Morning Prayer 28th May

1 John 4:1-6 (Click here for text)

There is a great temptation in the name of 'being relevant' to present an acceptable Jesus. Reducing Jesus to a kind of Palestinian Ghandi figure who taught peace and love ("man"!) is a real temptation. Someone once suggested to me that the best thing to do when preaching to a non-committed congregation was to concentrate on behaviour - present some good guidelines for living based on Jesus teaching.

But the problem with this is that it's like buying a computer to use as a simple calculator - there is no power. The Good News about Jesus as John puts it is that Christ has come in the flesh from God. Jesus does not simply provide us with another set of rules or inspirations (although he raises both these things to a new level); Jesus offers the Spirit of God - real power to grow in to God - into holiness. When we reduce Jesus to a comfort blanket we miss the point; Jesus has the power to transform our lives into lives that are holy and good. He has the power to change us but not just through providing a rational, theological framework to work out what is right. The power Jesus has is the creative power to actually change a person.

When I first realised just who Jesus is I remember the amazing sense of joy in singing praises to His Name. It was an incredible force within that simply made me joyful; from the joy came peace and a sense of direction and purpose.

This is not received through knowledge but through connection. John encourages us to open ourselves as little children to this connection and ENJOY!

Morning Prayer 25th May 2009

1 John 2:18-end (click here for passage)

St. John has a very neat way of dividing people, teachings and actions into opposites. Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Love and Hate, We and You, Us and Them, Christ and Anti-Christ.

Either one is in or not - there is no middle ground. St. John's measures are very clear too. It is quite simply the anointing of the Holy Spirit that both informs what you believe and guides how you live and therefore places you 'in' or 'out'.

His logic is simple and straightforward. The Holy Spirit is the means be which we understand the Gospel, it is the means by which we recognise and accept Jesus as divine and one with the Father and it is the way that we recognise truth and have our lives our shaped by it.

This is of course not a rational argument but it is rooted in orthodox Christian experience. When the Church comes to make decisions and understand the truth, it absolutely must be led by this same Holy Spirit and remain connected with the apostolic experience and message. We are all connected through this Holy Spirit in a way which is real or not - it is not something that comes and goes - it is the source eternal life and the life starts now.

Antichrists are not strange people who have occult powers to corrupt, they are simply ordinary people who deny Jesus - his divinity and his claim on their lives and thereby denying themselves the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The eternal life of the Gospel is something that is always there and there are a thousand antichrist arguments that sound so reasonable, but from St. John's perspective - you either know or you don't. Sometimes, the simplest choices are the hardest and the ones we are keenest to avoid.