. Perhaps today is the day we renew our trust in God because his son Jesus Christ wants to remind us that we can belong to him and he will come and live within us through his Spirit if we have faith and trust.

It’s this smile moment, a gift from God, that isn’t fleeting, but stays with us and can be always renewed so that we can know God’s presence with us on this day and throughout our week. Try asking God to give you a smile moment in your day and in your week.

Reflections on our changing country and world

The article for the August edition of St David’s news was written during July where we have seen varied weather patterns which haven’t resembled summer, so I am hoping that August sees some summer-like weather in Coalville, especially for our Summer Fair on August 6th!

It hasn’t only been the weather that has been changeable during the last few weeks, our whole country, the way it is governed and led and our relationship with Europe and the world has changed.

I look back to the Christian celebrations at Pentecost to mark the arrival of the Holy Spirit and remember the week of prayer we were called to by our Archbishops, Justin Welby and John Sentamu.

From the 8th to 15th May we opened St David’s during the day and dedicated our chapel to prayer. Our prayers were for every Christian to have a new found confidence and joy in their faith, for our Community and our Nation, including its leaders and to pray for ourselves to be gifted by the Holy Spirit.

We also had a prayer station which encouraged us to engage with the Lord’s Prayer. The whole initiative was called ‘Thy Kingdom come’ and we prayed, along with all other Anglican Churches, ‘Thy Kingdom come’.

On Thursday 23rd June, some 7 weeks later, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, a decision which has changed our country and its relationship with Europe and the World. Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn is going through a leadership battle as I write and Nicola Sturgeon, the 1st Minister of Scotland, would like Scotland to leave the UK and remain part of the European Union.

Does our prayer have anything to do with what is happening? Is it a coincidence or a ‘God-incidence’? Is God alive and does he care about his people? Do Christian people believe that by praying ‘Thy Kingdom come’, God will hear our cry and act?

All 4 candidates for the Conservative Leadership have a Christian faith background, some stronger than others. Theresa May, elected as our new Prime Minister, attends her Anglican Parish Church every Sunday, is the daughter of an Anglican Vicar and her life has been characterised as one of action rather than words. Speaking about her faith in 2014 she said “It is part of me. It is part of who I am and therefore how I approach things.” Her opening speech on becoming Prime Minister was a refreshing change as she talked about “fighting burning injustices” in our society rather than encouraging the privileged and the wealthy.

Does this echo Jesus words recorded in Luke 4:18, I wonder, “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free”? Words that inspire many Christians to bring about a fairer society and to bring about God’s kingdom.

Does our prayer have anything to do with what is happening? Is it a coincidence or a ‘God-incidence’? Is God alive and does he care about his people? What do you think?

I don’t know God’s plans for us and our country, but I do know that he asks us to remain faithful to Christ who has the victory and to grow deeper in our understanding of who he is; to desire the gifts of his Holy Spirit and to keep praying ‘Thy Kingdom come’.

Reverend Andrew Rhoades July 2016.

Who will save us?

In Paul’s letter to the people of the Church in Corinth (Corinthians 10:1-24) is a passage that we all should memorise and store into our hearts, a passage that we can all know in times of testing, some of you will know this passage from 1 Corinthians 10:13

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to everyone. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it”.

For Christians who endeavour to follow Christ’s teachings and commandments, we know that sometimes we will be tested and like Jesus we will be tempted and Paul is telling us that with Christ in our heart, we will be able to stand under these temptations and testings.

What is important, I think to notice is that Paul is referring to the temptations and testing of our world, we do not live in a heavenly place where there is all perfection and all goodness, we live in a world where there is also evil and sometimes we can be part of that evil.

Jesus refers to this in our parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). The Wheat will grow in a field of weeds and the weeds are not removed for fear of also damaging the wheat, the world we live in is one of goodness and evil.

Many times people will ask ‘why does God allow this evil to happen, why is there suffering in our world, surely God can’t be good if all this happens’. Of course these are statements born out of suffering in people’s lives and out of being exposed to the evil in the world which it is very easy to access, along with all the good things, in our internet based communications. God of course isn’t bad he is good and it is Satan who brings about evil.

Paul in his letter to the Romans points out that for those who ignore God in their lives and ignore his goodness then they will be handed over to the idols of the world, they will know the consequences of the sin in their lives and in the world.

Being exposed to the evil in the world, which is especially relevant for young people because for them the information on the internet is widely available, world situations become instantly accessible and they are not protected from them, the world we live in can become an anxious place and not a good and wholesome place.

People can ask questions about the purpose of life and find no answer, they can ask questions about the prospects in life only to find a lack of hope, they can ask questions about being happy and fulfilled, to find no solution, they can ask questions about suffering in the world and find a sense of fear.

People react in different ways, some resort to escapism in drink and drugs and other idols of the world. Some will not want to bring children into the world, some will resort to taking control themselves and even become extreme, some will become anxious and even depressed, some will insist on living their lives for themselves and condemn those who are different, some will blame God and remove him from their lives.

God’s story isn’t about bringing suffering into the world or stopping suffering in the world, the weeds will grow with the wheat, but his story is about providing a way out for us so that we can stand in this world knowing the goodness and holiness of Christ and knowing that he brings us to him to be loved by him. We come to see God’s goodness and we come to see his son Jesus Christ saving us from the world so that we can live lives with him and know a purpose in life, know the prospects in a life lived with Christ, know the hope in the world, know the healing where there is brokenness, know courage and strength and overwhelming love and not fear. We know Christ as our Saviour, where sins are forgiven, the price for them is paid with his life on the cross and he breaks into our world with his resurrected presence to bring us love and peace and joy in our innermost being. Christ is our Saviour, he rescues us from the pit.

As the Psalmist says “O LORD, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry”. (Psalm 88). Christ is our salvation, not the idols or evils of the world.

Paul tells us again of the story of the Exodus, of God’s people being saved by him through Moses and Aaron from slavery in Egypt to the Promise Land. Their journey was a difficult one but they were free and God was accompanying them, he was saving them. However many turned away from him and put God to the test and they found that they were then easy prey to the evil of the world and they suffered the consequences. Paul warns us not to do the same.

God came to live with us as his son Jesus Christ, to tell us how to live, to show us the immense and overwhelming love that God has for us. People who encounter Jesus Christ encounter the holy and the good and they know the sin in themselves and the brokenness in the world. But the world arrested Jesus, mocked him, whipped him and then made him carry a newly cut cross of green wood through the streets of Jerusalem to his crucifixion on a hill outside the city. As he struggled with his burden, people came to follow him and many women wailed for him. He turned to them and said

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

If the world crucified Christ, it’s Saviour and Prince of Peace when he was on earth, how much more will it need to be saved when the wood has become dry years later, 2,016 years later? How much more Jesus is saying will evil abound? But for those who turn to Christ, the cross, that instrument of torture and execution, they find that it brings forgiveness of sins and brings redemption, it brings us freedom, it brings us the love of a pure and good God into our hearts, it brings us a new way of life, it looks evil in the eye and defeats it, it rescues us to a life in this world and the next. Christ took our punishment on the cross, so that we don’t have to, so that we can live a life filled with God’s love.

The weeds will not strangle the wheat, the wheat will thrive amongst the weeds until the harvest and then they will be extracted. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross brings hope to the hopeless, strength to the weak, love to the unlovely, purpose where there seems to be no purpose. It demands that we follow him, God’s way, is not the way of idols, jealousy, shame, judging others, sexual immorality, violence, addiction, anger. The cross of Christ gives us a way out from these sins, we can come in repentance and faith and know forgiveness, love, grace and peace and a new way of life lived in love and generosity. We are transformed because we know the love of Christ in our lives and he gives us a way out.

Christ is our Saviour, not the idols and evils of the world, he redeems us from the pit.

The way of Christ in our world today, is the way, because it is through Christ that we can stand before God and know his presence in our lives in a very real way, we come to know healing and transformation and goodness and holiness and we are able to share this with others. Many Christians will not engage in the temptation and testing of the evil in our world. Why would you go back to this when you know something better? We keep ourselves walking in the new found freedom of Christ and away from the evil that pervades the world.

The cross has a power of its own to bring about salvation and redemption in our lives. The question isn’t why does God allow suffering in the world, the question is who is going to rescue us from the evil in the world? The answer is Christ, he took our place on the cross so that we can be saved, he gave his life so that we may know freedom and know truth, he took our sin upon him so that we may know goodness and love from God.

Then he tells us “No temptation has seized you except what is common to everyone. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it”.

 Andrew Rhoades 17th July 2016

Genesis 41.1-16, 25-37; 1 Corinthians 4.8-13; John 4.31-35

We come this morning / evening into a world that continues in turmoil. The Carnage in Nice described in newspapers and on our television screen has been shocking as a man driving an articulated lorry targeted crowds in the street celebrating. We feel so inadequate sometimes but I am sure we stand together with the people of France under attack again from extremists and bring them our prayers and hope in a Living Christ, a Living Christ who is not known or is ignored or is rejected by these extremists.

BBC News 16th July

Then, so soon afterwards on our screens we are shocked I think to see a military coup in Turkey, again a place where many have visited, a place where many have been on holiday and many are on holiday, a place where Paul walked and brought Christianity and a place now where Christianity is in a minority. A place bordering onto countries in conflict in the Middle East. We again can feel inadequate but we stand together with all people of peace and bring them our prayers and hope in a Living Christ.

These tragic and shocking incidents have followed the police shootings and racial attacks in the United States and the terrible extremist conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan spreading across the Middle East and even impacting Pakistan and other countries and resulting in people fleeing for their lives into Europe. We remember Jo Cox MP murdered recently here. Again we can feel inadequate but we stand together with people of peace and bring them our prayers and hope in a Living Christ as we pray for leaders of Vision and Peace.

We are experiencing our own turmoil in our political leadership which in itself is overflowing into Europe as our leadership changes. We can I think ask where are the Christian values in this country, Europe and the World? Have they been forgotten?  We have a gift from God in Christ that is being ignored by many, how much do we need to know the food of life given to us from God at this moment?

God’s story of his relationship with his people though is not one without turmoil, it is one of human joy and sufferings, of victory, but victory in suffering and submission. Out of every time of shock and sadness comes a time of resurrection and new life in Christ.

Joseph’s story, a faithful God fearing boy and man, isn’t one of continued blessing as part of God’s chosen family. As Christian people we don’t know continued blessing but the hope and love of God in all situations.

Joseph is one of the sons of Jacob, chosen by God to be the Fathers of God’s people, the 12 tribes of Israel, the name given to Jacob by God. But Joseph is disliked by his brothers, they attempt to murder him and then sell him to a Captain of the Egyptian Army Guard as a slave. God has his hand on Joseph and he does quite well managing Potiphar’s household and Joseph remains faithful to God in his new situation. But Potiphar’s wife has an eye for Joseph and when he doesn’t respond to her, she lies against him and he is sent to Prison where he stays for 13 years. Where is God’s blessing and peace for Joseph? Except that in Prison he meets former slaves of the King himself, the Pharaoh and through God’s discernment upon him helps them interpret their dreams which leads him to be called by Pharoah to interpret his dreams which in turn leads him to be in charge of the food in Egypt which in turn leads him to be the place where nations in famine turn for food and which in turn leads God’s people into prosperity. A resurrection moment or moments as God feeds his faithful people.

Paul writes to the Church in Corinth from Ephesus in Turkey to tackle the triumphalism in the Church over the spiritual gifts they are boasting about, over the different speakers and teachers claiming that their skill and wisdom together with their Christian faith made them almost like Kings. The Church was triumphal and the Church was split and Paul reminds them of his own life of service in humility often being attacked and being imprisoned is not one of triumphalism but one of suffering in order that those resurrection moments might occur. Through this suffering he is fed by Christ. Christ himself walked the path of suffering to reach the resurrection moment.

Then Jesus Christ, walking through enemy territory in Samaria, meets the suffering women at the well and feeds her with living water and sees her reach a resurrection moment where she rushes in excitement to tell all who would listen that God’s chosen one was here and he came to feed and bring resurrection moments to those in crisis.

Jesus is fed by the woman’s excitement, by her new found life, the chance to start again with God and follow his chosen one, Jesus Christ, God on earth.

It is us, all Christian people, no matter the place we are, no matter the joys or the suffering we know, no matter the gifts from God that we have; who know that Christ wants to feed us with his hope and love as we look to that resurrection moment and with excitement we see others embrace the Christian faith and values and find new lives and new hope in God and new peace.

The BBC on Wednesday looked at the comparison between Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany and our new Prime Minister, Theresa May and they debated many of the similarities and differences and then noticed in their article what they called the ‘Power of The Church’ in both their lives and what I would call the feeding of Christ.

BBC News 13th July

Angela Merkel comes from a protestant background in Communist East Germany, the daughter of a Protestant Clergyman, in a time where Christianity was under persecution as a dissident force but had a major impact in the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Her faith informs her principals and policies and is seen in her welcome of refugees into Germany as a moral imperative.

Theresa May, also the daughter of a Protestant Clergyman has talked about her faith being part of who she is and influencing her principle and policies, resulting in her surprising first speech as Prime Minister focusing her Government on social reform and reducing inequalities.

Hilary Clinton talked about her own Christian faith in January in answer to a question. She talked freely about her Methodist upbringing and her Church to follow the commandments of Christ to love God and our neighbour and to unpack the principles in the Sermon on the Mount.

In a world where God’s love story with humanity has always seen turmoil we know that Christ has the victory and there will be resurrection moments and we don’t know the seeds he has sown in people’s hearts who he is now calling to lead us into peace.

What we do know is that we remain faithful in word and action to our Christian faith and principles and that we are in turn fed by Christ as in excitement he brings his kingdom amongst us and as we share that kingdom with others. When we go out in action we see opposition, sometimes aggressive and violent opposition, but that doesn’t stop us sharing our faith and values with our community and our world as we are called to pray ‘thy kingdom come’.

The entire ministry of Jesus Christ is one of obedience to his Father in action in serving others, which leads him finally to the surrender of himself in death to know that resurrection moment himself.