It's been a month that has passed in a blur: finishing off tricky chores that need to be processed before the summer break. And now I am extremely ready for that break, especially after this afternoon, when I spent 30 minutes of near panic, convinced that I had lost my cash card, till Catherine (may she be blessed eternally) suggested gently that I look through my wallet once again, with the result that I discovered my card in a slightly different pocket from its usual one.
So that was enough of a Sign for me that I decided to let the rest of the day go. We had a birthday meal for James, and drank quite a lot of wine, and then watched The Big Bang Theory (Catherine thinks this is a documentary about living with nerds). And I felt I was myself again. All we lacked was the company of Edward and Michelle ...
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Nehemiah and today
The last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur. First there was an intensive week teaching a graduate course in Bristol - deeply fulfilling, because most of this year's cohort of first year UK Statistics PhDs were attending, but draining, because I started the week tired. Then a research workshop at Warwick, combined with all sorts of crazy admin stuff.
So no blog last weekend. Sorry!
This weekend we finished off the sermon series on Nehemiah, with the lovely story of chapter 8 (the people, weeping because they felt so inadequate; the teachers, telling them not to weep on such a celebration day but to have a party because "the joy of the Lord is your strength" - and to send food to those who had none). This series has worked so well, both intellectually and on an emotional level too. Why? I think, because it is a story, and people work well with stories. Because it is a story about a struggle, and that's where we are. Because it tells us that when we join together with God we can accomplish so much more than we ever felt to be possible before, and we sense this is a thought we are going to need to keep clear in our minds over the next months and years ...
So no blog last weekend. Sorry!
This weekend we finished off the sermon series on Nehemiah, with the lovely story of chapter 8 (the people, weeping because they felt so inadequate; the teachers, telling them not to weep on such a celebration day but to have a party because "the joy of the Lord is your strength" - and to send food to those who had none). This series has worked so well, both intellectually and on an emotional level too. Why? I think, because it is a story, and people work well with stories. Because it is a story about a struggle, and that's where we are. Because it tells us that when we join together with God we can accomplish so much more than we ever felt to be possible before, and we sense this is a thought we are going to need to keep clear in our minds over the next months and years ...
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Quickly after Singapore
So here is how the talk ended up - the one I mentioned in the last post. The single point is highlighted in bold red - you won't be able to miss it!
And as the wall rose so the danger increased. I imagine a risk assessment being carried out: yes, building while carrying sharp swords was a very bad idea, but it would be an even higher risk to be separated from one's weapon when one might need protection at a moment's warning. So one carried the heavy stones, while one's sheathed sword would trap itself awkwardly between one's shins, working, working, working, from as soon as the dawn gave enough light to work, right through till it got so dark that one could see the stars. And then one would snatch a bite to eat and straight away be told which hours of the night one was to serve on guard duty, and which hours one would sleep on hard ground, with only the burned stones of the old wall for one's pillow.
Read verses 4 and 5 with this in mind. These builders are tired and afraid, and they are being ground down by the abuse and ridicule showered upon them by their enemies, and they ask their God to give the enemies a dose of their own medicine. It's not polite, and it's not very Anglican, but it's who these people are, in the tension and the fear and the stress of those times. Someone once said, the most dangerous animal on earth is not the tiger, not the wolf, not the shark, but man. It is passages like this in the Bible that make us face up to the danger and the aggression and the violence that lie concealed within each one of us.
But there is another rôle model to notice here. Look at Nehemiah, ceaselessly working to encourage and protect and organize his people. We've heard before in this series, “No vision without implementation”. Nehemiah has had the vision, and now we see him performing the implementation. There is prayer, but also practical planning (verse 9). There is careful and astute response to danger (verses 13-14). Nehemiah never fights a battle; he just makes sure that no battle ever happens. There's a price to pay; look at the sweat and exhaustion expressed in verse 23. There is real and vivid leadership: look at verses 19-20, which form the key part of the passage for me today. Every one has to work widely separated from each other – that's the nature of the task – and yet be ready to join together the moment a crisis arises. So Nehemiah tells them all, to pay attention to the trumpet, to be ready to react instantly, to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice, because where there is danger there they will find Nehemiah, calling for them to come and fight at his side with the Lord God's help.
This trumpet call is not just about pastoral care, either. We need to pay attention to money matters. We'll be needing to be careful with the church finances, because God invented arithmetic and He expects us to honour His wonderful gift of 1+1=2. We will need to review our own giving, because HTC has to balance its books and pay the right rate for what it needs. Let's be careful with our own finances too: the Lord gives us money to spend wisely and well. But also let's not forget to pay attention to opportunities to exercise the kind of outrageous generosity that Jesus Christ modelled for us; why not pick something that appeals to you – Youth for Christ, Three Spires Tots, or HTC Organ Fund, or whatever – and see if you can make it your considered prayer over the next month to pay attention and find out if it is at all possible to contribute something extra to one of those. We discussed something like this at PCC last Monday; we know money is going to be tight this year, and it's going to be tight for everyone, but might it be that the Lord is saying to us, “Look, in world terms you are a rich church, and I have blessed you with all sorts of good things, so pay attention and see whether you can use a portion of my blessing to bless others?”. Talk to me, or to another PCC member, if that rings a bell with you; we need to know, is this what the Lord is saying to us?
Nor should we confine this trumpet call only to pastoral care and to money. The way we treat each other matters – as we will see next week in the next section of Nehemiah. People tell me I am not always as good as I should be at considering what effect I have on others; what I think of as endearing honesty and bluff directness can come across as tactless and crass insensitivity. And at times I focus so hard on achieving a goal that I forget to thank others for help, or to respond politely and accurately to invitations. I need to pay attention.
The New Testament word for all this paying attention is discipleship: learning the discipline of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:30). It isn't always easy being a disciple, because the Lord calls us to stretch beyond ourselves and become the amazing people that the Father created us to be. How does that call come to you right now, right at this instant? Maybe it's a call to pay attention to the example of Nehemiah and develop your praying into careful, detailed planning and practical action. On the other hand, maybe it's a call to pay attention to Nehemiah in a different fashion, and figure out practical ways to submit your detailed planning to the Lord in prayer. Our God came to be with us by taking the form of a baby boy, whose swaddling clothes needed changing every time he did a poo; our God knows about details and care about details and paying loving attention. There's as many different ways to develop discipleship as there are different kinds of people to be disciples, so at the end of this talk maybe the call for you is, pay attention, bring this to our loving Lord in prayer, decide in what way might it be most profitable for you to pay attention in the next week …
HTC 0930, 4th July 2010
Nehemiah 4:1-23
Loving Father, when we come to your Word it is tempting to treat it like a mirror, in which everything is a reflection of ourselves. As we consider the book of Nehemiah today, give us the grace to allow it to be a window, through which we look into lives quite different from ourselves, equally loved by You, whose different experiences have much to teach us; and give us the grace to allow Your Word indeed to become a loving but truthful teacher, to show us how best to move onwards in our journey home to You. Amen.
Introduction
I find this passage stirs up all sorts of memories in me, both old and new.
First memory. Thirty-eight years ago I had just left school, and was going to college in the autumn, and needed something to do in between. I decided to take the opportunity to spend four weeks at the Wycliffe Bible Centre in the Chilterns, helping to build new buildings on their construction site there. Frankly I was completely unskilled labour, and it was good of them to take me on, and it was very useful for a bookish studious lad to spend four weeks bashing holes in the ground with a pickaxe. I'd never known that digging holes was such hard work!
Towards the end, they kindly gave me the chance to be more creative, under careful supervision. With help, I built a wall! Not on the scale that we hear of in our passage, just four feet of wall, three feet high, slap in the centre of a field, just right for barbeques. It may be there still today; we dug good foundations and we tried hard to line up the bricks in proper order. Or maybe it was removed in favour of bigger and better walls; I know my place, I'm not proud, I'm no master bricklayer.
Second memory. Four or so years ago, our old pipe organ here at HTC finally fell into complete disrepair. Our musicians had been coaxing it along for years, but it had come to the end of all organs. We started an organ fund – if you're up for a stimulating challenge and fancy a spot of major fundraising then do let me know – and sadly, reluctantly, the old instrument had to go.
Now organ removal of any kind is an expensive business. Fortunately, amongst us there were some people who understood what had to be done, and they told us that with proper supervision and with very careful planning we could do the job ourselves, and save thousands on thousands of pounds. Well I'd never attempt such a project all on my own, but I trusted the people who told us we could do it. We obtained the necessary permissions from the diocese, and our builder experts put their heads together with our health-and-safety experts, and they devised a very careful and very detailed plan, and called for volunteers.
So I volunteered what time I could. I'd never taken down a pipe-organ before. Strictly speaking, I don't think I could claim to have done so now; my rôle in the process was confined to making cups of tea, and (under careful supervision) carting away the rubble. My wife on the other hand gained great fame for the passion with which she used a sledgehammer, but that's for her to tell.
Third memory. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had to make a crazy four-day trip out to Singapore. Long story, but it was the 70th birthday of a dear friend and work associate, and they had organized a special conference out there, and they said they'd pay my airfare at the cheapest rate for which I actually got a seat inside the aircraft, and I simply had to go.
It's twelve-and-a-half hours to Singapore; 750 minutes, or 45000 seconds. Every moment of which I was sitting next to someone with extremely sharp and prolonged elbows. On the flight back the person with the elbows must have been sitting next to someone else, because this time my neighbour had a head-cold and sniffed loudly and enjoyably on average every two minutes. That's 375 sniffs. And, by the time each flight ended, I felt tired and my eyes were bloodshot and every time I moved I was painfully aware that I smelt as if I had not had a shower for two days.
Building the wall
I'm sure you can spot the points at which the passage brought back these memories to me. There's the ruined wall of Jerusalem, not four feet long, but winding round a whole city. Vast amounts of work required: rubble having to be removed; old stones of the wall needing assessment to see if they were so badly burned as to be useless; steady, inexorable labour of building and lifting and digging and taking away. Added to which; major practical constraints. In those days a city wall was a vital element of a community's security: Proverbs 25:281. You didn't build the first 100 yards completely and then move on to the next bit, because a wall with holes is no use at all. You had to build everything at the same time, first 1 foot high so at least it might be a minor trip hazard to any attackers; then 3 feet high, then half-height so it would give some degree of protection against sharp pointy things, and so forth. So you built in a hurry, because as soon as you started building then the neighbourhood gangs would start getting ideas about coming in and knocking it all down before it got too tall. Added to which, as if it wasn't already difficult enough, there was the known hostility and aggression of local politicians, who kept dropping hints to the local security forces about the possibilities of fast promotion for anyone who just happened to generate an unfortunately fatal friendly-sword incident down at this new Jerusalem project. So the work would have had to be interrupted from time to time, as people stood together, family by family, armed and ready, showing they were not to be pushed around, nervous in the hot midday sun, eyes flicking round at every quick movement, stomachs turning acid-sour with the tension and anticipation.And as the wall rose so the danger increased. I imagine a risk assessment being carried out: yes, building while carrying sharp swords was a very bad idea, but it would be an even higher risk to be separated from one's weapon when one might need protection at a moment's warning. So one carried the heavy stones, while one's sheathed sword would trap itself awkwardly between one's shins, working, working, working, from as soon as the dawn gave enough light to work, right through till it got so dark that one could see the stars. And then one would snatch a bite to eat and straight away be told which hours of the night one was to serve on guard duty, and which hours one would sleep on hard ground, with only the burned stones of the old wall for one's pillow.
Read verses 4 and 5 with this in mind. These builders are tired and afraid, and they are being ground down by the abuse and ridicule showered upon them by their enemies, and they ask their God to give the enemies a dose of their own medicine. It's not polite, and it's not very Anglican, but it's who these people are, in the tension and the fear and the stress of those times. Someone once said, the most dangerous animal on earth is not the tiger, not the wolf, not the shark, but man. It is passages like this in the Bible that make us face up to the danger and the aggression and the violence that lie concealed within each one of us.
But there is another rôle model to notice here. Look at Nehemiah, ceaselessly working to encourage and protect and organize his people. We've heard before in this series, “No vision without implementation”. Nehemiah has had the vision, and now we see him performing the implementation. There is prayer, but also practical planning (verse 9). There is careful and astute response to danger (verses 13-14). Nehemiah never fights a battle; he just makes sure that no battle ever happens. There's a price to pay; look at the sweat and exhaustion expressed in verse 23. There is real and vivid leadership: look at verses 19-20, which form the key part of the passage for me today. Every one has to work widely separated from each other – that's the nature of the task – and yet be ready to join together the moment a crisis arises. So Nehemiah tells them all, to pay attention to the trumpet, to be ready to react instantly, to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice, because where there is danger there they will find Nehemiah, calling for them to come and fight at his side with the Lord God's help.
They have to pay attention, even as they labour under the hot sun, moving the rubble, lifting the stones into place, tripping awkwardly over their swords. They have to pay attention, even at night when they snatch sleep on the bare and bumpy ground, or as they struggle to keep their eyes open, standing on watch through the night to protect their brothers and sisters, parents, children.
Building today: paying attention
And what of us? Last week in Singapore, sleepless in the middle of the night because it wasn't really the middle of the night as far as my body was concerned, I started wondering about this passage and its relevance to us today. The thought of Nehemiah and the trumpet came flashing into my head; I believe the message of this passage for us today is, to pay attention! We face some challenging years as our community works its way through the present financial crisis; pay attention! Look out for each other, don't just focus exclusively on the work on your own part of the wall. Develop situational awareness of what is going on in the Lord's work next door, in the other church service, in the cathedral across the road, in the wider church in Coventry, the UK, the world. Listen out for the alarm calls; in Nehemiah 4:20 they used trumpets, but these days the grapevine will tell you of friends in trouble quickly enough if you pay attention. I notice that our young mothers do excellent work in looking out for each other when the hard work of parenthood gets too much, making sure there are opportunities to come round and have a stress-relieving chat or a cup of coffee; let's the rest of us use this as a rôle model, and be ready to look out for each other when the strain begins to tell. And we've got to be realistic; no one of us can do very much of this paying of attention; each of you is not being called to bear all the troubles of the community entirely on your own; but you won't have to if all of us all together pay attention to each other.This trumpet call is not just about pastoral care, either. We need to pay attention to money matters. We'll be needing to be careful with the church finances, because God invented arithmetic and He expects us to honour His wonderful gift of 1+1=2. We will need to review our own giving, because HTC has to balance its books and pay the right rate for what it needs. Let's be careful with our own finances too: the Lord gives us money to spend wisely and well. But also let's not forget to pay attention to opportunities to exercise the kind of outrageous generosity that Jesus Christ modelled for us; why not pick something that appeals to you – Youth for Christ, Three Spires Tots, or HTC Organ Fund, or whatever – and see if you can make it your considered prayer over the next month to pay attention and find out if it is at all possible to contribute something extra to one of those. We discussed something like this at PCC last Monday; we know money is going to be tight this year, and it's going to be tight for everyone, but might it be that the Lord is saying to us, “Look, in world terms you are a rich church, and I have blessed you with all sorts of good things, so pay attention and see whether you can use a portion of my blessing to bless others?”. Talk to me, or to another PCC member, if that rings a bell with you; we need to know, is this what the Lord is saying to us?
Nor should we confine this trumpet call only to pastoral care and to money. The way we treat each other matters – as we will see next week in the next section of Nehemiah. People tell me I am not always as good as I should be at considering what effect I have on others; what I think of as endearing honesty and bluff directness can come across as tactless and crass insensitivity. And at times I focus so hard on achieving a goal that I forget to thank others for help, or to respond politely and accurately to invitations. I need to pay attention.
The New Testament word for all this paying attention is discipleship: learning the discipline of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:30). It isn't always easy being a disciple, because the Lord calls us to stretch beyond ourselves and become the amazing people that the Father created us to be. How does that call come to you right now, right at this instant? Maybe it's a call to pay attention to the example of Nehemiah and develop your praying into careful, detailed planning and practical action. On the other hand, maybe it's a call to pay attention to Nehemiah in a different fashion, and figure out practical ways to submit your detailed planning to the Lord in prayer. Our God came to be with us by taking the form of a baby boy, whose swaddling clothes needed changing every time he did a poo; our God knows about details and care about details and paying loving attention. There's as many different ways to develop discipleship as there are different kinds of people to be disciples, so at the end of this talk maybe the call for you is, pay attention, bring this to our loving Lord in prayer, decide in what way might it be most profitable for you to pay attention in the next week …
Amen
1“An open town, and without defences; // such is anyone who lacks self-control.”
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