Authentic Jesus 5/10 | Mark 2:18-3:6 | Nat Charles

Mark 2:18-3:6 & Leviticus 23:26-32

Part of a series about the authentic Jesus.

This week: have we missed the point of our religion? These passages show how that leads to an absence of joy, missing the purposes of God and ultimately wanting Jesus dead.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting in person and on Zoom.

Authentic Jesus 3/10 | Mark 1:29-45 | Nat Charles

Mark 1 v29-45

Part of a series about the authentic Jesus.

This week: What king Jesus has come to do - he comes with power and authority to heal, but he primarily comes to preach good news of the kingdom of God. Will we listen?

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

Authentic Jesus 2/10 | Mark 1:14-28 | Nat Charles

Mark 1 v14-28

Part of a series about the authentic Jesus.

This week: Christianity is a message of good news - repent and believe! We also see Jesus' supreme authority, both then and now.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

Authentic Jesus 1/10 | Mark 1:1-13 | Nat Charles

Mark 1 v1-13

Part of a series about the authentic Jesus.

In this first sermon in our Mark series, Nat Charles preaches about the essence of the Gospel. It is about a person, who is the fulfillment of Old Testament promises, who comes to offer forgiveness and to bless the world.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom. With apologies, the recording picked up two microphones so the audio is echoey.

Let Justice Roll 4/5 - Amos 6:1-8, 7:1-8:2 - Nat Charles

Amos 4/5

Part of a series on the book of Amos.

This week: Nat Charles shows us how the men of Israel in Amos' day had become complacent and proud - their foundations were ruined. Amos speaks to God about the people, praying for God to forgive and relent. Amos also speaks to the people about God, but he recieves an unexpected response. Nat calls us to question: will we listen to and obey the word of the Lord? Will we repent when our sin is exposed? And will we pray for those who are lost?

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Let Justice Roll 3/5 - Amos 5 - Nat Charles

Amos 3/5

Part of a series on the book of Amos.

This week: Nat Charles shows us the urgent invitation from God to seek Him, the warning not to mistake seeking God for seeking religion, and that true worship should result in transformed lives.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Let Justice Roll 2/5 - Amos 3:1-8 & 4:1-13 - Nat Charles

Amos 3:1-8 & 4:1-13

Part of a series on the book of Amos.

This week: Nat Charles talks to us about the demands of love and the call to return.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Poverty and Wealth - Proverbs 30:7-9 & Luke 12:13-21 - Nat Charles

Proverbs 30:7-9 & Luke 12:13-21

A talk about Poverty and Wealth for SBD’s Giving Sunday, 17 Jan 2021

TRANSCRIPT

17.1.2021

 Welcome to SBD.

Today is an unusual Sunday for us. We’ve decided to set today aside to talk about giving. About giving our money and giving our time.

What I’d like to do is this. I want us to spend most of our time thinking about the prayer of Proverbs Chapter 30, before briefly setting out our context here at St Barnabas.

But as we start, if you are here today as a visitor, if St Barnabas isn’t your church community, please do feel free to ignore the specific requests that I make about money later on. If you are a visitor, and particularly if you wouldn’t call yourself a Christian, let me say really clearly as we start, that we don’t want your money. We’d love you to think about exploring who Jesus is – and if you have questions about how to do that, please be in touch with me on the Zoom chat, or get in touch after the service.

But, whoever you are, please don’t ignore what God has to say about money in Proverbs 30. I want us to look at the two parts of the prayer, but spending more time on the second.

THE PERIL OF POVERTY

First, the wise person prays that they won’t experience poverty.

In the Bible, poverty means not having food, clothing, or shelter. It’s what we would call destitution. And the wise person prays that they would be protected from that.

The reason is given in Vs 9 –that poverty would understandably drive people to extreme actions, like theft, and in so doing bring dishonour to the name of God.

Poverty is much in the news at the moment. It’s been clear throughout the Pandemic that the risks and burden of Covid have been much greater for those in our country who are poor. If you are poor, you are more likely to have underlying health complications that would make contracting Covid much more threatening. You are more likely to live in poor quality, overcrowded housing without access to a garden. You are less likely to be able to work from home, or access any online provision made available by local schools. Writing in the FT a few months ago, Anjana Ahuja put it like this, ‘This crisis has broadly separated us into the exposed poor and the shielded rich.’

The Bible is unsentimental and realistic about poverty. So the wise person prays that they won’t become destitute. It’s not a prayer that God always answers. There are many Christians around the world today who don’t have enough.

But in our context, nobody here is poor as the Bible understands it.

THE RISK OF WEALTH

So why not pray for riches? Why not pray to win the lottery, or that our share option will skyrocket?

According to Proverbs, the wise person prays for no more than what they need. They pray, in effect ‘no more pay rises, I have enough’, because they recognise the hidden danger of wealth. It’s there, again, in Vs 9. If I have too much, I may disown you and say ‘Who is the Lord?’

Let me put it really explicitly like this – if you or I have more than we need for food or for clothes, we will be tempted to walk away from God.

Stated like that of course, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that any of us would see ourselves doing. But praying this prayer puts us in an uncomfortable position. If we have more than we need, what will we do with it?

Let me try to outline practically some of the ways in which our wealth might adversely affect our walk with the Lord.

-       First, prayer might become an optional extra. Of course, we all know about the importance and privilege of prayer. But if we’re wealthy, how much will we really see our utter dependence upon God in prayer?

Let me put it like this, how many of prayed this morning ‘Give us, today, our daily bread’? Our relative wealth means that we can simply assume we will have what we need. And in that position, it’s much harder to retain our spiritual life and commitment. If prayer is an optional extra, rather than the beating heart of our lives, it might just be that our wealth has acted like a fire blanket that dampens our dependence on God.

-       Second, we might find that our conscience becomes a tiring irritant. We are all very good at rationalising our behaviour, especially to other people. Whether we want other people to think that we are wealthier than we are, or poorer than we really are, we all think that we know how to do it. How to present ourselves in a certain that we fits with a perception we’re trying to create.

We can pretend to others that we are being wise with our wealth, but the person we find it hardest to convince that we have used our wealth wisely, is our self. That inner voice of conscience might become a tiring irritant if our wealth is displacing God in our lives.

-       Third, we may come to resent other people in our lives. Especially needy people, or our church community. If we value or wealth more than anything else, and we feel that it’s threatened by the presence of other people in our lives, we’ll simply end up trying to avoid those people. And we won’t serve the people that God brings in to our lives, as we might have done.

-       So lastly, and most seriously, to disown God makes us fools in God’s sight. The story of the rich farmer in Luke 12 makes that really clear.

The story is not designed to belittle wealth. Every society needs people who create wealth, like the man in this story. A successful business is a good thing – it should bring prosperity and wealth not just to one individual, but to all those involved in it, and to the wider society.

But this man is a fool in God’s sight, because his life is his business. He knows, doesn’t he, that there is more to life than his wealth. But, next year. And then, it never comes. So he has devoted his life to something that he will never enjoy. And God’s verdict is ‘you fool’.

Friends, there’s much more that the Bible says about money than I have covered here. We could talk about the need to provide for your family. The need to save wisely for later life so we don’t burden others unnecessarily, the requirement to settle our debts.

But before a brief word on our situation at St Barnabas, let me just say this. Today is not primarily about fixing our financial pressures. Today is actually about our spiritual health. And the prayer of Proverbs 30 is an invitation to spiritual sanity – to be honest with ourselves and honest with God about the material resources with which we’ve been entrusted.

And my prayer for you, my hope for you, is that you won’t pass up the opportunity. On one level, I don’t really care whether you give to St Barnabas. Don’t get me wrong – I’m going to ask you to. But even if you never give St Barnabas a penny, if you are persuaded that there is more important Kingdom work taking place elsewhere that you want to support, I hope that you will make the prayer of Proverbs 30 your own, and be honest with yourself about your wealth.

SBD CONTEXT

Let me say something briefly then, about St Barnabas.

The first thing to say is that I don’t know who gives what. If I had to guess, I would guess that some of us give more than we can manage. Some probably don’t give at all, and most of us have been giving something for a few years, without giving it too much thought.

Wherever you are in that mix, can I ask you to make some time this week to review your giving. Set aside an evening to pray and review.

As you may know, our context is that since last April, our hall hire income has been greatly reduced. There are no hires happening at the moment, and we don’t know if and when they will resume. So we are expecting that this year, we will have a deficit of about £35,000 in our budget. Some of that deficit we can cover with our reserves and some of it we can cover by reducing our costs. All staff, apart from me, are now on furlough.

But we would also like to cover some of it through our giving. A 10% increase in giving across the congregation between now and August, would cover around £5,000 of that deficit. As you review this week, could I ask you to increase your giving by 10%?

For some of us, that might be an impossibility. Some of us will have been hit hard financially by Covid. And if that’s you, what I actually want to say is, if you need financial help from the church, we’d like to make it available to you – the 6:10 fund that we have in place to assist those facing hard circumstances is available.

But, for others, it might be that Covid means you are spending much less than you otherwise would and it might be that you could commit to an increase of more than 10%.

But, wherever you are on that scale, can I ask you to make some time this week to pray, and to review?

Let Justice Roll 1/5 - Amos 1:1-8, 2:6-16 - Nat Charles

Amos 1:1-8, 2:6-16

Part of a series on the book of Amos.

This week: In our first sermon in our new series, Nat Charles shows us aspects of God's character revealed in the opening chapters of Amos. The LORD is the God who speaks, the God of the nations, and the God of Israel, who cares more about justice than we do.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 9/9 - Colossians 4:2-18 - Nat Charles

Colossians 4:2-18

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: What does it look like to live as those who are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms? We are to be devoted to prayer, ready to speak, and aware of the people with us. NB Due to a quirk of Zoom, there is only a small video of Nat this week. This will be fixed by next week.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our Sundays page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 8/9 - Colossians 3:15-4:1 - Nat Charles

Colossians 3:15-4:1

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: how our identity in Christ shapes our lives. We think about how being seated with Christ in the heavenly realms affects our church life and our home life. Unfortunately the camera stopped working half way through so this is predominantly an audio file this week.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our Sundays page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 7/9 - Colossians 3:5-14 - Nat Charles

Colossians 3:5-14

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: See how identity drives behaviour; as those who are in Christ, we put to death our old attitudes and behaviours and put on Christ-like attitudes and behaviours. No video of Nat this week due to Zoom camera issues.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our Sundays page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 6/9 - Colossians 3:1-4 - Nat Charles

Colossians 3:1-4

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: Paul tells us that to grow as Christians, we must remember that we have died and been raised with Christ, and thus set our minds on things above.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our home page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 5/9 - Colossians 2:16-23 - Nat Charles

Colossians 2:16-23

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: We only need Jesus. Growth does not depend on empty ritual, empty experience or empty rules.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our home page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 4/9 - Colossians 2:6-15 - Nat Charles

Colossians 2:6-15

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: Christians grow in the same way that trees do: by remaining rooted in the same place, in Jesus.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our home page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 3/9 - Colossians 1:24-2:5 - Nat Charles

Colossians 1:24-2:5

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: We can trust the message preached by the apostle Paul, because he was prepared to suffer for it.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom and in person. See our home page for details.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 2/9 - Colossians 1:15-23 - Nat Charles

Colossians 1:15-23

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: We are complete in Christ, add something and you lose it all.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Complete in Christ 1/9 - Colossians 1:1-14 - Nat Charles

Colossians 1:1-14

Part of a series on the letter to the Colossians.

This week: Jesus is all, he is sufficient for spiritual growth.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Songs of Experience - Psalm 67 - Nat Charles

Psalm 67

Part of a series on the Psalms, Songs of Experience.

This week: Blessing: In our final sermon in the series, Nat Charles explains the 'what,' the 'why' and the 'so what' of blessing.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom.

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TRANSCRIPT to follow

Songs of Experience - Psalm 8 - Nat Charles

Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2 v5-9

Part of a series on the Psalms, Songs of Experience.

This week: Purpose: Nat Charles encourages us to look up, look back and look forwards to find our meaning and purpose as humanity.

Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom. Due to a computer issue during the recording this video is audio-only.

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TRANSCRIPT

This afternoon we’re beginning a new sermon series in the book of Psalms. I wonder what your experience is with the Psalms?I grew up in a tradition where the Psalms formed an important part of the weekly worship of the gathered congregation. Every Sunday, at least one Psalm would be chanted as part of the worshipping life of the congregation. And depending on how well the congregation knew the Psalm, it could feel like a serene, reflective, almost ethereal moment in the weekly service.

Yet that often felt like a sharp contrast to the content of the Psalm that we were singing. There is an emotional depth and honesty to the Psalms, to the point that sometimes we struggle to know what to do them.

But the reason that the Psalms have formed a significant part of the worshipping life of the people of God over millenia is that they teach us how to bring, and direct our own emotional life before and too God. The Psalms are a gift to us, because they don’t only give us information about God, although they do that, they help us know how to respond to God and to life in his world. They help us to tune our hearts, shape our prayers, and give us a vocabulary for our own Christian life and experience.

So over the coming weeks, as we work through a selection of the Psalms we’re going to be thinking about life as it is for us so often. We’re going to exploring issues like joy, security, doubt, envy. And this afternoon, in Psalm 8, we’re going to think about our purpose, and how we ought to think of ourselves, as human beings.

Questioning the value and meaning of your life might not feel like an everyday concern. But we live in a historical where it’s a deeply important question. And there are two views of humanity that you would find at work in the world at the moment.

The first is deeply optimistic. I read a book at the start of this year, written by a journalist who explores why the concept of liberal democracy is under pressure and in retreat at the moment. He starts by telling the story of an overnight drive that he had with his friends from Oxford to Berlin in 1989, to be present when the Berlin wall fell. And he writes that at that moment, as the wall came down, it seemed as though there wasn’t any problem or obstacle to human progress that couldn’t be overcome by human spirit and technological ingenuity. Communism was in retreat. The nuclear threat was fading.

But thirty years on, things are much more complicated. In fact, the pendulum has swung. And now, people think of humanity in a much more pessimistic way. As we try to come to terms with our colonial past in this country, we’re confronted with uncomfortable questions about ourselves. And most troubling of all is the question of whether we are so compromised and complicit we just don’t know how to even begin addressing the conversations we should be having.

In the midst of all that, Psalm 8 speaks with piercing, ringing clarity. How do we find our meaning and purpose? The answer of the Psalm is that it’s in living before a majestic, creator God. Three things to notice. Look up, look back, look forwards.

LOOK UP

First, look up. The beginning and the end of the Psalm root everything in the reality of who God is. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

The Psalm is profoundly God focussed, theo-centric. How majestic is your name. And the first verses tell us that we live in a world that is profoundly God focussed. You have set your glory in the heavens. Which means that the whole universe speaks to and witnesses to the presence and reality of God. God is the defining reality of the universe, humanity is not.

We may carve the likeness of an American President into the side of a mountain, but the whole universe speaks to the presence and reality and grandeur of God. We’re living in his place, not the other way around.

And that’s visible on the broadest scale, but also on the smallest. In Vs 2, David reflects on the power of praise. There’s an irony at play here – when someone that would have been considered weak or inconsequential praises God, a child or infant, it’s enough to silence the enemies of God and his people. Such is God’s glory and splendour that it completely transforms our notions of power and weakness.

If you want to know what our purpose is and where meaning is found for humanity, start by looking up.

That might sound like it belittles humanity. But I wonder whether that perspective is actually liberating. If we know that we live in a world that is charged with the grandeur of God, we’re freed from the impossible burden of believing that we have the responsibility of fixing everything, and making the world perfect once again.

Of course we find that a burden. We can’t do it. Which isn’t a reason to not get involved, but does give us perspective on what can be achieved by human effort alone.

LOOK BACK

Look up. But also, look back.

The tension in the Psalm is driven by the fact of God’s majesty. The heavens, so vast and enormous to us, are God’s handiwork. The moon and stars, beyond measure to us, God set in place as you or I might lay the table. 

But knowing God’s majesty troubles David. He puzzles over why humans matter to a God like this. Vs 3, ‘what is humanity that you are mindful of them, human beings, that you care for them?’

And his answer to that question comes by looking back. He draws on the Scriptures, and the foundational narratives of Israel, the early chapters of the book of Genesis. In vs 5-6 David reflects on Genesis chapter 1, which pictures God as the immense and vast creator of all things, installing human beings in his creation to steward the world. To fill the earth and subdue it. 

In other words, we matter because we are made by God, we are in his image. And we’re made to steward his creation. ‘You made them rulers over the works of your hands’ says David ‘You put everything under their feet’.

At times, a sentiment like that has been used by some within the Church as a charter for abuse, whether abuse of the environment, or abuse of other humans and an opportunity to exert power over them.

But rightly understood, David sees the role that humans play in God’s creation as a means of service. Humanity is steward God’s creation, in recognition that creation rightly belongs to God, and ruling is an act of service to him. So to rule in any other way, would be an abuse of trust and position.

So as he wrestles with the question of purpose and meaning, David holds two things together. Humanity is not central in the universe. We are not at the centre of the gravitational pull of the world. God is. We are in his orbit.

And yet, he has created humankind with a high calling in his world. To rule and reign for the good of the creation.

LOOK FORWARDS

Look up, look back. Also, look forwards.

Of course, we don’t see any of this in the world as it is at the moment. As you and I look at the world, it appears as though it is ruled by other things. By illness and disease. By structural and institutional injustice. By greed. Ultimately, by death.

We live in a world that looks as though it is ruled by other powers.

Which is why the Hebrews directs our gaze to Jesus. We don’t see humanity living out it’s God ordained purpose. But we do see one who is. Who through his death, and resurrection and ascension in to heaven is ruling over all things in his humanity. And because we are joined to him in his death and resurrection, where he has gone and what he is doing now is our future hope. Where he is we will be. What he is doing, we will also do. Not in degree, but in character.