The Vicar writes…

The Vicar writes…..  

At last.  It’s officially SPRING!  What a long hard winter it has been, from -6c in my garden in January to a high of +16c this week in March….numerous frosts, some significant snow falls, and a lot of cold hands and feet later.  I love the winter, the snow, the frost and the cold…but I am glad that the warmer weather and the signs of springtime are finally with us.  The last couple of months have also been a hard time for people in our community as we see businesses folding, friends losing their jobs and the general pressure of life taking its toll on us all.

Thank God for Easter and the resurrection promise.  The seasons are the constant reminder to us all that change is possible and that many changes are very welcome indeed.  Much as I love the snow, I would hate for it to be ‘always winter and never Christmas’ as it was in C S Lewis’s Narnia when the White Witch reigned supreme.  Some of us have had to say goodbye to loved ones this year and we have specially felt the grip of that winter chill as we stood by the graveside, or placed our flowers.  Good Friday and Easter give us cause to hope and reason to welcome the future.  Imagine Good Friday without Easter Day and you are immediately catapulted into the world of so many people out there who have no hope or prospect of change, trapped in their personal circumstances with only the same broken story to repeat day after day.

Jesus Christ changed all of that. 

His journey to Calvary and the darkness of the cross reminds us that we are never alone on our darkest of days;  he understands what it feels like to have no hope and to see no way out.  As he was hanging on that terrible piece of wood in the searing heat and suffering the torrent of abuse from wicked people who should have known better, how very tempting it must have been to say to himself…and to God:  “That’s it.  I’ve had enough of this stuff.”  ~ and the next moment a thousand-strong army of angels appear to rescue him and dare anyone standing nearby to lay a finger on him.  

Every year I read the Holy Week story I wish it was different.  Whenever I get to the passion narratives and the terrible moments of betrayal, verbal and physical abuse, brutality, bullying, scape-goating and the like, I find myself wishing for a history rubber so that I can rub out this awful event in Jesus’ life.  I wish with all of my being that I could do anything to not make it so…and to change this moment when all of human sin, yours, mine, Hitler’s, Judas’s….everyone’s, was piled sky high upon the shoulders of our lovely Lord Jesus and the weight of it drag him down and down and down, into very hell itself.

Every one of us deserved his punishment.  Every spiteful letter, every curdled comment, every twisted motive, every abuse of privilege, every cruel remark, every forgotten responsibility, every cowardly deed….everything you or I have ever done that has made God sad or angry…all of it piled onto him.

What a price to pay for your salvation and mine.  No wonder we have so much to celebrate as Easter Day approaches.  We cannot change the past; it has already been written.  But we can change its effect upon us by learning from it and resolving to live a life that doesn’t cause Jesus Christ more grief.  Who could ever begin to want to do that after all he had to go through for each of us.  No wonder St Paul warns the early church not to ‘grieve the Holy Spirit’ (Ephesians 4vs30) and Hebrews 6vss1-6 urges us not to put at risk our salvation by ‘crucifying Christ all over again’ through just carrying on with behaviour the Bible clearly teaches us is wrong.

The cross is the highest price anyone could pay for your life or mine.  Let’s deplore the fact that it was necessary because of our sin; and always treasure the value it places upon the need to live as Jesus showed us by his example and teaching.  It is a scary thing to me to remember at this time of year that one day we shall each stand before the ascended Jesus Christ and give account for all we have thought, said and done.  Given the stakes, it seems to me worth taking some time out before that happens to make sure the cost of Calvary has not been lost on us.

May each of us give the utmost value to what has been done for us on the cross, and as we celebrate the Easter promise, set our minds and hearts to live lives that would make Jesus Christ proud.

Happy Easter to you all.

Robert

‘Jesus himself drew near and went with them’

The devastating earthquake which hit Haiti just before 5pm on Tuesday 12^th January has stunned us all.  The Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 was bad enough as it killed something like 230,000 people.  But that was spread across 14 countries.  The death toll in Haiti which has now exceeded 150,000, is just in one country and confined to a relatively small geographical area.  One of their government ministers is quoted as saying that the eventual death toll may be nearer double that number.

If you’re like me you just can’t get your head round the sheer scale of this disaster and the indefinite interruption to ‘normal’ life.  The outpouring of generosity and help from around the world has been tremendous, not least from St John’s ~ to date the appeal we opened on 17^th Jan has passed the £179 mark: thank you church family for all you have donated.  Let’s all do what we can to help.

The reality is that so-called ‘natural disasters’ don’t seem at all ‘natural’ to any of us as we ponder the horror of 150,000 souls passing into eternity in the blink of an eye.  What does God make of it all we may ask ourselves?  For those without faith I guess the answer is fairly simple : ‘C’est la vie’; bad stuff happens; earthquakes are inevitable; people die for no good reason; there’s no real point to any of it so better ‘eat, drink and be merry’ for tomorrow……who knows where you might be tomorrow?

For those of us who believe in a loving God it’s not quite so simple.  We read about the institutionalised problems with the government of Haiti; we read about long term political issues about the behaviour of the international community towards this country over the years; we listen to young people in our country interviewed on the news, begging questions about groups of reporters who’ve gone to Haiti for a story ~ unintentionally diverting urgent water, food  and transport supplies by their very presence in that place.

And we wonder about it all.

Jesus taught his disciples the truth about ‘disaster theology’.  There was one time that a block of flats (equivalent) collapsed killing 18 men in the Jerusalem borough of Siloam.  Maybe that was caused by an earthquake too, we’re not told.  On another occasion Pilate dished out some ‘Thomas-a-Becket’ style executions when he gave the order that a congregation from Galilee should be exterminated while they were ‘at church’ (see Luke 13). The question Jesus asked his disciples was this:

“Did these people deserve to die?”

And before they had chance to reply he answered it for them with one very important word.

“No.”

Remember, Jesus speaking was God speaking, the creator the universe, of heaven and earth, the one whose hands ‘flung stars into space’.  This is God’s answer to the question.  God is not a theologian or a cynic.  He is not a theologian because he is omniscient ~ which means He knows everything…yes absolutely everything.  You can ‘Google’ Wikipedia for just about any question there is to ask; but according to a recent newspaper report even Wikipedia gets its facts wrong, so beware.  God’s not like that.  If you go to the Bible and ask “What does God say, what does He believe?”, you get Jesus speaking and He knows the answer; he doesn’t need to ‘Google’ it!

Neither is Jesus a cynic or a fatalist.  He didn’t answer his disciples’ question about disasters by saying, “Bad stuff happens; get over it guys.”  He was much more concerned with the bigger picture.  We’re all here on a limited ticket.  It has a time expiry and for some of us that ticket runs out unexpectedly, just like it did for the tragic victims of the Haiti earthquake.  Jesus didn’t come into the world to save us from natural disasters; he came into the world to save us from sin and its eternal consequences.  Life is a fleeting breath: 70, maybe 80 years or a few more besides.  But in the words of the great Benjamin Franklin, the only two things certain in life are death and taxes.  And so Jesus bites the bullet and delivers the punch line ~ “unless you repent, you will also perish”.

He was simply making the point that natural disasters and tragedies are a ‘wake-up call’ to people to turn to God and find forgiveness from sin while there is still time. When we pass into eternity it will be too late; there is no moral transformation in death.  When we die, we die as we are and we meet Jesus in the state and condition we happen to be in.  The grave seals that; it doesn’t change it.  That is why the job of the church in mission is so absolutely critical.  That is why repentance from sin must always be at the forefront of our Christian message.  That is why Jesus was willing to go through Calvary and the horror of the crucifixion.  It is this Jesus who ‘draws near and goes with us’ into this new year and new decade.  May we take encouragement from Him that whilst we may rightly mourn the tragic loss of life in disasters, there is one ultimate disaster we can all avoid and that is by ‘drawing near and going with him’.

May you and yours know His presence day by day, whatever the new decade may bring.

Robert

On sunday 6th December, we shall be celebrating the confirmation of 22 candidates at St John’s.  The last time this number of people were confirmed together was … before the present records began!  I guess you could say ‘that’s encouraging’ … or better still ‘Praise the Lord!”

We have 13 adults and 9 young people standing before God, the church and the Bishop to affirm their desire to follow Christ and play their full part in the life of the local church.  Please pray for them by name, as Barbara and I have been doing since September when they began preparation sessions.

Young people: Claudia Brookes, Lucy Chapman, Michael Knight, Joseph O’Hara, Luke Potgieter, Andrew Rose, Lily-Beth Willden-Brinkman, Charlie & Eleanor Winch.

Adults: Annette Hogben, Christiana Isideso, Michael Jahans, Susan Jahans, Caroline Jahans, Donna Lakin, Emma McHardy, Pauline Miles, Claire O’Hara, Neil Sargent, Stephanie Wigg, Jacquie Wilkinson & Angela Willden.

Confirmation is a good moment for all of us to re-visit our own commitment to Christ and to re-affirm our desire to follow him; so I hope that we will all make a real effort to come along to support them that night in church.  For some of us, we have been ‘around in church’ since our parents brought us in a pram/buggy!  For others of us, we have started coming, or coming back to church more recently.  What matters is that we all stand together equally in need of God week by week as we worship, commune, pray and serve Him in our daily lives.

Whether we’ve been coming to church for years or just in recent days, the writer to the Hebrews reminds us that we are coming to someone who ‘meets our need’ (Heb 7:26).  I find this both challenging and reassuring.  It is challenging because we don’t always know what our needs are!  I am reminded of the little boy who was taken to  Hamleys toy store in Regent Street by a wealthy uncle, who after leading him through the door for the first time asked him ‘what would you like?’  Overwhelmed by the sher scale of choices available to him the boy proceeded to fill a shopping basked with things that caught his eye, but which he later lost interest in and quickly discarded.  Baptism and Confirmaiton spells out our need to repent, reject evil and put Christ first in everything.  The promises and statements contained within it are about choices and priorities.

For us as Christians in an increasingly secular world, the states are sky-high as our country and society drifts further and further away from our Christian heritage towards an atheistic humanism which drives much of what passes for ‘democracy’ and ‘political correctness’ just now.  The Italian government is feeling the heat in this regard at the moment as they battle against the law lords of Strasbourg to retain the right to display crucifixes in their schools.  Such a ‘battle’ was unthinkable a decade ago and is a sign of just how far we are drifting towards spiritual bankruptcy in the west.  Let us hope for all our sakes that Strasbourg loses this one at least.

The fact that God knows our needs is also reassuring.  He is not like the person choosing presents for someone who, looking at the ‘2 for one’ bargains says ‘Hmmm. That’ll do nicely for…’  God, knowing your needs means that he wants exactly what’s best and right for you.

I wonder if you believe that?

Many of us have a skewed version in our head of God wanting the best for us because our experience of life has been anything but ‘the best’.  Confirmation therefore provides ust hte opportunity to get our bearings again in regard to the goodness of God.  It is human beings who have the capacity to be bad, do bad things, make the world a bad place and generally make our life feel like hell.

God is different.

The life of Jesus testifies that evil, badness, rubbish treatment and all the accumulated wickedness of human nature is what caused Jesus to leave the security and glory of heaven, to come down and down and down to Bethlehem so that he could meet our greatest need of all: forgiveness and a new beginning.  This is the faith that our friends being Confirmed on 6th December are affirming; this is the faith many of us were baptised into; this is the faith of the Church.  Let us therefore reaffirm it, and hold unswervingly to it in an increasingly secularised world.  As the famous carol puts it:-

‘What can I give him, poor as I am?  If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.  If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give him, give my heart.’

Dear friends,

Today on my way to Toddlers at church, I came across a resident in our parish who was in great distress.  I was on foot, and her trembling figure caught my attention as our paths crossed.

I had an appointment to keep, and it’s always one of those dilemmas in life – should I stop to help someone, and be late for the next commitment, or send up an arrow prayer for them and let God take care of it!  It’s not always possible to get it right, and I am the first to say that I don’t always make the right call on this one.

However, today I felt it was right to stop and so I asked her if everything was alright.  her shaking form and trembling voice said it all.  We talked for some minutes about a terrible trauma she had just experienced.  She had no credit on her phone and so I let her make some urgent calls on my mobile phone (don’t do this at home will you! Unless your phone has caller  ID barred to the people you allow someone to phone) and narrowly escaped being mugged by her boyfriend who had by that stage caught up with us and was now swearing at her (and me, I think, he wasn’t speaking English at this point!)  Thankfully we escaped his threats and I was able to pray with her and send her on to a place of safety.  Later on I phoned her to check that she was safe.

Seeing the hand of God at work … you never know when someone is going to come around the corner and need your help.  The writer of  Proverbs says “boast not of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Prov 27:1).  Thank goodness we don’t!  No wonder Jesus commanded us not to worry about tomorrow, because today has enough challenges of its own.  The best way to prepare for the unexpected is to place our lives each day at God’s disposal and say to him “Here I am Lord : use/send me.”  But don’t do that if you don’t want any surprises along the way!

As I look back over 25 years of ministry in the Church of England, I can see many occasions when that ‘disposal’ has been put to the test.  Most of what each of us does in life is unnoticed and unrecognised by others and it is in ‘the daily round and common task’ where we most need to see the hand of God at work in our lives.  Service and menial tasks are not highly valued by our culture, which is why much of London’s service industry is staffed by foreign nationals who are willing to come here to do jobs ‘Brits’ won’t do.

The greatest challenge for us as a church in Erith is to reach out in service to our local community.  This has always been our mission in the parish, but it’s getting harder and harder to build those bridges which will cross the gap between the church and the world.  Harvest is one way we can do this, as we bring our offerings of fruit and veg, packets and cans, so that local people who need the ministry of Greenwich and Bexley Hospice can know that we care about the distress they are in.  Giving to the Bishop’s Harvest appeal in our cash collection on 11th October is another way we can do it, as we express our concern for those in the wider community of our world who can never take their daily bread for granted.

If there’s one thing that 25 years ‘in the ministry’ has taught me it is this: our best preparation for helping people in need is to make sure that each of us keeps connected to God through daily prayer and Bible reading.  There simply is no substitute to haveing a ‘Quiet Time’ at some point every day, when in a divine pause we can remind ourselves of our utter dependence upon God for all we are, all we have and all we will be doing that day.  If you’re struggling with this or don’t know how to get started, there are many helpful aids to kick-start your daily walk with God.

As we celebrate Harvest together this month, as we remember those who gave their lives for our nation’s freedom in November, and as we postpone our Christmas shopping for as long as possible (!) may God help us this autum to serve him and our community better.

Yours in the service of the King of Kings,

Robert

Dear friends,

the death of Jade Goody on Mother’s Day last month was a very poignant moment in our country.  Traditionally, Mother’s Day is associated with celebration, thanksgiving for our Mums, flowers and gifts of appreciation, a special service in church, lunch out with the family … for Jade’s family it was a last farewell vigil as she slipped into eternity in the early hours of the breaking dawn.

Death is terrible.

There is simply no getting away from it.  Especially terrible for a 27 year old mother of two with everything to live for.  The Archbishop of Canterbury rightly paid tribute to her courage and the refocussing of priorities as her life drew to an untimely end; something all of us would do well to take heed of in a culture obsessed with the material world.  Our post-modern society doesn’t cope well with death.  Witness the death of Princess Diana in 1997: the mass outpouring of grief across the country verged on hysteria and was a reflection of a deep spiritual vacuum in our society caused by a generation bred on the values of consumerism and the ‘must-have’.

That generation is terminally ill; the credit crunch and financial meltdown has seen to that.  For the first time in my lifetime at any rate people are facing the stark choice of accepting a pay cut or being out of a job.  Today’s newspaper headline heralded the arrival of deflation as January and February statistics showed inflation turned negative.  The cost of living is predicted to fall for the rest of the year.  Can anyone remember that ever happening  before?!

Who would have believed this just a year ago?  The changes taking place in our world at the moment are simply staggering.  We are experiencing the double-whammy of turbulent economic times where the world economy heads into uncharted territory, at the same time as we are all struggling to make sense of the long term impact of global warming.  They’re drilling a 100,000 foot ice core in Greenland at the moment to try to find some answers to the latter issue, but like the global meltdown of the financial foundations of our world, I suspect the answer to the problem will prove to be equally elusive.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, Jade’s death is a stark reminder of the one absolute certainty that every one of us on this planet faces.  It brings us up short and confronts us with our own mortality.  Death is the one certainty that every human being has to deal with at some time or other.  O yes, we all have become skilled at postponing it through exercise regimes, vitamin supplements, health check and massive amounts of cash injected into the health service.  Death may be postponed, but it cannot be avoided.  Many people do not get the opportunity to prepare for it as Jade did.

Which is why Good Friday and Easter Day are so important for us as Christians.  The Easter story is a dress rehearsal full-on, up-front for the whole human race.  It offers us all the opportunity to prepare for the greatest certainty that any of us face – we are all going to die (not withstanding the return of Christ in our lifetime of course!)  so let’s take every opportunity to step into shoes of the star players as we track through Jesus’ final days here on earth.  Let’s sit with the disciples at the last supper and feel the emotions of friendship and family which Jesus’ death sent into chaos.

Let’s listen in on the prayer of the greatest man who ever lived as me makes his final bid to God in Gethsemane to be spared the horrors of the way ahead.

Let’s stand at the foot of the cross with John and Mary and experience what it felt like to watch the Son of God suffer a sinner’s death.

And above all, let’s stoop with Peter and John at the empty tomb and marvel as we suddenly realise that death is NOT the end!  It was not the end for Jade Goody; it was not the end for Jesus of Nazareth.  It will not be the end for you or me.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Barbara joins me in wishing you all a very happy Easter.

April 2009

Dear friends,

As the sun streams through the window on a glorious September day, I wonder if this is really autumn!  I guess many people will be thankful for an unexpected dose of vitamin D before the dark winter nights draw in.  Light plays such an important part in our lives.

When we are born we leave the darkness of the womb for the light of our first day on earth.  When our first son was born he went “under the lights” to cure him of jaundice.  Our pattern of life is governed by the rise of the sun and the length of the day.  The food we harvest this autumn has depended on light for its health and growth.  All creation on earth depends for its survival upon the light.

Light guides us when we are surrounded by darkness.  Light from a lighthouse alongside the cliffs can be the difference between life and death in the depths of a raging storm.  One man’s simple observation of a cat’s eyes reflected in a night time stroll led to an invention that has saved the lives of countless numbers of us as we travel around the country on our ever increasing number of busy roads.

This autumn we celebrate with our Scouts the life of one man who has helped to bring illumination into the lives of thousands, indeed millions of young people across the world.  It is 100 years since Baden Powell began his experiment on Brownsea Island and gave new purpose, direction and inspiration to countless people growing up.  Anyone who has ever had anything to do with the Scouting Movement cannot help but be inspired by the values and skills that are being passed on from one generation to another.  I regularly see this in our own parish at close quarters and am deeply impressed by the tireless work of all those brilliant adults who give up their time and energies to enable youth to benefit from all that Scouting, and of course the Guide movement, which followed on a bit later, have to offer.  I still have pictures on my mobile phone of the water fight I got caught up in at the Scout summer camp and proof that I did actually make it up (and down!) the climbing wall at the Guide camp.

Jesus said “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  Baden Powell’s commitment to young people and their well-being flowed from a strong Christian faith; his example and pattern of life still speaks today, 100 years later.  What a testimony to someone’s life!  May his example inspire us all and, as Baden Powell himself said in his closing remarks before he died:

“leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in the feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time.”

May God help each one of us to do that.

Every blessing,

Robert

September 2007