Am I alone in thinking every time I see one of those photographs of the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet sitting around that big meeting table at Downing Street and let’s face it that photographer has been pretty busy recently with all the ministerial changes – what a bunch of misfits?! A lot of my friends and former work colleagues tell me after a long management career, I should enjoy watching the TV series “the Apprentice” which I generally avoid. I wonder why? A bunch of seeming misfits with huge egos sent out by Lord Sugar into the community to deliver a business venture or task and come back with a profit or not. My ignorance of the fundamentals of the programme may illustrate that I really do not watch it but if I have got even the barest outline of the Apprentice then where might I find an early template for the Apprentice albeit with the profit motive replaced with a missionary one? Well here it is from 2000 years ago in Matthew 9 and 10. If you were choosing a team of missionaries would you really have picked fishermen, tax collectors, political activists? Would they be the perfect fit? When I went to Uganda earlier this year, I travelled on the same plane as a vicar I know from Stamford who was leading a mission to Rwanda. As we arrived at the gate waiting to board our flight there was Canon Martyn doing short first-time interviews with members of the team who in a few hours, he would send out as a mission team. Now I am not suggesting these people were misfits – I am sure they came with many skills and qualities but in the limited time they had in Rwanda how could they best be used for Jesus in the harvest? It actually was harvest time in Rwanda but this was a different harvest – a harvest of souls. Meanwhile I was waiting to board wondering what God would call me to do during my visit - well the answers are found in my presentation on our Church Near You website details on your pew sheets if you have not yet seen it. Might it have been better if that Rwanda team had x skill or y qualities? Might it have helped if I was better equipped for whatever I would be doing or if I too had a team? Probably but God uses us. We may feel like misfits but God uses us and works with the skills we have and the gifts God gives us. How often do I hear across our 6 churches that there is so few of us and we are struggling to cope or wish more people would come forward? That same prayer was going up in 1st century Galilee because Jesus commanded people (chapter 9 v.38) “So pray the Master of the Heaven to send more workers to harvest his fields.” I suppose we need therefore to ask the question – are we grumbling or are we praying? One commentator I read observed of this passage that the writer of Matthew could have just recorded this incident in a few words or even ignored it completely but chose to set out the detail of what the disciples were to do when sent out, which places to visit and not to visit, what to take or not take, what research to do, how to approach and how long to stay. The reason that commentator gives for such detail is because it is good practice for all of us for all time and I think that is right. I remember attending Canon Martyn’s church some years ago and hearing a young student who had gone from their university with another person they hardly knew. All they took was their passport and were given a return flight ticket. They were flown to Romania I think and taken to a university in a remote city. There were no Christians there. They had no money and spoke no Romanian. Somehow, they found someone with some English who knew someone who would put them up on their college floor, fed them and found a venue for a mission and several people became Christians. So, it happened 2000 years ago it has happened in the 2000s and can still happen even in small rural churches. What led those students to the right people and what leads us when we despair at how few people there are? It was prayer and it is prayer accompanied by obedience and being willing to serve. That is why all that detail is there and that is why there can be a solution. Of course if we would rather do it all in our own strength well just look around at how many closed churches there are and then pray to the Master of Heaven. We may feel we are misfits. The world may look at us and confirm we are misfits but God uses us just as we are and shows the way. What a privilege it can be to be a misfit!! Amen
Matthew 28:16-end – Is God a hybrid?I am indebted to Revd Dr Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Anne’s Kew for introducing me to the nurseryman Mr Thomas Fairchild of Hoxton in East London. Fairchild who lived from 1676 to 1729 and is believed to be the first person in 1717 to create a hybrid of two different plants, recorded as the Carnation and the Sweet William to form a new plant called the Fairchild’s Mule. Now a mule was a sterile plant so once it has gone unless you manage to get cuttings, it is finished. Thomas Fairchild had the foresight to take some cuttings, dry them and two remain with the Royal Society today which had been formed a little over 50 years before Mr Fairchild donated them so botanists can closely examine what this first ever man-made hybrid plant was like.But Mr Thomas Fairhild was not at all happy with what he had done because he was a devout Christian and believed that the world had been created divinely by God and feared, and indeed some critics told him as much that any attempt to tamper with God’s creation amounted to blasphemy. So perturbed was Mr Fairchild that he left a bequest to his local church, St Leonard’s in Hackney for a sermon to be delivered every year warning against tampering with God’s creation by playing God and creating new forms of life. A sense of that crops up again in 19th century novels like Frankenstein. The sermon is always delivered in the week leading up to Trinity Sunday and this year that honour fell to Revd Canon Dr Giles Fraser.In around 2011 a botanist tried to recreate Fairchild’s Mule and suspected the carnation Fairchild used might have been a Pink rather than a carnation and produced these magenta looking flowers which closely resembled the Fairchild’s Mule specimens at the Royal Society. They were indeed sterile and attempts to take cuttings of this prolific little plant failed and eventually it flowered itself to death. This picture of these replica Fairchild’s Mules is therefore all we have. Perhaps Thomas Fairchild was right to be fearful and leave the bequest he did!!Today hybrids of plants and animals of two or three or more types are common and use of hybrids is constant to get the best strain or crop or variety. So, is the Godhead also a hybrid and was Fairchild playing at God’s game? To which my answer is emphatically no. For that to be the case someone would have to have made God and the three constituent parts of the single godhead and no one ever did. Last year we celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea where the Nicene creed was drafted and approved affirming the Holy Trinity. In it the writers wrote that we believe in “Jesus Christ the only Son of God begotten of the Father before all ages.” We know that the Holy Spirit was brooding on the face of the waters at creation. All three persons of the Godhead are eternally begotten. No one created God. We believe in one God who was and is and is to come who as well as being one is God in three persons. And we are commissioned by Jesus in the penultimate verse of the last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Note the word “name” is used just once and in the singular. We baptise into the name of one God Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we do so because we are making disciples across all nations: disciples of the living God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Yesterday as a JPCC we were looking at and reviewing the Mission Action Plan for our 6 churches so that we have a plan for how we deliver that great commission. By next Sunday lunchtime we will have had 4 baptisms in our Stodden churches compared to just one baptism in 2025 and we know there are more baptisms to come in the second half of this year and maybe by refocussing our mission action plan there may be even more. This is our job; it is what we are here for. We have also had 4 confirmations in the last 6 months – the first confirmations across our churches in over a decade but only two of our fonts have been put to baptismal use since I came and our confirmands have come from just 3 of our churches. So, there is lots of scope for our 6 churches going forward. Yes the Great Commission does challenge us to go out to all nations but let us at least go out to Pertenhall, Swineshead, Dean, Shelton, Melchbourne and Yelden getting people ready to be baptised – why not join us at Melchbourne for afternoon tea this afternoon and make a start so we can be baptising in all these places in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as Jesus commissioned us to do. Amen
Luke 10:25-37 Whenever I read this most famous of parables – the Good Samaritan my mind is drawn back to the journey to Entebbe Airport, the main international airport in Uganda which is situated on a peninsular into Lake Victoria about 45 minutes out of Kampala. It sounds like a lovely setting and in a way it is but most flights back to London leave at night or in the early hours of the morning and the only reason any vehicle driving that road at that time would be to get to the airport to fly out of Uganda and the probability someone white and wealthy might be in that vehicle is more than sufficient to tempt bandits to hold up your vehicle and take what they can. So, the safer option is to book into an airport hotel the night before and book a driver to drop you safely off at the airport ready for your flight. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was just as dangerous, situated in a gulley with steep hills rising on either side offering opportunities for bandits to hide and leap out and attack anyone who looked good for the money seemed like open season for the bandits and that his the fate the befell the man in this parable told by Jesus in response to the question the lawyer asks Jesus “who is my neighbour” when the law says love your neighbour as yourself. It is also the question Lord Atkin had to consider in probably the most famous English court case from 1932 when Miss Donoghue drank an opaque bottle of ginger beer that had been bought for her and in which was a decomposing snail. Mr Stevenson was the provider of these bottles of ginger beer. He didn’t know Miss Donoghue and had no contractual with her since Miss Donoghue did not buy or pay for that bottle of beer. So, the Judge had to ask himself “Who, then, in law is my neighbour?” and his answer was persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected.” And yes, this is word for word what Lord Atkin said and so a link was created between Miss Donoghue and Mr Stevenson that made the producer liable because Miss Donoghue was his neighbour. Jesus answers this question in a slightly different way by recounting the reaction of the 3 different characters to the plight of this injured and now penniless man. No one knew this man but all saw his condition but only the third passer-by offered any assistance to this unfortunate man and I think it is fair to say, he went the extra mile; taking him to a nearby inn and pays for all his care and returns on his way back up to Jerusalem to settle any outstanding debts. Now, I should say something about the comparison between Jews and Samarians. ~Both believe in the same God but Samaritans only relied on the first 5 books of the Bible as the word of God and so like the Jewish Sadducees did not believe in life after death. Samaritans also believed that Holy of Holies was on Mount Gerazim, not Jerusalem. But because of these differences Jews hated Samaritans and vice versa. The very suggestion of a good Samaritan to a loyal Jew like this lawyer was hard to take and so when Jesus asks the lawyer which of the 3 people who encountered this man turned out to be his neighbour, he cannot quite bring himself to say the Samaritan but rather “the one who showed mercy to the injured man” was his reply and Jesus tells this lawyer to go and do what a Samaritan had done in that parable, to identify with him and that would be a hard pill to swallow for the lawyer. For us it carries none of the same impact but the practice of identifying with Biblical characters is a good spiritual discipline going back to Ignatius of Loyola and beyond. Are their equivalent people to a Samaritan in our own society that we can substitute? Or do we identify with someone else? In reading up for this I discovered that a survey had been done in America and Africa – sadly they did not say where in either continent on who you identify with. Americans tended to go for the 3 passers-by - the Samaritan, pries and Scribe. I was not surprised from conversations I have had about this passage that most Africans asked, identified with the injured man. How you read a Biblical passage like this can and should affect how you should act and respond. Mr Stevenson in that court case tried to argue that he had no responsibility for Miss Donoghue after she drank that ginger beer. She did not purchase it from him and he did not even know her and yet the Court held they were neighbours. He produced it, she drank it. Jesus says whoever you encounter or become aware of is your neighbour who you should love as you love yourself. Why? because it forms part of the law of God in the summary of the commandments but equally because it reflects the world wide reaching extent of the grace of God that should be reflected in the lives we lead however challenging that might sometimes be for us. Amen
Do not Rejoice that the spirits submit to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven Luke 10:20 I can recall occasions when I have spoken at Christian meetings and at the end there was an invite for people to come and give their lives to Jesus and to my surprise, people came and did I count them? You bet I did! And I am sure there was rejoicing in heaven over one – well quite a lot more than one sinner who repented – but there was a fair amount of rejoicing down here on earth too, not least from the preacher! And maybe that is not too awful, is it? It has all happened through and in the name of Jesus after all. In a sense that is no different from those 72 disciples who were sent out by Jesus with authority from Jesus to drive out demons in his name – and they did and the demons fled and when the 72 disciples returned (some versions say 70 – it really does not matter) they were all pretty chipper. All those demons they had removed. Not only that but they were able to tread on serpents and scorpions and no harm would come to them, I wonder how many of the 72 actually tried that?! Well, Jesus was not that surprised, I am sure when they returned. He knew it would happen and had happened. This was why Jesus came to earth, as it says in the first letter of John “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the evil one” (1 John 3:8) and Jesus had given authority to these disciples to fulfil that purpose on that mission. And Jesus is not disappointed or complaining that the 72 are celebrating what has been accomplished with the people they met while out on the mission field but Jesus says don’t rejoice in how many demons you forced to submit any more than we should keep a tally of how many people we have led to Christ. Why? Because, actually they did nothing, we did nothing – Christ did it all through us. Instead, Jesus says you should rejoice that your names are written in the book of life. That is the big deal – not the number of suppliant demons but where your name is recorded. It is quite fascinating looking through some of the old church registers and seeing all the names. The first name in one of the registers in Manton where we live in Rutland, is Shillaker from 1837 and there are still Shillaker family members living nearby today. Indians who search their family history travel back to the town or village connected with their name and in that place, there will be keepers of the family records going back centuries, often much further than we can often trace back in the UK, written on cloth and people from that family come from all over the world to update these cloth scrolls with their family members. But for those of who believe in God we rejoice that our names are written in the book of life and reference to this book come up time and again in the Bible. It is not a family history but a record of those chosen by God. Moses prayed to God for the people he led out of Egypt, praying that God would forgive their sin and if not, then Moses asks that he be blotted out of the book God has written (Exodus 32). The Psalmist writes of the “book of the living” (Psalm 69) and the prophet Daniel prophecies that everyone whose name is written in the book of life will be saved (Daniel 12) and Paul in his letter to the Philippians mentions several people whose names are written in the book of life and don’t start me on the Revelation of John, the last book in the Bible – there are just so many references to this book there. This is where our great joy is to be found. In Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” This is not something that you did. This is something God did. “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”–is the name that would be written on that plaque nailed to the cross on which Jesus died, so that your name and my name would, if we believe, be written in heaven, in the Lamb’s book of life. God wrote your name to his book of life when you were converted baptized into Christ. The triune God placed his name upon you and a place has been reserved for you, not because of what you do, which does not mean you should do nothing for God any more than those 72 disciples did great things is Jesus’ name and so should we as his disciples but what you do is done in God’s strength whereas your name can be in that book of life only by God’s grace and that is something worth rejoicing about. Amen
