True Inspiration Requires Right Action

by Bruce Gilberd

(Based on Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and Psalm 126)

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”  Yes to that!
This morning I put it to you that lasting deep joy arises from God’s inspiration, and our resulting action – both!
We are not only to be hearers of the word and the inspiration of God’s Spirit, but doers of his will in the marketplace and the world – and I note that Isaiah emphasises justice – doing as a key outcome of being inspired.
Joan has most helpfully been reminding us of this recently – that whenever God intervenes and inspires, action is required, and happens.  In Israel’s history: Moses leads Israel out of Egypt; Solomon builds the first Temple; Ezekiel predicts the return from Babylon to Jerusalem; and so on …. To John the Baptist’s brief ministry to pave the way for Jesus’s pivotal work for all humanity.
Throughout the first century, covered by the New Testament, time and again inspiration requires and leads to action, and it is so down the centuries and today.
Today, in Isaiah and the psalm readings, we see inspiration leading to restoration – of persons, cities, the nation – and the great joy of that!  I am sure you picked up the meaning and relevance of the first verse of Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

And what follows – action!

  • Good news to the oppressed
  • Binding up the broken hearted
  • Liberty to the captives

and so on.

And, it is this very text Jesus chose to read centuries later to preface his first sermon in his home synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19), and what a stir that caused!

True Inspiration leads to Right Action!

When John the Baptist’s disciples come to Jesus to ask if he is the Messiah – what does Jesus say?  There is no theological discussion.  He points out what he is doing.  The inspired Divine Man, Jesus, points to the inspired, life-giving action that was happening.  (Matthew 11:2-6)

Last Saturday and Sunday were God-inspired events – and now a vibrant part of St Francis Church history.  So now we, newly inspired, seek to act, rightly, deeply, convincingly, in our village and wider spheres of influence.  Some of this action will be personal, some with others.  It will involve:

  • Prayer – seeking the Lord’s guidance
  • Giving – self, time, energy – and
  • Action – on one or several fronts

It will not involve a self-centredness – the Holy Spirit is given to disciples – yes, and corporately to the Church, not so we can have an individual high (we may!) but to empower us to act – to do God’s work and will, God’s way, in the marketplace and God’s world.
Some of you will recall the old word “Comforter” was used to describe the work of the Holy Spirit.  Have some of you seen the Bayeux Tapestry portraying Norman William’s conquest of England in 1066?  William is prodding his sword into the buttocks of the soldiers in front, and the caption is “King William comforteth his troops”.

The Holy Spirit comforts us!  That is, prods and stirs us to action!
So, when the Spirit comes upon us, to empower, to disturb, to guide, to require truth and costly love in our living – we then need to get specific … as to how, like King William’s soldiers to put our hearts and minds and bodies on the line … Now what?

Option 1:  We may look to the world wide Anglican Church’s Mission Statement, to see what we are led to do:

  • Share the Good News with a friend?
  • Encourage children and others we know to be baptised?
  • Learn and share more about our faith?
  • Offer accurate listening to someone we know is hurting?
  • Challenge local Councils, or the Government, on issues that need addressing and that address us?  Call for justice?
  • Act responsibly with our household waste, plant trees, be discerning buyers?

Option 2:  Or/And … there are these outstanding Aotearoa issues (so, pray, give act …):

  • Good housing for low income families
  • Putting church investments into housing and social services
  • Reducing child poverty for 300,000 children
  • Enhance gender and ethnic and interfaith respect
  • Speak up when a line is crossed
  • Resist technological takeover of our attention.

The Spirit is given to Jesus’s disciples in order that we may act, joyfully and effectively, in some way or ways towards justice and peace in our village, our world.  If it all seems too much, pick one action today and do remember Michel Quoist’s remark:

So, how might I sum up my message to you today?  With this prayer: Come, Holy Spirit.  Initiate and guide all our actions!

Blogging

Beginning

Well, it’s time we started a blog.  Everyone’s doing it these days, so why not us?  Why not add to the multi-terabytes out there in cyberspace that nobody reads.  Cyberspace needs more bytes.
Some bloggers have an impact in our world way beyond their worth.  Some bloggers “go viral”, and some even become “influencers”, though when and how one’s rank shuffles from viral to Influencer, who can tell?  That too is a cyber-mystery.

Anyway, blogger, virus or Influencer, it’s time.  And, with breathtaking imagination, I’ve decided to blog first about blogging.

Middle

Blogging began in the late fifteenth century.  Because that was when European sailors began tossing logs over their stern to give a measure of speed through the water.  (To digress from this digression, the ropes tethering the logs were knotted, and the speed could be determined (in ‘knots’) from the number of knots hauled overboard by the trailing log.)

Anyways … the log speeds were used for navigation, and recorded.  The logs were called “chip logs”, and the records became, in due course, “ships’ logs”, no bull.  And eventually materialised on TV as Captain James Kirk’s “Captain’s log, Stardate 41153.7. Our destination is planet Deneb IV …”.  Remember them?

Well, in the late 1990s people started various sorts of “logging” (initially just personal journaling) on the World Wide Web, and in ’97 a Jorn Barger called his online journal a “weblog”, later shortened to “blog”.

There you have it!  The history of blogging, instructively laid out in St Francis Church’s first blog.

End

Today, Wikipedia tells me, “there are more than 570 million blogs on the web.”  And now one of them is us!

I intend to write blogs every ten days for this website, except … if anyone else wants to contribute in my stead, then please let me know.  You are most welcome.  Send me your blog and I will evaluate it, possibly edit it, and then publish it for all the world (or perhaps nobody) to see.  Naturally, blogs will be asserted as the bloggers’ own opinions, and will not be put forward as the general opinion of our church at large.

We’ll soon be viral.  WTS.  (Watch this space.)

Ken F

Open!

opening of the new entrance foyer

The weekend of Dec 5th and 6th saw the opening and dedication of the recently completed church entrance way (on the 5th) and a ‘renewal service’ for the members of St Francis Church (on the 6th). Both events were well attended. At the opening, the welcome and explanatory remarks were given by Rev Bruce Gilberd, former Bishop of Auckland. Then local leader, Barry Pollard, spoke of the building process and thanked various contributors. Auriol Farquhar read a piece from the Bible describing the dedication of the original Hebrew Temple, in Israel; after which Jackie Francis organised the ‘Unwrapping’ of the new building.

A very long strip of blue bunting had been wrapped around the whole church building, and Jackie gathered various members from the crowd – mostly children – and counted them down to pulling the bunting bow, at which the bunting fell off the entrance and the new entrance was declared Open!

A sumptuous afternoon tea followed for the several dozen people gathered for the event.

Advent Reflection: Beginnings

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Mark 1:1-11)

Well it’s all about beginnings today! And isn’t it wonderful to be back in the church again!

This year we are following the Gospel of Mark, the first of the four books written about Jesus that we now call the Gospels and here we have his opening sentence “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Some scholars now think this is more like a title for the whole of Mark’s story of God’s work in and through Jesus Christ and that the whole story that Mark tells … is still just the beginning. Why? Because the significance of what God accomplished through Jesus’s life, ministry, death and resurrection endures.

The impact of God’s work isn’t over, the transforming power of the Gospel – the good news – continues.
Transformation requires movement and movement means aliveness doesn’t it?
Alive in Christ: isn’t that our story and our journey?

An ‘aha’ moment for me not so long ago was reading this statement: There is not a single story in the bible about the status quo.
From “Let there be light” to “a new heaven and earth”, Scripture tells story after story about transformation and movement. God is ‘the becoming One’ whose coming into being creates the present, moment by moment.

It’s not uncommon I guess after a new idea or revelation to be aware of other supporting comments, so receiving Richard Rohr’s daily meditations for a week recently under the title “A faith created by Courageous Movements” really resonated with me. Especially this observation he included from a colleague Brian McLaren’s book: “We make the Road by walking”.

Movements play a special role in biblical stories. In Exodus we hear, for example, Moses led a movement of liberation among oppressed slaves. They left an oppressive economy, journeyed through the wilderness, and entered a promised land where they hoped to pursue aliveness in freedom and peace.
Centuries after that, the Hebrew prophets launched a series of movements based on a dream of a promised time . . . a time of justice when swords and spears, instruments of death, would be turned into ploughshares and pruning hooks, instruments of aliveness [Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3].

Then came John the Baptist, a bold and non-violent movement leader who dared to challenge the establishment of his day and call people to a movement of radical social and spiritual rethinking. . . .
When a young man named Jesus came to affiliate with John’s movement through this baptism – that we have just heard – John said, “There he is! He is the one!”

Under Jesus’s leadership, the movement grew and expanded in unprecedented ways. . . . It rose again through a new generation of leaders like James, Peter, John, and Paul, who were full of the Spirit of Jesus. They created learning circles in which more disciples were trained to extend the movement locally, regionally, and globally. Wherever advocates and activists in this movement went, the Spirit of Jesus was alive in them, provoking change and inspiring true aliveness. . . .

[Christianity] began as a revolutionary non-violent movement promoting a new kind of life on the margins of society. . . . It claimed that everyone, not just an elite few, had God-given gifts to use for the common good. It exposed a system based on domination, privilege, and violence and proclaimed in its place a vision of mutual service, mutual responsibility, and peaceable neighbourliness. It put people above profit, and made the audacious claim that the Earth belonged not to rich tycoons or powerful politicians, but to the Creator who loves every sparrow in the trees and every wildflower in the field. It was a peace movement, a love movement, a joy movement, a justice movement, an integrity movement, an aliveness movement.

So Mark’s story really is just the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ – we here today are part of this on-going story, called to participate in the continuing spirit-led, transforming movement of God-with-us in our own time, because of Jesus who dwelt among us and still shows us the way to be fully alive.

God of light and love revealed to us in Jesus the Christ, be with us on our journey of daily new beginnings, movement and transformation. Amen

Sunday 30th November: Pain seeking understanding