Thieves and Angels

At “vicar school” I’ve been learning about a really helpful lifelong skill called Theological Reflection. It might sound dull but it’s not! Trust me, I’m an Ordinand. In essence it’s about us thinking about a certain experience in light of our faith. To put it rather simply it’s asking, “where is God in this?” and then… “what do I do now?”

In my first theological reflection class, I realised I already do it all the time, as most of us do. In fact, over the last 30 years versions of it have become popular in all kinds of fields like business, medicine and finance. You may know it as “Reflective Practice”. When we hear a story in the news and think “ah that’s just like the story of the Good Samaritan.” When a situation brings to mind verses from the Bible or we feel our church traditions and beliefs are shaping the way we respond to a situation, it’s all theological reflection.

Knowing how to do it well is so valuable. It’s such a great way to deepen our faith and fulfil our mission as disciples because it’s about working out where and how God is at work in our lives and how we can respond and act in a Christ-like way. Honestly, I love this stuff. I fear I might bore you to tears over the coming months, but I don’t think I can help myself. I’m an evangelist by nature, and this is my new thing to proclaim.

Anyway, I drew you in with a snappy title which promised intrigue and drama and I’ve delivered neither. So here it is: last night, Sunday 8^th November, something really awful happened which provided quite the opportunity for some deep theological reflection. At about 7pm as I was relaxing after an exhausting but wonderful Remembrance Sunday, my phone started buzzing. About 4 or 5 messages all at once from friends asking if I was OK or needed help. I saw some missed calls. I got an email. I got 3 Facebook Messenger alerts at once. My phone was blowing up. I got a notification that said the word “hacked” and my heart sank.

Immediately I tried to get into my account and change my password and alert my friends that my account had been hacked and whatever messages they’d received were completely untrue. At this stage I didn’t even know the nature of the messages. I felt sick. I was being contacted by former colleagues, school friends, parishioners, people I’d not spoken to for years. What had they been sent on my behalf!? I raced upstairs on tiptoes (not easy) so as not to wake Elizabeth and turned on my computer to deal with it more quickly at a keyboard.

Dozens and dozens of my contacts had received this from my Facebook Messenger account, “I’ve got some bills due tonight but locked myself out my online banking for 24 hours, if i send you details to my other account can you pay it for me? Its for £280 I promise to pay you back tomorrow morning with an extra £20 xx”

Some people who received it, like my old tutor from 6^th form, thought it was too unusual to be true and began asking her own questions, and soon realised it was false. Others know I’m a stickler for an erroneous apostrophe and thought “this just can’t be Rachael”, and one friend didn’t think I’d offer to give her £20 extra! But, sadly for one friend it was too late.

Truly believing I was in need, she gave. She just saw that her friend was in trouble and she willingly parted with nearly £300 as soon as she could because she loves me, because she’s a generous person, and because she tries hard to be Christ-like in her daily life. I was too late in getting warnings out and she’d transferred the full amount to the hacker’s bank. She was angry and mortified and stressed. She spent all night on the phone to her bank’s fraud investigation team, and meanwhile I spent all night contacting as many people as I possibly could to warn them. I felt absolutely terrible. Later that night she sent me a message telling me it’s “time to forget about it now, please, please don’t worry about it- we’re fine, we can take the hit”. Reluctantly I took her advice and turned off my phone and tried to forget about it.

Today I’m relieved that it seems, so far, no-one else has handed over money to the hackers, and my anger has given way to gratitude. As my mind turned to God, initially just to give thanks for my lovely friend, I wondered where God was in this whole picture. Theological reflection begins with understanding what led to the experience (social and cultural factors for example) and I reflected on the greed of some people who would con a stranger out of money to meet their own needs. I thought about how vulnerable even the smartest people can be. I thought of technology and how easy it is to manipulate to pretend to be someone you’re not, to transfer funds in an instant, to investigate the electronic footprints left behind.

And I then asked myself, how does my faith shape this? What does the Bible say? What would Jesus do? Where does God sit in this picture. I could have thought about sin and retribution and of Paul telling his mentee Timothy that “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” But instead I went to the Gospel passage I’d preached on the day before, on Remembrance Sunday. John 15.17 This is my command: Love each other.

My friend did what she did out of compassion, generosity and love. She didn’t hesitate to act. She just gave. She gave a lot, and it has cost her greatly, not just in money (which hopefully she’ll get back) but in emotion and time, and in the bitter taste this whole saga leaves her with. God is the source of all love and generosity and Jesus teaches us to love one another as God loves Him. Like an angel, last night my friend was watching out for me (or whom she believed to be me) and she showed me what love looks like.

And folks, it just wouldn’t be good theological reflection if it didn’t culminate with action. So here’s what I think action looks like for me. I think the most appropriate thing to do to combat the thieves and fraudsters and the manipulative badness of this world is to continue to preach love. To live a life so sure of God’s love for me that it spills out and washes over others. Today I’ll be dedicating myself to thinking about all the love in my life. Love wins. Again.

Epiphany Sermon: Wise Men and Jigsaws

A short sermon based on Matthew 2. 1-12

“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

Astonishing. I find every detail of this story astonishing. These men, probably astronomers, or scientists as some researchers have deduced, these non-Jews, believe they’ve been given a message. These men have seen a sign about the birth of such a special person… that they need to go to him.

So they set off from their homeland on foot or on camels and they travel a very, very long way over field and fountain, (moor and mountain) following this rising star they’ve seen.

How long was that journey? Several months? Possibly longer? Jesus may have been as old as 2 when they finally got there. (So yes I’m afraid, the traditional nativity scene of the wise men standing beside the shepherds in the stable is fake news).

What drove them on all that time? What made them leave their home country to visit a foreign baby? And what did they find when they got there? I wonder what they thought when they saw that toddler. His ordinary parents. Their ordinary house.

Well, here’s something else extraordinary: These travellers, weary and dusty from their epic journey finally arrive at Mary and Joseph’s house, and what do they do? They get down on their knees! They’ve arrived at the home of the King of the Jews, and humble as he looks, they recognise who he is. They know they were right about that star. They get down on their knees and they pay him homage.

They then offer the little boy expensive gifts that they’ve riskily been carrying all this way. And then they depart. They return to their own country.

What an amazing story.

It seems like quite a leap of faith, to follow a star all that way. But something drove them on. They had a piece of the puzzle and had the faith that the bigger picture existed, even if they couldn’t see it, even if they’d never see it. They just had to go and find out. So they got up and went.

Just like Mary. She had to take a leap of faith after her piece of the puzzle was revealed. She was visited in person by an angel and told the baby she was going to give birth to will be “great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Not something you hear every day! Yet she replied, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She was given a piece of the puzzle. Yes a more detailed and perhaps larger piece but still not the whole picture. It was enough for her to go on.

And Joseph. He had a piece of the puzzle too. An angel came to him in a dream and told him “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” That’s a bit of a weird and vague and frankly extreme claim. And again, not the full picture. Joseph took what faith he had, what piece of the puzzle he had and waited faithfully to meet his future son cum Messiah.

Then there’s the shepherds. They were absolutely terrified when their bit of the puzzle was given to them. An angel visited them in person and said “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” They went.

All of these people, humble shepherds, a carpenter and his fiancé, the foreign astronomers… something significant was revealed to all of them. King of the Jews, Saviour, Messiah, Jesus who will save people from their sins, Son of the most High, he will reign forever and his kingdom will have no end. Each was told something different about the little boy and together they build a much clearer picture of who this special child would be. I wonder if they swapped stories. I wonder if they conferred. They’d have got a better understanding if they had.

Each of their experiences was different. And strange or frightening, overwhelming or obscure as these messages were, they were the right messages for each of these people. Joseph wasn’t told to follow a star. He probably knew very little about starts. The scientists weren’t visited by an angel from heaven. They mightn’t have believed their eyes. Their pieces of the puzzle were as incomplete and they were right for them.

I wonder if it’s like that for us too. How did, or how might we come to know who Jesus is? None of us can see and figure out the big picture. The enormity of who he is and what he’s done for us. But some of us know a bit, and that bit’s right and unique to us.

Some of us might not even know we have a tiny jigsaw piece in our hand. Some of us might have been carrying a piece of the puzzle for years but have no idea where to put it, or what to do next. But whatever we hold, it’s the right piece for us. It fits. And one day, if we choose, we can add it to the rest and reveal someone beyond our imagining.

But it’s completely up to us. God doesn’t play with us like puppets on strings. We are free to choose to know God or not. To set off, like the wise men, with our piece of the puzzle and to seek out the bigger picture. Or not. We can choose to put our faith in the God we don’t fully understand, and we can spend our lives being enriched and blessed by what we learn as the pieces are revealed to us. Or not.

Our epiphany moment probably won’t be an angel or a star or a dream. It might be years of faithfully collecting puzzle pieces that are revealed to us at difficult or confusing or joyful times of our life, until one day we can just about make out the border.

Fortunately, although the full and perfect picture of God in Jesus might not be revealed to any one of us, it is revealed to every one of us. We each have a piece, we each know a bit, we each see and understand an aspect or a viewpoint or a characteristic or some truth, and together, the people of God make up this picture. Because Christ exists in all of us. Jesus said “abide in me as I abide in you”. Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus.

Whether we’re a humble artisan, a young woman, a farmer, a scientist, a foreigner, a person who’s never stepped foot into a church until tonight, we were each born with a piece of the puzzle that will be revealed to us when we’re ready. God abides in each of us:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139.13-14)

Now it’s up to us to decide what to do with our insight, our faith, our puzzling questions. Will we go and find out more about this Jesus, whose star shines so brightly?

God is weird: PART 3

An Ordination Candidate’s Experience of The Discernment Process

Out of My Depth

A few weeks later I was sitting in front of the DDO feeling incredibly nervous. I’d spent hours deliberating over what to wear, for fear of appearing too formal and Army Officer-like, or much worse, too casual. Perhaps those hours would have been better spent reading the Bible. One of the first questions I was asked was whether my conversion experience in Afghanistan felt more like a Road to Emmaus experience or more like a road to Damascus. Hmmm. Jolly good question. If only I knew more about these roads. Damascus is in Syria. What might that have to do with Afghanistan? Was this a trick question?

“Gosh, it’s hard to say really.” I stalled for time. “It wasn’t a very road-y experience at all. It was in a shipping container.” Hadn’t he been listening at all? I’d been very clear about where it’d happened. There were no roads.

Then I was asked about my tradition. “Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic? Up the candle or down? High church or low church?” This man is speaking another language, I thought. I faltered. I desperately wanted to answer correctly. My future could depend on it. But I hadn’t the faintest idea what any of this meant. My first 9 months of being a Christian were spent worshipping in tents and in the back of armoured vehicles in Helmand Province. How should I know if I was an Evangelical? And Anglo-Catholic? No, I was definitely Church of England, I knew that much. It was certainly a trick question.

I feared the interview wasn’t going well at all, but the warmth and friendliness of the DDO helped a lot, and we carried on for another hour. I told him stories and shared my fears and concerns. He seemed rather excited about having a shiny new Christian to work with, which was a relief. He diagnosed me as very possibly having a case of potential vocation, and prescribed me several months of prayer and further discernment. He handed me several kilos of paperwork to fill in. I was officially a candidate.

Spilling the Beans: Going Public

I still hadn’t told many people about this. In fact, other than Kate from Cranmer Hall, Richard the DDO, Dickie my husband and Justin the Padre, only two others knew (best pals). I was still embarrassed. Why, exactly, took months to work out. Eventually I figured it was pride. Up until this point in my life, I had been very driven by success and achievement. In fact I’d have probably once told you that my biggest fear was not spiders, or death, or War of the Worlds (the new one with Tom Cruise…seriously terrifying). It was failure. I wouldn’t normally put myself in a public situation that was so uncertain. And putting yourself through the vocations process is pretty public and pretty uncertain! At any stage someone may say no. And it can take a long time. Months, years…even decades for some.

I was keeping it to myself because I was so unsure the church would say yes, and I didn’t want to have to face people if I was rejected. And I know that’s really not the right word to use, but in layman’s terms, and certainly in my own mind at the beginning of this process, it felt like the right word. I’ve since learned to say “not recommended.”

So having identified pride as the obstacle, and humility as my aim[2], I decided to come out of the discernment closet. I told my parents, brother and sister-in-law at a family meal on Easter Sunday two years ago. That conversation could have gone better! At first my family, whilst very supportive of anything I do, were rather concerned. It was such a massive departure from my ordinary life; my army career. And leaving the security (relative; financial) of the army to embark on a second degree did appear rather drastic, especially as there were no certainties it would lead to a job, as it were.

My mum was particularly unhappy about it all, and her maternal instincts manifested themselves in interesting ways. She viewed the established church as cold, dusty, old and miserable. She feared it would take the life out of me. None of my family had had much contact with the Church before, and sadly none of them could imagine it as a lively, joy filled, and life-giving environment. I could see why my mum would want to protect me from a life, which she probably thought, would drain away all the energy and happiness that characterised her daughter.

I’d have to help my parents to see the unbridled joy that knowing and worshipping Jesus could bring. But I wouldn’t change their minds overnight. For now, they’d just have to trust me.

I realised my problem with pride was fairly deep rooted, so I took the rather extreme approach of going to the press. Or rather, the press came to me on a totally unrelated issue, which I used to tell the world “Hi, I’m a Christian!”. As a serving female Army Officer, the local newspaper had, over the years, interviewed me as a “local girl” about this or that to fill space on slow news days.

 

It was supposed to be an article about the 20^th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I’d recently been serving as been part of a British delegation. In the interview I decided to tell the reporter that I was a new Christian, I was discerning a call to ordained ministry, and would soon leave full-time Army service to start studying theology while I worked it all out.

This excited her. She ran the story on Bosnia, and a few months later got back to me and did one on faith. Whilst reading it in the paper was hugely embarrassing for me, as the reporter hadn’t quite got the exact nuances of the some of the things I’d said (it’s snappier to type “trainee vicar” than “discerning a call to ordained ministry”), it was quite a relief that pretty much everyone I knew would now know about this bizarre change of direction. This article was followed up by one eight weeks later about me doing a faith sharing mission weekend in HMP Durham, alongside about 30 convicts. Again, I cringed at the wording, which didn’t reflect how very unsure I was and am, but at least now all my colleagues, family and friends now knew, which helped me to deal with the problem of pride.

Yes, now people very much know I’m a Christian and that I’m wondering about becoming a priest. They’ll also very much know whether the church decides to recommend me for ordained ministry or not. Taking this risk, and being open and honest really has helped me to accept that my future is no longer in my hands. It is in God’s hands. This verse helps me:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6

A second, totally unexpected and totally brilliant side effect has occurred as a result of me going public; conversation starters about Jesus. I couldn’t count the number of times in bars, at dinner parties, or at the gym that I’ve got into a conversation about careers (“So, what do you do?”) and I’ve been able to say, “Well I was doing that and now I’m doing this. Yes, crazy isn’t it? Oh you want to hear how this U-turn came about? Let me tell you about my weird conversion experience in Afghanistan and how knowing Jesus has changed my life”.

Within a couple of sentences we’re totally away from whether or not I may one day wear a dog-collar, and slap bang in the middle of the Gospels and how ace Jesus is. So “coming out” as a candidate in the discernment process was definitely the right thing for me to do. But, what now?

[2] All of James 4 helped me, but in particular vs 6-7 “Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God.”

 

Combating Worry: How the Army and Jesus Use Procedure to “Keep Calm and Carry On”

A sermon on Matthew 6.25-34

 

“Don’t worry. Chill out. Calm down. Take it easy. What are you so stressed about? Relax!”

I can’t help but feel a bit irked when I hear someone telling me this. Don’t they have any worries of their own? Don’t they get stressed about stuff?

Of course they could be Christians, in which case I’ll let them off. It’s not that Christians have special super powers, but there’s something in the way we’re taught to live out our faith that helps us to combat worry.

How? Well it’s about following a procedure. To illustrate what I mean, let me share what I learned from my time in the Army. I’ve served 3 tours of Afghanistan and spent a year and a half on the front-line in Helmand Province, so I know plenty about worry and procedure.

Picture a scene with me.

It’s the peak of summer. The sun is beating down. You’re patrolling down a dusty village lane. Sweat rolls down your face and into your eyes. Your body armour is heavy and uncomfortable. Your clothes stick to you with sweat. Your mouth is dry.

Children with no shoes on, dart in and out of doorways, shrieking and kicking a battered football. Adolescents sit outside shops chatting or fixing a bicycle. They look up at the patrol. They shout insults, or ask for sweets, or come over to shake your hand. It depends on the village. Thick set dogs tied to gates bark and snarl, and you hear the distant cries of a baby from inside one of the low mud-walled farm buildings.

You walk on with your rifle held firmly in your hands. It’s a day like any other.

Then BANG. Bang. Bang. Bang. Stop.

Everything slows down just a fraction and your whole body reacts to the real-time life-threatening danger.

You’re being attacked. Bullets are whizzing past your head and thumping into walls behind you.

Then time speeds back up to normal and you hear different voices shouting orders and responding, and soldiers scattering in a beautiful dusty dance that looks chaotic to the untrained eye but it’s a perfectly synchronised movement. Every member of the patrol has their place.

Rifles are cocked. Safety catches are switched. Pouches are checked.

Someone shouts: “Contact. Enemy. 100m. Left of Mosque. Two times enemy. Rapid fire.”

Panic rises and bullets cut through the air, but you resist the desire to just lie flat on the floor and cover your head, because you’ve been taught not to panic.

You’ve been taught to trust in procedure and to act accordingly.

Why? So your can do your job.

How? Because training kicks in.

We’re going through the motions we’ve practiced time and time again on exercise. We’ve trained for this moment. Everyone knows their role. Worry is replaced by confidence in procedure and acting in a predictable way to unpredictable circumstances.

What I’ve described isn’t the sort of worry Jesus was talking about in Matthew 6, but the theory’s the same. We combat our worries by following procedure… Christian procedure. So when Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” let’s look at how Jesus modelled dealing with worry.

His simple procedure was to spend a lot of time in prayer. He totally relied on God for every provision, including supernatural provision. Jesus practiced trusting in Him.

This was his go-to response. This was the procedure he followed. This was how his training kicked in.

Jesus tells us to do the same when we worry. To set our hearts on God, to trust in God, to pray to God, to concern ourselves with God’s work and to not worry about tomorrow. And He promises us that then will we see how well we are provided for.

He said: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

But having faith that God’s got it covered is really hard. Maybe that’s why worrying is so commonplace. And if it wasn’t such a universal experience, the Bible wouldn’t be full of lines like “Don’t be afraid, don’t worry, trust in the Lord”. Jesus wouldn’t have needed to say, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”

Exodus 16:18-20 is a classic example. The Israelites were in the desert and God provided them with food. They were told not to stash it overnight, but instead to trust that God would provide the next day and every day. But some of them couldn’t. Despite all they’d been through and all they’d seen of God’s grace and faithfulness, still they worried about not having enough in the future.

Trusting God with our worries has always been hard. But I think it’s so important, not least for our peace of mind, but also because when our worries get too big, they can seriously affect our ability to serve God.

Take money worries for example. This worry comes up a lot in my line of work. Personal debt, increasing energy bills, the pension age rising, house prices and rent increasing. And churches tell me they worry their numbers are dwindling. They worry about repairs. They worry about having enough money to pay their share into the central pot so that the diocese can continue to fund clergy stipends. They worry their most generous givers might ever leave.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Squeamish as we might be at the mention of money, I think bringing it up is really important because not only is money something we handle every single day, but how we spend, save, hoard, stash, give away, donate, and contribute can be indicative of where we are with God, where we are with trust, and where we are as disciples of Jesus.

Worrying about money can get so bad that it clouds our judgement. It makes us so anxious that we want to hold tightly onto it and not give it away. Our money worries can stop us from being the kind of disciples Jesus is calling us to be. We can get fixated on tomorrow with all its “what if’s”.

• What if I don’t have enough money tomorrow?
• What if I increase my contributions, but tomorrow I can’t sustain it?
• What if I have to reduce my giving in the future?
• Wouldn’t it be best if I just gave less to start with so I know I can always manage?
• What if a bigger priority comes up?
• Isn’t it sensible to keep a large amount in reserve?
• Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Money worries can stifle and hinder us and stop us from being as generous as we truly are. So many of us would agree that being generous people in every way is a really important aspect of being Christians, but the difference between thinking and doing can be massive worries about money.

Money worries can stop us taking the next step. In James’s letter he said faith without deeds is dead. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” We’re called to be people of action. And yet so many of us are trapped because of our money worries. We can’t let go.

But imagine a different picture.

Imagine following and practicing Jesus’ procedure for worry: Praying, spending time in God’s presence, trusting, stepping out, gaining in confidence, trusting more, giving our worries to God. Being honoured and provided for by God. Being freed from that anxiety about tomorrow.

Imagine each one of us having the freedom in Jesus to give as generously as our situations and personal circumstances will allow.

Imagine God seeing and blessing and remembering every single generous act.

Imagine if we had such faith in God that we could each release whatever we felt able, and use that money for good and righteous deeds to serve God.

Imagine if our worries about tomorrow were overcome… would we be able to be more generous today?

What difference will that make to our local area?

To our homes and families and church and wider community? To charities and the Food Bank and the poorest and neediest in our neighbourhoods.

Think back to the soldiers under fire. Think of the panic and worry in that situation, and think of them all getting into the right positions and acting in predictable ways. Think of how they were able to keep calm and carry on because they did what they’d practiced. We need to do the same when we worry.

Remember that our procedure is to pray, seek God’s kingdom first, trust, and step out in faith. How much more manageable would our money worries become? How much would that free us to live more generously? Remember that God is bigger than any of our worries and knows our personal situations inside out. God knows if there’s any obstacle in the way. And God asks us to be generous only according to what each of us has.

And remember that God will honour our generosity, so have faith. God feeds wild birds, how much more will he feed us?

If you feel Jesus is inviting you to recommit yourself to trusting in God more so that you’re released from any money worries you may have that are restricting you from being who God’s calling you to be, then next time you pray, pray about that. See where it takes you.

I’d like to end in a prayer based on Philippians 4:4-7:

Lord help us to trust that you are at hand; and to not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let our requests be made known to You. And Lord may Your peace, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen

Religion vs Jesus: 2 Corinthians 3

I preached this last night at an evening service at Holy Trinity, Darlington, Diocese of Durham. Here’s my account of what I’ve learned about what Christianity is and isn’t since my conversion. Readings: 2 Corinthians 3, Exodus 34.29-35

I want you to come with me on a journey tonight. We’ll be stopping off and exploring various points along the way, but trust me, we’ll end up at a really great place where we’ll discover that it’s in Jesus alone that we find freedom.

Let’s start in Afghanistan on a very cold night in an army outpost. We won’t linger here long- shivering in the dim light of a few lamps, the persistent grumble of the diesel generator in the background, cold dusty earth under our feet, and a cumbersome rifle slung over our shoulder- but long enough for me to tell you that it was here, in this far off land in 2012, that I had an experience that totally shook my world view, that challenged who I thought I was and what life was all about.

It was here in a shipping container that I came to the wonderful, awesome, comforting and terrifying realisation that God exists.

I became a believer.

But in the following days and weeks, after my initial jittery elation that God really had created the whole universe and had known me since before my birth, I came up against some big personal struggles.

Not to do with God, but with religion.

Because, if I’m honest, up until that moment I’d scoffed at religious folk. I’d felt pity for people that I thought were being duped into believing a fairy tale. I’d felt anger towards people who used religion to control and oppress the vulnerable. And I’d felt baffled by people who seemed to follow all the rules and look down on others, but couldn’t actually give a reason for their faith.

People trapped by rules and customs but who didn’t seem to know Jesus. Religion seemed boring and restricting. I was wary of signing myself up to Christianity if it was just about having to abide by lengthy lists of rules.

I felt so torn, because part of me wanted to be sure of all the laws first, and exactly what would be expected of me, but the much bigger part of me was just so excited to know that Jesus was God’s son, and I loved Him so much, that I wanted to forget about the rules that I didn’t yet know, and throw my lot in with the guy from Nazareth.

So I did.

OK we’re still in Afghanistan and I’m desperate to know Jesus better. And to get to know Jesus, I have to read the Bible.

And fortunately, when I begin reading my Bible in my tent, I see, with great relief, that what Jesus seems so much more concerned with, isn’t following all the religious laws at all. It’s being right with God.

To the people around him, he seems to be a rebel. He’s challenging the status quo at every corner. And this really angered the sorts of people who prided themselves on following all the religious laws.

I read that, one day, several of these religious types, these Pharisees, including an actual lawyer, tried to test Jesus.

They asked which commandment is the greatest.

He replied,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Wow, I thought. Could it be that all the rest of the rules pale into insignificance if you could just keep the first two?

All those things carved in stone, all the rules about fasting and keeping the Sabbath and tithing, and circumcision and sacrificing animals and eating the right foods, and praying the right way. Don’t they matter so much?

It’s seems not. The more I read my Bible, the more I saw that Jesus had a way of turning the picture upside down. Looking at a situation with totally new eyes. Challenging systems and beliefs, but not because He was a rebel, because He was God’s Son. He was perfectly obedient to the will of His Father. It’s just that he saw that people were against the will of his father. So He spoke out about it. A lot.

And then I read about that time Jesus and his friends were walking in the fields on the Sabbath, when some of them ate some corn. The Pharisees were furious that they’d broken the Sabbath rule, equating the picking of some corn to harvesting, which was ridiculous. And Jesus said so. He said “If you’d known what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Then the Pharisees tried to catch Him out in the temple when a man with a shrivelled hand turned up for healing. The Pharisees asked if what He was doing was lawful.

So He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

He touched and healed lepers, He talked to women, He ate with sinners, He bypassed rules about temple sacrifices by healing sins. He challenged the authorities and spoke out.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”

Jesus came to abolish the idea of trying to please God through religion. When religious rules get in the way of mercy, compassion and justice they should be overridden.

Jesus didn’t break rules to be rebellious, He broke rules to show that people mattered more than rules.

The basics of Christian discipleship are about loving God entirely with every fibre of our being, and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves

That’s what I was beginning to learn 4 and a half years ago in Afghanistan.

 

Come with me again on our journey, back further in time, to about 2000 years ago. To Corinth in Greece. The newly established church who’d received Paul’s letter, part of which David read out.

Paul was reminding this church plant that Jesus had revealed the new covenant, the new law. A new way of looking at religion. Jesus revealed mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to those who have ears to hear. The church in Corinth needed to hear it, and we need to hear it.

Jesus doesn’t want us to be like Pharisees, banging on about our dutiful deeds with loud prayers and pious solemn faces, bragging about our righteousness and condemning others whose lives are a mess.

He doesn’t want us to do religion for the sake of doing religion.

Jesus wants us to put Him at the very centre of our lives. To be every day Christians. Disciples at large in our communities. Challenging the status quo. Being so loving and caring and set on fairness and equality and compassion that it surprises people. Our faces are shining radiant and bright in the knowledge of freedom in Jesus. It makes people sit up and take notice.

“Why does she give up so much of her time for others?”, “Why is he bothering to sit with that homeless guy who’s clearly on drugs?” Because we are every day every minute Christians. We’re not called to be carved-in-tablets-of-stone people. We’re called to bring-God’s-kingdom-on-earth people.

I think the very lives we lead are the best advertisement for religion. The people we are in our communities as followers of Jesus is the best way to convince people (like me!), that Christianity isn’t dead, old, boring; just a set of restrictive rules. It’s about how our lives are transformed by the Spirit of God and knowing we are freed in Jesus our saviour.

 

I’d like to finish with those reassuring words from Paul in his letter to the new church in Corinth.

Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiselled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.