Month: August 2021

Having an appetite for Jesus

(John 6:35-51)     

Sermon preached at Bramley St Peter, 8 August 2021 –
this can also be viewed as a video on the parish Facebook page

If you were here last Sunday, you’ll remember we heard the story about Jesus feeding five thousand people with rumbling tummies. Did that make you feel hungry?  Who’s got an appetite for food right now?  What do you fancy – a full English brunch (I’ve got some baked beans here) or something healthier (gluten free crispbread)?

I read recently of a man who had suffered a heart attack and his doctor asked about his diet. “Burgers, chips, pizza, and ice cream” were among his answers. The doctor told him to change: Low fat, low salt, vegetables, fish, grilled chicken and rice.”  His first reaction was, “This is going to be absolute torture!”  Later he told his friends, “At first it all seemed tasteless, but after a while I thought: ‘This isn’t so bad.’ I felt better, and I had more energy.  I don’t miss burgers as much as I thought. My whole appetite changed after about two months.” [1] His point was that while hunger is natural and unavoidable, appetite can be controlled. Change your diet and you will change your appetite. Get used to eating healthy food, and you will desire it.

Jesus seems to be saying something similar here. He’s using bread as a symbol because we all know what it is to be hungry, to have an appetite for food, and he had just settled the rumbling tummies of that crowd of followers. But he’s really talking about our appetite for God. Jesus says that when he satisfies this hunger, you’ll never be hungry again.  He’s still talking picture language, so he means that if we have our fill of him, we won’t be hungry for God.

But what is it like to feel hungry for God?  It’s something very personal so no two people will describe it exactly the same.  This is my experience. The first time that I heard someone describe the hunger for God was when I was about 16, the speaker was actually the school headmaster talking about having our spiritual emotions aroused.  That rang true with me and made me realise that some of the emotions I had, the sense of there being something more to life than I had already experienced, were in fact a desire, a hunger for God.  I started asking Christian friends about their faith. They took me along to church, and that was the beginning of my own Christian journey. 

A much more famous Christian, St Augustine famously wrote of the heart that is restless until it finds its rest in God.  I still experience that.  This sense of “feeling restless for God” can also be explained as “feeling hungry for God”. It takes the form of being unable to relax, even though there is nothing I could name that is causing me any anxiety or pain. Once I have spent time in prayer or praising God, then I can relax more easily.  

As with physical food, there is spiritual junk food – the time-wasting activities we can easily slip into – and spiritual health food – praying, listening to Christian music, reading the Bible.  As with the man who went on a healthy diet, the more often I spend time doing those things, the more spiritually healthy I am, the more I actually want to spend time with God, and the less attractive spiritual junk food seems.

Ideally, I would be praying and praising constantly, but as I’m not a monk, that’s not really possible.  The main thing is to realise when I feel that appetite coming on, and to know it means to turn back to Jesus to have my hunger satisfied. With him the fridge is never empty.

Your own experience may take a different form.  What matters is that we can feel this spiritual appetite for God when it comes, recognise it for what it is, and know that God will provide the spiritual food in Jesus to satisfy our hunger.

[1] Illustration – Colin S. Smith. UnlockingtheBible.org

Shine, Jesus, shine

Image origin unkown.

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise, continuing the theme of the Transfiguration, probably needs no introduction.  Graham Kendrick’s “Shine, Jesus, Shine” may well be the best known hymn of the later 20th century, sung in churches of all traditions.  What’s the secret of its success?

A jolly tune, for a start. The chorus in particular is fun to sing, indeed the hymn is better known by the opening words of the chorus than by the first verse (Lord, the light of your love is shining). It is belted out, with clapping, even by those who bring their children for christening but are not regular churchgoers. The image of Jesus “filling this land with the Father’s glory” and “flooding the nations with grace and mercy” is an appealing one.

What that means in practice is expanded by the words of the verses. The light is “shining in the midst of the darkness” (verse 1), echoing the familiar words of the Christmas Eve gospel. But in this verse we also ask Jesus to “set us free by the truth you now bring us”, recognising that we are in fact prisoners of our own darkness. Verse 2 recognises that we have to come out of those shadows into the Lord’s radiance, and that only by his blood (shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sin) can we enter it. We therefore asked to be “searched and tried” and for our darkness to be consumed. Trial is the language of judgement, and that is the hard part about turning to Jesus: accepting that our dark actions and thoughts deserve God’s judgement.  As St John puts it, “people loved the darkness because their deeds were evil”.  

The third verse tells an important truth about the faith. “As we gaze on your kingly brightness, so our faces display your likeness, ever changing from glory to glory”.  The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we become like him, and the more we are not only living in the light but enlightening those around us.  As more individuals are changed in this way, the land can indeed be filled with the Father’s glory – a glory shining not from the sky but from the faces of those who make up Jesus’ body on earth, just as his body shone at the transfiguration on the mountain. The sermon I’m preaching today (which I will post separately) has a similar theme.

So although the hymn may be popular because it’s fun to sing, it has a deeper story behind it, that the way Jesus will shine in our land is by individuals coming to him in repentance, and accepting his light into our own lives so that we may give light to others.

Jesus on the mountain peak

Today’s hymn, picked for the Feast of the Transfiguration, is “Jesus on the mountain peak” by Brian Wren. Sung to the traditional tune ‘St Albinus’ (better known to the Easter hymn “Jesus lives!”), it is in four verses with alleluias, and tells the story of the appearance of Moses and Elijah to Jesus as described yesterday.  The lyrics are in the first person plural, as “we” tell the story.  “We” could be interpreted as the first disciples (Peter, James and John) or as us their successors who see by faith.

We can never know whether Jesus had control over the timing of this event, but the fact that he went up the mountain and took just his three closest disciples with him suggests that he knew that this, or at least some form of special spiritual experience, was about to happen. It appears in the three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) where they each put it after the feeding of the multitude, and after Peter has already declared his belief in Jesus as Messiah. What has been evidenced in Jesus’ miraculous works is now confirmed directly by the Father from heaven, so that these three at least can have been in no doubt afterwards of Jesus’ unique status. But like some of those he healed, they are told to keep silent, perhaps because he didn’t want to stir up opposition earlier than necessary.

Jesus, restore to us again

Transfiguration window in the window of St Luke’s, Charlton (London).
Photograph (c) John Salmon and reused under Creative Commons licence.

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Jesus, restore to us again”.  I hadn’t come across this one of Graham Kendrick’s songs before, but it’s in a familiar style.  Many of his common themes are here too: restoration, power and signs, the work of the Holy Spirit, all springing from the charismatic movement. But his songs have proved popular even in churches that haven’t experienced charismatic revival.  

The first three verses rehearse these familiar themes of incarnation, crucifixion and the power of the Spirit. Verse 4 stands out because of its reference to Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and Prophets that were fulfilled in Jesus.  I don’t know whether the song was written specifically for the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August), though I doubt it, but that’s why I picked it for the eve of that date in the Christian calendar, when we remember that three of Jesus’ disciples witnessed him meeting those ancient saints in glory on the top of a mountain along with the voice of God declaring Jesus to be his son. The verse starts, though, with “Upon the heights of this great land” – asking God to reveal his glory in our time as he did then.

The last verse picks up on the appearance of Moses and Elijah representing the Scriptures (God’s word as received by Moses and proclaimed by the prophets) and God’s power (shown in the ministry of both men as well as that of Jesus). The hymn finishes with “May word and works join hands as one, the word go forth, the Spirit come”, a balance that individuals and churches have to try to achieve.

John is quick to pick up on rhyming or the lack of it in the hymns we’ve been singing, and he no doubt picked up as I did that most of the verses consist of three pairs of rhymed lines (or semi-rhymed: again/name is used twice, and agreed/wed and one/come aren’t really rhyming either). But verse 2 is an exception where the first and fourth lines rhyme and the second and third don’t. I wonder if Kendrick added this verse in or re-wrote it later?

I will sing the wondrous story

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is an older one than most in this book, “I will sing the wondrous story” by Francis Rowley, set to a traditional Welsh hymn tune, Hyfrydol.

The ‘story’ of the title is the Gospel message, of how Christ left heaven to be incarnate on earth and die for our sins (verse 1), continuing to this day to find and rescue sinners (verse 2), and eventually lead us back to heaven (verse 3). In the outer verses the second half is the same, where the song will be sung ‘with his saints in glory’. ‘Singing the story’ could be interpreted either as a celebration of the tradition of hymn singing in churches, or as the joy that we should find in talking about Jesus’ saving works.

This is one of those hymns which has much Biblical and Christian symbolism. Phrases such as ‘realms of glory’ and ‘crystal sea’ for heaven, lost sheep as a metaphor for sinful humans, a presumed reference to Psalm 23 in both the lost sheep and the days of darkness, and crossing a river as a symbol of death and resurrection, are familiar to lifelong Christians but need explanation for anyone who is new to the faith.  When we tell the ‘wondrous story’ whether in song or by other means, we need to use language that people will understand.

My soul finds rest in God alone

Today’s song from Sing Praise is “My soul finds rest in God alone” by Aaron Keyes and Stuart Townend and based on Psalm 62.  I didn’t find this easy to sing, with lots of dotted quavers or semiquavers, and a mixture of 3/4 and 5/4 time, but perhaps it’s one of those intended to be sung by a soloist or a worship band alone rather than by full congregation.

As with many Psalms, this is an affirmation that we can trust in God when everything else around us seems untrustworthy.  The various afflictions mentioned here, whether the cursing and lies of enemies, temptations in the world around, financial worries or the ultimately unavoidable shadow of death, are countered by the various images of the unchangeable God: rock, fortress, salvation, the hope of heaven.

O God, you search me and you know me

Nursing mother. Rashid Mbago, Tanzania
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “O God, you search me and you know me” by Bernadette Farrell. By coincidence, it’s another setting of Psalm 139 (as on Friday last).  Unlike the Taizé chant, which was set for cantor and congregation, this is a more straightforward congregational hymn or metrical psalm in five verses.

There’s therefore not much to add to what I wrote a few days ago, other than that (maybe because it’s by a female composer?) she includes the verse “You created me and shaped me, gave me life within my mother’s womb”.  We who are not able to give birth obviously miss out on the joys, as well as the pains, of this experience common to nearly half the human race, but I presume it deeply affects any mother’s attitude to life, to have participated herself in bringing one or more people into the world.

Those who insist on referring to God only by male pronouns are missing much feminine imagery in the Bible of God as mother. As she spoke through Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”