It's that Day again

October 31st.

Reformation Day.  The date when, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.   Beset by the Papal money-making indulgences that supposedly bought dead relatives out of purgatory (but more importantly raised money for building St Peter's Basilica in Rome) Luther inspired North European revolt against the greedy grip of the Roman Church of his day.

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

Which this evening we might adapt somewhat.

It is certain that when the penny sweets plop into the bag, gain and avarice can be increased, but the way to change spiritual darkness is in the power of God alone.

Prayer

Here is a clip from the video our Church Young People showed on Sunday morning when they led our service . . .

 

 

Starting Well

A good start is such a sealing happiness.  When we roar off the blocks it is clear to us and to all that we are heading for  the stars.

Take the Church where I am currently Pastor, for example.  It was founded (at the height of British Free Church popularity) in 1902.  I have been Pastor or Interim Pastor of several churches including one MegaChurch.  What they all share in common is that they began in tiny rooms with a handful of people.  The number of people covenanting together to form the first Church Membership was usually in the teens or the twenties at most.

Muswell Hill Baptist Church in its leafy London suburb roared off the blocks with 116 members.  One hundred and sixteen!!  And that's not all.  Just two years later the membership had more than doubled.  After six years it had nearly trebled.  Even a cursory statistical projection would mean that at that rate of addition the current membership would be many thousands. (It isn't).  At that rate of multiplication the membership of Muswell Hill Baptist Church would, many years ago, have included every human being on earth!

It was a good start.

Probably no-one thought about it too much in those heady times, but the Bible is very short of encouragement regarding sparkling starts.  It seems almost obsessed with a good ending.

For example we might think of the story of the sower.  Some seed starts badly but much of it well.  All that matters is the ending, the harvest.  On another track, we cannot understand the mission of Jesus Christ by stopping at Christmas or the Sermon on the Mount.  We may go further: the very definition of a Christian is someone who finishes - Be faithful to the point of death and I will give you a crown of life.  You cannot go through a deconversion.  You can stop professing and this is a mark of non-conversion.

Starting well is never the end of the story.

In Vain

Tonight England played San Marino in an International.  But the question is - why?  San Marino are the lowest ranked of 208 football nations and have lost every one of dozens of games they have played in competitive football.  If any team ever turned up in vain it is them.

 

In vain.  Only two small words, but they conjure up rotten thoughts for most of us.  At its least threatening it will be memories of queues that were endured only for the doorman to turn us away, the cashier to close or the shop shelf to prove empty.  We waited in vain.  Worse - much worse = an investment, an emigration, or a nation’s decision to go to war.  No-one wants such things to be in vain.

 

In literature the greatest and therefore most painful experience of acting in vain is summed up by, among others, the English poet Abraham Crowley,

 

A mighty pain to love it is,

and 'tis a pain that pain to miss;

but of all the pains,

the greatest pain is to love,

but love in vain.

 

Whatever else we do in vain, the last thing of all we want to do in vain is to love.  Yet in a myriad of broken relationships - spouse with spouse, child with parent, brother with sister - human beings inflict this emptiness upon one another so that whole swathes of lives appear to have been invested in vain.  Could any feeling be worse? Could anything be worse?

Unfortunately yes.  And there is a whole Bible book devoted to reflecting upon it.  Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, bewails the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.  “Let’s look at everything”, says the writer, “and look - it is all, from cradle to grave, from king to pauper, from nurture to wealth-creating, from history to hope - in vain.”  Life is Vanity Fair.

 

But then, as the Apostle Paul reflects on the Resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15) he in the living Christ the key of purposeful living:   For you know that your labour is NOT in vain in the Lord.