"If you want to walk on water..." Sunday 10 August 2014

Originally preached at Dagnall Street Baptist Church on Sunday 10 August 2014 by Philip Palmer.

Matthew 14:22-33, "If you want to walk on water..."

http://www.stalbansliteraryfestival.co.uk/podcasts/dsbc/DSBC20140810am.mp3

Sermon 3rd August 2014: Is there more to life than this?

Originally preached at Dagnall Street Baptist Church on Sunday 3rd August 2014 by Simon Carver

The fourth in a series of "Questions people ask."

http://www.stalbansliteraryfestival.co.uk/podcasts/dsbc/DSBC20140803.mp3

Why do I keep messing things up? Sunday 27 July 2014

Originally preached at Dagnall Street Baptist Church on Sunday 27 July 2014 by Philip Palmer.

The third in a series of "Questions people ask."

http://www.stalbansliteraryfestival.co.uk/podcasts/dsbc/DSBC20140728am.mp3

Will anyone love me? Sunday 20th July 2014

The second in a series of sermons: "Questions people ask".

Originally preached at Dagnall Street Baptist Church 20th July 2014 by Simon Carver

http://www.stalbansliteraryfestival.co.uk/podcasts/dsbc/dsbc20140720.mp3

Appeasing the Masterchef gods - will John and Gregg love me?

Having not watched any of the previous episodes, I turned on the TV last night and Celebrity Masterchef was on. It was the Final and the last cooks standing were two people I didn't recognise, and Jodie Kidd. I hadn't realised quite how tall Ms Kidd is. Normally she would be among others of her exceptionally tall species, but alongside normal people ... The contestants had one task which was to cook a three course meal of their own choosing in two and half hours. Gregg Wallace and John Torode, the presenters and judges of the show wandered around the cooks' tables, making encouraging noises, but rolling their eyes behind the contestants' back. And then they were done.

One by one the contestants brought up the products of their labours. There is an unfairness inherent in this process in that the last person to come forward, has had their food cooling and congealing on the plates for several minutes before it gets prodded and tasted. If my mother was a judge she would mark it down purely on the basis that it would fail to take the skin off the roof of her mouth. 

While I have sat through many Masterchef episodes, I had never before noticed the similarity between the way that the food is judged and the offering up of Ann Darrow to King Kong. This is not a sly dig at Gregg Wallace's pre-diet physique, rather it is a based on the attitude of the contestants. As they lay out the food, their faces show that they are beseeching the gods, "Please like my food. Please love me."

This blog is really an effort not to waste a thought that I'm not going to be able to fit into a sermon which is part of a series of "Questions that people ask". This arose from the idea that the Church is often answering questions that people aren't asking and that if it is answering those questions, it is not very good at letting people know. This week's topic is, "Will anyone love me?" 

The Masterchef contestants demonstrate very visually the desire that is in all of us to know love. That love come from a person, but it may come from being in a place, or returning to a place. As Mad Men's Don Draper once said:

Round and a round, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved.

If you want to know more, let me know. 

God loves dinosaurs!

When I was a boy a lot of friends used to like going to the Science Museum in London because there were things you could do. There were knobs you could press and wheels you could turn that made things happen. There were machines, there were trains, there were even rockets that went up into space. Me, I was less interested in the Science Museum than with another of the museums – the Natural History Museum.

One of the main attractions of the Natural History Museum was that there were animals there that you would never see in a zoo. Huge creatures like the Diplodocus as big as several houses and which just stood and munched grass all day. And then there was the most fearsome of all: Tyrannosaurus Rex, with its funny little arms, but great big teeth – all the better to eat you with.

I say all the better to eat you with, but no human being was ever eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, because they were long gone before the first humans appeared on the earth. The dinosaurs became extinct around 66 million years ago and the first human beings weren’t born until just a couple of 100,000 years ago.

It would have been wonderful to have been able to see these dinosaurs in real life, like we can see the lions and giraffes at a wildlife park. We can’t because they are extinct. We don’t know why for sure, but within a fairly short space of time – at least a short space of time for geologists – the dinosaurs went from being top dogs to having been replaced by dogs – or rather mammals in general. What’s very strange is that almost every animal and plant that has ever existed is now – just like the dinosaurs – extinct. Scientists estimate that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now gone. They are extinct, shuffled off this mortal coil.

In Genesis 1 we read:

And God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

God made all these things. We might think that it is a little strange that God made all these things and yet he has allowed 99.9% of all the things that he has made die out. Human beings often take the blame for animals become extinct, but almost all of those species that have disappeared since life began had gone by the time the first human beings appeared, so it’s not all our fault. So why has it happened?

I don’t think that the dinosaurs disappeared because God hates dinosaurs. I think that the opposite is true – God loves dinosaurs – although it doesn’t specifically tell us that in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t actually mention dinosaurs, but that’s because the people who wrote the Bible didn’t know about dinosaurs. If whoever write Genesis had known what we know about pre-historic animals we might read this in Genesis 1:

And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the diplodocus and he woolly mammoth to chew grass and the tyrannosaurus and sabre-toothed tiger to eat meat, each according to their kinds.

And that verse would have ended in the way that all the other verses end in the story of God’s creation … “and God saw that it was good”.

God has made more animals and plants than we will ever see and I’m fairly sure that he has made lots more things than we will ever know about. God has made exotic animals, birds and plants that disappeared long before human beings were ever born. God has made all these things because that is what God does and that is what God loves. God loved the dinosaurs when he made them and I believe that God still loves dinosaurs. Just because the dinosaurs are no more, does not mean that God has stopped loving them. They are part of God’s creation and earthly death has no bearing on God’s eternal capacity to love and to hold his creation close to his heart.

Even if we ignore all the plants and creatures that have disappeared unseen by us, we can still marvel at God’s extravagance all that we can see. Why do we need so many different plants and animals? Who knows? Well, the answer to that, I guess, is that God knows and we must presume that God loves variety.

One final thought to end with and once again it concerns life and death. I suggested that God loves dinosaurs and I want to emphasise that I said that God loves not that God loved. God loves all that he has made and he continues to love all that he has made. God does not cease loving when one of his creatures no longer has life on earth. The implications of this are huge for us as human beings. We speak about knowing us and loving us, and that is all well and good for the here and now, but I believe that if God truly loves his creation and all of his creation then he continues to know us and love us long after we are gone from this place and into eternity. God has always loved us and will continue always to love us.

God loves the dinosaurs, even though they are long gone from this world. And he also loves my Dad, your Mum and Dad, your husband or wife, your son or daughter and he will continue to love you, long after you’ve gone, because God is the God of creation and he holds all that he has made in his hands and close to heart.

If Judas had lived ...

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Matthew 27: 5 records that Judas, ‘went away and hanged himself’ having become full of remorse at seeing the result of his actions. The remaining eleven disciples elected a replacement for Judas by taking a vote amongst themselves. And so Matthias was chosen. But what if Judas had lived? What if his remorse led to his begging forgiveness of his brothers – and sisters? What if the eleven and their more loyal female companions decided that Judas had simply acted on the doubts about Jesus that they all shared?

These ‘what if …’ scenarios are interesting, but, ultimately, they tend to be not just hypothetical, but also speculative. However, ‘what if’ a real-life Judas was able to share his thoughts?

In 1966 Mao Zedong launched a Cultural Revolution in China. His perception was that Communism needed to be enforced and that the way to do this was to remove any vestiges of China’s historical and cultural heritage. There were echoes of earlier movements in the USSR and Nazi Germany as family members were encouraged to give up other members of the family who were not ‘on message’. Persecution was wide-spread and it was stated in court in the trial of the Gang of Four that 729,511 people had been persecuted, of whom 34,800 were said to have died. These are certainly conservative estimates as it is estimated that between 1966 and 1969 half a million people were killed.

One of those who died was Fang Zhongmou. She was 44 when she was beaten and arrested. She was forced to kneel in front of a crowd while her ‘crimes’ were denounced before she was taken outside of town and shot.

The similarity between Fang’s story and that of Jesus is uncanny – including the execution outside the town. One difference is that Jesus was betrayed by a friend. Fang Zhongmou was betrayed by her 16-year-old son.

Now aged 60, Zhang Hongbing is seeking to atone for what he did by telling his mother’s story. Fang was cleared of her crime – tearing down a poster and accusing Chairman Mao of encouraging a personality cult around himself – in 1980 and a headstone was erected where she had been buried.

WWJD? What would Judas do? Would he tell the story of Jesus? Would he, like Paul, have become a changed man and an advocate for faith in the Risen Messiah? Would Judas have been challenged as, on the lakeside, Peter was challenged by Jesus? Of course, we cannot know, but I’m sure he would have been – and is – forgiven, because that’s what Jesus does.