Bible Sunday - 26th October 2025
I expect most of us have wondered from time to time about what Heaven might be like. We have done it. Artists have done it. Even cartoonists have done it – perhaps especially the cartoonists!
I have in my collection a wonderful cartoon showing a newly arrived soul in heaven. She’s been issued with her harp and her wings and is sat on a floor of fluffy white cloud. She’s looking up at God, who is inevitably off-stage. She’s smiling, and she says pleasantly…
“Haven’t I read your book?”
We all refer to the Bible as the Word of God, and today, the Church offers us an opportunity to reflect on what the Bible means to us in our daily lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.
(I do hope you’ve all got one, by the way. And if you have one, that you read it. If you need any help with either, do please ask.)
Of course, the Bible may be God’s book, but he clearly didn’t write it himself. The word Bible means, “Library.” It is a series of books, written by individuals, inspired by God, and recognised by the early Christian Church as being faithful to the Tradition that they received and suitable for our instruction, reflection and inspiration.
But being the Word of God. And God, being God, having immense depth, so it’s words, its many passages have layer upon layer of meaning, just waiting for us to journey into them. But we must take care. The Word of God is alive; it is a living thing, and we must treat it as such when we study it… if, indeed, study is the right word.
What I mean is this…
Imagine if the person sitting next to you in church today turned to you and said, “I’d like to study you!” how would you feel…?
You might very well say, “Look, I’d like to be your friend, and maybe we can share lunch and get to know each other a bit, but I have no wish to be studied by you!”
You see, the Word of God is not to be placed in a test-tube and analysed. It is something – like God Himself – with which we must engage in a relationship, as if we were engaging with God himself – which, of course, in a way, we are. And a relationship is a two-way street. We bring to the Scriptures our lives, our baggage, all – for example – we are feeling today, our emotions, our hopes and fears, our hurts, our pleasures, and we receive back all that God has to say to us through the pages of our Bible. In short, our story meets God’s story, and if our hearts are open, it is in that meeting that transformation takes place.
Let’s look at it another way. What if I asked you a question …
Who is God? …How might you answer that?
In biblical times there were two basic ways of thinking about God: depending on whether your background was Greek or Jewish? And I suspect this is not really any different today. We might call it a rational personality or a relational one. If you’d asked a Greek the question, “Who is God?” you would probably have got a response something like this…
“Who is God? Yes, well. OK. Well, I’ll have to think about that. And, er, how about we meet here at this time next week and have a coffee… and I’ll do a bit of research and then I be able to tell you who God is.”
And when you met him the next week, you would most likely get an answer something like this piece of elaborate graffiti once found at St John’s University, New York.
Jesus said to them, “Who do you say that I am?”
They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma of which we find the ultimate meaning in our inter-personal relationships.”
And Jesus said, “You what?”
On the other hand if you asked, say, a Jewish mother who God was she’d say something like…
“Who is God? Well, God is the God who gave Abe and me three wonderful sons, and when one of them was killed in a motorbike accident, God is the God who held our marriage together. That’s who God is.”
Do you see the distinction? The Greek way was concerned with information. The Jewish way in transformation.
Try reading some of the stories of the Bible through that lens.
Such as Elijah and the still small voice of calm in 1 Kings 19, which can be a story about professional or carer burn out.
Like Elijah handing on to Elisha in 2 Kings 2, about facing up to what is coming in life and going forward in faith.
Like the boy Samuel called by God in the Temple in 1 Samuel 3, about recognising when God is doing something new; about always looking for the child.
If you think the Old Testament is irrelevant, it isn’t.
It works just as well in the stories of the Gospels…
Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus, which can be about dealing with grief through the eye of faith and God meeting us in our pain.
The crippled man at the Pool of Siloam; a case of taking responsibility for your transformation and not just moaning about your lot.
And so on.
Of course, those are not the only meanings to those stories. There will be others.
Nor am I saying that the academic study of the Bible is of no value. We all need a bit of Greek thinking, and a bit of Jewish thinking too., I guess it depends on what you are trying to do when you pick up a Bible and read it. You need a bit of background in order to apply what you read.
It also depends on what God needs to say to you right now… It’s that two way street thing again, That is why the Scriptures are the Living Word of God. It’s not about absolute answers (although it is about truth), it is about engagement. It is about relationship.
So if you want to ask the question, “Who is God?” why not ask instead, “Who is God for me, now?”
Since the beginning of time men and women have sat around discussing who God might be – a philosophical question with a range of philosophical answers…so philosophical that the truth is always just out of reach because to find it would spoil the game. They create a God in their own image, supposing that they create one at all.
Others again have taken their own personalities, their own preferences, hang ups, prejudices, and project them upon God so that he becomes like them.
So it is that God can become a God of fear and anxiety and a God of guilt; the God of the intellectual or the God of the extraordinary, so heavenly and whacky as to have no earthly meaning (for that too would spoil the game). There is also the God of the successful where wealth equals divine approval, or the cuddly God so comfortable but quite without true standards, or the remote God like the clockmaker who completes his machine, sets it on the shelf and walks away. These too are attempts to create God in our own image. Mostly more emotional than the Greek, but as excessively subjective as the Greek was objective.
So when we are reflecting on where we are in our lives, we need to realise that God can engage with them – not just in general terms, but with the nitty-gritty here and now. And it is with this in mind that we can approach the Holy Scriptures.
In other words we can ask, “Who is God for me now?” And we find that He is the God who stands with me in solidarity in whatever is going on for me and whatever I am feeling…now. He is the one who supplies our needs, who helps us to cope with where we are today.
That God is a God of Love is the central theme of Christian faith, yet so many Christians cannot truly grasp the extent to which God loves them. We are so hung up on the God who holds us to account that we do not see the God who understands, who died for us, and longs to see our relationship with him make a real difference in our lives. The Bible is a very mixed bag, so to speak, but you could say it is the longest love letter in history and it is addressed to us.
Some years ago there was published a dear little book called, “Mister God, this is Anna.” It’s a story of a 5-year old girl who speaks about her reflections upon God with her adult friend, Fyn. In it is this rather wonderful passage…
You see, Fyn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can only kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little like Mister God but not much yet… You see, Fyn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it?
Indeed it is not, Anna. Indeed it is not.
So when I ask the question, “Who is God for me, now?” I can only answer that this is the God of my past, the God who sustains me now in all that I am at this time, and is also the God of my future. He is the God who has loved me, loves me today and will go on loving me that I may grow into all that he has designed me to be, that I might find myself in Him.
Amen.
Revd Preb. Robin Lodge
Harvest Festival - 12th October 2025
When I was a toddler, my father took me to church. Mum was busy with my sister, a new baby, who was quite unwell. Hence the urgent need for prayer. Not being one for Prayer Book Mattins at the age of 3, I was sent to Sunday School.
I’m sorry to say this, folks, but I hated it. I sat in a corner and said very little, earning myself the nickname, “Little Jack Horner.”
Then, one day, came the Sunday School party. It was held in quite a posh house not far from where we lived. Once dropped off, I sat at a table heaving with goodies. I spied a sandwich. I thought to myself, “That’s a nice looking sandwich. I think I’ll eat it.” But before I took my first bite I was scolded really quite severely by this blue rinse.
We hadn’t yet said grace… Humiliating, or what?
Like I said… I hated Sunday School.
Now, after an experience like that, I might have been forgiven for dismissing the saying of grace as a mere manifestation of middle class religion; set up especially to catch out little boys like me. We never said grace at home. I was taught good manners, of course, but at three years old, I suppose the job was, as yet, unfinished.
Of course, I know now, that saying grace is a good thing. In fact, it is a God thing. We say thank you for what we have. And we acknowledge that it is by God’s grace we have it. And much else besides.
Food, spirituality and religion have long been connected. This is not surprising. All are related to our need for survival: physically, spiritually, mentally … wholesomely, even, if that’s a word.
There are many connections in Scripture between food and our relationship with God.
It’s earliest manifestation in Adam, Eve and the apple is perhaps unfortunate. But think also of the visit of the Three Men to Abraham and Sarah by which they were promised the unlikely gift of a son; there is the Passover meal which triggers the escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh; and, of course, the Passover of all Passovers that is the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. Throughout Scripture table fellowship is a sign of shared identity, acceptance, love and belonging – much like this celebration of the Eucharist today, which is itself a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet as an image of what Heaven is like, united in feasting around the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Now, we all like to have our food. As I say, it’s about survival. We need it to live, which is why we are so conscious of those in the world who do not have enough food, whether through the vagaries of climate change, or through warfare like the suffering people of Gaza. For us, who by and large do have enough and to spare, it is a source of enjoyment, creativity even, given the large number of cookery programmes on TV. Either way, where there is food, we come together in an atmosphere of sharing and wellbeing. To be adequately fed is to function as the human beings we were created to be. To be underfed is invariably an injustice, a violation upon one’s humanity.
It is the same in the spiritual life. This Holy Communion is about spiritual food and drink. It sustains our souls and brings us closer to God. Similarly, regular prayer and the reading of Scripture is another form of spiritual food. Its absence leads to spiritual starvation and distance from God.
Harvest Thanksgiving is a celebration of food and drink, the essence of life and a source of its quality. That’s why as I speak the team are preparing our harvest lunch for later in the morning. It is a recognition of the sheer generosity of God. The Israelites in the desert under Moses were hungry. So God gave them manna to eat. Read the passage in Exodus and you will see the sheer generosity of God. There is enough for everyone, and some to spare ready for the Sabbath so that it need not be gathered and all may rest. Human need is at the heart of God’s intentions. And it should be at the heart of ours.
In Deuteronomy 26 we heard this morning how Moses instructed people, when they entered the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey – that is, the sheer generosity of God – that they should not forget that it was God who brought them out of their place of need, and, by implication, to remember that in their treatment of others.
As we look around the world today, at the starving millions of the poorest nations, at the fatness of the richest, the desperate need in Gaza and so many other places, and the increasing demands on foodbanks in our own communities in spite of the riches we enjoy, it is not hard to see that it must break God’s heart, for that is not how he set up the world to be. For there is more than enough food in the world to go round if only we would share it.
Starvation and plenty. Our meanness and God’s generosity. Injustice and fairness. How do we engage with all of that? Like climate change, that other frequent Harvest theme, it feels too big to cope with.
I guess each of us must search our hearts and answer that one in their own way. For some it will be that generous gift to charity. For some it will be practical action such as helping to run the local Foodbank. For a few there will be chance to influence the way things are done so that food justice is to be found in the life of our community, our region, our nation, our world.
We will do this, not because we should, but because we must, compelled as we are to make our response of thanksgiving from the bottom of our hearts for all that we enjoy.
As the Psalmist says, “For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.”
Amen.
Revd Preb. Robin Lodge
The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity - 5th October 2025
Last night as supper was ending there came a Beep Beep. It went on. Beep Beep. I switched off the radio, unplugged another connection, tried a third, and wondered if there was some sort of incident happening. Still the Beep Beep continued, close to me, following me. I put my left hand in my jacket pocket and found our phone, the missing handset, which I’d been hunting for. A woman’s voice said to me, Return it to its source which I did. Peace. Our phone had had enough of being removed from its power source, and said so!
That surprise interruption set me thinking. God is our power source. He lives both in each of us and around us. Jesus is/was his full expression on earth and speaks to us, if we would listen. And it is Jesus who sets the pace and style for us to live by. He maps our Christian journey. In different ways I assume we all have committed ourselves to this. We witnessed twelve year old Connor’s baptism not long ago. If we listen to Jesus in scripture and see how he lives in others, then we will grow at the pace he chooses for us. Led and fed by him, everything else in our lives will follow fluently - and gloriously humbly. Not that we won’t meet suffering: he asks us to take up our cross daily, and so follow his taking up of his.
So today’s short reading from Luke (17:5-10) is a brief example of Jesus’ tips or guidelines. Tips about faith and tips about doing what we have to do, at work or at home, and staying humble in the process. These tips follow on from Jesus’ previous tips. Be sure you don’t trip others up or cause them to stumble. Rather than hurt another person, it would be better for you to have a mill-stone tied round you and you be cast into the sea.
Jesus exaggerates hugely at times – on purpose. He has to hold our attention and keep us awake.
Alright, you may say, but how do we keep these tips, how do we journey with the Master? We could have a mental box to put them in. We can’t grow in faith on our own. We need help and to do this with others. We are relational creatures. For today’s reflection, I shared some ideas with a friend and listened to her. Secondly I turned to a commentary – Tom Wright’s Luke for Everyone - and also I have read and re-read to the verses given and listened to them. For the Bible does speak to us. Somehow God’s Spirit speaks to us through it.
The disciples say to Jesus, ‘Give us greater faith’, which is probably what we would want to say to him. He says, If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed and you said to a mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; it would obey you. That is astonishing and nearly impossible. How can a tiny seed’s worth of faith, achieve that? One answer, borrowing from a song, is Impossible until it is not!(See Carrie newcomer’s song).
‘It's not great faith you need, Tom Wright suggests. ‘It is faith in a great God’. Wright also says,’ Imagine you are looking through a window, small or large, ‘what matters is the God that your faith is looking out on. If it is the creator God that we are looking at, the God active in Jesus and the Spirit, ‘then the tiniest peephole of a window will give you access to power like you never dreamed of.’ Repeat. That’s what our faith can become.
A website (Streams in the Desert) which I consulted last night, said Faith is less about what I believe and more about how I live. About being faithful.’ (And we went on to sing a hymn where we praised God with Great is your Faithfulness!
There’s another thread running through these verses in Luke, another tip for our box: being humble. A humble person has a low estimate of her or his importance, so one dictionary tells us; has modest pretentions. Humble comes from humus;,Latin for earth, the ground we walk on.
One person who was humble and grounded was Francis of Assisi, the son of a cloth merchant, who is remembered especially, on October 4th. He had great advantages of birth and background and status but he chose to reject such privilege and good fortune and become a humble Friar, a follower of God, whose role was to turn to the poor, lepers especially, and to serve them. At one public occasion before the Bishop and his father he stripped off his fine clothes and adopted a beggar’s garment.
Francis overflowed with love, love of God, love of all men and women but especially of the poor; and love of God’s creation. He talked to the animals. He talked to the birds. He also said: Do few things but do them well, simple things are holy. He might have added, And keep us humble.
Jesus tells a story of the slave owner who came in one evening and expected his slave who had been working outdoors to cook and feed him before having his own evening meal. Jesus says the slave was only doing what he should, his duty. We are to be like that: get on with what is expected or needed of us and so help others. This is what so many of you do here, in many different ways, for the good of us all.
At Cuddesdon we all had to help with such jobs as the laying and clearing of tables, as well as get on with our studies. I needed to realise that such jobs were something that you did not do to show how marvellous you were but to enable the place to run smoothly. I also found a quiet satisfaction in doing the chores that were expected of me. The place, I found, was teaching me humility. And at the moment I need humility in my caring of Sheila at home.
But perhaps humility comes to us, as Paul wrote to his mentee Timothy, not so much ‘because of anything we have done’ but ‘because of God’s own purpose and grace.’ In that case we can pray for humility and the willingness to serve others.
Jeremy Harvey, Reader