Interrupted

I really dislike being interrupted.

This morning, the postman knocked on my door with a parcel, but I was busy doing something. His friendly hello was met by an abrupt smile before I quickly shut door.

My daughter asked me a question about how we measure time but I was looking at something on my phone and I fobbed her off with a snappy answer.

My husband suggested that we boycott fossil fuels as our own personal sanction towards Putin’s invasion of Ukraine but it seemed too outrageously impractical to take it seriously.

The blue tits that come back to our garden every year to make their nest had just arrived but I didn’t notice them at first; I was too busy making packed lunches clearing up spilled milk brushing teeth combing hair practising spellings folding the laundry feeling anxious.

It wasn’t until hours later – forced into solitude by Covid round two – that I looked out of the window and saw them. Utterly glorious. Flashing blurs of colour dancing through the trees. Tiny living things pulsating with life and energy. Too quick for my eye to follow as they darted through the boughs of the elder tree and sang to each other, incessant in their joy, giddy in their embrace of the first sunny day for what seems like forever.

I almost missed it.

I wonder what else I’ve missed.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading the story of Jesus and Jairus.

Jairus is an important local leader and he begs Jesus to come with him and heal his daughter who is dying. Jesus follows. There is a big crowd that day and people surround him, press upon him, pushing and shoving their way to get a glimpse of the action.

But then Jesus stops.

“Who touched me?” A ridiculous question. And one that no one has time for. Everyone has touched him. Everyone is clamouring around him.  How can they possibly hope to ascertain whose particular shoulder has brushed up against the rabbi? But Jesus is insistent. “Someone touched me.”

And then the woman comes forward. Ashamed, trembling, full of the fear of a public rebuke. It was me who touched you she confesses. I touched you and you healed me.

“My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

The concerns of the crowd, of Jairus, of the disciples are for a first daughter, the girl, just twelve years old, desperately in need of help. But Jesus does not just see one daughter in this story but two. Despite the pressing needs of the moment, Jesus allows himself to be interrupted by this woman. Jesus is on his way to do something incredibly important – arguably a more important thing than most of us have ever done: to save the life of a child – and yet he stops on the way.

Now, Jesus is Jesus, and this story has a happy ending. He successfully meets the needs of both daughters. It’s easy – a bit too easy – to compare ourselves to Jesus here and let ourselves off the hook. Of course it’s OK for Jesus to stop. He’s Jesus. It doesn’t matter if he’s interrupted because he can still do what he intends to do. He still manages to get everything done and make everyone happy; his ‘to do’ list still ends up being completed. That’s not the same for me!

But today, as I watch the birds start to build their next, I wonder if God would like to interrupt us more often that we’d like to think.

Perhaps interruption isn’t an annoyance, but an invitation.

This Lent, I want to slow down slightly. I want to be interrupted. I don’t want to miss anything.

 

Father God,

Interrupt me today.

Open my eyes to see your beauty in unexpected places.

Open my ears to hear the whisper of your Spirit.

Open my mind to understand your love.

Open my heart to be moved with compassion.

Open my hands to respond with generosity.

I do not want to do today without you.

Alert me to your presence.

Amen.

 

Advent 21: With Us

Scripture: "They will call him Immanuel" (which means "God with us")." (Matthew 1:23) 

Song: Emmanuel, You're One of Us

Happy Christmas!

One of the things that God most wants is to be with us. 

Let that sink in. 

Christmas is a time for being awed again by a God who left his throne in heaven to walk amongst us because He wanted to be with us. In the words of Rend Collective's Song, he left his throne to wear our scars. This is an unbelievable truth: that Jesus would abandon glory in the hope of winning back his people, that Jesus so wants a relationship with us that he would willingly come to earth to die so that we might live with him forever. 

God wants to be with us this morning. In this very second, he waits, as the Father of the prodigal son waits on the edge of the field, for us to turn around and run to him. He waits with open arms wanting to embrace, wanting us to sit at his feet and tell him how we're feeling. He wants nothing more than our attention, to set his love upon us, to tell us that he is with us always and that life need never be lived in isolation from him. His Holy Spirit sent to live in our hearts is proof that he never wants to be apart from us. God could have an empty heaven and be perfectly content and yet he wants us there with him. (John 17:24)

In 2020, this is a truth that we need to hear and know more than ever. We do not know what 2021 will bring. In recent days, Christmas plans have been thrown into confusion and a new strain of coronavirus is wreaking havoc in the South East. We do not know what the future holds but today, of all days, let us remember the truth that - whatever comes next - God is with us. 

God is with us. We do not need to be afraid.

God is with us. We need never feel alone.

God is with us. Because he wants to be.

Reflection: 

God is with us in every part of the day ahead, every part of the week ahead, the month, the year. In each moment, the moments we long for and the ones we dread, he is alongside us. 

Use the words of this poem this morning to reflect on the awesome truth of God's presence. 

Immanuel 

The Lord is with you. 

God is here, now, right this moment. 

The creator, the king, the author of life itself. 

Here. Now. With you. 

The Lord is with you. 

Not against you, not distant or far off, not distracted by needs more pressing than your own. 

Here. Now. With you. 

The Lord is with you. 

His whisper stirs the dawn, his voice echoes in the sound of a new-born’s cry, his call caught up in the taste of coffee on a cold morning. 

Here. Now. With you. 

The Lord is with you. 

In the hustle and the bustle, the pain and hurt and loss and dreams left unfulfilled. 

The mundane, the boring, the day after day after day. 

Here. Now. With you. 

The Lord is with you. 

He is the ever-present one, closer than breath, than flesh on bone, than thought and feeling, than the anxiety that presses upon your heart. 

Here. Now. With you. 

The Lord is with you. 

God. The most high. The uncreated one. The maker. The king. The Almighty. The one without start or end. 

Here. Now. With you. 

Dare you believe it, trust it, lean on it. 

The Lord is with you. 

His name – 

Immanuel. 

Father, we pray that we would know the reality of you with us. We pray that we would feel you close and know the difference that it makes. We pray that we would feel your presence in a new way today, that we would know the truth that you are as close to us as turned attention, as close as conversation. All we need do is acknowledge that you are there. Amen.

Advent 20: Freedom

Scripture: “I will be an enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) 

Song: Wounded One

“People are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” (2 Peter 2:19) What are we mastered by? The peculiar chains that bind each of us are slightly different: anxiety about the future; the pain of ongoing sickness; fear of what other people think; addictions to what hurts us; financial insecurity; worry about weight and appearance; the pressure to buy certain things and appear to live a certain lifestyle. 

We are all enslaved by something.

When Jesus came he proclaimed that freedom had arrived. He set free those who had been chained by tormenting spirits and thought processes (Mark 5:15), those we had been sick for many years (Luke 8:48), those who were estranged from their communities (Mark 1:40-45, Luke 9:42-43), those whose tongues had never let them speak (Mark 7:35), whose eyes had never let them see (John 9:6-7), whose legs had never let them walk (Mark 2:11-12) He fulfilled the ancient promises of the prophets by declaring that he was the one who had come to release the captives from what bound them. (Isaiah 61:1)

But, Jesus also declared freedom of an altogether more powerful kind. He claimed that he had come to set us free from the one thing that masters everyone: sin. When speaking to a crowd about freedom, the crowd took offense at him, claiming that they didn’t need his help. We are already free, they said. Don’t talk to us about freedom. But Jesus went on to say that all of them were, in fact, slaves because all of them were sinners: “Everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.” (John 8:31-36)

This is an extremely uncomfortable claim. We are all slaves because we all sin. We all do things wrong. We all do things that we don’t really want to and we know will cause hurt and yet, somehow, we are powerless to not do them. The angry word spoken once, sworn never to be spoken again, that pops out a second time. And a third. That snide comment about someone else’s family or ability or appearance that spills out before we can hold it in. That dig about someone else which makes us feel good. That small, white lie that saves our own skin. That secretive snacking on cake in the kitchen whilst claiming to everyone else to be on a diet. That smug satisfaction about seeing someone else fail to do something that we ourselves struggle to do. The determination to do better, be better, think nicer next time that fails the second a particular circumstance arises.

But, sin is not just the things themselves. The biblical story starts with the invasion of an enemy into God’s good world: the snake in the garden. And it is this enemy that Jesus came to defeat. In Genesis, God says that one day someone will come who will crush the Snake; one day Satan and all of his evil intentions will be finally destroyed.

Thus, sin is not just about individual sins. He saids, and she dids and they didn’ts. Sin is something much more powerful and deadly than that. It is an enemy force bent on wreaking havoc and death. The enemy that Jesus tells us has come to kill, and steal and destroy. (John 10:10) The enslaving power of this enemy is too deep for me to break off. I cannot be free of it. Only Jesus can set me free. Only the Promised Snake-Crushed, who is wounded even as he is declared victorious, can set me free. Only the cross can disarm Satan and his powers (Colossians 2:15)

On that first Christmas, thousands of years ago, the baby that Mary delivered into the world was the one destined to deliver the world from the sin that enslaved it:

God rest ye merry gentlemen

Let nothing you dismay

Remember Christ our Savior

Was born on Christmas Day

To save us all from Satan's pow'r

When we were gone astray

Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Comfort and joy

Advent 19: Clean

Scripture: 

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; 

he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them. (Psalm 34:4-7)

Song: Nothing but the blood

We all know - even if only in a Sunday School singsong fashion - that Jesus came to die for our sin. But the Bible tells us that the blood of Jesus on the cross does not just remove the guilt of our sin but the hurt of our shame.

Jesus came to remove the stain of sin and the stains of those who have been sinned against. By his blood, we are washed clean and made utterly new. We are made white as snow. No matter what we have done or what has been done to us.

 For those of us who have been subjected to awful things at the hands of others, we need to hear the truth of this. When Jesus died on the cross, he embraced all of our suffering: he took on the sin of the rapist and the shame of the raped, he took the punishment of the abuser and washed the wounds of the abused. 

The bible says that Jesus was like one who was despised. (Isaiah 53:3) He was like one that others would turn their faces to avoid. He was humiliated in the most base and brutal manner imaginable. He knows what it is to be ashamed. He knows what it is to feel dirty, and to be looked at with disgust. Jesus hung on the cross bloody and mangled for the whole world to see, a convict condemned to death, a common criminal made an example of, a beaten lump of humanity exposed to the eyes of all the onlookers, the subject of gossip and slander, the one people muttered about in streets and wouldn't allow their children to look at lest they too somehow became contaminated.

But by his death, he cleanses us of all our rubbish. We are tarnished by regret at what we have done, and by the shame of what others have done. Jesus says, Come to me and be clean. Come to me and let me tend to your wounds, let me start to wash away the pain of your past. Come to me and let me make you new.

Reflection: Jesus, thank you that your promise to make us new. Thank you that there is no stain that you cannot remove. Thank you that as we look to you we are made radiant; our faces are never covered in shame. Thank you that you died to wash us clean.

Advent 18: Life

Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believed in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)

Song: Saviour of the World

Jesus came to offer us eternal life. (John 3:16) His promise is that those who trust in him will live even though they die; they will live forever in eternity with God.

And yet, his promise isn't just about some distant happily ever after. Jesus offers fullness of life in the here and now. He says that he has come to give abundance of life. (John 10:10) This seems strange when in many ways his life, and the lives of his first followers, didn't look particularly 'full' by worldly standards. They weren't rich or famous or important. They didn't have security. Many had left family and friends and employment behind: all of the things that we would think necessary to feel full and satisfied.

But Jesus says that he offers a satisfaction, a life-giving fullness, that is distinct from circumstance. It is possible to be full of joy even when your world is falling apart. (Philippians 4:12-13) He says that life is about knowing who God is (John 17:3); that our emptiness can only be filled up by God himself however hard we might try to cram it full of other things. The deepest longing of the human soul is to know the one we were made for. This is what gives us life. This is what Jesus offers: relationship with the Creator that fills our life now and continues to fill it forever.

Give up your broken cisterns, he says. (Jeremiah 2:13) Give up your striving and your money-making schemes. Give up your anxiety and your consumerism, Give up your relentless pursuit of something new that will make life meaningful. Come to me instead. Stop spending money on what can never satisfy (Isaiah 55:2) What I have doesn't cost anything. Come and receive the free gift of life and watch it well up from inside you and pour into those around you. Come to me and have life - life in all its fullness.

Reflection: Read the words of Isaiah 55. Lay aside what has tried and failed to make you full and ask for what only Jesus can give. 

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live." (Isaiah 55:1-3)

Advent 17: Understanding

Scripture: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are – yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:15-16

Song: God is Near

Why did God choose to become a man? It's a fairly nonsensical plan for salvation when you think about it. And even if it wasn't possible for us to be reconciled to God by any other means than the death of a sinless person dying in our place, why would Jesus need to walk out 33 years of life first? Why wait 33 years to die if that's what you've came to do?

There is something stupidly beautiful in the fact that Jesus embraced our humanity; for his time on earth he took on everything it means to be a human being. He took on weakness and vulnerability, hunger and sleep deprivation, shame and rejection. He became fully one of us in order to save us. It was necessary for him to share in our humanity even to the point of death so that he could break death's hold over us. (Hebrews 2:14)

When I taught in Croydon, the kids used to say "God knows" all the time. "Ahh, Miss! Swear down. Say God knows." But he does. And that isn't just a matter of omniscience. It isn't just about knowing everything; it is about understanding. Jesus proves to us that God fully understands the human predicament. Every emotion, pain, doubt, temptation - Jesus understands; he has been through it.

I cannot quite comprehend this but I need it to be true. I do not want to worship a God who looks down from heaven and scoffs at tiny human beings making their silly little mistakes all the time, who looks on from a distance with disdain in his eyes and wonders why the poxy creatures get so upset when one of them dies, or when they are hurt by a friend, or why they rant and rage so much when He seems so distant.

But Jesus shows us that God is not like this at all. Our God is a God who understands. Our God knows what it is to be cast out. He knows what it is to be let down by friends. He knows what it is to call up to the skies in desperation for something different to be done. He knows what it is to struggle to trust. He knows what it is to be abandoned by your loved ones.

There is great comfort here if we would stop to see it. This Christmas, whatever our struggle, God knows. Swear down.

Advent 16: Loved

Scripture: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10

Song: Reckless Love

In the retelling of creation in the Jesus Storybook Bible (my favourite children's bible!), God creates humanity and it says this: “God loved them with all of his heart. And they were lovely because he loved them.” The bible tells the story of a people who knew that there was a God and that that God loved them. He was their Creator and he had made them in love.

But sin marred the connection between people and God. People forgot that there was a God who loved them. They started thinking all kinds of different things about God instead: that he was a tyrant, that he was distant, that he was flippant and harsh, that he ruled over those he had made with indifference, that this God didn't really care about his creatures at all.

And as humans doubted their loved-ness so they became less and less lovely towards themselves and towards each other. Un-loved-ness spiralled out of control.

I question whether God loves me. With all my flaws and failings, it is difficult to comprehend that there is a God of the Universe and that this Almighty, holy King loves me. He loves me even when I turn my back on him. He loves me in the middle of all my mess.

But Jesus came to convince us of this truth - the truth of a God who loves us as we are even when we consider ourselves utterly unlovely. He came to put God's love for the world, and the people in it, on display in the most dramatic way possible. He came to prove to us that God is a God of love. He came to show us in a way that we could finally understand what love really looked like. Real love looks like dying in someone else's place. There is no greater definition of love than to willingly lay down your life for someone else, especially for those who have rejected and abandoned you. If we are waiting to know that we are loved then we need to look to the cross to remind ourselves of what love looks like. 

Reflection: 

In his book, Sacred Fire, Ronald Rolhesier remembers the words of a wise friend who was trying to teach him about prayer. He said this:
"You must try to pray so that, in your prayer, you open yourself in such a way that sometime – perhaps not today, but sometime – you are able to hear God say to you: `I love you!’ These words, addressed to you by God, are the most important words you will ever hear."

Spend some time in prayer this morning allowing God to address you in this way.