Screwtape, Acts, and our Church rooted in eternity

Last night at our journey in Faith group I was talking about the early Church and how the Apostles started to build the Church we are part of today. During the discussion I was reminded of one of my favourite books, CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. In this wonderful little book CS Lewis reveals to us a collection of demonic letters from a devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, who is just starting his demonic career. In one of the letters Screwtape describes the church as seen from hell and he describes it like this:

“I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”

We seldom see and often miss the greatness of our Church. It's all to easy so see the sinful nature of ourselves and see that as our Church. But that picture is just wrong, we should see the great work passed on to us by the Apostles, the early Christian’s, the shepherds who have over every generation built our Church into God's saving victory, Christ's Body, an eternal and wonderful movement. We are part of that, we should be proud.

I have two recommendations for your spiritual reading over the next couple of weeks. Neither is that long and both are wonderful insightful books. The first is the book of Acts, you can read it cover to cover in a few hours, it's the 5th book in your Bibles New Testament and is written by Luke as a second volume to his Gospel. It tells the story of the church in it's first days, months and years. We know many of the stories from Acts from our Sunday liturgy, but you lose the big picture sometime if you don't read the book as it was written. Please, pick it up and read it, you will, I promise, be amazed by the story of faith and love found in those pages.

My second recommendation is the book that prompted this post, The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. It's great fun, but really insightful. It was really helpful to me in my early days as a Christian. It helps us understand the Theology played out on a personal and eternal scale.

I am sure you can find it at most bookshop and I have seen it at quite a few second hand book shops. You can also get it of course on Amazon in paper or Kindle format Link to The Screwtape Letters on Amazon.co.uk

Please, if you do take me up on these recommendation let me know how you get on.

Dad's Perfect Time

Dad’s Perfect Time

Lord, grant me the gift of patience,

The willingness to wait on you,

Understanding to know your purpose,

To say in the simplicity of faith,

Father, your will not mine be done,

Thank you for your perfect timing,

The joy that comes with obedience,

The blessings you so freely give,

As every situation works for good,

Drawing us nearer to our God.

Patrick R
November 2010

Candlelight

Candlelight

St Stephen’s Church, Bristol

Christmas Eve 2011.

In the soft gently flickering candle flame,

The solemnity of life’s passing hour,

Is reflected all our hopes and memories.

The tender love that has been our delight,

And remains constant to this day,

Brings healing to our tears and fears!

The dreams that one day will soar high,

Not answered perhaps as we would,

Yet fulfilled for us as best Dad wills!

So as we in silence pause and wonder,

Hearts sing hymns of praise and glory,

In the candlelight to God our Father!

Patrick R
December 2011

When God Created Me by Patrick Rigg

I have a friend, Patrick Rigg, who I meet regularly on the Soup Run. Patrick lives and works on the streets and in the shelters in Bristol and he is a Poet and a Christian. Patrick has been our guest at St. Augustine's before and has spoken to us at the Soup Run general meetings about his life and the good the the soup run does.

Recently Patrick has started to share some of his poetry with me, and with his permission I am going to post some of it hear.

When God Created Me

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4 verse 13.

When God created me,

He made someone unique,

He did not see a colour,

To Him I’m not black or white,

I’m just His child.

When God created me,

He made me very special,

He called me by name,

To Him I’m not male or female,

I’m just who I am.

When God created me,

He gave me many talents,

Gifts that are only mine,

The power to make my mark,

Just as I am today.

When God redeemed me,

He alone took away my stain,

Loosed from all prejudice,

Freed me to serve Him joyfully,

Enjoy the success He gives.

So today I claim victory,

Regardless of colour or gender,

All the hate that divides,

Proclaiming in certain knowledge,

I can: I will ‘cos I am.

No one will dispute my worth,

For it’s here I will make my mark,

As God’s treasured creation,

His so unique and special child,

And walk tall; proud for all to see.

April 2012.

Love

Readings
First Act 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm Psalm 97
New 1 John 4:7-10
Gospel John 15:9-17

If you prefer to list to the homily click here for the audio post.

Homily – 2012 Year B – 6th Sunday Easter

Today's message is beautiful and simple.

Jesus tell us that:

His Father loves Him,
He loves us and will continue to love us, His friends,
and we should follow His example and love everyone.

Before Christ came the very best of us called ourselves servants or salves. Moses called himself a servant of God, Joshua called himself a servant of God, King David called himself a servant of God. This was a high honour and these men were some of the greatest in our spiritual history.

Jesus changed this relationship, because of love, no longer should we be His living tools, his servants, used to do His work. We should be His friends, compelled through love and friendship to help him with his business.

In the Roman world at the time of Christ there was a title of Friend of the Emperor. A friend of the emperor had unrestricted access to the emperor, they could approach whenever they pleased and ask whatever they liked. They weren't the generals or leaders of the time, they were much closer to the emperor than that.

We have been called friends of God, allowed to approach Him whenever we like, with whatever request we care to bring before him. Through love we have been raised to friends, and it must be through love that we approach our God.

We are called, commanded and compelled to love each other. What a wonderful task that is. It's not always an easy task but it is wonderful.

What would our world be like if everyone truly loved everyone?

This is the world we have been hearing about all through Easter, it's the world the apostles were building after Jesus left them. It's the story told in Acts, it's the story of the church, it's our story too, and it will be our children's and their children's until Christ comes again.

Jesus came to us, told us his plans, showed us how to live, and how to die. Showed us love is the only way. Then he commanded us as his friend to do his work. Not as servants just doing as we are told, but as friends, thinking and acting with love, bringing His kingdom of heaven to earth. Think about the worlds of our Lord's Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” By our love for each other that is what we are called to achieve.

Over the last few months a lot of our Children have been preparing to receive their first communion. They have been learning about Gods love, about forgiveness, about taking Christ into themselves, about living a Christian life. Well I have a challenge for those children today, I want you to remember what Jesus told us to do in today's gospel, He told us to love one another, so I want you to tell someone that you love them.

Today's message is beautiful and simple.

“What I command you is to love one another.”

My friends, with that as our command, there is one thing I must tell you,

I Love You!

St Thomas and Doubt

Sorry, it's been a few weeks since I last posted here. There are three good reasons, firstly I haven't preach a homily since February. Second I have been spending most of my spare time learning to sing the Exultet and lastly I have just left my job and am currently looking for work which is a very strange feeling for me. But on the plus side I have a great deal more time right now so am planning on writting a few of the things I have intended to but never got round to. So keep checking back I hope over the next few weeks to post several new items.

Anyway here todays homily, our Gospel today was so rich it was impossible to say everything I wanted to. You comments as always are aprecaited.
GodBless,
John.

Homily – 2012 Year B – 2nd Sunday Easter

First Act4-32-35

Psalm Psalm 117
New 1 John 5:1-6
Gospel John 20:19-31

I am sure you don't want a half hour homily from me today, but with so much to talk about just from today's Gospel reading I could easily talk for 30 minutes or considerably longer. You will, I am sure, be pleased to know that this will be a normal length homily because I am not going to talk about Jesus breathing the holy spirit into the disciples, I am not going to talk about the institution of confession and the forgiveness of sins. I am not going to talk about Jesus sending out the disciples to continue His work, as He himself had been sent. I am not going to talk about why these were probably the original last words of John's Gospel, and that chapter 21 was added later. If you want to know about those things ask me after Mass, or drop me an email.

Who I want to talk to you about today is a hero and role model of mine, “doubting” Thomas. St. Thomas is remembered for his lack of faith, for doubting the resurrection. In some way you are left feeling that Thomas wasn't as strong as the other disciples, that his faith was weak. But while I think we can learn something from Thomas' mistakes his doubt was not a mistake but something we all have and was one of Thomas' strengths.

Thomas was a brave and faithful servant. He was the disciple that believed if Jesus went to Jerusalem he would be killed, but he went with him anyway. John tells us just before they headed to Jerusalem that Thomas said “Let us go too, and die with him.”John 11:16 Thomas expected to die with Jesus, when he didn't he must have been left lost and confused. I see something quite human in Thomas, a strong man able to do things himself, able to make up his own mind on matters, not often needing or even knowing how to accept help from others. Also, from the fact that he wasn't in the room with the other disciples, we might guess that Thomas preferred to be alone to work through his grief and confusion. This I think was Thomas' only mistake, he left the fellowship of the church just when he needed it, and as a result he missed something very special. He missed Christ's first visit.

By missing that visit, Thomas has to take the word of his friends as proof of the resurrection, and he struggles to do this. It is this struggle we hear of today, and it's this struggle we all go through from time to time. Thomas lets us know it's all right to ask questions, to think about our faith, and when we doubt to challenge.

It is difficult to have faith in today's world. It's a busy complex world where information conflicts and experts disagree. We see so much of the world on a thousand TV channels and a billion internet sites but we witness so little of it first hand, it's difficult to know what to believe. Atheism is establishing itself as a religion, strong belief in the absence of God, no room for doubt, no room for questions about the unknown. To survive in today's world we have to question and challenge, it's good to doubt the facts, it's good to ask questions so we can make our own minds up.

Even here in this church, how strong is your faith, what do you really believe. In a few moments when we all say the creed together will you be confidently affirming your faith, strong in the knowledge that you understand and wholeheartedly believe ever word you say. Or will you be concentrating on getting the knew words right, just reading what is on the card in front of you?

The church, Our Church, is a great teacher, a great communicator. We, as that church, are called to spread the good news, the Easter joy of resurrection. Are you ready to do that, is your faith strong enough? Or do you have doubts? Doubts are OK if you take Thomas as your example, your guide, your mentor.

Follow his example, if you don't understand, if you can't believe something just because someone says so, then ask questions. But also look to what happened when Thomas got his answers. When he believed his first words were “My Lord and my God”. With that strength of belief Thomas served Christ for the rest of his days, non-scriptural texts of the time trace Thomas' mission to India and the building of Christ’s kingdom there among both kings and poor alike.

I started by telling you what I could have talked about but didn't and encouraging you to ask me if you wanted to know more. Now taking Thomas as your example I challenge you to explore your faith, challenge your doubts, and ask questions and most of all find answers.

Don’t' let your doubts separate you from Christ, be prepared to place your hand into his wounds, be brave, be prepared to believe.

Thank You, All who contribute to the Soup Run

This Saturday evening was one of those rare occasions when I we saw something on the soup run that couldn't be easily forgotten. It also mirrored the Gospel reading and homily I had read in Church just before we went out and had to read again the following Sunday morning.

As we walked around Bristol we saw a man fall. I ran over to help him and the first thing he did was cover his face shouting “Don't hit me! Don't hit me”. Once he realised I was there to help he relaxed a little and we talked. He told me about the previous night when he had woken up in a car park with a man standing over him about to urinate on him. He confessed to being an alcoholic, and he told me that he drank to forget that he had killed a man when he was serving in the army. He didn't feel that he deserved our help.

There was little we could do to really help him, but for 10mins we were able to show we cared and when I with great reluctance left him he was smiling and said he felt a lot better. The Soup Run is mostly about showing unloved people that in fact they are loved. Homemade soup, cake and rolls show this wonderfully and practically.

I am really proud of our church, the way that everyone pulls together to help. We have over 90 people signed up and helping from all ages of 6 to 90. This weekend what you do made a difference. I man with no hope, totally uncared for felt that he was loved.

Thank You all, never stop loving the stranger and know that Jesus would be proud of you too.

Here's my thank you from after the homily on Sunday morning.