You probably know that the government is running a national public consultation next month on the question of whether or not marriage should be opened up to same-sex couples.  You’ll find an excellent piece on it here from my friend John Stevens http://www.john-stevens.com/ (scroll down to find it).  I’m preaching on this topic in church at the end of April, and I would find it helpful to hear from anyone in the church family at Holy Trinity before then with your input along these lines:
- are you finding non-Christians beginning to ask you about it?
- are people you know talking about it?
- are you embarrassed about what you would say if/when the topic does come up?
- how well informed do you feel?

Why is this an important issue for Christians?  Marriage between a man and a woman is (as the Anglican marriage service puts it) ‘a gift of God in creation’.  It’s not a human convention that we are free to revise according to the whims and trends of our culture;  if we attempt to do so then it will be to the detriment of all of us.
In the past I’ve said that Christians shouldn’t expect the law to back them when they demand that non-Christians around them not do anything that might offend them.  That’s why, for myself, I was not especially supportive of the Christian hoteliers in Cornwall who asked the law to protect their conscience them in refusing a double room to a homosexual couple (and incidentally they recently lost their appeal).  It’s also why I think there’s no good reason for Christians to be especially up in arms when the courts rule that prayers may not form part of the formal agenda of local council meetings (as was recently decided in relation to a town council in Devon).  Any councillor who is Christian is still free to pray in the council chamber as much as they wish to.
Why, then, do I encourage Christians to do what they can to prevent marriage being opened to same-sex couples?  The reason is that, whereas those issues are to do with the exercise of particular Christian practices (with regard to prayer and sex), marriage is something more far-reaching:  it’s a fundamental aspect of the grace that God shows to the whole world, whether they belong to him by faith or not  -  what theologians have usually called ‘common grace’.  This is one of those times when Christians can warn society that marriage has been given to us for our good, and that we destroy it at our peril.
Society is of course free to give legal rights to same-sex couples if it chooses to, and in fact Britain did precisely that a few years ago with the introduction of Civil Partnerships, which grant same-sex couples exactly the same legal rights as married couples.
A final thought:  the national leaders of the Church of England are often criticised for not speaking boldly enough on the crucial issues, and frankly that criticism is often merited.  So it’s gratifying to note in this instance that John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has been one of the first to speak openly and with conviction on this issue.

The question I asked in the notes about these verses was:  where does this challenge you most today?  That led me to think about ways in which I can kid myself I’m serving others but I’m really not because it’s just a mask for my self-serving sinful self.  The Word of God really does get under our skin in this kind of way.  So, I’m not really serving others, even though it may look like it, when:
1) I’m doing a job while grumbling that no one has come to help me
2) I’m doing a job mainly because if someone else does it they will annoy me by not doing it the way I like it done
3) I don’t have to give up something I really, really wanted in order to do it
4) I get all prickly if someone suggests a better way of doing it
5) I get resentful if someone suggests it’s time to hand the job on to someone else.

I thought of those in a couple of minutes.  You can probably think of more just as fast.  Let the Word of God get under our skins and make us uncomfortable, so it can really change us.  Press on for the Lord.

Here’s our Bible-food together for the next couple of days:

Tuesday 21 Feb
Mark 10.35-45
The disciples made the same mistake a few times!  What is it about Jesus that will put us right on this?

Wednesday 22 Feb
Luke 22.31-34
How do you see Jesus’ grace and kindness in this?

Erica and I had the privilege of spending two days at a ‘Pastoral Refreshment’ conference for ministers and their wives this week.  There was good food, warm and welcoming company, and we didn’t have to travel far  -  Hothorpe Hall, near Market Harborough.  The focus of the conference is for church leaders to keep being refreshed by keeping their focus on God and his grace.  The highlights were:
- A wonderful level of honesty.  One couple who have served in church leadership for many years gave an honest account of how in the past he had worked himself into a nervous breakdown, and the effect that had on everyone around him.  There were great lessons about how easily a genuine desire to serve God can easily mask underlying ungodly desires to prove oneself and feel important.
- Superbly encouraging talks from Terry Virgo. A memorable insight was from 2 Cor 1.3-7.  When a church leader is facing opposition or criticism or some other affliction, that is a sharing in the sufferings of Christ.  And God is doing it so that he can do a work inside that person that will then overflow for the good of others.  That is how God is sovereign in such situations.
His talks will be here http://www.livingleadership.org/ in a few days’ time.  The one on Elijah from 1 Kings ch.19 is especially worth any Christian’s time.

This is yesterday’s sermon passage.  What was it saying to you yesterday about…  truths to believe?  attitudes to foster?  behaviour to change?

No point messing around with these verses:  there’s a massive command and motivation to sexual purity here.  I picked this passage for us to read because it runs with the idea of the temple (v.19).  Last Sunday we heard from Luke ch.22 that Jesus predicted the destruction of the magnificent temple-building in Jerusalem.  It turned out that it wouldn’t be needed once the Holy Spirit had been poured out on all those who trust in Christ.  You don’t need a building to be “God’s house” when God is populating his world with communities of people who’ve got God the Holy Spirit living in them.
So there’s the motivation to sexual purity in all its forms (what we do, see fantasise about)…  It was an abomination when they turned the temple-building into a place for making money, and Jesus violently threw them out (Luke 19.45-46).  It’s equally unnatural and abhorrent when we use our bodies for things which dishonour God, since he’s come now to live in us and make us his own.

Here’s Jesus saying something pretty similar to what he said in the section I preached on yesterday.  What perspective does it give me on my week?  It’s this:  every day you and I live really matters.  It’s either a day lived in expectancy of the return of Christ, a day that puts the fact that he really is Lord into practice… or it’s a day doing something else.
I find it easy to make the goal of any particular day something like, ‘Get to the end of it without making a mess of anything’, or ‘get through it as unscathed as I can’.  Here’s a much bigger goal from Jesus each day:  Live each day for the Lord that you love with the expectancy of his return.  That’s what makes each day that I live, with the limited amount I’m able to achieve, a worthwhile day.
And if you’re still with me:  were you overjoyed by v.37?  What other master comes home and starts serving his servants?

You heard from Sunday’s sermon that this short section on the widow who gives everything is the climax of the last two Sundays in Luke’s Gospel.  What this widow does stands as a massive contrast to the religious leaders:  where they have decided that they won’t allow Jesus to change some of their cherished beliefs and so won’t accept him as Lord (for which he rebukes them in 20.41-44), this widow instead gives everything she has for God.  She’s the example to follow with our money and with our lives.
Our money…  It takes discipline not to let this year’s luxury in my life become next year’s must-have that I can’t do without.  But if I keep letting my expectations of my life-style creep up, the proportion of my money that I hold back for myself will grow, and that’s what Jesus is concerned with here.
Our whole lives…  Don’t confuse devotion to the Lord with doing jobs in church.  Of course people who are 100% devoted to the Lord will often be among the first to stick up their hand when jobs and ministries need doing.  But full-on devotion is about every component of your life:  at home when no one else is watching you;  at work where no one else from church can see you;  with your friends, where they’ll forgive most things because they’re your friends.  In all of it, am I seeking to please Jesus Christ?  to do only what honours him?  to live in ways that will show others that he’s changed my life and not just given me a religious hobby?  Do I want most of all that people I spend time with come to faith in him, and am I praying about that?  It’s the answers to these questions that reveal how much of our lives we’re giving over to God, and how much we’re holding back.

If you need it, here’s what we’re in for the next two days:

Friday 3 February
James 1.22-27
Continuing from yesterday…  widows in New Testament times were often poverty-stricken.  What is God telling us in these verses that we should do?

Saturday 4 February
Psalm 133
Today is our February Feast, so this is a short Psalm about the unity of God’s people.  What promise does the final sentence of the Psalm gives us?

And if you want to be ready for Sunday, the sermon will be on Luke 21.5-38.

No one can become a Christian without repentance.  When the apostle Peter preached this sermon his big finish was that Jesus didn’t stay dead but is the Lord and Messiah.  So repentance is the right response (v.38).  Someone who has simply added a love for Jesus to all the beliefs and lifestyles they already had has not become a Christian.  There has to be a turning away from what we used to believe and some of the ways we used to live.  Only then is Christ really our Lord.
And as we go on as Christians?  Repentance remains vital.  A Christian said something funny-sounding to me today:  “I’ve really enjoyed becoming more aware of my sins in the last couple of weeks”, they said.  “It’s been good to have a focused time of repentance for them.”  How could grieving over our sin be good for us?  That’s the glory of the gospel:  it allows us to face up to the awfulness of our rebellion against God (no excuses, no ducking our responsibility), while all the time knowing that all those sins have been paid for.  Repentance every day is good for us not because we drift in and out of being Christians, but because Christ is always the Lord.

And for the next couple of days:
Tuesday 31 Jan
Luke 20.45-47
These religious people were self-serving.  What most tempts you to turn your relationship with God into something similarly self-serving?

Wednesday 1 Feb
Luke 11.37-54
Here’s a similar scene where Jesus is attacking the religious leaders.  If theirs is bad religion to avoid, what’s the opposite that should be evident in us?

Have a good week.

In the year 2000 in Britain, seven out of ten people said an extra-marital affair could never be justified.  In 2011 only a half thought that an affair was always wrong, and just one in three said that lying in your own interests is always wrong.  These results have come out in what’s called a large-scale ‘Integrity Test’, done by a university department in Essex (but I think they didn’t just survey people who live in Essex, so you can’t dismiss it as revealing the truth of any prejudices you might hold about that much-maligned county). See more here http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=3879.
What does this mean?  As I slip into middle-age, I always want to beware of the obvious trap of the no-longer-young, namely moaning that “things ain’t what they used to be” and “the world is going to the dogs”.  The middle-aged have thought that about the young since the birth of the human race, and it’s usually pretty boring and untrue when they trot it out.
However the results of the Integrity Test can’t be ignored.  They show definitively that in the last eleven years the levels of honesty and integrity which Britons expect of themselves have slipped markedly right across the spectrum of human life.  Two things that means for Christians occur to me:
(1) The more we hold fast to utter honesty and integrity (leave a note with your name and number when you scratch an unattended parked car, never lie in a job application) the more we will stand out in the world.  And the more we stand out, the more regularly someone might ask us why.  And then we’ve got an open goal to tell them not about ourselves, but about the Lord we’re trying to follow.
(2) For parents:  we can’t expect our kids to pick up something approximating to Christian character just by growing up in this country.  Our homes have got to be their school for these virtues, and our lives as parents need to be their model.  Of course we don’t want to breed little Pharisees who do the right thing on the outside but have no love for Jesus on the inside.  But we also want our kids’ inner love for Jesus to be schooled in showing itself in a life that is worthy of the gospel we teach them.  We don’t teach it to them if we hardly ever open the Bible with them, but they’ll only truly learn it when they also see it consistently in our lives.