Takeley Chapel

Enough said.

Posted on Jul 31, 2022 by M Emlyn Humphries

But now you must get rid of all such things—

anger, wrath, malice, slander,

and abusive language from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another,

seeing that you have stripped off the old self

with its practices

which is being renewed in knowledge

and have clothed yourselves

with the new self,

according to the image of its creator.

In that renewal there is no longer

Greek and Jew,

circumcised and uncircumcised,

barbarian, Scythian,

slave and free;

but Christ is all and in all!

Colossians 3:8‭-‬11 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/col.3.8-11.NRSV

Posted in Meditation | Tagged sunday | Leave a comment

Shush

Posted on Jul 24, 2022 by M Emlyn Humphries

‘When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord .” So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. ‘ Hosea 1:2-3 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/HOS.1.2-3

I suspect there will have been some interesting conversations around the dinner table today, unless of course the children were taken out of the service!

The still small voice, that speaks in silence, spoke to Hosea as a loud angry God. A bit like Hosea really.

‘But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen…
” Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” ‘ Hosea 1:7,10 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/HOS.1.7,10

That’s more like it.

For me the Bible is all God’s word, speaking; it’s all in red letters. I ask that Jesus is my teacher and Jesus says,

‘“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ‘ Luke 11:9-10 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/LUK.11.9-10

The still small voice speaks, and I seek to go beyond myself into the mystery that is God to hear. I don’t want to hear Jesus as me, I want to hear him as he is. Jesus stands between the full presence of God and human experience with its suffering and joy, privilege and want. Scholarship helps, community helps, tradition may help: Jesus offers a welcome to seekers.

Our place of gathering, is not only to hear, sing and pray, it is around a table of remembering, a sharing of wine and bread, recalling the brokenness of Jesus and his life poured out for us.

As a child and a parent, the regular gathering to eat was important, and sometimes it was very hard, but in the eating we could start to forgive and be healed. To be sent down from the table was a searing punishment, to end a meal in an argument scarred.

In many traditions, the table is approached after an act of seeking God’s mercy and forgiveness, forgiving others, praying as Jesus taught.

‘And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” ‘ Luke 11:4 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/LUK.11.4

We know we are fallible, Luke calls us evil,

‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” ‘ Luke 11:13 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/LUK.11.13

But in our reading, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and, even though we might be the only one left standing, we can be reassured that what we hear is important and when heard with a contrite heart can be trusted.

‘As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. ‘ Colossians 2:6-8 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/COL.2.6-8

I have heard it said that if we feel God is saying a particular thing, a good practice is to pass all we hear through the filter of the teachings of Jesus,

‘“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Matthew 5:7-9 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/MAT.5.7-9

and

‘He said to him, “
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.
And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” ‘ Matthew 22:37-40 https://my.bible.com/bible/2016/MAT.22.37-40

Posted in meeting, Teaching | Tagged church, kingdom, love | 1 Comment

Good news.

Posted on Jul 17, 2022 by M Emlyn Humphries

After detailing the transgressions of the rich in Israel against the poor Amos reveals the sin in their actions and the inherent judgement in what they are doing. He says,

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?
Amos 8:7‭-‬8 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/amo.8.7-8.NRSV

The Lord will not forget the victims. The transgressions of the nation are not forgotten. The life giving waters of the Nile rise up each season and churn the sediments. It’s inevitable. Amos speaks of the destruction of Israel because of their pride, the life giving waters, their wealth churns up their folly. Then Amos ends,

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.
Amos 9:14‭-‬15 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/amo.9.14-15.NRSV

Suddenly in the text there is a people God does not destroy. Those left behind are able to rebuild in the midst of the judgement.

The theme of exile is also here, exile from Eden mirroring the exile from the promised land, the people brought back under Moses. The vision is one of a new returning to a renewed Eden.

Those who were taken away were the ones judged by God whereas those left behind were the remnant who receive grace and are renewed. Grace is shown that they will no longer to be plucked away as a judgement and, further more, the nation taken away in judgement with those who hear God’s calling, will return to share in the abundance.

So much to ponder.

But wait this is important now, for our time. After speaking of the Nile, Amos conjures this image,

On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
Amos 8:9‭-‬10 NRSV https://bible.com/bible/2016/amo.8.9-10.NRSV

This is made real in the death of Christ and recalled in Luke 23.

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 23:44‭-‬46 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/luk.23.44-46.NRSV

Also James uses this section of scripture, from the Greek Bible as a proof text for the inclusion of the Gentiles in to the people of God,

‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord— even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things
Acts 15:16‭-‬17 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/act.15.16-17.NRSV

Or as the Hebrew Bible says,

On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord who does this.
Amos 9:11‭-‬12 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/amo.9.11-12.NRSV

This is made real in the resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost.

It is true now, and has always been that God really cares for the poor and marginalised and has formed creation so that the pride of those who trust in wealth is punished without mercy by the inevitable flow of history, evil begetting evil. Amos sees this and experiences it. This is the sin of the world; pride and the forgetting of the poor, which leads us to forget God.

But suddenly in Christ this changes and out of the devastation God brings a new life. The wounds we have recieved and the wounds we have inflicted are healed. Jesus delivers us from the sin of the world. We are born once more to love. This love wounds us again and again, as we seek to follow the calling of Christ, being transformed by turning again and again to him in our need.

Jesus died to deliver us from the power of the sin of the world and his grace to all is that in the cross there is healing so that we may live a resurrection life where love transforms all in all. The sin of the world is defeated in Christ and we are called to live a life in a new kingdom under the rule of Christ which is love. Here we find abundance that transforms the devestation.

First our wounds are healed, and then we are faced with our part in the inflicting of wounds, horrified at the wounds we inflict on the One who is love. Grace says even though God will not forget the evils done, God does not forget the victim, and tribulation will follow, God says you are remembered, washed and clean, and will prevail to abundance. God acts in our lives, not because we deserve it, preserving us to the end; never forgetting us, giving up on us or leaving us.

First we experience love, and in Christ we learn love, finding healing in his life. Then, love draws us to goodness and we find grace. No prayer has earned this, we find God because God seeks us. We love God because God first loves us. We are delivered from sin through the work of Christ.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Colossians 1:19‭-‬20 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/col.1.19-20.NRSV

Posted in Meditation, meeting | Tagged grace, healing, judgement | Leave a comment

What are we doing?

Posted on Jun 26, 2022 by M Emlyn Humphries

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.
Galatians 5:19‭-‬26 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/gal.5.19-26.NRSV

The deities of Gallatia were famously cruel, says Tom Holland in a podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ask-nt-wright-anything/id1441656192?i=1000567526058).

He refers particularly to Cybele the Mother of the Gods whose priests the galli, were eunuchs, males who castrated themselves after a frenzied ceremony and dressed as women thereafter.

Cybele was a protective goddess of Rome, standing for its authority and order. Cybele’s earthly manifestation was Livia, the mother of Roman emperors, deified in AD42 as the Great Mother, the Mother of the Gods.

Why am I bothering to write this? Well it gives a background to Galatians 5 with Paul’s railing against the subversion of the Way of Jesus by both Jewish law and Roman. He equates circumcision to castration. But there’s more. It also calls us to examine the religion we call Christianity.

Paul was a radical and his message was dangerous, foolish and a stumbling block, undermining the judaisers and Roman civil society. Living by the Spirit was revolutionary. And today? Well today I think we need to reconsider the gift we have as people of the Way of Jesus, our seeming slavery to creeds and traditions, and our running after religion.

We are people of the Spirit. Luke reports Jesus to have said to one of his would be followers who appealed to tradition,

… “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:60 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/luk.9.60.NRSV

This section of Jesus’s teaching is a preparation in my mind for the realities of being followers of Jesus in a hostile world. His followers were cast out from the synagogues and proclaimed atheists by Roman civil society, considered by some to practice cannibalism, drinking blood and eating flesh.

Jesus alerts us to the power of a people of the Spirit and how religion is not our security. A relationship with the living God is. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

To be plain, we need to examine our traditions and religious practices. When we hear that the son of Cybele, the mother god, was Attis who was mutilated, died and rose again we can see what a threat the story of Jesus was to Rome and its protecting gods. We also need to be alerted to how the later inclusion of Christianity in the Roman cults would have Christianized the practices of the gods of the land and subverted the true message of the kingdom of God wrapping it in alien forms.

The way our churches are organised and their practices owe a lot to the system of paterfamilias of Roman culture. This religious system arguably gave a framework for the spread of Christianity outside the synagog with the church leader taking on the role the father under Roman family law. Some of our ways of being are a throw back to this tradition and are now sanctified by those who wield power. That’s why church services feel so incongruous when held up to the way of Jesus. We have to exercise discernment for our times or become more irrelevant.

We know Pope Gregory, who aimed to Christianise the British Isles, directed that the Anglo Saxan pagan festivals were to be made Christian and churches supplant places of worship, for example Glastonbury.

The origins of some of our ways of being the church, threaten the integrity of the message and are redundant. We need to be wise and faithful to the word of Jesus and keep it simple.

Paul says,

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Galatians 5:13‭-‬15 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/gal.5.13-15.NRSV

Let us be free. Let us not be consumed by the arguments and practices that divide, so that we bite and devour one another.

It is time now to be revealed as those whose faith releases us to love not binds us to beliefs.

See the amazing Anglo Saxon Carvings at Breedon, a testimony of the Christianising of the British Isles

Posted in meeting | Tagged church, faith, Jesus, kingdom, mission, radical | 1 Comment

Cruciform pigs.

Posted on Jun 19, 2022 by M Emlyn Humphries

O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
Psalms 43:3 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/psa.43.3.NRSV

This is a cry that has inspired me for many years, answered in the voice within. The story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19 reveals the many manifestations of God and their bewildering interactions which speak, Trinity to the Christian tradition. God outdoes the storm and fire gods, locating the LORD in silence,

and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
1 Kings 19:12 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/1ki.19.12.NRSV

The Holy Hill is the gathering place of the divine court presided over by the God of Hosts, the Most High God. Here Elijah encounters the heavenly court in sheer silence.

In the story from Luke, the demons recognise Jesus as the son of this God. Jesus is fresh from the stilling of the raging of the storm over the waters stepping on to dry land. Previously I have written about this story (https://takeleychapel.org.uk/2019/06/23/here-but-not-here/ ), but today I saw something new.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/medmss/7352474870/

Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
Luke 8:30‭-‬33 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/luk.8.30-33.NRSV

The poor man was delivered from oppression but what about the poor pigs? I saw that the pigs were Christlike. The pigs are heroes.

All creation is good, being drawn by a good God. At the heart of the creation is the Cross which ripples out and draws all God’s creatures. Jesus trusted the pigs I think, and when Jesus allowed the demons to enter the pigs, he trusted that all would be made well.

For the demons not to be sent to the abyss would not be good and the pigs took it upon themselves to make that happen bringing forward their judgement. I see the pigs rushing to the water as an act of non coerced love! They sacrificed themselves taking evil down into the watery chaos.

This may appear fanciful, but we might see a theme in the readings of not only us needing to trust God to be God but God trusting in the goodness of creation. It also speaks to us now where the metaphysics of that day is lost on us.

Look at the end of the story. After a short time with Jesus, the once demon afflicted man could be trusted with the message of God’s rule.

And the reading in Galations? God entrusts each of us as children of God, clothed in Christ to bring the message of God’s rule.

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:23‭-‬29 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/gal.3.23-29.NRSV

All creation is drawn by God’s love and the pigs cry out with the rocks, God is with you and you can choose the Way and be saved lead by the light and truth.

Photo by Forest Simon on Unsplash