This will be at St John’s Church Community Halls, on March 10^th from 11am–2pm

There will be Craft and Gift Stalls to suit all tastes, including:

The ‘Nearly New’ stalls are all focussed on Mums and Kids –

Ladieswear, Chick-lit Books & Chick-flick Films!, Accessories & Trinkets, Gifts & Nic-Nacs, Baby Equipment, Children’s Clothes, Toys & Games,

Our kitchens will be open, offering tempting Hot and Cold Drinks, alongside Delicious Home-made Cakes and Snacks!

Looking for a last-minute Mothers’ Day gift? Or just browsing? Popping in for a chat with friends? Or looking for a lunch-time snack?

ALL ARE VERY WELCOME!!

The title of my talk is going to be ‘Obstacles to Belief’. What are the questions and the issues that prevent faith in God? For that matter what are the questions and issues in our minds here today that hinder the development of faith in God?

I would expect lots of different answers to that question. One obstacle to faith is almost certainly the chequered history of the church and the behaviour of individual Christians. Sometimes when I read church history I wonder with disbelief that Christianity has survived at all! To me the dogged determination of faith to survive is in itself evidence of God and a reason to believe. Despite everything, we are still here!

The most frequently cited obstacle to belief though – and the one I expect the students to cite this week – is the presence of suffering in the world, whether natural or man-made, and God’s apparent indifference to it. Why does God allow the innocent to suffer whether from war, illness, natural disaster or the evil acts of individuals? Or why does God appear to show partiality, healing or saving some but not others? How can God be a God of justice whilst allowing injustice on such a massive and continuous scale?

Those questions focus our minds on the nature and identity of God; aspects of faith that church leaders sometimes skate over. So let me try and explore this a little this morning with the help of our Old Testament and Gospel readings.

Christianity’s understanding of God is heavily influenced by the nature of God as revealed in the person of Jesus. That God became incarnate in humanity through Jesus, encourages us to apply human attributes to God because we can apply human attributes to Jesus. Combine that with the gender nature of our language – and not all languages have this problem – and in Britain we end up always talking about God as He, Him and His, a problem that is exacerbated because Jesus happened to be a man.

Yet this is not consistent with scripture. The very first reference to God in the Bible is as ‘spirit’. And – as we were discussing in Morning Prayer on Tuesday this week – the Wisdom books of the Old Testament remind us again and again that God is feminine.

So the first thing to say is this: please let us not constrain our understanding of God, by the humanity of Jesus. Jesus points to God, but the totality of God is not revealed in the humanity of Jesus.

Secondly, in creating the world, God unleashed a phenomenal creative energy yet, at the same time, shared that energy in and through humanity. Genesis is absolutely explicit on this point. God created us in God’s image. Responsibility for God’s creation is therefore shared between God and us. As co-creators with God we cannot walk away from evil and suffering in the world and blame God. It is for us to prevent, deal with and respond to in partnership with God.

Our reading from Deuteronomy hints at the coming of Jesus – “from their own brothers I shall raise up a prophet…” But then comes the sense of shared responsibility…”anyone who refuses to listen to my words, spoken by him in my name, will have to render an account to me…”

God shares responsibility for this world with us. It is an awesome undertaking that we could not begin to contemplate if God were not at our side. We can say with absolute confidence, that our need of God is mirrored by God’s need of us. Remember that wonderful prayer of Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours.

Finally, let us not confuse two similar yet distinct concepts: power and authority. In our gospel reading from Mark, we heard the story of Jesus speaking in the temple and curing a man suffering with convulsions, the very first such healing that we hear about in that gospel.

I think it is significant that we are told that Jesus spoke and acted with authority; we are not told that Jesus spoke and acted with power.

In our culture those two words – power and authority – conjure up quite different images. Power is more likely to remind us of physical strength or force, whereas authority is more likely to remind us of a person’s position or role. A police officer might be able to exercise power and authority, whereas a head teacher, except in very unusual circumstances, governs solely by the authority vested in them.

Jesus’ miracles did not have their origins in Jesus’ faith in God’s power, but through Jesus’ faith and confidence in the authority of God. If we believed more in God’s authority and worried less about God’s lack of power, I believe our faith and trust in God would grow, and we would soon see the fruits of that in our relationships, community and church.

So where does this leave us with the question of evil and suffering?

In sharing responsibility for God’s world with us, evil and suffering has become our responsibility too. We cannot wash our hands of it and blame God. But, working with God and filled with God’s grace, courage and love, we can face up to it and respond to it. And that is the task of Christian discipleship.

Amen.

For more information please telephone Rev David on 0115 963 3490.

It’s comforting perhaps to think that Jesus got himself embroiled in a wedding reception that was going pear shaped.

Interestingly, the writer of John’s gospel fails to tell us whose wedding it was that Jesus and his disciples attended. What is clear is that Jesus and his followers were far less important guests than Jesus’ mother, Mary. And so when the wine runs out it is Mary that grasps the initiative and draws Jesus  – a little unwillingly perhaps – into the centre of events. Mary’s host risks humiliation and she senses that Jesus can do something about it. The familiar miracle then unfolds, the wedding is a success after all, and Jesus’ disciples believed.

The miracle at Cana is the first of the seven signs of Jesus recorded in John’s gospel through which Christ’s glory is made manifest. Seven is a very significant number in scripture and is always associated with perfection – God rested on the 7^th day; Jacob bowed down seven times before his brother as a sign of perfect submission; God ordered the lampstand for the tabernacle to have seven branches and there are seven trumpeting angels in the book of Revelation.

And so it is through the seven signs in John’s gospel that we come to have a fully rounded understanding of the significance and truth of Jesus, both perfectly human and divine.

The story of the wedding at Cana overflows with insights into the nature of the transformed life that is available to us through faith in Jesus.

First, is the sheer abundance of joy that is on offer. Jesus didn’t provide sufficient wine of adequate quality but a quite staggering volume of the very best wine available. There was no way the wedding guests could consume all that Jesus provided; it was a gracious outpouring of excess.

There is a church in a plush part of west London that, in place of tea and coffee, serves wine after every Sunday morning service.

Now I’m not advocating that at St John’s, but in a way such a practice does speak powerfully of the fun and joy that Jesus wants us to know. There is nothing gloomy about being a Christian. Jesus wants us to enjoy our faith.

Secondly, the miracle at Cana shows us that Jesus is interested in the ordinary dramas of which our lives are made. Compared with living under Roman occupation, this family crisis was trivial in the extreme. It was socially embarrassing but was hardly earth shattering. Yet Jesus took it seriously. Families in crisis are a concern to Jesus.

And it is this point that I want to focus on this morning.

Our life as a Christian community can often feel dominated by the pressures of keeping the show on the road – building repairs, church cleaning, fundraising, hall bookings, garden maintenance, paying our parish share. The list of things we have to do is quite long.

Yet if all the energy expended to do this is to be worthwhile, it must be for a purpose greater than ensuring that St John’s continues.

And for me, that purpose is all about serving the community around us; sharing our faith through words and deeds with those who live in this part of Hucknall.

To do that successfully, means being as committed to the issues and concerns that dominate the households that surround us here, as Jesus was committed to resolving the family crisis at the wedding at Cana.

Another way of looking at this is to say that what we do here at church on Sunday is only worthwhile, if it helps each one of us, to be better equipped to serve God in all those relationship encounters we have from Monday to Saturday, wherever we are and whoever we are with.

There was a crisis in the story of the wedding at Cana and Jesus got stuck in and did something about it.

What are the crises in our own community that we might be called – as a church or as individuals – to get involved with?

The two very local issues that keep recurring to me and are mentioned to me by others are the need to support parents both through parenting skills and pre-school clubs. Supporting parents in those vital early years is surely something that can transform lives for generations.

But you may have your own sense of needs we are called to meet too. So please do share those amongst us so we can pray for them too.

At the same time, let us also celebrate all that we currently do, and remember that it is God that strengthens, resources and equips us to do His work.

Let us pray:

Loving God, as your Son showed commitment to the ordinarily dilemmas and tensions of life; help us to bring your light and Word to the many challenges that face our community;

and as we do so grant us the peace of knowing you are with us,

So that we might offer your peace to others in troubled times. Amen.

Ironically, the theme of waiting – that so dominated Advent – continues after Christmas as we wait for the final arrival of the Magi at Jesus’ side.

And wait we should. We may not know how old Jesus was by the time the Magi arrived, but he clearly wasn’t newly born.  Given Herod’s determination to eliminate all male children under two years of age, Jesus could easily have been a year or so old.

If the wise men showed such patience in seeking out Jesus, then perhaps, so should we be prepared to wait until tonight before adding our wise men to our nativity scenes.

Like all the other stories associated with the birth of Jesus, the arrival of the Magi offers us much food for reflection.

Whoever the Magi were, and wherever they came from, and there is much debate on both points, scripture clearly tells us that their journey didn’t turn out as they expected.

You will recall that the Magi went looking for a new King precisely where you might expect to find one – in the political and religious power centre of Jerusalem – only to be told by the very person most threatened by the arrival of a new King – Herod – to look elsewhere and go instead to Bethlehem.

The Magi’s ignorance of the Jewish scriptures confirms to us their foreign origin but also betrays to us their secular expectations. Paradoxically, thanks to Herod, what began as a search for a political heir becomes instead the search for a divine one. What began as a search amongst the powerful elite, ends as a search amongst the poor and marginalized. This new King is clearly a King of surprises, a King that is going to turn expectations upside down.

All this makes even more powerful the theological significance of secular Gentiles being amongst the first to recognise and acknowledge this new ‘King of the Jews’. Not only is this new King above and beyond the mortal realm of politics, the Good News of Jesus Christ is also intended for all people and encompasses the entirety of creation. The story of the Magi is the story of a God whose appeal is universal yet also a God we cannot contain, control, define or circumscribe. Our God is simply too big and too great to be constrained by our language, our understanding or our expectations. Our God is God.

Yet our God is also intimately accessible, through the person of Jesus.

And it is this that the wise men realised as they knelt down and unwrapped their rich treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Face to face with the person of Jesus, the penny drops and they realise for the first time in whose presence they really are. The wise men have their Epiphany moment. They encounter God in Jesus and believe.

And this is where the story of the Epiphany becomes our own. Each of us, I am sure, can point to a moment of revelation in our own lives. We may find it difficult to recall or to discuss, but somewhere in our journey our eyes have been opened, our hearts warmed and our souls enlivened by a recognition of the divine, whether in art, music, creation or in one another.

Epiphany moments in our lives may seem very rare. But that is less to do with God and more to do with us. God is permanently waiting for the opportunity to encounter us; it is us who are so often less than willing to be prepared to encounter God.

The story of Baboushka, Russia’s equivalent of St. Nicholas, is a good illustration of this. An elderly woman, with no family, Baboushka lived deep in the forest with little else to do than clean her home.  One cold evening, when she was busy scrubbing her floors, the three Wise Men passed her house on their way to see the Holy Child. They spotted her in the window and asked her to come with them to see the Messiah. But she refused stating that her floors were not yet clean.

She invited them to stay the night but they said that they were in a hurry and bid her farewell and went on their way. Later, that night Baboushka regretted her decision not to accompany the strangers and so, gathering a few trinkets from her meagre possessions, she set off to find them and the Holy Child. The story goes that she is still looking, and that everywhere she visits, she leaves trinkets as gifts in the hope that they will help her find Baby Jesus.

I am sure we can all recognise times when we have been too busy with things that don’t really matter to grasp the opportunity to encounter God.

Yet there is always hope.

Like Babouskha, the wise men of Matthew’s gospel get things spectacularly wrong.

They search for the wrong kind of King in the wrong kind of town. But the story of the Magi shows that this is no barrier to the workings of God – God can even work through people as despicable as Herod.

But that is only possible because the wise men also get things spectacularly right. For a start, they commit themselves to a search that must have taken months and at considerable cost and risk to themselves.

Secondly they remain open to possibilities. They didn’t ridicule Herod for his suggestion of Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace nor did they ignore the dream that warned them to return home by a different route.

The experience of The Epiphany for us – moments in which the manifestation of Christ is revealed – depends not on our perfection as Christian disciples but upon our commitment to the spiritual search and upon our willingness to accept the unlikely and surprising, perhaps even the seemingly impossible, as signs of God’s presence.

Which makes Epiphany a fantastic season with which to kick off the New Year.

Let us be expectant that God will reveal himself to us this year. May this be the year in which we search more diligently for Christ in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. May 2012 be the year in which we remain steadfastly attentive to the possibility of God at work in this congregation and in this parish.

But above all, may we remain open to the God whose track record suggests that the presence of Christ is to be found in unlikely places and amongst unlikely people. And as our Epiphany moments dawn, let us be ready as the wise men were, to give thanks, to offer the very best gift we can – ourselves – and to worship Christ our Lord and our God. Amen.