I'm perfect

We're all IMPERFECT, of course, but I'M PERFECT in Christ. Do you see what I've done there?

(I owe this to a student on the seemingly excellent Sussex Coast Ministry Training Course where I very much enjoyed filling in leading a preaching group on Judges 2 today).

Illegal Sign of the Cross

I understand that under the Lincoln judgement it is illegal for a Church of England minister to make the sign of the cross while conducting public worship?

Agape Child Communion

If, as seems likely, the early church sometimes celebrated the Lord's Supper in the context of an ordinary meal (or so called Agape), as 1 Corinthians seems to imply, then it seems especially likely to me that children of believers would have participated both in the meal and in the bread and wine of the Holy Communion.

We know, by the way, that children were included in church assemblies in New Testament times as they are addressed directly in Ephesians, which seems to have been designed to be read out "in church".

Honour your Fathers

The commandment to honour your Father and your Mother can be seen as a commadment to honour all authority. It also speaks of a respect for history and tradition.

God himself is the true and ultimate Father.

The king may also be seen as a kind of father of the nation. The state may be an extension of the family.

The pastor is also something of a Father to his people. As Calvin said, you cannot have God as your father without having the church as your mother.

The commandment to honour your parents therefore applies to all of life, not just to the family, but also to the state and church.

Evening Service

I think it would be very lovely to have the main Sunday morning church service fairly early, then have people from church round for lunch, then a little nap and the rest of the day free for family, rest, fun and private and family devotions. But I've always been a twicer - going to church morning and evening on a Sunday. Now I'm required to do so.

However, it would seem that a Biblical case for Sunday evening services can be made: Luke 24:9 and Acts 20:7 (John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, on the Sabbath, if I remember rightly)

The Red Tory

This morning Radio 4 profiled The Red Tory, Philip Blond. He believes in a small state and is socially conservative. He is for the local and the little man participating in the economy. He is worried about the decline of the family and critical of the fading liberal consensus. He rejects both socialism and hardline economic Thatcherism. His post-grad work was under John Milbank at Cambridge and he is an expert on Thomas Aquinas! All very interesting.

Rich List

The Sunday Times Rich List was published today. Of course it ought to read:

(1) The Triune God

(2) The Christian believer

God's wealth is, of course, credit-crunch proof. His value has never gone down, his worth is infinite. If it were possible, God's riches have only ever increased as more and more people acknowledge Jesus as Lord, his church is built and the world is transformed from one degree of glory to another, towards the fullness of perfect maturity.

Insert Jonathan Edwards quotation to the effect that the Christian really possesses all things but has not the trouble of managing them as Jesus holds them for him.

Keeping Sunday Special on Camp

Do you keep Sunday special on your childrren's Christian summer camp, observing the Christian Sabbath / Lord's Day?

I am convinced it is our duty to do so. This should include two main elements: (1) Rest (2) Special corporate worship. The whole should be done in a mood of joy, delight, feasting, gratituse and meriment.

Here are some ideas:

Have the main meeting in the morning since Jesus rose from the tomb in the morning. Make it recognisably churchy: include a call to worship, confession, creed etc. Or, perhaps better, attend a good local church.

Give the kids a lie-in.

Have extra free time.

Have the best meals of the week.

Any suggestions / comments most welcome.

Worst service ever

Last night Mrs Lloyd and I experienced the worst service we've ever had in an eatery at Cafe Rouge in Durham. We had a lovely lunch at Cafe Rouge in Manchester once but last night's proceedings were laughable. So we had a good laugh about it. I might gather up my strength to tell you all the dreadful details sometime.

Update 1:

Most of the food was actually okay. The service was slow slow slow and the staff seemed to be deaf and blind to the calls and waves of the dinners. Some people resorted to shouting at them across the room. But then they had been shouting at each other earlier. One waitress went to sit by the loos, eat garlic bread and play on her mobile while we starved. To my mind the attitude of the satff was rather slap-dash and far too informally and chummy for my liking.

They managed to bring us the wrong wine and it hadn't been chilled.

Mrs Lloyd and I both had untrimmed green beans which were rather woody and stringy at the ends.

We were also served creme fraiche instead of chantilly cream and when we sent it back we thought that what they claimed was chantilly cream might have been creme fraiche with sugar and vanilla, whizzed up and spat in by every member of the kitchen staff. It certainly tasted unlike any chantilly cream we'd ever had and much worse than the stuff they sell in Tescos.

What does "this" mean?

Today we drove past a pub that proclaims itself to be:

UNDER "NEW" MANAGEMENT

I'm not sure what I was meant to gather from "that", except perhaps that the latest proprietors of the hostelry may well be "idiots".

Cathedrals: public sacred space?

As I understand it (which is very little) the medieval cathedral was a funny mix of the sacred and the secular. Cathedrals still are, you might say.

Cathedrals would have been one of the few large buildings in a city and would be a meeting place as well as a place for divine worship.

It's good to have buildings that are explicitly set aside for the glory of God, but I don't think that means that they can never be used for other lawful purposes.

Cathedrals have more of a public character than most other churches where there's a "private" more family feel.

As far as we have the resources and the opportunities, and if we've nothing better to do, let's open up our church buildings.

Cathedral or warehouse?

What type of church building would you ideally like? I'd much rather a cathedral than a converted warehouse, cinema, school or theatre.

I think a specially designed building can affect a mood and send messages. Our buildings are more than rain shelters. That's one reason we have architects! Our homes and our church buildings (and every other building) can be built to the glory of God, but in different ways.

Some evangelicals often claim that non-Christians find it hard to enter (churchy) church buildings. Perhaps. But I've frequently been on holiday and day trips with non-Christian family who are very keen to visit ecclesiastical buildings of all sorts - admittedly for touristy reasons, but they seem to have no problem with entering church buildings as such.

My non-Christian family would like a lovely church building, and I don't think they are hugely weird in that. Many people would like to get married in a nice church, for example. Maybe you'd say that a building might distract them or that they'd like it for the wrong reasons, but there you have it.

If we say some people don't like to go to churchy buildings, we should also remember that some people didn't like school or don't enjoy theatre or cinema and so on, so is there such a thing as a neutral space? And would that be a good thing?

Lighten up your church

I must admit that I was skeptical about our recent church lighting project. I could see well enough and it cost an awful lot of money that I thought perhaps could be used better for preaching the gospel.

Having said that, however, I was very pleasently surprised by the results. The church building seems much lighter! It's given things a much more friendly, lively, welcoming, vibrant feel, I think. Looking back, I'd say the church was a bit dark and gloomy before - even perhaps a little oppressive in contrast to the new - but I'd not especially noticed it then.

The lights are dimmable and more flexible now.

There are noticable spotlights on the table, the font and the pulpit. Worth thinking about whether you want these and what messages they might send. It's perhaps especially odd for us to have the font super-illuminated when we never use it!

The new lighter light does show up the need for a spring clean (in the inacessible heights) and a lick of paint though....

Sacred space and time

As there is sacred time in the New Covenant (the Christian sabbath, the Lord's Day), does it also make sense to think there is sacred space? I ask this question from complete ignorance, but don't sciencey boffins kinda tell us that space and time go together?

Clearly the Lord Jesus has transformed sacred space. His body (physical and ecclesial) is the Temple. Jerusalem is no longer a holy city in a holy land. Church meetings can take place anywhere.

I guess we could all agree that heaven is a sacred space. And we pray that earth will become like heaven. Heaven will one day come down to earth.

This is actually a question about holiness. In the Old Covenant there are degrees of holiness from unclean, clean / common, right up to holy of holies.

Jesus has saved and cleansed the world. The world has in some way taken over from the promised land. All space is clean. Is all space holy? Are some places more holy than others?

Similarly, Jesus declared all foods clean - though the Supper remains a holy food.

Thinking allowed.

To ask the whole question again, all the sacred space stuff in the OT, only applicable to Jesus?
Does anyone know of any good stuff to read on sacred space (especially from a Reformed perspective)?

Sacrifice and Altars in OT and Lord's Supper

We need to say often and loudly that the Lord's Supper is not a meritorious or propitiatory sacrifice. But I'm inclined to think that there might be sacrifice-ish things about it. Anglicans are committed to saying with the Prayer Book that the Supper is a sacrifice of thanks and praise.

James B. Jordan argues that:

The word "sacrifice" (zabhahh) is used only for communion meals in the Hebrew Bible. Hence it does not mean "sacred slaughter" per se, but "slaughter to prepare a sacred meal."

Foootnote:

Unfortunately, in English the word "sacrifice" is also used for all the ritual "nearbringings" (qorbanim) of the Levitical system. Thus, we speak of the "sacrificial system" and of the "five basic sacrifices." In Hebrew, however, the verb "sacrifice" is only used of the animal sacrifice to provide a communion meal - in the Levitical system this is the Peace Sacrifice - and is never used in connection with any of the others. In Hebrew, one never "sacrifices" a "burnt offering" or a "meal offering" or a "sin offering," etc., though "sacrifice" can be used to cover the entire process if one of these is linked with a Peace Sacrifice (See Ex. 20:24 and 24:5).

This is why the early Church, and some traditional churches, call the Lord's Supper a sacrifice, because it is a communion meal with God. Similarly, since altar means "place of communion," the Church's table is often called an "altar." In terms of Hebrew usage, this is entirely appropriate.

Back to the main text:

Accordingly, the related word "altar", mizbeahh, means "place of communion," not "place of slaughter." Communion, not slaughter, is the idea common to all altars, including the incense altar and the symbolic altar of Joshua 22.

The Case for Covenant Communion, p52 - bold emphasis added

Interpreting metaphors (and covenants): continuity and discontinuity

Miss Clarke's discussion of the interpretation of the poetry of the Song of Songs has provoked me to blog this:

Rev'd Dr Peter Leithart is discussing 'Sacramental Hermeneutics and the Ceremonies of Israel', arguing that Old Testament "ceremonial laws" (though the category is clumsy) play a part in regulating the ceremonial life of the New Testament church, with both continuity and discontinuity. Such an approach requires us to be "able to pick out those features of the two ceremonies [of Old and New Testaments] which are common" to both. He continues:

As stated, it appears to be a mystical and well-nigh impossible undertaking, but we perform similar operations all the time. We know, for instance, that Solomon's similie comparing his beloved's eyes to "doves behind your veil" (Song of Songs 4:1) does not mean a) the woman's eyes are feathery, b) the woman's eyes are pure white, c) the woman's eyes are equipped with small claws, d) the woman's eyes can fly, e) the woman's eyes each have two dark eyes of their own, f) the woman's eyes have a beak, or any of a hundred other possible analogies. How do we know this? It is difficult to say, but we do. And it is eaqually difficult to say exactly what the analogy is in this case: how are a woman's eyes like doves? That question has no straightforward or simple answer, but that does not make the comparison nonensical. Discovering appropriate analogies between baptism and circumcision, Passover and Eucharist, is much easier. The point is that we navigate through similie and metaphor and analogy every day, without a second thought.

in The Case for Covenant Communion (Athanasius Press, 2006) p117

Blessing Inanimate Objects

I must admit to a certain nervousness about the idea of blessing inanimate objects, but this from Bishop Ray R. Sutton gave me pause for thought:

St. Paul speaks of the "cup of blessing which we bless." [1 Cor 10:16] Note that an inanimate object, a "cup of blessing," is blessed. This was the biblical argument against the Puritans by the Anglicans for the Scriptural allowance of blessing things as well as people. The blessed cup of blessing in some way was therefore set apart for use by God to apply His grace. In this sense, the sacrament becomes a means of grace. God is not trapped in a material object, but He clearly associates His presence with it such that it is a blessing used by Him to convey grace.

in Gregg Strawbridge (ed.), The Case for Covenant Communion (Monroe LA, Athanasius Press, 2006), footnote 5, p72

Even if you want to say that Paul is using a figure of speech, you'd have to conclude that talk of blessing a cup is a legitimate manner of speaking.

The Resurrection Sabbath

The Resurrection Sabbath that we celebrate is not identical to the Exodus Sabbath of the Old Covenant. That Sabbath, with its ceremonies and sacrifices, died with Christ and rose again on the first day of the week as the Lord’s Day of the New Covenant.

Bruce A. Ray, Celebrating the Sabbath: Finding Rest on a Restless World (P&R, 2000) p94

Work, play & worship

As some unknown observer has described modern America, “We worship our work, we work at our play, and we play at our worship.”

Bruce A. Ray, Celebrating the Sabbath: Finding Rest on a Restless World (P&R, 2000) pp4-5

Planet Narnia

Having just watched The Narnia Code on BBC i player I'm very interested in reading Planet Narnia. I'd not heard of The Discarded Image before either, which might be well worth a look.