Christmas has been a little different for me this year. Different to how it had been before, not worse, still good, just different. I grew up in a family that loves Christmas! It has always been a time of year for me which was just special, when we tried to remember the extra-ordinary ways that God works and interacts in our, often tiringly ordinary, world. My family would spend a lot of time at church and with extended family, and on Christmas Eve, we’d go back to our house and my sisters and I would pretend we were so tired that we needed to go right to bed, where we would sneak into whoever’s room was biggest and tidiest (my parents equally pretending they didn’t know we did it). We would stay up until we couldn’t, laughing, telling stories, retelling old stories, laughing some more, trying to hold in the laughter while my dad went around the landing putting our stockings on our door handles, despite knowing most of those rooms were unoccupied. And then we’d wake up early on Christmas day to share in gift-giving together before walking down to church in our new Christmas socks to share in joy and happiness and love and hugs. We would then usually crash out mid-afternoon after the pitiful amount of sleep we’d all gotten the night before.
Most of those things still happened this year, and I got to invite my fiance into some of those joyful moments, so precious to me. But some of them didn’t. Now that me and two of my sisters have moved out, and the other two were back only in the holidays from university, the time I got to spend with them was less. It was just as loud as ever, just as laughter- and love-filled when we were together, but I was only there briefly, and they sometimes had work, and we all decided this was the year we wouldn’t try and stay up all night (not least because I was driving Jordan and myself back to Cambridge in the evening of Christmas day and needed not to be insanely tired for that). But the brief times Jordan and I spent in any one place meant we got to be in more places; I saw friends here over Christmas too, and got to be enveloped in their love as well. And I got to meet Jordan’s grandma, visiting from St. Lucia, pulling me into their family. Extra-ordinary. It wasn’t the same-old. It was a time of meeting God in people God knew and who’d spent variously long lifetimes growing in a relationship with him. So my Christmas this year was quieter. It had much more travel. More people. More places. It was the first Christmas I got to spend in all the same places as Jordan. It was a Christmas in which I got more sleep, one for which I had to be more sensible. One with more space to observe. And I realised, not for the first time and I doubt for the last, that my life is changing again. It’s different to how it was, and it will be more different still. It had been changing for a while too, maybe every moment different from the last, and it was like I’d only just discovered an ability to notice it. An ability I’d almost forgotten I had. The last couple of months have been a whirlwind of settling into a new job and planning a wedding which sucked nearly all my free time into this exciting but exhausting blur of newness and change. (Or tired me out enough anyway that all I wanted to do instead was fall in front of the TV or better my Mario Kart score…) Difference, newness, change - though I clearly profess to and think I love it - is also tiring. This month, my youth group will be looking at the theme ‘I AM’. That great name of God that denotes a God who doesn’t change, never tires; a God who is. In a world of constant change, and in the moments of realisation that things have changed, this is still the name of our God, and a name we need to know. Psalm 9, verse 10 | “And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.” When God names himself, it is not random or trivial, not because he likes the sound of this or that name, or wants to continue a tradition of ancestors. God chooses names for the sake of revealing things about himself that will deepen his people’s understanding of him, faith in him, and love for him. When God gives himself a name in Scripture it is a moment for us, like this Christmas time has been for me, to slow down and observe. So when Moses asks God who he is and God’s answer is, “I AM who I AM” we should take notice. We should ask what this answer reveals about God. We should consider what kind of a God would name himself this. We should observe, and see, and notice why God wants us to know this name in particular for him. When God first shares this name, things had changed for Moses too. He’d grown up in a palace. He’d had everything he’d wanted. He’d never hungered or thirst. He’d learned and read and run and grown. Only one day he’d seen too much - too much injustice - too much that he couldn’t stand by and watch it any longer and he got angry. He felt it wasn’t right. His bones told him it wasn’t fair. His stomach lurched and twisted as he stood there watching the show of inhumanity on these slave people. On a people he knew he’d come from. A people he somehow belonged to. He reacted. He wasn’t proud of it. He tried to hide it, and forget it ever happened. But when someone pointed him out, he knew he couldn’t do that there and so he ran. That’s when things really changed. So now he kept the flock. But he liked it out here. It wasn’t worse, it was still good, just different. Out here he didn’t have to see the things that weren’t right. The things that made his blood run hot, and the sweat bead on the back of his neck. Out here he could go on, not seeing. He didn’t want to be an observer. He was content to not see anything. But one day he observed something he couldn’t not see. Exodus 3, verse 3 | “And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’” So POINT NUMBER 1: If we do not turn aside to see where God is, in either the changed situation we find ourselves in, or the one we have built into our comfort zone, we will never even make it to the place where God, in his light, reveals himself to us in just the way we need right then. It is easy to carry on going, doing as we always do. One of the things I love most about the Sabbath, is that it is different time to every other day. It is a defined time for the ‘doing as we always do’ to stop. Moses could’ve carried on, keeping the flock - you see a fire and you keep moving. If I was Moses, I’m not risking going back to my father-in-law to tell him that all his sheep died in a bush fire that I stopped to look at. But every week, we have this different time, where we’re not worried about the same things as every other day (the normal things we have to do for work, the people we want to impress), and I want to use that space to remind myself as much as anyone, to keep on saying throughout each week, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight.’ Because I want to see where God is here. To slow down, and observe what God is doing in me and around me. Point 1: If we don’t turn aside to see where God is, we will never even make it to the deeper revelation of who God is. Following this turning aside, Moses is invited into God’s presence. To a burning bush that doesn’t burn. He is told he walks on holy ground. He hides his face, afraid to look. But God immediately tells him the reason he’s called out to him - God has seen the suffering, the affliction, the inhumanity that his people are being subjected to in Egypt. The same suffering and inhumanity that Moses saw, and which turned his heart in anger all those years ago. The suffering and inhumanity he’d stopped seeing when he’d restarted his life out here in the hills. Well God has seen it and he says to Moses, “I have come down to deliver them… COME, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” Exodus 3, verse 10. God says, ‘I have COME DOWN’, he then calls Moses to COME, and he’s calling Moses to come so that he may BRING Israel also. God has come down, to call us to come, so that we might bring others of his children also. I really want you to get this, because this is what God is saying of himself. God doesn’t sit back and orchestrate his plans like a puppet master, or a super long strategy board game. God comes down, then calls us to come, so that we might bring - we’re never alone in that. God has come down first. I’m emphasising that because it’s easy not to get it. We’re like, of course, it’s obvious, we know this, we get it. And sometimes we look on the people God interacts with in the Bible and we think (sometimes I definitely think), ‘Seriously? How could you still be questioning? How could you still not get it?!’ But in reality, we are just the same. We, like Moses, respond as in verse 11: “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” I’m crying out to Moses, ‘God speaks to you from a burning bush that doesn’t burn and tells you himself that he has come down to deliver his people, and he wants you to come with him to bring them and you still think this has anything at all to do with what you can do?!!’ But in reality, I am just the same. Four years ago I went paintballing for a friend’s birthday in Derbyshire - it was the only time I’ve ever been, so far, and I completely loved it! I was climbing over anything I could, wading through rivers (streams…), dodging and watching and running and crawling. I really liked it. But I remember - to this day - this one moment, just before I got shot in the leg 3 times (at close enough range for it to sting and leave a nice array of bruises for a few days!). I was behind a tree, and I was looking forward, where what I was trying to reach was behind a little house-style wall. But there was someone crouching in the window, firing at me. And then someone else who I’d failed to notice started firing at me from the right. And I couldn’t be behind the tree in both directions, and I couldn’t fire back in both directions, but there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. I remember it so well. I wasn’t scared of being hit, that had already happened that day, and it didn’t really hurt, but my heart was beating fast because in that moment I couldn’t work out a way through this. I knew I couldn’t do anything. I knew I wasn’t equipped for this, wasn’t trained for it, and I was all alone, too far ahead of my team to even hope for anything that could save me. I was the only one there, and in that short moment, I was overwhelmed by my own inability to do what I wanted to do. The difference is that when God comes down and calls us to come too, there will never be that moment when there isn’t somebody there who’s got our back, and our above, below, left, right and ahead. So POINT NUMBER 2 is this: We don’t need to depend on ourselves, when God calls us to come. When it is God we’re seeking, we will not be forsaken. I do know this. I’m sure you too do know this. But I still get that same feeling sometimes. When I witness God’s love being quashed in favour of power, or hatred, or greed, or conflict, and I want to change it, and I want to make the world better, somehow, but I can’t think of anyway that could ever happen. And suddenly I’m behind that tree again, and I sink down, my heart pounding. But if the story of Jesus coming down, a story as long as time, tells me anything, it reminds me of our God who surprises people with hope time and time again. As God interacted with the patriarchs, spoke through the prophets, shouted to clear the way through John the Baptist, was born to a teenage girl, taught teachers new ways, brought healing where unfairness only had been known, died on a cross so that I could be free, and rose again to declare victory - that God is also with me. So that even if we feel pinned behind a tree, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait for the inevitable, God is beside us, as if from everywhere, surprising us as always, illuminating a way to bring love and peace and joy and hope to that situation too. Point 2: We don’t need to depend on ourselves, when it is God we are seeking. Then of course we get to the crescendo of the story we are looking at. God tells Moses to come, Moses questions, ‘Who am I…?’ and God tells him “But I will be with you,” then Moses questions again, ‘And who are you?’ Exodus 3, verses 13-15 | “Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name? what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’” In verse 14, God calls himself by the Hebrew word ‘I AM’ or ‘I WILL BE’ (as those tenses are the same in ancient Hebrew) in the first person, ‘I AM.’ And in verse 15, he gives the most common name he is ever called in Hebrew Scripture: the tetragrammaton. Sometimes Christians have called this name Yahweh or Jehovah, supplying vowels that make sense to a word without them. Jews viewed this word as so holy, that they wouldn’t even read it and so when they came to this word in Scripture, they said ‘Adonai,’ a word for an exalted Lord, hence in our English translation the word is translated as LORD, but in all-caps, to show where it is a translation from this name. But these two names are intrinsically linked. They come from the same stem: ‘I AM’: ‘eh.weh; ‘HE IS’: ya.weh. The consonants in these two words, and the way they are interchangeably used in these verses, show us that whenever we see LORD in all-caps, that name of God has something to do with this story where God responds to the question ‘Who are you?’ by saying, “I AM WHO I AM.” But what can we know about a God who answers that ‘he is who he is’? What does ‘I AM’ tell us about God? At this point in Israel’s history, the Israelites had been in Egypt for around 400 years. They had become slaves and were severely oppressed. All they knew about God was what he had done for their ancestors. The only promises they knew of were the ones to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, told of around the dinner table and in quiet corners by beds at night. They needed to know that God had not changed and neither had his promises. The name I AM tells of a God who IS. A God who exists with nothing that brought him to exist. If you asked me how I got to be who I am, I could point to a hundred moments that shaped me, I could tell of my parents who begot me and formed me, I could tell of friends and teachers and church members who taught me, I could tell of a God who planned me and created me. When God was asked, he said, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ God is who he has always been, and will always be. God IS, and therefore doesn’t change in the ways we do. Objectivity - is crucial here. It’s important that we believe in an objective truth beyond our own subjective feelings or desires. It’s very important, of course, that we know that this objective truth is beyond us, and we don’t confuse our own ideas and make ourselves the objective truth in our eyes - but we must know that God is unchangingly true, always. We may desire God to be a certain way, or we may feel that God can’t possibly be as some people say, but none of that changes who God is. Our calling as God’s people and God’s creatures is to strive to know him for who he is, not who we’d like him to be. So POINT NUMBER 3: God IS. We can always depend on God because God doesn’t depend on anything else to exist and God doesn’t change, regardless of what we think or feel. Only when we know that God is both truth and here can we trust him whether we are joyous celebrants, settling into our comfort zone, captive slaves, or on a mission. For us, things change all the time. But in each change, God remains. Point 3: God IS: God is here, and God’s truth doesn’t change. There is one final important point when we talk of our God, I AM. In John, chapter 8, verses 56-59, Jesus says, “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.” This God - this God who answers when asked and reveals when people seek him - has drawn near not only to Moses, but also to us in Jesus Christ. This God who is here and who is truth that doesn’t change, is revealed to us, and draws close to where we are, in Jesus Christ who went as far as dying for us, so that we could know God with us, Emmanuel. Point 1: If we don’t turn aside to see where God is, we will never make it to the deeper revelation of who God is. Point 2: We don’t need to depend on ourselves, when it is God we are seeking. And point 3: God IS: God is here, and God’s truth doesn’t change. As we begin a new year let us restate our faith in our God, I AM. Let us commit ourselves to the habit of regularly turning aside to see where God is and grow into a deeper understanding of who he is. Let us push forward, not depending on ourselves, but trusting that when we are seeking God, we will not be left behind, or forgotten. Let us know, with our whole hearts, our whole souls and our whole minds that God IS here, and God IS unchanging truth, and may knowing this deeply fill us with Love of God and love for others. I pray this prayer today. Amen.
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Sometimes we need to see differently to be able to trust enough to live differently - to adjust our focus on to the Awesomeness of God, rather than the annoyances or fears or stresses of everyday life. God reveals godself to us, in the very midst of all we experience and endure, so that we - awakened and arisen - would continually be re-positioning ourselves to further reveal God's ways in the world around us.
Quite a while ago I was telling one of my friends the story I'd tried to tell with my Elijah painting, and she got super excited and asked if I'd paint the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. Months later I finally sat down with her and asked what it was that the story said to her - I wanted her to tell me the story from her perspective, and hear what it was I was going to paint.
She told me a story of someone who was relatable - as a person, but also as a woman. She told me a story about someone Jesus accepted and spoke to and revealed God to, knowing all that she'd done and said before, but accepting her regardless of it. She told me a story about a Jesus who drew people together, despite their differences in ethnicity, in customs, in opinions... So this is what you may see above, perhaps among other aspects of the story you bring to it as well. Re-read it, take a look - see what meaning expresses itself as you dialogue with the text, with the art, and with yourself. The background of this painting was actually originally part of a mini series of paintings I made exploring Communion. It had the yellow-brown of the bread, the red of the wine, and the blue of the water with which Jesus washed his disciples' feet. The preacher that morning had talked about Communion as a confrontation for change; a confession for peace; and a community for God. And part of that resonated with what I'd heard my friend telling me about this story of this woman at the well. She met Jesus, and there was confrontation, but not to wound - to change. And despite the social distinctions and differences, Jesus made a community for God through his discussion with her and her sharing of it. As I added the pearlescent blue on top of the blue of the foot-washing, the words of John 4.14 rounded my head: "The water I give becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within". And I thought how with Jesus, something so menial, something only a servant would do, becomes so life-giving. And so exciting! God changes things! God changes H E R, and God changes me! On the final day of the congress, Sam Leonor preached (again) on how a belief in the destination of our journey affects how we act along the way. We had read to us Revelation 21.1-6 and were thinking about the New Earth; about when there will be peace and reconciliation between all people, and even all things. Where there will be no pain, or suffering, or tears, and where God will dwell with us. Where nobody will hurt or abuse anyone, or oppress or despise anyone, but all will live in harmony and compassion alongside each other. And what Sam was saying, was that if that's what it's going to be like in the future - if that's what we believe, and hope for and long for - then that's what it should be like now. In our everyday lives NOW, we should be witnessing to and demonstrating that the future is beautiful, by living like that now. It pains me that Christians do not demonstrate the joy and hope and love we believe in. It gets blocked out or pressed down by all the other things going on around us. And it should not be! It shouldn't be that when someone throws me an off-comment, I want to show everyone that I can hold my own and explain why I'm in the right so much that I turn it into a fight! If I believe in and long for God's Kingdom of peace and reconciliation to be fully brought in, then I should be making peace and reconciliation in my relationships now. It shouldn't be that when I see someone lost or in need or alone, I'm too scared to reach out to them and I just walk by on the other side and leave them there. If I believe in and long for God's Kingdom of love and compassion to be fully brought in, then I should be recklessly giving love and compassion to those around me now. Sam finished by saying, 'Let's give credence to the belief in the New World we hope for, by living like it now.' In other words, let's give credence to our faith - all of it, who God is, what Jesus did, the hope that's coming - by living like we have what we have! God is incredibly beautiful, and having faith in God makes my life beautiful too. Just sometimes I get weighed down too much to see it. That should not be! My joy and strength come from the Lord, and so I can live making peace and reconciliation; giving love and compassion; and trusting in God no matter what my circumstances are. If that's what it's going to be like, then that's how I want to live now. What do you believe but don't really live? You are precious and loved by God; let him open your eyes to see his beauty, that you may be blessed, and be a blessing! Also based on one of Sam Leonor's talks; the idea about the precious and wonderful things we've all got, being to be given and not just to have. The woman who anointed Jesus' feet did so with a jar of nard. The kind of jar that is so expensive, that it's more an indicator of social status than something you use. The kind of jar that sits on a prominent shelf in the house, where every guest can see it. NOT the kind of jar that you break open and pour on someone's dirty feet. But as Christians - as followers of this Christ-like way - we need to be reckless in our outpouring of what we have so that others can glimpse the outpouring of Christ's love for them. Reckless, just like that woman was. She walked into a room where she didn't belong, with a jar of something so expensive and precious that she wasn't supposed to use. Sam imagined with us, that as soon as she went in, the whispering and staring would've started. The judgement, the questioning of what she was doing. And if she hadn't had her eyes fixed on Jesus; the one she loved, the one she was there to anoint, she never would've managed it. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus then we don't count the cost of being radically hospitable to others. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus then we don't get scared by the risk of reaching out to someone else. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus then we won't join in with, and add to, the injustice in our world, but live demonstrating grace, and hope and love.
This post was my thoughts and notes based on a talk given by Sam Leonor at 'The Journey' AYC 2017 European Youth Congress in Valencia, Spain. |
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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