Tag Archives: Psalm 16

Faith – By Sight? By Touch?

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The Eagle Lectern at St James’ Church, West End

A recording made of an informal talk for a Service of the Word for St James’ Church, West End during the present Coronavirus Pandemic whilst our church door are locked. A transcript of the talk is printed below as well.

based on the following readings:

Psalm 16 – The Golden Secret, A precious song engraved in gold by King David
from The Psalms – Poetry on Fire (Passion Translation) © tPt

1 Keep me safe, O mighty God
I run for dear life to you, my Safe Place.

2 So I said to the Lord God,
‘You are my Maker, my Mediator, and my Master.
Any good thing you find in me has come from you’

3 And he said to me, ‘My holy ones are wonderful,
my majestic ones, my glorious ones,
fulfilling all my desires’

4 Yet, there are those who yield to their weakness,
and they will have troubles and sorrows unending.
I never gather with such ones,
nor give them honour in any way.

5 Lord, I have chosen you alone as my inheritance,
You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion.
I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands’

6 Your pleasant path leads me to pleasant places,
I’m overwhelmed by the privileges
that come with following you,
for you have given me the best!

7 The way you counsel and correct me makes me praise you more,
for your whispers in the night give me wisdom,
showing me what to do next.

8 Because you are close to me and always available,
my confidence will never be shaken,
for I experience your wrap around presence every moment.

9 My heart and soul explode with joy – full of glory!
Even my body will rest confident and secure.

10 For you will not abandon me to the realm of death
nor will you allow your Holy One to experience corruption.

11 For you bring me a continual revelation of resurrection life,
the path to the bliss that bring me face-to-face with you.

and Acts 2:14a, 22-32 and John 20:19-31  

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Can we simply believe what we see? I would say yes, most of the time. Even so, sight can deceive the brain because after all isn’t that what we call magic? We only have to think of magicians who have claimed to have made whole buildings disappear, such as David Copperfield and the Statue of Liberty, and the people there as witnesses at the time would have sworn on their lives that it really did happen – they saw it with their own eyes.

No don’t get me wrong, there is no suggestion of magic taking place in any part of our gospel this morning, or indeed in any part of the Easter story, but sight and witnessing are at the heart of it – except there was one who despite all of this wasn’t convinced – he doubted.

A few weeks ago, I spoke about worrying and how it wasn’t helpful, in that it can produce fear; may be a bit like the fear some of us might be feeling at the moment because of the necessary self-isolation and social distancing; and what fear does to your mind is that it leaves you doubting, it paralyses your thoughts. This sort of doubt is definitely not helpful. It’s the thing that stops us from doing the things that God is calling us to do. As the psalmist said, ‘You are my Maker, my Mediator, and my Master. Any good thing you find in me has come from you’

‘You are my Maker, my Mediator, and my Master.
Any good thing you find in me has come from you’
Psalm 16:2

Doubt, therefore, can stop us realising our true potential when we think, ‘I doubt God would want to know someone like me’ – yet we forget that we are exactly as God created us to be in all our diverse and different personalities, blessed with a variety of gifts and talents

On the other hand, doubt can be a useful, self-check tools – giving us a moment to pause and to consider. Perhaps Thomas was right to say, ‘hold on a minute, I not only need to see this for myself, but I need to have physical evidence as well’, because surely the physical always trumps the visual? So, when Jesus appears a second time he offers this opportunity for Thomas to confirm his physical presence – that he was not just some holographic projection. Yet in both of his appearances it doesn’t record that any of them reached out and actually touched Jesus. On the contrary, Thomas immediately answered Jesus’ offer with a firm declaration, ‘My Lord and my God’.

This was pure faith, the same faith that enabled Peter to later step forward and point out to the crowd that King David was undoubtedly dead and it was his faith that led him to boldly and unflinchingly declare ‘we all are witnesses that Jesus rose from the dead’.

We all are witnesses that Jesus rose from the dead
Acts 2:32

Oh, that we would be so bold, the ones that have not seen and yet have come to believe. How though are we to convince people about the truth of the resurrection? If we go back to that first encounter that the disciples had with Jesus, we can actually see that his main concern is not to provide proof of this. The first thing he offers is reassurance that its really him and the disciples rejoice – but Jesus moves swiftly on – his purpose isn’t to linger on the miraculous fact that he’s risen from the dead, but rather to enable the disciples and us, through the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive and to be able to discern when it is called for. He is inviting them and us to extend the same Peace he spoke to them in that locked room, to begin to share that in faith with others, to start others on that journey of discovering the truth for themselves.

Yet how can we do this when our own faith journeys can often be full of ups and downs. There are times when our faith runs deep and there are times when doubt threatens to take over. The fact remains that we simply cannot force anyone else to believe – indeed we can not even force ourselves to believe. Faith comes only and always as a precious gift – but it is helped by being surrounded with others who carry and hold that gift of faith as lovingly as we do.

Whether our faith runs deep or shallow we can still live as one who believes, bearing witness in our words and actions to the truth that Jesus lives because God brings us ‘a continual revelation of resurrection life’. Sight may be fallible, the physical may be convincing, but as John declares in his purpose for writing these things down, it is the written word that is something tangible, to provoke thought and reflection, to come back to time and again, to give us better understanding through our experiences to show something in a new light.

Fear can be overcome; doubt can be set aside, and faith and belief are the keys to life in all its fullness through the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen

 

 

Changing Doubts Into Hope

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Baptism with water and the Holy Spirit

Baptised with water and the Holy Spirit

It’s not often that you start a talk in church with a piece of music. However last Sunday, the second of Easter (yes we are still celebrating Easter long after the chocolate eggs have been eaten and the hot-cross buns finally toasted) I decided to see if the congregation were up for a bit of ‘Name that Tune’ The piece in question was the theme tune from Star Wars, Episode 4, ‘A New Hope’

We were celebrating a Eucharist, made all the more special because it was to include a baptism. Our readings included the story of Thomas meeting the resurrected Jesus and it was, looking to the future we are being offered, that we hopefully were to discover that morning

First though I want to ask you a question… Is it just me?? Or do we all have moments of doubts? Doubts about whether we are capable of doing something – if we have the ability or the strength? Doubts about whether we can trust others to carry out the things they have promised to do. Doubts about what the right thing to do is? Doubts about what our purpose in life is? Doubts about where God is in our lives? Is it just me??

Everyone doubted that Noah could build an ark – and yet he went on to achieve this incredible feat of engineering; Sarah doubted that she would ever have children and even laughed in God’s face and yet she went on to be the co-founder of a great nation Moses doubted that he had the articulate skills to face up to Pharaoh, yet with the help of his brother Aaron he went on to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. Elijah doubted that God was with him when he fled in fear for his life to Mount Horeb and yet it was there that he encountered him in that ‘still, small, voice’ guiding him as to what to do; Peter doubted when he walked on the water and yet there he was at Pentecost speaking out boldly and clearly, and of course the eponymous Thomas

So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ John 20:25

So it certainly seems that God has no problem with us having doubts from time to time, after all we’re only human and we’re very often not in a position to see the bigger picture or what the future holds for each of us. What is it that we need to turn those doubts into belief I wonder? What proof will be good enough? For Thomas it was physical proof that the man he had been following and believed in had truly risen from the dead and was very much alive and standing in front of him. Maybe the only proof we’ll accept is when something we’ve doubted would happen has actually happened then we’ll believe it, or maybe if something didn’t happen when we feared it might. Good concrete evidence is often what we seek to allay our doubts and fears

Doubt often comes about because of a fear of failure; fear that we will let people down; fear that what we desire won’t come about. And maybe it won’t – not in the way we think or hope it will… and that I think is the key. The need to change our outlook from negative to positive, changing our doubts into hopes, putting our faith in God not in ourselves. All the while we hold on to our doubts then we are stopping ourselves from believing that things are possible.

Psalm 16 is sometimes translated with the subtitle ‘the hope of the faithful, a prayer of trust and security in God’ and it’s a beautiful lament from David which contains the following lines,

‘I praise you, Lord, for being my guide. Even in the darkest night, your teachings fill my mind. I will always look to you, as you stand beside me and protect me from fear. With all my heart, I will celebrate, and I can safely rest. I am your chosen one. You won’t leave me in the grave or let my body decay. You have shown me the path to life, and you make me glad by being near to me.’

Appropriate words as we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, but also appropriate for our own lives, as Peter in his first letter tells us, ‘By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ – a living, breathing hope that has been placed in all of us.

Font blog

The waters of baptism in the font at St John the Evangelist, Hedge End

And this morning we witnessed that hope being placed into a young child, Noah; whose baptism symbolised a new birth, not of water but of the Spirit. A hope that will be new and vibrant, a hope that will be reflected in the love and example that he receives from his parents, grandparents and godparents; a hope that Noah will need to have reaffirmed from time to time not only by his family, but by the whole family of Christ.

Because it’s all our responsibility to look to the hope that has already been placed in our own lives and to remain steadfast in trusting that God knows what he’s doing and all will be well.

Regrettably, as we’ve already seen, there may still be creeping moments of doubt. Again as Peter puts it, ‘even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.’ And let’s be honest, all of us have and may be having to face various trials, some more than others, some harder to bear than others. Maybe our faith has been tested to the limits, but, if through it all, we don’t lose hope and believe that we will be given the strength to endure it, then just like metal that when it is tempered by fire is made stronger, so our faith will emerge with genuine hope for whatever the future may bring; and just like Thomas we will be able to declare, ‘My Lord and my King’

Jesus tells his disciples, standing there right next to him, that they are blessed because they have seen for themselves with their own eyes and have no reason to doubt only to believe. How foolish we must seem to others to believe in something we’ve never seen, yet we have all come to or are coming to faith in so many different ways. What is it that convinces us that we should believe? Is it a personal encounter with Jesus; is it the love shown to us by those around us; is it an example of a friend, or was it that we just couldn’t believe that our lives are nothing more that this brief span of time. Whatever it was that started you on your journey of faith, be hopeful and hold on to it and remember how blessed you are.

The promises we make to the newly baptised, to support them in prayer, example and teaching we should also make to each other. We should push all of our doubts to one side as we are welcomed into the fellowship of faith and remember instead the one hope to which we are all called

Let’s celebrate that hope, and as always, may Christ’s peace rest in you…Amen

Expect the unexpected in our font!

Always expect the unexpected in our font!