Learning to Follow

Well that is the Brechin City Football Club season over for a couple of months. That means for the basic observers of the sport that there is a wee break. But for the serious fan and those in management this is just the beginning to get ready for the new season. So it was in the early church in those days after the resurrection and though it seemed quiet and the Pharisees seemed off the hook for what they had done in arresting Jesus and having Him crucified. There was this absence of that Jesus guy and his annoying disciples. But behind the scenes there was a lot happening and Jesus was teaching and preparing his disciples and followers for the work that was soon to be set before them—the start of the Church.

So as we prepare for this the Forth Sunday After Easter the gospel text shares that Jesus in John 10:1-10 compares himself to a shepherd as he talks about the relation between sheep and their shepherd. The fact that sheep don’t follow strange shepherds but rather the one whose voice they recognize. Then in verse 11 Jesus says quite plainly “I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” Peter then in the New Testament text, 1 Peter 2:19-25, says in verses 23-25 “…He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” This was both saying that Jesus was the shepherd who gave his life and a reminder that we are to be the sheep.

We know it is not the building that makes up the church but rather the people who attend and participate. We should be the sheep that follow the shepherd and make up His church. It is about learning to follow the guidance of the shepherd. Just as in football the team must follow the manager and the rules of the game. So it was for the early church. They had to follow Jesus and the doctrine that he had taught. 

So the Reading from Acts 2:42-47 tells us the response of the new sheep, the new members of that early church. “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

This should guide us on our own journey through life and as we seek to see our own response to the manager and rules, Jesus and the Scripture texts. I hope our response is like the disciples in that we come from fear and doubt to following our shepherd.

Learning to follow,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Week of Chaos -makes me think

Another week of chaos has just flown by, a week that leaves us reeling from the thoughts of natural disasters and manmade horror. A tornado in Oklahoma and a gruesome murder in Woolwich. Some of the other things that took place in the news leave me gasping at how to express my thoughts. 

The man-made things I guess bother me more and more as we lose the moorings of a ‘once Christian culture’ and religion becomes the way of thinking for those that have such. I keep coming back to Biblical verses Religious as terms and I see religion letting us down left, right and centre. I have a fair bit more reading to do before I speak my heart and understanding but for now will re-emphasise that I believe the Bible is the revelation from God. Sadly there are those that deny such while in just the breath before claim that they uphold a similar view of scripture to mine. 

But then you have a man in Woolwich, where more and more a lone wolf idea is being shoved aside as more and more arrests are made, that used religion as a reason to murder a man in broad daylight on a busy street. It is garbage like this that remind me that religion is not the answer to our problems in life. Whilst the proclamation is a religion of peace there is no peace.

The bizarre part is that in Christianity we are faced with dilemmas of conscience that can leave us struggling to define what it means to ‘live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age’ (Titus 2:12) while scripture is clear. My take is that biblical living should change our lives, we truly should live lives of peace and love, while at the same time saying sin is sin. Yet always mindful of the thought that while we are no longer to participate in the behaviour that is wrong, we are to be a redeemed people that don’t forget what we are redeemed from. Pauls says it this way: ‘and such were some of you.’

So this dilemma of how to respond to things like the killing of Lee Rigby strikes deep into my Texas heart as my reaction is one that screams out for vengeance and revenge on his behalf. Yet my Christian side reminds me that I am to act in love and kindness toward those that are in need of something more than religion. My humanity at times like this make me want to lash out and my Christian side then says ‘no, speak of the love of Christ’. Sadly it would take way more space than this forum provides to sort this out, but at least you get the gist of my dilemma and I suspect many of yours as well.

So I shall leave us with James (2:25+27) definition of true religion: ‘But whoever looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed... Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. ‘ The actions of too many religious people doesn't match that by a long shot.

Growing in Grace,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Relationships Still More

So still building on the basic theme of relationships from the past couple of weeks. One thing that can define relationship is being a friend and I am reminded of the words of Jesus, where He said: “Greater love has no man then this that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13) But love is often hard to define and sort out in our lives. We often talk about falling in love, falling out of love. Yet the great commandment according to Jesus is twofold: Love God with all you are and Love your neighbour as yourself. (paraphrase according to Jon)

So that gets me to thinking perhaps love in a relationship is not an accident, it is not something we fall in or out of at a whim. Rather I think it is a choice, it is something we decide to do. We make friends based on our likes and dislikes and from there our relationship grows or falls apart based on the in common things. Sadly where I started a couple of weeks back is that of ‘Vines that Choke the Life Out’ of relationships and how easy it is for little things to grow into bigger things and suddenly best friends are fighting with each other.

Well I think perhaps marriage should be the foundational basis of society and yet we have lost our way with what it is about or how it should function in our world. But sadly for too many marriage is now a thing of the past and there is much confusion about it.

The way it is presented these days is that it is something two people do if they love each other. But this was not the origin of the way it worked or how it should work. Yes, love is a factor, or should be at some point since the command in Ephesians is; “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it...” So we see again a command to love, a choice that has to or should be made. But if love is the basis and people don’t choose to love then small wonder marriage is in such trouble. The reality is we are to be doing marriage to picture what Christ did when He died as a sacrifice for us. If we did marriage as a 100% commitment, a 100% sacrifice, it changes everything. Relationship then matters in a way much different than our normal starting point.

The thing is, marriage is hard, relationship is hard, but there are answers out there. But as I am learning it takes time to learn the lessons and sometimes, well too many times, we wait till it is too late to get help or to find a way forward. That is where I don’t have all the answers but I know the Guy who does and with a wee bit of ‘want to’ on our part, He can help us build relationship right.

Things are looking up,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Relationships in the Wind...

Published in the Brechin Advertiser on 9 May 2013

How does that saying go? Be careful what you wish for. Here was me last week talking about building relationships and trying to keep them in good shape and WHAM out of nowhere from my point of view a few that I am involved in blow up and out of proportion to anything I could have imagined. I’m not sure if I got all the ‘vines’ sorted yet and if the ‘trees’ (see last week’s for a bit of explanation) will be back and healthy or nae but I’ll keep working on it and hopefully get it sorted.

It just keeps me reminded of two simple principles I know I have shared before and will again: 1) If you have a belly button you have a problem. 2) The problem is not the problem.

The points as should be obvious is that if you are alive there is some kind of challenge or problem you are dealing with in your life. I know even in my perfect world it is not perfect and I face daily things that leave me troubled, some that I have no control over, others that are of my own making. And the second is that often the thing that I say is the problem is only the latest problem, it is really about three problems back that I have to fix before the latest one can get sorted.

So what seems to be the biggest problem in relationships? Well more often than not it seems to me to come back to basic communication. The way we say something and it is misunderstood.  In my case too often I just don’t seem to listen, I try to listen but then I hear what I hear and sadly it is not always what was said. Alan Greenspan put it this way: ” I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant” Sadly since you have the same problem I do, the problem just gets worse and worse and we find we just don’t get what the other person said.

This affects all kinds of relationships, work, educational, shopping, trades folk, family, marriages, best friends. And perhaps shouldn’t say all kinds but ‘all’ relationships. It is communication, that ability to talk and write and say something beyond a grunt that makes it work.

I am reminded that Jesus came into the world yet he created the world in the first place. John 1 starts by saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made... And the Word became flesh and lived among us...” God Himself put a focus on the idea of word, in this case The Word, who as we read through John we realize very quickly was Jesus, the incarnation of God. As I read the OT I realize very quickly that folk there were often very much in direct contact with God, yet somehow they misunderstood what God’s plan was, so much so that one book ends with the words “and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” A bit of a problem.

More to come,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Those Vines That Choke the Life Out...

Published in the Brechin Advertiser on 02 May 2013

Well a slightly less crazy week in the news. Not by much but still a bit easier to understand. So what of relevance is going on in our world? What thing just stands and cries out pay attention to this?

Not sure really. So will address relationships at some level. Why? you ask, because it seems that is what is breaking down in our world. Friends that don’t talk, families that don’t get along, neighbours that haven’t spoken in years, communities that hate each other and even nations that want to go to war over stuff that really doesn’t seem that important or that the leaders feel bad because the rest of the world isn’t taking them seriously enough. Or some such excuse.

Well most of those international situations I don’t have answers for, and neither it appears do our beloved politicians as they jet around from place to place trying to make up ground. So guess I will go to trying to help families at some level. And if I can manage, will try to address this from a few angles over the coming weeks... 

I was in conversation with my brother and he was telling me about having to pull vines from some trees in his garden. How over the years they had grown up and just taken over. So much so that now they were choking the very life out of some of his biggest trees.  It was a bit of a picture of how we live our lives and build our relationships. We put a lot into them in the early days, we work hard to dig the soil right to plant the tree, we water, fertilize, sometimes staking the trees in the early years to keep the wind from blowing them over. We wrap the trunks so the rabbits won’t come and chew the bark off and kill them before they get a chance to get started. Then out of virtually nowhere a wee vine starts to grow up, and as it grows it attaches itself to the tree and we see it there but don’t do anything about it till suddenly we realise the years have come and gone and the vine has gotten really big and is choking the life out of that tree that we had once spent a lot of time and effort to get started.

And so it is in our relationships. We spend time together, we say nice things to each other, we buy gifts small and sometimes not so small just to show we care. Dinner out with friends are times to bridge gaps and encourage each other. We go to events together and one day wake up to say: Man that is my best friend in the whole wide world. Then like those vines growing up from almost nothing to kill the tree, little things jump in and get to niggling at our relationship. But you know it is such a little thing and they are my best friend so it gets ignored, and sadly it continues to happen over and over till it gets to be a big deal and suddenly the relationship is not as healthy as it was...

Think about that for now and I’ll pick up with this next week,

Rev. Jon Bergen