Over four weeks we will be looking at the story of Job- how trauma found him and how he responded.
19th September, 2010 “The Devil’s Cards?”
26th September, 2010 “Suffering with Others”
3rd October, 2010 “Everything you know about God is wrong!”
10th October, 2010 “Restoration”

“Everyone is under the power of sin”

He quotes the Jewish prophet Isaiah

“No-one is righteous, not one…

they have no idea where to find peace.

They have no idea how big God is at all”

He continues:

“The Jewish law isn’t an exhaustive list of right and wrongs we can keep. Its purpose is to show us how screwed up we are.”

What is sin?

There are only a handful of sins.  They rear their heads in different forms. 

They mix together like colours so even though there’s nothing new under the sun we are still capable of finding new ways of sinning.

Red and yellow mix to make orange… a touch of blue and we have brown.

As time moves forwards the shades of sin remain constant.  I’m pretty sure I haven’t met someone who has not sinned- and even more sure I haven’t met someone who hasn’t seen and felt the effects of sin.  It’s all around us.  Even within periods of great religious fervour it crouches at our door, sneaking up on us when we least expect it.

Three Definitions of  Sin

• Sin is an illegitimate way of meeting a legitimate need
• Sin is that which causes a breaking of relationship with those around us (and more particularly God)
• Sin is anything which does not bring glory to God

The Seven Deadly Sins

Gregory the Great, a chunky monk who became pope, listed seven sins he considered deadly.  (He actually edited a list of a previous man.) He was more of a people manager than a theologian/teacher yet this list still permeates through art and history from Bosch’s paintings to Dante’s Divine Comedy to Pinchers “Se7en”

Augustine of Hippo, a fourth definition and nouns as verbs

Augustine, often called an early church father, was a gifted orator whose philosophical affections were sought by many ‘schools’ before he followed his mother’s faith.  While pondering the birth narrative of Jesus in the Gospels he concluded sin must transfer through the seed of man.*  If this is true we can with modern knowledge put forward the idea sin runs through our DNA…

 Sin is what we are.

 This kind of talk hurts our pride.

“everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glory”

Let me put it another way… it’s not what we do, but in the fact we are human.  We say I am human, but we need to view ourselves more as a verb than a noun.  “I am human” becomes “I am being human”  In trying to perfect the art of being human we forget we, collectively or singularly, will never be God.

 Hair salons and the ugly truth of white light…

 I used to go to a really posh hair dressers.  I don’t think I’m allowed to call it that… a hair salon… no… a boutique.  I used to go not just for the hair styling, but to be surrounded by pretty stylists, good wine and smooth coffee. (It was that kind of place).  I’d wake up early and choose my outfit, bathe, wash, dry then style my hair so I could look good before I walked through the doors of said salon.  I wanted to look my best when I walked in.

There’s something about the lighting of hair salons.  Maybe it’s the way it is reflected  in all the mirrors.  I don’t know.  But when I sat down in the chair every hair, spot and blemish that I had missed or failed to bring under my control could be seen.  I wanted to apologise, “honestly, I looked great when I left the house”.  Instead I would have to pretend I’d been the victim of another late night party.

‘White light’ is ugly.  It is stark, it tells the truth, but it is us.  We show up the worst in the people around us and they show up the worst in us.   But when we come into relationship with Jesus accepting he isn’t made up of the same stuff as us something in us begins to change.

When we see our humanity in this way Paul’s words suddenly begin to make sense when he says “I am a new creation”.  When we come into relationship with Jesus we are more than changed.  We’re not mutants; transformed and remoulded, but something completely new.

When God looks at us through the lens of the cross of his Son he doesn’t see white light, but the colours refracted into something beautiful.  What he sees is his own promises, his own words, his own image. His own glory. 

In the ugliness of the cross, maybe we  can find something beautiful too.

“God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.   For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.” 

What deadly sin would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments

*I realise this is a much simplified account of Augustine’s views.

Our desire is to strip away all that is unnecessary.

Our desire is to throw off the things that hinder.

So for a moment I will ask you to dream with me of a gathering of people centered around the teachings of Jesus.  Good news that has not been overtaken by aspirational ideas, but aligned with serving our neighbours and the poor.

I ask that you dream of a spirituality which is not dependent upon one weekly meeting, but upon the people of the church meeting together in clusters throughout the city.  Where it’s okay to admit you’ve had a crappy day. Where we stop relying on a weekly meeting for top-me-up, but instead seek Christ to build and disciple us through each other- where the priesthood of all believers is practised and not just preached.

… Imagine a faith where we are able to call the homeless our friends.  Instead of soup we give them dignity and identity.  Instead of gold… hope.

So this is what we do:

We look at the Bible and we look at our lives, and we look at the way we ‘do church’ and we ask “does this add up?” Does my life relate to the teachings of Jesus.  A way of life that was so dangerous he had to be put to death?

We call ourselves ‘a community’ instead of ‘a church’, primarily because there is only one church.  In fact- if we’re feeling super-spiritual we might even get up early on a Sunday morning and visit another congregation.  Secondly, because not all who come to our gatherings are believers.

We ask questions when we do not understand/disagree, because we learn together.  Although there is often one main speaker/discussion leader we believe the Holy Spirit is in all believers, and to paraphrase C.S.Lewis we all have our own little piece of God that nobody else has.  When those who are not yet believers talk we are still able to listen in to the quiet voice of God, because we do not know it all.  Doesn’t it get tiresome when someone is trying to answer your question before you’ve even finished.

We don’t always sing songs, because singing isn’t the only way humans express themselves.  Our gatherings can contain poetry, art, spoken word, scripture reading.

We rarely take an offering, because we try and have minimal costs. We encourage all members to give to local charities or grab a tea with someone who is homeless.