Lord's Prayer part 2

Go here:
http://homepage.mac.com/klock/lwec/sermons08/111608am.htm
Excellent

Jesus - Lamb of God

Another brill sermon is here:-
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/2008/3416_Behold_the_Lamb_of_God/

Wonderful quote from Andy Bathgate on 1John2:12-17
"At best the world offers a plaque or a statue. All our desires for reputation, legacy and instant gratification are ungodly and transient. The Christian perspective is well summarised in a rephrasing of the 10th commandment: 'Thou shalt not need to covet,' when we find contentment in doing the will of God."
quote´from RS Wallace, 'The Ten Commandments', Oliver & Boyd 1965

Truth and the Bible

Another brilliant sermon is to be found here:-
http://www.church.org.uk/resources/sermondetailpf.asp?serId=993

Preaching Jesus

Found a challenging and uplifting entry here:
http://cranmerhouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/preaching-jesus-versus-pleasing-people.html

The Continuum Blog

Since I found The Continuum I have really appreciated Fr Hart's entries, because as an Evangelical Anglican priest in the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, (of the 'original' Anglican communion) I have found his contributions stimulating and challenging. However his remarks about Cyprus today really annoyed me. To be charitable, I assume out of ignorance of what God is doing here today and probably being unaware of how far at times the Church of Cyprus has strayed from God's ways. I don't want to labour this last point too much as there is no perfect church anywhere; any church is comprised of sinners. However one of the reasons that the Turkish Cypriots living in my part of Cyprus are so difficult to reach with the Gospel is that in living memory and folk memory they associate the Orthodox Church of Cyprus as being totally wedded to the EOKA terrorist group, who were trying, in the 50's & 60's, to rid the island of TC's (and the colonial British rulers), to effect Enosis or union with Greece. One of my parishioners has a picture of Archbishop Makarios (who went on to be the Republic of Cyprus's first president) blessing bombs for use by EOKA.

Much more positively is the work of God in this amazingly cosmopolitan society. Here are just a few examples. There are 20,000 Chinese in south Cyprus. The Greek Evangelical Church in Larnaca some years ago spawned an English congregation, which in turn recently spawned a Chinese Church which is growing apace; a daughter congegation has been planted in Nicosia; another in Limassol is planned. There are overflowing Filipino Churches everywhere, an Arabic Church in Limassol that has been brought about through the vision of a Sri Lankan church there. In the Pafos area aside from about 5 English speaking congregations including 3 Anglican, the is an American pastor running a Church for E. Europeans - he was previously in Russia for a number of years. In the north the Turkish Church in Kyrenia recently baptised about 15 Bulgarian Turks and had heavy handed police interference as a result. St. Mark's in Famagusta has a 95% Nigerian attendance from just about every denomination you can think of - and until recently we met in a beautiful building built by the Nestorians, and who would have worshipped Syriac (E. Aramaic). The first known service in English in Cyprus was at the wedding of King Richard and Queen Berengeria in the 12th Century. There are resident Lutheran Scandinavian and German priests on the island; there are Maronites from antquity, and the Anglicans have been here since British rule commenced in the late 19th century. God has moved, God continues to move. It's His world He is on a mission and we need to catch up with Him.

This missional thing

Glenn Hatcher wrote an encoraging article. I hoped to reproduce it all, but cannot. Go here to find it:-
http://kingdomreflection.blog.com/4109854/

Not for the first time in the last few days have I been brought up short by a challenge to my traditional thinking. This time is respect of salvation; and in particular the place of the resurrection. The challenge came from the blog of Fr. Gregory Hallam - Antiochabouna.blogspot.com and I got the length of his blog after researching about St. Theodore of Tarsus and Canterbury, because we are hoping to establish a daughter congregation in a place that was formerly Ayios Theodoros; the obvious name choice being St. Theodore's for our congregation - but who was he? Fr. Gregory's church website told all that and more - and it was all new information to me, but then came the challenge. He wrote in April last about the difference between the traditional 'protestant' understanding of salvation, and that of the Orthodox. Of my position as he perceives he wrote as follows:-
In Eden humans disobeyed God and broke their relationship with Him. For this they were cast out of Paradise as a punishment and suffered death as a consequence of their sin. This fall corrupted (more - Calvin or less - the Scholastics) human nature thereafter and made reparation with God a human impossibility on account of the gravity of sin (which includes the transmissible guilt of Adam and Eve), its disabling power and God's judgement upon man's transgression. Only God Himself could put humanity back into a right relationship with Him (justification) and impart holiness (sanctification). This He did by suffering the punishment for our transgressions - death - in the sacrifice of His Son for the salvation of the world in our place, propitiating God in respect of the offence of original and subsequent actual sin. By this means Man was restored to a right relationship with Him and was accounted worthy of eternal life made available to him in and by Christ's resurrection.
Notice here that death is both a consequence and a punishment for sin; that someone must bear the punishment justly due for our transgression and that only when Christ has appeased the Father is eternal life possible. The resurrection has no saving significance beyond that which has already been achieved on the cross.

He then compared his understanding of the Orthodox Church position as follows:-

In Eden humans chose a demonically inspired autonomy from God and by that choice death entered the natural order and human life specifically. God in his mercy and love removed them from Paradise into this world lest this physical death be compounded by an eternal spiritual death. Now subject to suffering and death, human alienation from the divine life becomes the raw material for Satan's attempt to subvert humanity finally from God. This corrupting influence of the fear of and flight from death makes of sin an ever present reality for the children of Adam and Eve. However they remain free to choose between God and Satan and this outworking of salvation in history eventually enables a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Spirit the Saviour who is both God and Man. This incarnation which includes the whole dispensation of Christ from his birth to his resurrection unites our human nature to God and redeems it. As we repent and live ascetically for God in the power of the Holy Spirit the resurrection victory of God over the opposing powers (which led to the death of Christ), we partake of the divine life of the Trinity, the energies of God, and are transformed in an ontological union with God from one degree of glory to the next, (the ascension of our humanity). This salvation process starts in this life and is consummated in the next.

Notice how death is not a punishment from an outraged God in Eden, nor is our banishment. Everything is done out of love. There is no divine anger to placate, no debility of our will, no meaning in the death of Christ without the resurrection (but every meaning with it!). All of the life of Christ saves us and this is by the incarnation gathering everything that is ours into God where it is transformed into the divine image and likeness. Moreover the Holy Spirit is the divine personal agent of our transformation and everything is a coordinated work of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The Ever-Virgin Mary becomes the model of what it is to be a Christian. She broke down the wall of opposition to God in her own life and womb and by her own gracious response to God. This is what it is to be saved in the Orthodox Church, to be an Easter people.

I have to say that I found this totally revolutionary. I am still mulling it over. Scripture seems to me to attest in many places to the wrath of God against sin; thus the need for the cross and Christ's death in my traditional thinking and preaching.

The irony is that the populace often seem to have it all back to front in that Good Friday services are usually poorly attended; full to bursting for Easter Day. Truly you can't have one without the other; it's all of a piece - along with the incarnation - the remembrance of which we are once again approaching.

Another irony is that a Syrian Orthodox priest said that the one day of the year that the Syrian Churches are always full to bursting is Good Friday...

I'm still thinking...

Becoming Saints

One of the Blogs I look at regularly is 'The Continuum', and in particular the contributions of Fr. Robert Hart, often sermons. The 31st October sermon ready for All Saints' Day really got me thinking in several areas. One part concerned a challenge to traditional evanglical thinking that all believers are 'saints' from the instant one believes. The word is "'oi 'agioi", = the holy ones, in the Greek.
Fr. Hart remarks that sainthood is something we should be aspiring to and not something that we automatically become upon 'accepting Jesus', being 'born again' or whatever phrase you want to use for becoming a Believer. He argues from the opening greetings of Romans and the Corinthian epistles that we like they 'called to be saints'. I noticed by contrast the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians simply refer to those addressed as 'the saints'.
And then came the sermon at the little Beresford Road Evangelical Church, Lowestoft this morning. Ephesians 4 - 'put off the old man; put on the new man'. So in other words with the aid of the Holy Spirit that we are given as believers, it is a conscious act of the will to want to become Holy or saintlike.

Sanctification is a cooperative process in other words, its not automatic. Paul in Romans 6, to paraphrase, says 'how on earth can you contemplate deliberately sinning when you've experienced the undeserved favour of God?' Fr. Hart also does a good job at demolishing the comic book, computer game, or TV Superhero idea of saints that some misguidedly espouse. Most that readily spring to my mind would want at most to be remembered as (saved) sinful human beings struggling to follow Jesus and putting off the 'old man' ... And that brings me to the motto for St. Mark's Church, Famagusta for 2009· "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. Amen." 2 Peter 3:18

Hallowe'en

It seemed almost churlish to send away the four small children at my mother's front door wanting to do 'trick or treat' and gain some money in the process. It's 25 years since Val and I left the UK. I remember being quite shocked back in 1983 when I was first in Ireland to discover that the mid term break was even referred to as the Hallowe'en Holiday. On reflection I could see where in a traditionally Roman Catholic country and the celebration of All Souls' Day, followed by All Saint's Day, Hallowe'en had come from. But leaving aside the Bible believer's problem with praying for the dead, and apart from blaming the Americans, how on earth did British children come to be encouraged to celebrate such obvious evil. It's easy to be over simplistic, but if the Church had not lost its confidence in the revealed Truth contained in the Bible, perhaps we would not have lost most of the population of the country. Behind the children at the door was a thirty-something Mum. Did she 'trick or treat' when small? How far back do we have to go? Back as far as when real witches were burnt at the stake maybe? But then the propogation of true Bible Christianity by the destruction of its enemies was never right either. What a contrast to the children at the door is to learn of four teenagers coming to faith at the little church in Mum's street and are to be baptised in the sea on Sunday. New saints at All Saintstide. Alleluia! Just hope they don't freeze to death - they'll need to warm up at a Guy Fawkes bonfire....and there's another problem tradition!