13th June 2010 - "Rules are not enough"

Stephen Fielding - All Saints', Datchworth

I was last here in August.  Much too long ago.  Then, we looked at Psalm 119 - the longest psalm – all about the Law of God.  Keeping it, learning it, loving it. Every single verse of that great psalm about loving and keeping God’s law, the Law given to Moses. And this morning, after this great long gap, we meet the same subject again. Only this time the message is rather Different.  The Law – the Jewish Law - is not enough. Rules are not enough.

I wonder if you remember a few years ago that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, attended the Roman Catholic funeral of his judicial colleague the law lord Lord Russell of Killowen. This was a mark of respect to a former colleague and friend. Lord Mackay of Clashfern was a ‘wee free’, and the wee frees were outraged that a member of that church should even visit a Roman Catholic church let alone attend a funeral service there. And so they excluded him from being a member of the wee frees. I don't know whether that strikes you in the same way that it strikes me, but it certainly struck Lord Mackay that a church which despised his honouring of a friend at a Roman Catholic funeral was not the sort of church which he wanted to belong to and he promptly left. For surely the honouring of a friend and the claims of respect and duty must be higher than the rules of the wee free Church which said that they should keep themselves to themselves, ‘unsullied and unspotted’ by the world.

6th June 2010 - "Give us this day our daily bread"

Stephen Fieldin - St Mary's

I expect you've noticed that some Christians, particularly younger Christians, wear wristbands with four capital letters on them. WWJD. What Would Jesus Do? I don't wear one myself, but I can well see how asking What Would Jesus Do? can be a powerful reminder that he is our companion, our friend, our guide, and our model to follow. To ask, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ is to recall, to remember and to follow what Jesus the teacher taught and Jesus the man actually did.

And what did he do? He taught us to pray and he prayed himself. ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ And for the last few weeks, many of us have been exploring what Jesus meant when he prayed to his Father and urged us to pray in the same way. Today, this morning I want to explore with you that little phrase ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, that part of the Lord's Prayer which a number of us considered last Wednesday here, as part of the prayer which Jesus taught us to say, every day, at least once a day, and three times a day if you follow the teaching of the early apostles, who told the followers of Jesus to pray the prayer that Jesus taught them three times a day. Our Father who art in heaven. So then -  ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ What's it all about? How did Jesus actually put it?

30th May 2010 - "The God we worship"

Stephen Fielding
St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter

This morning, I want to talk about God. I mean, the sort of God we can believe in, the sort of God we can love. Perhaps you would expect me to talk about God on this Trinity Sunday.

My Oxford law tutor at Christ Church used to sit on the patronage board that the college had for all the livings - the churches - of which the college was patron, all 67 of them. And he'd go along to the interviews to interview the candidates who’d applied to be vicar or rector of the churches that the college was patron of. A funny old system but a real system nevertheless. And if he was doubtful about any clergyman presenting himself as a candidate  - perhaps he was too liberal, didn't say his prayers, or if he was going to drive through the modern liturgy in defiance of a congregation that preferred the old form of worship, he’d ask the candidate a simple question: do you believe in God? Wow! An exocet of a question, don't you think?

9th May 2010 - "People of Reconciliation"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter

I should like to be a fly on the wall in the discussions currently going on between David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Actually I should prefer to be helping them negotiate, except that I wouldn't perhaps have in this case the freedom from bias which a mediator is expected to have. There's everything to play for in these negotiations, they are very high stake, and the party leaders and their advisers will be asking themselves the key questions - what do we want and what are the big issues? To be successful these negotiations will have to follow one golden rule - the golden rule that I've observed over many years of helping people negotiate. The golden rule is that both sides have to give something up if there is to be the sort of coming together and reconciliation which will produce a deal. We cannot negotiate, as John F. Kennedy said, with those who say ‘what is mine is mine, and what is yours is negotiable’.

These negotiations have come about as the result of the judgment of the electorate last Thursday. And this evening unusually we have had our reading from the prophet of judgment Zephaniah. The judgment that he's talking about is, of course, not the judgment of the electorate but the judgment of God. Let's say a word or two about this important idea, which is much less negative and much more full of promise than we might actually believe.

9th May 2010 - "Can these bones live?"

Usha Hull - St Peter's Tewin and Ayot St Peter
Ezekiel 37 1-14
John 5 1-9

The sun beats down mercilessly and as far as the eye can see there is only sand and the cracked dry earth. Only the occasional knarled tree dots the horizon, withered and bent as it reaches deep into the bowels of the earth in its quest for water. There was water here once, there was life here once, on this dried up lake bed, the evidence left in ripples of dry sand and earth. As we look for shelter from the glare of the merciless sun, I wonder if this was what Ezekiel’s valley of dried bones must have looked like, a wilderness devoid of life and hope, before the breath of God transformed the landscape.

I am standing on a dried up bed that was once a salt lake teeming with bird life in the land known as Rajasthan in India. The desert is expanding in this place once known once as the country of the kings. And shortage of clean safe water is affecting not only the eco-system, decimating plant and wild life, but causing suffering on a massive scale among the human inhabitants. At the edge of the dried up lake stands a village and here, among some of the most vulnerable and poor people on earth we have heard stories of helplessness, of suffering and of loss.

2nd May 2010 - "Let your glory shine"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin
John 13:31-35

One of the many pleasures of being associated with this church is that every Wednesday I get to take the assembly at Tewin School. We learn new things about God, we say our prayers together, and we sing new songs. For the last two weeks we've been singing a wonderful song new to all of them – ‘All Heaven declares the glory of the risen Lord’. I wonder if you know it. And perhaps we will be able to introduce it here at some point. It speaks of the glory of the risen Lord.

Glory. That's a very important word for us, is it not? And not an altogether easy one to understand. I wonder what you think it means. We remember of course that in the Old Testament Ezekiel saw the glory of God leaving the Temple and going eastwards through the Mount of Olives and out into Babylon where the exiles were. It's a wonderful picture of the reality of the presence of God - a presence weighty, dignified, substantial, to which honour and glory should be given, and it later acquired the idea of brightness, Ezekiel calling it a ‘devouring fire’. Just as Moses had seen the very presence, the glory of God in the burning bush. Later writers describe glory not only as being the actual presence of God but also as something that belongs to the messianic age, that points to the future - and some of this background comes over to us in the New Testament. Glory is an integral part of the Kingdom of God, realised now and expected in the future. And nowhere is this more clearly expressed than in the person of Jesus Christ. The glory of God, says Paul, is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of John is soaked in the glory of God from first to last. Right at the beginning John says to his readers – ‘We beheld his glory’. The glory of God is seen in every miracle that Jesus performs: they are signs of the glory of God. The glory of God is a showing forth of the presence of God, a manifestation of God, an epiphany of God. Look at Jesus, says the Gospel writer John, and you will see in him God in his actual presence. And this morning’s gospel reading tells us that the ‘Son of Man is glorified.’ What does it mean and what does it imply?