Alternative plans

I thought of a joke the other day. It’s not particularly funny, I know, but it helps express something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently.

Question: What’s the difference between God and George Osborne?

Answer: God has a plan B.

This issue has arisen in several ways, through thinking about stories in the Bible, things which have happened recently in my role as minister, conversations with friends. A few days ago I was reading the story of 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is told by the prophet Samuel that he’s to lose the throne of Israel because of his disobedient act of sparing the life of the Amalekite King, Agag. At the end of the chapter we’re told that ‘the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.’

Fast forward another 3,000 years and we read about Peter, in Acts 10, on the roof of Cornelius’ house, seeing a vision of all manner of food and being told by God that he’s permitted to eat it all. And yet it’s not Peter who’s remembered as ‘Apostle to the Gentiles.’ Galatians 2 tells the story of how Peter ‘drew back and kept himself separate’ from Gentiles, an event which meant Paul had to assume the mantle of leading the sharing the Gospel with non-Jews.

All of which raises some difficult but important questions. When God first instructs Samuel to anoint Saul as king, does he know about the way the story will end, in eventual failure? How do we understand Saul’s prophecy of 1 Samuel 10? Does this show some evidence that Saul started out being the right man for the job, the best man available to God? Does God always foresee how people will change? When he revealed his vision of clean foods to Peter, could it be that, at the time, Peter seemed to be the best person for sharing the gospel to the Gentiles?

I talk to so many people who regret how things have worked out in their life, and who see this as a failure on their part, an inability to properly listen to God. I didn’t know how that person would turn out when I married them, I’d no idea the complications that there would be when I moved to that new job. There is often an added dimension of personal guilt for Christians when they try to make sense of these sorts of disappointments. I wonder how many people in Israel berated Samuel for picking the wrong king...

But what if God is inside time, alongside us? He knows everything there is to know, but that can’t include events in the future which are not fully settled. In that case, we could have been clearly hearing from God, who felt at that moment that for us that job, that home, that husband or wife was right. I realise this is a huge change in thinking for many of us, but I can’t help feeling it’s one which helps us make more sense of a lot of the struggles we face, and shows God not to be weak but rather loving and responsive, able to work powerfully and resourcefully even when things go wrong.

Finding God in the Neighbourhood

Last night a number of us spent time in Billesley, taking photographs for a presentation which we’ll be sharing on Sunday morning at a family service focussed on prayer for our community. We spent some time listening to our soundtrack, Gungor’s ‘Beautiful Things’ which you can listen to here. And then we went off to find some appropriate images which would give expression to the theme of the song, the idea of God birthing something new and lovely in the midst of the apparent chaos and failure of our own lives.

As we set off, I had in mind some words which I read recently in Alan Roxburgh’s recent book, Missional. Much of the book is a prolonged reflection on Luke 10’s account of the sending of the seventy, where Roxburgh argues for a shift in thinking about mission, a new orientation focussed not on attracting people to a pre-defined package on offer from church but rather listening and responding to the ways and means God appears to be at work in our community. Roxburgh suggests that, ‘... the primary way to know what God is up to in our world when the boundary markers seem to have been erased is by entering into the ordinary, everyday life of the neighbourhoods and communities where we live.’

Next Sunday morning will provide us with the opportunity to think in more detail about where and how God is at work in our community, as we listen to members of our local policing team and others involved in the Third Sector. My hope is that it will challenge some of our preconceived notions about the problems in Billesley – after all, how can we show God’s love to those around us, if we don’t show some love ourselves, love which starts with listening?

If anyone out there has stories to share on Sunday morning, it would be good to hear from you...

Prayer - being honest with God, honest with ourselves

I’ve spent a large part of today getting ready for next Sunday’s Family Service at YWBC. We’re continuing to look at the theme of prayer, and posing the question, ‘What should we ask for?’

One of the passages we’re looking at is 1 Kings 3, and the famous story of King Solomon’s prayer for wisdom. The opening chapters of 1 Kings are not pleasant reading – Solomon does not have a clear path to the throne and his power is consolidated only after a number of violent deaths, including that of his brother Adonijah and his father’s military commander Joab. The chapters make little attempt to hide the fact that the trail of responsibility for these murders ultimately leads back to Solomon.

But in chapter 3, we have a very different portrait of the King, to whom God appears in a dream. God instructs Solomon to ‘Ask what I should give you.’ Reading Solomon’s reply, I’m particularly struck by one claim which he makes: ‘I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in.’ Considering the guile and ruthlessness Solomon has just shown in order to secure power, these words demonstrate either breathtaking nerve before God or a genuine humility in his presence, or both.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to make judgements about Solomon. I wonder if all of us have played this game at one time or another, presenting ourselves as innocent victims before God, failing to acknowledge completely our own culpability where things have gone wrong. Perhaps, God is gracious enough to see beyond this sort of self-deception, recognising it as part-and-parcel of the human condition. He is certainly approving of Solomon’s request for wisdom, granting him ‘a wise and discerning mind.’

And yet the Solomon story does not work out well. For all his apparent humility in asking for wisdom, it’s hard to escape the feeling that a basic instinct for power and wealth is never really dealt with in his life. Ultimately, his life is not one characterised by humble rule or justice. Instead, he comes as acquisitive, for power, for riches, for women. It’s telling that when God appears again to Solomon in 1 Kings 9 the message delivered to him is one of warning about the danger of falling away.

So I wonder if 1 Kings 3 offers insights on prayer at all sorts of levels. At face value, we’re taught to ask for what is right. But beyond that there’s another lesson, that if our prayers don’t really reflect a true depth of changed character then their long-term impact may be much less than might otherwise be expected.

Exodus 32: Prayer as a means of shaping our future

This morning we began our new teaching series on prayer, reflecting on the astonishing story of Moses’ prayer to God in the aftermath of Israel’s building of the Golden Calf, a betrayal which brings God perilously close to getting rid of Israel, and starting again with a new people. Hopefully the talk will appear soon on YWBC’s audio page.

Reading Exodus 32 again over the past week, I’ve been struck again by how significant Moses’ prayers were. Filled with hurt and anger, God tells Moses to ‘let me alone,’ so he can come to terms with Israel’s idolatry and proceed with plans to get rid of them, starting afresh with a new people borne of Moses. But Moses doesn’t give God the space he’s looking for. Instead, he encourages God to think of his reputation (what would the Egyptians think if God brought the Israelites out of slavery only to annihilate them in the future?) and also the promises made to forefathers such as Abraham and Isaac.

This isn’t the only biblical story where God’s mind appears to be changed by human pleading. In Genesis 18 Abraham negotiates with God and persuades him not to destroy Sodom, and in 2 Kings 20 we read of Hezekiah’s life being prolonged for another 15 years because of his prayers.

The question is, how do we live differently in the light of such passages? In his excellent book, God of the Possible, Greg Boyd suggests: ‘Many Christians do not pray as passionately as they could because they don’t see how it could make any significant difference. They pray, but they often do so out of sheer obedience and without the sense of urgency that Scripture consistently attaches to prayer.’

Sometimes it feels as if we’re passively sitting, waiting, wondering when the renewal we all hope for is going to begin. But as James writes, ‘You do not have, because you do not ask’ (James 4:2). Shaping the future of our church begins with prayer, not presuming upon God’s blessing, but starting to show God how dissatisfied and demanding we are.

It would be good to hear the thoughts of others of others on this issue, and good to hear of anything you sense God saying as you pray.

Mark 13: ‘Beware that no one leads you astray.’

Last Sunday our journey through Mark brought us to the book’s most controversial chapter. In Mark 13 Jesus predicts the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, a magnificent structure only just rebuilt at massive cost by Herod. The Temple is reckoned to have occupied the space of 35 football pitches, a vast expanse of gold, marble and other expensive materials. For most Jews of Jesus’ time, this was the building that provided a concrete symbol of national pride and hope in God, including the aspiration that one day all the peoples of the world would come to worship Yahweh on Mount Zion.

But Jesus delivers an astonishing, shocking verdict: ‘Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown done.’ He goes on to warn the disciples of the danger of being led astray by false leaders, a probable reference to the Jewish revolutionary movement who took over the Temple in 67AD to further their own agenda, and invited the backlash from Rome which eventually led to the building being razed to the ground by Titus in 70AD.

As Ben Witherington has commented, this chapter is ‘primarily not about the end of the world, but the end of a world – the world of early Judaism as a temple-centred faith.’

By coincidence, I read this week about the impending 100^th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant, a document signed by over 470,000 people, pledging opposition to the prospect of Irish Home Rule and a continued determination to remain citizens of the United Kingdom. Controversially, the document wasn’t just signed by individuals but was also supported by the Presbyterian Church, who even suggested amendments to the wording which were accepted by Unionists.

I owe a huge debt to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, in which I grew up and found faith. And we need to be wary when sitting on judgement on people in divided societies, who sometimes make the wrong choices when feeling their very survival is at stake. But it’s hard not to escape the conclusion that this alignment with Unionism was ultimately destructive for the church. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, my abiding memory of church is of a people with a militant, closed spirituality, a defensiveness which reflected their precarious political situation, a feeling of being unwanted in both London and Dublin. Having made little contribution to peacemaking, this church now has little stake in building the new Northern Ireland which is developing in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement.

So who are we putting our trust in today, and how will history judge us? I currently hear a number of colleagues in ministry wax lyrical about the opportunities offered to the church by the so-called Big Society. May be it’s understandable that, like the 1912 Presbyterians, we sense how the political situation is developing and feel the need to involve ourselves. But will future generations look back on a period of unprecedented cuts in welfare and budgets which caused great hardship for the most poor and vulnerable in our society, and ask why the church saw government policy as an opportunity to further its own evangelistic agenda?

Mark’s Big Story: was Jesus submissive?

So we’ve completed our three evenings looking at Mark’s Big Story. Our focus last night was on ‘creating a new community,’ the values and practices of the new kingdom movement ushered in by Jesus. What’s interesting about Mark is the way in which his Gospel contains no major teaching section, like Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Instead, when it comes to lifestyle, we’re left to look at the actions of Jesus and his disciples.

Closer inspection leads us to a couple of interesting discoveries. Firstly, the task of Jesus and his disciples is constantly one of exorcism in Mark, with numerous examples of Jesus coming face to face with the strong man who is holding people captive. When Jesus calls and commissions his disciples in chapters 3, 6, and 16, the job of casting out demons is central to the kingdom mandate.

Secondly, there’s the method. The Jesus movement are vulnerable (they depend on the hospitality of others and they don’t take lots of equipment or resources with them on the journey). Jesus also models a response of compassion, and the kingdom values are such that the important people are those who would not be considered significant by others – slaves, servants, children.

And the ultimate example of the method is found in Jesus himself, whose victory is not brought about through a show of strength, but in the moment of surrender on the cross.

And that conversation led to one of the big questions of the evening. Was Jesus submissive? Is that the best word to use to describe the man who openly challenged the practices of the Pharisees and turned over tables in the Temple courts?

Reflecting on this question this morning has brought me back to Hebrews 5:7: ‘In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.’

I wonder if these words offer a clue to the underlying, guiding principle of Jesus’ ministry... that the decisions which led to every miracle, every parable, every gesture were all, ultimately, underpinned by a desire to submit to his heavenly Father. Jesus did not understand himself to be making up his own plan, but fulfilling the mission of God.

So what implications does this have for us, for the confrontations and challenges we find ourselves making in the name of Jesus? When we examine the protests we take part in, or our political affiliations, can we honestly say we understand everything we’ve done to be a part of a life fully submitted to God?

As Martin Luther famously put it, when preaching on discipleship: ‘Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire - that is the road you must take.’

Petitions and taking on the establishment

Last night was the second of our three evenings at church reflecting on the big themes in Mark’s Gospel. We spent two hours looking at Jesus’ relationship the establishment, the likes of the Temple authorities, the Pharisees, the Herodians and Romans, all of whom were threatened by his presence and ministry, and all of whom formed the coalition which gathered to ensure his execution at Easter.

Reading through Mark again, it’s striking how polemic Jesus’ actions are when facing up to the ‘powers that be.’ There’s an attack on the Pharisees’ ‘human tradition’ which concludes an incitement to the gathered crowd who are told that ‘nothing outside a person... can defile’ (Mk 7:15). There’s the turning over of tables in the temple and an attempt to shut down the buying and selling of goods in its precincts (Mk 11:16).

It’s troubling to compare the practices of Jesus with that of so many of our own churches, especially within our Baptist tradition, where we seem to have lost so much of the edge of our protesting, non-conforming heritage.

And it’s also interesting to think about the current debate on the redefinition of marriage which is causing so much angst within the evangelical community. Lots of churches, including our own, have offered members the opportunity to sign the Coalition for Marriage’s petition voicing concern about the government’s planned changes. But what are we actually doing when we sign a document like this? Are we taking a prophetic stand, asserting our obedience to God and not the state? Or are we asking the state to stay on our side, making sure the establishment rules are still on our terms? Are we trying to have our cake and eat it?