SINGING THE FAITH - Psalm 98 Revelation 5: 5-14

‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ - So sang Julie Andrews some forty years ago. Even if the nun who later sang ‘Climb every Mountain’ put me off somewhat, those words still ring true.

Music has about it a number of unique qualities. It can calm us when we are stressed. It can invigorate us. And yes, it can stimulate us into both thought and action.

Next weekend, Live 8 will show that music has a power to influence opinions and possibly events. This is hardly new. In the 1960s the radicalism of the time, benefited enormously from the music of people such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. By 1984 the horror of events in Ethiopia brought about an articulation of rage by pop stars such as Bob Geldhof and Midge Ure which led to the best selling record ever, ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ followed by the spectacular Live Aid Concerts at Wembley and New York. Other notable events and causes since have led to similar responses albeit on a smaller scale. The message is that music has a capacity to influence life and our world.

It is not that people always understand what they are singing. Back in the 1980s there was a great record by a singer called Eddie Grant. It was called, ‘I don’t wanna dance.’ It always filled the disco floors. And in a perverse way, I rather enjoyed watching people dance as they sang, ‘I don’t wanna dance.’

A flippant example - yes! For music often challenges our perspectives. Joan Baez singing, ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ always makes me think about issues of peace and war. And hymns have their moments when despite the familiarity of many of them, they make me think about my faith. For hymns have been a part of the life of communities of faith for a very long time.

The idea of singing in worship of God is hardly new.

We find it so often in the Scriptures going back to that moment of triumph when the people of Israel sang their praises to God following their freedom from slavery in Egypt, in the Exodus. And in the Psalms which were as a Hebrew hymn book, time and again we find the singing of praise to God. And songs go on with Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ when told the disturbing news that she is to have a child and when the child , Jesus, is born, even the angels sing to the astonishment of the shepherds. And then as our Scriptures come to a mighty climax with the Revelation of St John, exiled for his faith on the rocky Island of Patmos, which was in those times a brutal labour camp, what does John envisage? He sees the battered faithful singing songs of worship to the Lamb that is Christ and in doing so, receiving their own healing.

Perhaps, in that we can glimpse the importance of singing. If you go to a football match, it is commonplace for the fans of a side that has just gone into the lead, to taunt the opposing fans with a refrain of;

Sing when you’re winning;
You only sing when you’re winning.

But in Scripture, singing is not only for the moments when winning. Singing takes place in Psalms of Lament when the author is feeling totally wretched. I nearly chose for this service to have Psalm 13 read, a Psalm which includes lines such as;

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
And have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall me enemies be exalted over me?

You see, in singing we are able to bring our whole understanding and experience of life to God. We don’t just have to bring our nice thoughts for God is big enough to take all that we are. But often, it happens that as we sing of our pain, God brings hope. The same Psalm ends with a change of mood for having sang to God of pain, the Psalmist has drawn closer to God and so is able to conclude;

But I trust in your steadfast love;
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
Because he has dealt bountifully with me.

And ever since its beginnings, the Church has sang. It has sang its praises in wonder and in awe. It is as Fred Pratt Green puts it in one of his hymns;

When in our music God is glorified
And adoration leaves no room for pride,
It is as though the whole creation cried
Alleluia.

Indeed it seems that hymns appear at the very moments when people focus most on God. Whilst there have been those who opposed other than the singing of metrical hymns, movements of God have repeatedly been accompanied by explosions of hymns writing. This can be seen in the history that gave the Church those profound Gregorian chants in the Middle Ages, the hymns of Martin Luther at the Reformation and in our Methodist history in the hymns of Charles Wesley.

I think I understand the reasons why our history stresses brother John who was after all the great inspirer and organiser of the Methodist movement. But I can’t help but feel that more people both at the time and indeed today, have come to understand the importance of the Gospel and our evangelical doctrines through Charles Wesley’s hymns than John Wesley’s sermons. Why? Well, apart form the fact that the sermons are to put it mildly difficult, I have a feeling that it is that which we sing again, again and again, that becomes a part of us. And the fact that Charles Wesley’s hymns were set to popular tunes only served to add to their popularity, a lasting popularity which led to Bernard Manning, the Congregationalist scholar rather than the Mancunian comedian, describing them as Methodism’s ‘incomparably greatest contribution to the common heritage of Christendom.’

None of this is to deny that John Wesley had something to contribute for contribute he jolly well did. When the 1770, hymn-book came out, John offered his rather fastidious instructions as to how we should sing. Here goes!

Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it be a cross to you, take it up, and it will be a blessing.

Sing lustily with a good courage. Beware if singing as if you were half - dead, or half - asleep; but lift your voice with strength. Be not afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sang the songs of Satan.

Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but survive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear harmonious sound.

Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

Mmmm. There’s some sense there although I think that with such a fussy approach, John Wesley would not have ranked as one of the great formers of choirs.
But here we are today. Over the years, a lot of hymns have been written and sung. They are means by which we praise God, seek harmony with God and attempt to live as Christian people today. And speak to us they do still.

When we question why we have life, a choir sings;

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul praise him for he is thy health and salvation!

And if this is remote to us another choir sings the refrain;

It is a thing most wonderful
Almost too wonderful to be,
That God’s own Son should come from heaven,
And die to save a child like me.

And then when we wonder how we can live for this God, once more we here the choral sound;

Still, with creative power,
God’s Spirit gives to men
A pattern of new life -
And worlds begin again.

But come the moments when we put limits on the extent of God’s love, and a mighty choir sings forth;

In Christ there is no east or west,
In him no south or north,
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.

And then when we sink to despair in the face of evil, we hear once more the sound of singing;

Hark! We hear a distant music, and it comes with fuller swell;
‘This the triumph - song of Jesus, of our King, Immanuel:
Zion, go ye forth to meet him; and, my soul, be swift to bring
All thy finest and thy noblest for the triumph of our King!

Do you get it? Time and again, singing the faith takes us closer to God. For never should we undervalue the gift of singing or the spiritual riches to be found within our hymn books.

Oh, the hills might be alive with the sound of music. But so to are God’s people! A people born in song! A people with a God to sing praises to! A people with a lively faith which is for singing and expressed in singing.

AMEN

This non lectionary sermon was preached in Bideford on Sunday June 26th at a service to mark Choir Sunday

FAMILY VALUES ? Genesis 21: 8-21 Matt 10: 24-39

It was Mark Twain who once commented that his problem was not so much the things he didn’t understand in the Bible as the things he did understand.

Whether, he was right or not there certainly are some problems with the things we have crossed in today’s Scripture Readings.

Let’s first look at Abraham. I struggle at the best of times to find him an attractive person. Already, he has passed his wife of to an Egyptian Pharaoh as being his sister which has kept him safe but has led to her being morally compromised. Worse still, he has stirred up a right hornet’s nest in that at the instigation of his wife Sarah, he has decided to give God’s promise of a child a bit of a push by sleeping with her Egyptian servant Hagar. In the Genesis narrative, we are not told how Hagar responded to this happening which was certainly not an unknown practice in those times. However, given the power relationship, Hagar does not seem to have been in a position to make a free decision and so some commentators have likened this story to rape. That may be seeing the story through 21st century lenses but I suspect that Hagar was in no more of a position to withhold consent than were African slaves who were abused by the slave owners on America’s plantations.

Anyhow, the result of these shenanigans was that Hagar became pregnant with the son who was to be Ishmael. But more happened than that. The relationship between Hagar and Sarah deteriorated. May be because of the wrong she had suffered, may be because she a slave had what Sarah wanted most, Hagar began to despise her mistress and in return, Sarah treated her slave with cruelty - to such an extent that Hagar ran away. Yet such is Hagar’s pitiful state that she has to return to Abraham and Sarah where she gives birth.

But the problem does not end there. Some years later, God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah is fulfilled and Sarah gives birth to a son called Isaac. And with this, the problem between the women, flares up again. In away this is so modern - a story of a father with children by two women who both think he’s making to much of the offspring of the other woman. However, in this case the outcome is extreme. Sarah demands, at a party to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, that Abraham get rid of both Hagar and the now adolescent son, Ishmael. And so, desperate to maintain an easy life for himself as always, Abraham looks after himself by sending them to the perils of the desert. Comforting himself, with a promise that Ishmael would also father a nation, Abraham shows his ’love’ with a little food and a skin of water. What a Father!

Other than at Abraham’s grave, we never hear of Isaac and Ishmael meeting again. But a poison has come to exist, a poison that has gone down through the centuries. For today, the children of Abraham look back to this inglorious Father through these sons, Arabs looking back through Ishmael and Jews through Isaac. And the story of pain that begins with Abraham misusing Hagar, just goes on and on!

But perhaps, we might find a better picture of family values in our Gospel Reading. But here too, we are in for a bit of a shock. As you know today is Father’s day. This morning, I had cards from both of my children. My son, James, in typically robust form, sent me one with a cover which proclaimed;

This Father’s Day Card is given in a way of saying sorry for my behaviour over the last year

Before adding on the inside

And as an apology in advance for the year to come.
Happy Father’s Day.

Pretty typical of James.

As for Kaye, well in response to my often calling her Princess Kaye, she begins rather sweetly;

However old I get Daddy I will always be your little Princess

Sweet! But wait for it! On the inside is added;

And you will always be my servant!
Happy Father’s Day from your loving daughter.

Aagh! Family values are alive just as Jesus taught us.
Well, No! Not exactly! For Jesus tells us in our Gospel, that he has come not to bring peace but a sword, and wait for it:

To turn a man against his Father,
A daughter against her mother.

Some Father’s Day greeting card that would !

And the passage goes on to talk of those who love parents more than Jesus as being unworthy of him. It might not surprise you that when I yesterday visited my father who has Parkinsons, I did not talk in this sort of language.

So is Jesus really against family values? Well I find that hard to believe of one who would seem to have cared for his family in the absence of his father, one who commits his mother to John’s care whilst on the cross. Surely, if Jesus was cavalier on family, Paul would not have written so extensively on family matters in his epistles.

I think the truth is that Jesus is largely using dramatic language, speaking with hpyerbole to make his point. Remember this is the Jesus who warns at Gethsemane that those who live my the sword die by the sword. My guess is that he is emphasising the importance of following him and his way. Matthew’s first readers would know all to well how Jewish families divided over their response to Jesus, with Christians often being betrayed into persecution by their close blood relatives. For many family had become a reason not to follow Jesus. These verses powerfully remind us of the great importance of following Jesus even when it goes against our cultural norms and the views of those who are nearest and dearest to us.

But I think, there’s more to things than that. You may remember the story elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel of how Jesus’ mother and brothers come to see him. When told, Jesus
answers;

Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?

Before adding as he points to the disciples;

Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

You see, too often, we misuse family by using it as a means of restricting our sphere of responsibilities but the way of following Christ extends the circle for whom we should care. To care for Me and Mine is good but Christ challenges us to think wider.

How does he do so? Our passage has some clues. It calls on us to be like Christ rather than thinking we are Christ. That’s a warning against the abuse of power by associating ourselves directly with the Divine. But it does ask us to be like Christ and the message of the Gospels is that Christ is revealed in love in and to the most unlikely of places. I love the picture of God ’s love - love so great as to see the fall of a sparrow yet knowing and loving us much more than that. Don’t we have here a love that brings importance and value to those who feel as strangers to both? And as that is the way of the God who is in Christ, that is the way that Christ suggests we should be.

I can’t emphasise too strongly the importance of healthy self value. It’s a lack of self value that wrecks many a life. It’s a lack of self value that causes people to give up struggling with the challenges of life. It is a lack of healthy self value that lies behind the recent spurge of prison suicides. And it is not rocket science to affirm that self worth is a part of getting the best out of people. Years ago, I taught at Cornwall College on a course to do with working practices. I was ill-equipped on the subject and to be honest I was teaching one week what I had learnt the previous week. Most of it I have long forgotten. However, one thing I remember is Maslow’s pyramid of Needs. And there in that Pyramid is self worth both in regards to the negative of a person without self worth being unable to really function and the positive of self actualisation being a real motivator.

I defer to nobody in believing that the nuclear family is important and beneficial. I believe with all my being that such is the Christian perspective. But it is not the all! For the way of Jesus takes us beyond Me and Mine to a world that we are called to serve with outcasts, rejects and so on. The way of Christ is not about rejecting family but about widening our understanding of family.

Back to Abraham! He might not have been much of a Father but the story still has something to tell us of God as Father. For in Hagar’s distress, God meets her. Meets her just as when she ran away in her pregnancy. And in this second meeting, God brings healing from her distress, provides her and the boy with refreshments and gives to her and her son, the promise of a nation just as had been promised to Abraham and Sarah.

And there is the rub. The Patriarchs of Genesis are a pretty rum bunch but are blessed. But God’s blessings don’t stop there, reaching others including the victims of the Patriarchs such as Hagar. And so we see a great circle of love, a circle of limitless unbounded generous love which reaches a climax in Christ. For on this Father’s Day, we worship the God who is not tribal or limited but who is the Divine Parent of all, who brings us all into relationship with one another.

AMEN

This sermon was preached in Alwington on Sunday June 19th

JUNE 12TH 2005 LAUGHING WITH GOD Genesis 18:1-15 Matt 9: 35 - 10: 8

It may just be that on rather too many occasions, I have run out of petrol. Indeed, on one birthday my wife gave me a container to fill with petrol at the nearest garage should I run out of petrol again. Anyhow I do rather like the story about a nun who was so eager to reach her destination that she drove past a garage with an array of petrol pumps, only to come to a halt a mile down the road. The nun walked back to the garage where the attendant explained that he would like to help her but unfortunately he had no container in which to put the petrol. Feeling sorry for her, he agreed to look in an old shed for something that might help. Anyway, the only thing he could find that could hold the petrol was an old bedpan. The grateful nun said that would be fine and so she made her way back to the car, taking great care not to spill any of the petrol. Reaching the car, she began to carefully pour the contents of the bed pan into the petrol tank. Just as she was doing so another vehicle came alongside. The driver rolled down the window and looked at the nun with incredulity before, gasping, ‘Sister, I sure wish I had your faith.’

That may have made you laugh - or not! However, there is laughter in our Old Testament reading this morning. It begins with a rather painful note. Abraham and Sarah have felt the pain of not having children t a time when this was a situation that meant exclusion. Some years before Abraham had been promised that his descendant would be a nation. With Sarah’s consent he had sought to move things on by making her slave Hagar pregnant with his son, Ishmael. But the Divine promise has been repeated with the emphasis that its fulfilment is to be through Sarah. Not surprisingly Abraham has laughed at the prospect of fathering another child when he is close on 100 years old and Sarah is already 90. Something a little crazy going on here!

And so it reads to us today. From time to time we hear of men fathering children at advanced ages - Des O Connor being one who has made the news in such a way recently. And to me it certainly is not strange for I would not be here if my grandfather had not fathered my mother how was his last but one child, at the ripe age of 72 years old. But even with our modern scientific discoveries, the idea of a woman having a child at 90 is beyond our experience. No wonder, when Sarah hears the mysterious strangers speak of her having a child within the next year, she laughs. I think the wonder is that she was not totally hysterical!

But it is going to happen. A bundle of joy is on the way in Isaac whose name fittingly translates as ‘He laughs.’ And so this is a story of God transforming a situation which in that time at that place, was a desperate situation which many would have judged as being a sign of God’s disfavour to something very different indeed. No longer does Sarah laugh at the ridiculousness of the Divine word. Now in her joy she is laughing with God. For as one of our praise songs puts it, we find that God has;

Turned our sorrow into dancing.

And this morning, I would invite you to see that God continues to transform the situations of hopelessness. For God is an ever present in our lives. I suspect that when Abraham first offered hospitality to the three mysterious visitors, he did not realise that he was entertaining God in the process. Indeed, the Scripture dances between a discussion with three men and a discussion with God. Perhaps, here we are being reminded that God is present with us at the moments when we least are understanding of it. But certainly, even if we have not experienced anything on the level with Abraham, I suspect many of us have heard the voice of God speaking through the mouths of people whom we have known. Only recently I read a sermon by Beth Quick, an American minister whose lectionary notes I read each week, with the title, ’The Voices in my Life.’ It tells of the ways in which God has called her into the path of the ordained ministry and how she has often heard God’s voice through friends and acquaintances. And I for one would say AMEN to that!

For indeed, God is still calling us to laugh with God. The Christian people have always seemed unequal to the tasks of the age. Even is the greatest days of the church in our country, those who have gathered for shared worship have been a minority. And yet to us, that minority, God entrusts us with the continuation of the work of the Divine. The story of the Church begins at Pentecost with a roomful of people, many of whom had failed Christ so badly just a few weeks before. But to such as these broken people, was entrusted the responsibility to take the story of and the teachings of Christ, across the entire world. And to day, the inequality between our resources and the calling, are as immense as ever. The words of Christ continue to echo;

The harvest are plentiful but the workers are few.

But still comes the challenge to let God move us and our world from despair to hope, from sorrow to joy.

The big story in the next few weeks will be the G8 summit at Gleneagles. At that summit, millions will be watching to see if the leaders of our world are going to make an adequate response to the needs of Africa which have been so effectively articulated by the Make Poverty History Coalition. We know that to respond adequately, means more than slogans and takes us into the world of difficult decision making. BUT to the cynical and to say that the challenge is insurmountable is no response for in Africa, extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS are responsible for in terms of the loss of human life, the equivalent of a daily tsunami! If ever the words Something must be done meant something it is in response to this challenge and that something certainly does not mean a continuation of a situation in which during the past 4 years according to today’s Observer, UK arms sales to the continent have quadrupled to reach the obscene total of £1 billions worth.

The stories in the Bible tell us of a God who brings hope from the most desperate of circumstances, a God who

- forms a nation out of two people who would be at the senior end of any Derby and Joan Club by granting them their heart’s desire

- who builds hope in a people whose leaders have for half a century been in exile whilst those left have been poor and without direction

- who brings a Saviour out of a stable and from a birth that was tainted with disgrace

-who uses motley crowd of ill educated hot heads to tell of that Saviour to the great centres of their world

- who transforms the agony of a criminal’s death upon a Cross to be a sign that that cross is the gateway to endless possibilities including the gift of eternal life.

The story of Abraham and Sarah speaks of the God who changes things. It speaks of the God for whom nothing is too hard. It speaks of hope for our world.

In a few minutes, we will approach the Table. There we will receive the tokens of bread and wine and as we receive we will be reminded that in these tokens we meet God. Ridiculous, the scoffers might say and laugh they surely will. And yet as find God’s love and acceptance in bread and wine, we find the harmony of God that enables us to then go into the world, laughing with God. For as we then go out into the streets, we can with joy proclaim;

The God who can do all things is with us

And at that, we can be filled with joy and laugh the laugh of joy.
AMEN.


This sermon was preached at a Holy Communion Service at Bideford

TRAVELLING WITH GOD JUNE 5TH GENESIS 12:1-9

One of my interests over the years has been local and family history. My cousin, Anne, has spent much time painstakingly researching the history of the family of our respective mothers. She has gone back to the 1500s and it seems that our direct ancestors of the line researched are consistently located in three parishes. True, both of my grandfathers mined abroad, one in Chile and one in South Africa, but both came back to the parishes from which they came.

My late mother was certainly an example of someone who liked to stay where she was familiar. Her whole life was spent in one town, Redruth, and she found it hard to understand those who moved away as have most of my generation. I still remember her shock that her sister was moving to, horrror of horrors, Devon - for they people the other side of the Tamar wouldn’t be like us Cornish folk! How much greater her shock when I with my family crossed not just a county barrier but went off shore to the Isle of Man. And in a way I can understand how she thought for whilst I never regretted that move, occasionally on a not so good day, I would feel stranded as I looked out from Douglas Bay and saw the last boat of the day sailing out beyond the horizon. I guess all of us have a tendency to be happiest with the familiar.

Yet today, we look to the story of Abraham who having moved with his father’s family from Ur which is probably in today’s Southern Iraq to Haran which is in the area of the Syrian/Turkish border, now receives the call to go South down to Canaan, a land which includes present day Israel - only this time he is told by God to leave behind the things of the past. Given his age, it must have been a traumatic step to leave the things which had represented security. Indeed, the evidence is that Ur where he came from originally offered much more economically than Canaan and yet Abram’s obedience to the Divine call makes him a hero of faith and one who is even described as a ‘friend of God.’

But this story is about more than a physical move by Abram. The background is that the stories of early Genesis suggest that God has dealt with all creation and met with rebellion. Now comes the dawning of hope and it begins not with all creation, not even with one nation but with one person. Abram becomes God’s man but the purpose of this is made clear in God’s promise that through Abram the nations of the world will be blessed. And intererestingly, three faiths see in this man, one to whom they owe much. For before there was the Law, Abram obeyed and even trusted.

But Abram’s story is not a straightforward story. At times he is not particularly likeable. He is a man who to protect his own skin, tells an Egyptian Pharaoh that his wife is his sister, therefore sacrificing her virtue for his safety. In response to the promise of a child, he hurries God’s promise by making his wife’s slave girl pregnant. He has a difficult relationship with the inhabitants of Canaan and as for his treatment of his sons, I guess that today any family of his would be put by Social Services onto the ‘at risk’ register. Do you get the picture? This is a deeply flawed man and in many ways his journey is a spiritual journey. Standing still can not be an option. He has a need to grow to be the person that God would have him be. And there, we can find a message to ourselves. Like Abram, we are not all that we should be and like him we are called on a journey, not necessarily a journey to far off places but a journey of going closer to what God wants us to be. For Abram, it includes a change in his understanding of God as elsewhere in Scripture we find that he had been a worshipper of many Gods which is not surprisingly considering where his roots were. For us, we still have much to learn about God and what it means to be God’s people. Like Abram, we need to be open to God changing our vision. And is not that an important part of living in faith, that our vision of what it is to be truly human and what it is to be God’s people, get challenged? Think back into Christian history and contemplate a foul mouthed slaver named John Newton, who is touched by God and becomes not only an Anglican clergyman who writes hymns but a campaigner against the very system of slavery in which he once was so involved. And in other fields such as prison reform, reconciliation between races and more recently that great cause of our time, the eradication of the extreme poverty that blights the continent of Africa, amongst those who have offered new vision have been those whose perspective has been transformed by God.

In all of this, our first point of reference is flawed old Abram, a man who shows us that our flaws and shortcomings are no obstacle to being called on a journey with God. For God so often brings out the best from the worst.

And in all of this, paramount is the capacity of God to do things beyond our wildest imagination and dreams. In the case of Abram and Sarai, the Divine purpose is to be fulfilled through, yes, the seemingly impossible. Advanced in years and unable to have the children that were in those days deemed essential, God promises to make Abram into a great nation. The Impossible Dream! Yes but the message here seems to be telling us that when God is at work, the impossible can become the reality. The barriers that we are so concentrated on can like Iron Curtains or even Apartheid, come crumbling down. For in the scheme of things, God’s Kingdom is so much stronger than the power centres which we look to. And here, in an impossible promise, God reveals to Abram the means by which God will draw fractured humanity into relationship with the Divine.

But what does all this say to us? I think that we are called on a journey of discovery with God. We do not know where it will take us. Baggage that we hold dear may have to be jettisoned for that which is more worthwhile. We may at times appear to be counter cultural or even totally crazy. But as a man called Paul once wrote, that which we deem to be God’s folly is much greater that that which we deem to be our wisdom. In our lives, in this church, and indeed in our nation, God calls us not just to accept what is but to be guided by God to what is better. Travelling with God may be at times bumpy but it is creatively bumpy and if we are to be faithful in our commitment made to James earlier in this service, surely we need to be getting on to God’s bus and moving forwards with God.

This sermon was preached at Bideford on June 5th at a service in which a boy whose first name is James was baptised.