Friday 24th January  

Reflection 

In my experience, churches are places full of people who like to enjoy themselves.  Christmas party season is a great opportunity to gather together with a variety of people to enjoy the festive season. Church halls host parties for the Women’s Guild, Men’s Friendship Club, Junior Church, Caledonian Society, Elders’ Meeting, and many others, with buffets and roast meals all loaded onto heaving plates.  New Year (or Hogmanay) follows swiftly on the tail of Christmas parties, with late-night celebration, joviality, drinks (including a congratulatory dram or two) and the customary revelries as the clock chimes midnight. 
Today’s passage gets us to think about what it means to judge those ‘of the world’ who are seen to behave in ways we feel strong enough to question: whether that be greed or drunkenness, revelry or making idols, or putting before the world a view of sexuality which is informed by our anxieties and assumptions.  Instead, this letter wants those ‘inside’ to think about the hypocrisy of this position which suggests distancing from the world rather than be part of it. Yet this passage calls upon those of faith to sort out their own house first – to consider what it means to be party people, to be people with diverse sexualities, needs and desires. It is our responsibility to revise our understandings to reflect those among our fellowship; we on the ‘inside’ are compelled to think about what makes us into people who like to celebrate, like to embrace a variety of relationships and encounter a plethora of needs and interests. 
If we can embrace and own our ‘inside’ celebrations, relationships and passions in their complex multiplicities, then our own interactions with the world in its ‘otherness’ can be nothing but welcoming and loving, embracing the humanity we share and enfold. 
 

Prayer
Loving God, help us to behave
without hypocrisy
and with love.
Open our eyes
to the diversity among us
and the ways we are your people.
Make us quick to judge ourselves
ahead of others, that we may better appreciate 
your kingdom in the world. Amen.

Thursday 23rd January

I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.  I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church. But some of you, thinking that I am not coming to you, have become arrogant.  But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power. What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?
 

Reflection

Growing up, we may have (or have had) someone in our lives to whom we look up, someone we aspire to be like, someone who we respect and want to base our own lives on.  For some it will be a parent or guardian, for others it will be a teacher, a youth leader or a Minister, for example. Alternatively, there may be several people involved.  For me, family, teachers, Boys’ Brigade Officers and Ministers all played their part.
Paul called upon the Corinthians to imitate him.  Having started the Church in Corinth, he saw himself as a ‘Father’ figure and was trying to unify the people by assuring them that he had their best interests at heart.  Paul walked close to God, spent time in His Word and in prayer and, as a result, was aware of God’s constant presence in his life. God was Paul’s inspiration, the person he looked up to.  Paul wanted others to imitate these aspects of his life, this Christian living. 
Paul may have been writing as long ago as A.D.55 but we could do worse than follow his example even today.  Living as God would want us to, not just talking about it, has stood the test of time as a way of life. To know what God wants us to do in serving Him, we need to stay close to Him, following Paul’s example of reading Scripture and spending time in Prayer, in conversation with Him and, very importantly, live our lives in such a way that  His light shines through to those we encounter in our daily lives. 
 

Prayer

Lord God,
Thank You for all those who guide us through life, especially those whose guidance is inspired by You.
Help us to listen, to discern what is right and then to act as You would have us do as an example to all around us.
Help us to constantly focus on You, both through Scripture and Prayer.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen!

I Corinthians 3: 16 – 23 

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written,

‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’,

and again,

‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,  that they are futile.’

So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you,  and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Reflection
In his book Imagine Church, Neil Hudson writes: “The goal of a whole-life disciple-making church arises from the Biblical conviction that Jesus is Lord of all and that the core vocation of the Church is to make whole-life missionary disciples” (2012, p. 84).  Hudson makes the case for Christian communities to be supportive and nurturing in such a way as to encourage each other to be disciples in their daily lives, when they are scattered, at work, school, Aldi, wherever. This is Church as a community that puts Christ at its centre – on Sunday when together and throughout the week, when apart.  Gathered and scattered – still Church, still ‘God at work’ in the world through and within human beings. 
In this part of his letter, Paul continues his case for how the Corinthians should be Church together.  The question in verse 16 should have brought a lightbulb moment for the hearers. Paul encourages them to look beyond their little community.  To consider how they gather together and for what purpose. Paul encourages them not to overthink this. Might sound foolish to the wise folk of this world, but God’s foolishness is wiser than the wisest of wise guys.  Paul reminds them that the apostles and teachers that have taught them are not leaders to create some kind of earthly hierarchy. No – the order is this. Apostles serve the students. The students become the church. The Church is Christ’s body.  Christ belongs to God. It would be unwisely foolish to think otherwise. We can get wrapped up in our own structural wisdom that we completely forget Christ. 
“Don’t you all know that you are God’s holy structure and that God’s Spirit lives within and dwells among all of you?”  As we consider how we ‘do church’ together, Paul would encourage us not to lose sight of the fact that we ARE Church together and God’s spirit dwells there.  That alone should bring us to our knees in awe.     

Prayer
God, we thank you that we don’t have to be the wisest people.
You choose us anyway.  Sometimes more than once as we wander away and you call us back.
Remind us who we are.  Remind us of your Spirit at work within and among us.
Wherever we go, remind us of your presence with us and your love for the people we meet there.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen

Reflection

Sunday 19th January Psalm 132

1 LORD our God, remember David
and the hardships which he bore.
2 To the Mighty One of Jacob,
to the LORD, this oath he swore:
3 “My house I will never enter;
4 rest and slumber I will shun,
5 Till I find the LORD a dwelling
fit for Jacob’s Mighty One.”

6 This we heard of in Ephrathah,
found it in the fields of Jaar:
7 “Let us hasten to his dwelling,
worship at his footstool there.
8 Rise, O LORD, and dwell among us,
resting with your ark of might!
9 May your priests be clothed with honour;
may your saints sing with delight.”

10 For the sake of your own servant,
David, your appointed one,
Do not turn away your favour
from his own anointed son.
11 God has sworn an oath to David
and he will not turn from it:
“I will choose from your descendants
one who on your throne will sit.

12 “If your sons will keep my covenant
and the statutes I make known,
Surely then shall their descendants
sit for ever on your throne.”
13 For the LORD has chosen Zion—
there he wishes to remain:
14 “Here’s my resting place for ever,
here it pleases me to reign.

15 “I will bless her with abundance;
for her poor much food I’ll bring.
16 I will grant her priests salvation,
and with joy her saints will sing.
17 I will raise a horn for David,
for my chosen one a light.
18 With disgrace his foes I’ll cover;
he’ll be crowned with glory bright.”

You can hear a Free Church of Scotland sing this Psalm to the tune Blaenwern here.

Reflection

Psalm 132 is the longest of the Psalms of Ascent. Many scholars think the Psalms of Ascent were used by Israel especially for the pilgrimage feasts for which large numbers of pilgrims would make their way to Jerusalem for the celebrations.
It may have been used as a kind of liturgical re-enactment in Israel while still under a monarchy.  It first celebrated David’s capture of Jerusalem and then the carrying of the Ark into the city, followed by the rehearsal of God’s promise that one of David’s sons would sit on his throne forever.

The national story of Israel begins with Abram building a primitive altar in Canaan before which to worship God. Israel’s first steps are enstoried as a people who worship the One True God. Later on, as they journey through the wilderness, we are given that Moses erected a portable Tabernacle or “Tent of Meeting”, within which was kept the Ark of the Covenant. Yet King David desperately wanted to build God a “proper home”, though he was not to see it come to pass.

All good religion, I believe, strains towards the future. It is written in hopeful voice and tenses of anticipation. Tales of hardship endured, and overcome, in company with the Lord of Love become the nourishment from which confident hope emerges. 
Sundays bring rest and the occasion to look back at the paths we have followed, recently and in the more distant past. As we gather in our Tents of Meeting today. May we dream and pray and long for a society that is a worthy habitation for the Master of all our hopes – where abundance truly belongs to the poor.

Prayer
 
Journeying God of all nations:
faithful pilgrims on the way to worship at the temple
came from different regions and with
different faith experiences.
In all our worshipping today
may we each have a sturdy sense of anticipation
and an enlivened hope for our world.
 
Master of our best dreams
may your longing be found in us and seen through us in holy action.
Amen.

1 Corinthians 3: 10 – 15

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw —  the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward.  If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Reflection

We all hope our churches are based on the foundation of Jesus Christ but what we build on the foundations, Paul warns, will not necessarily be equally wholesome. Each generation chooses to build with gold, silver and precious stones or with wood, hay and straw. The latter will obviously be quicker, cheaper and easier. When the refiner’s fire – to use an Old Testament image for God’s judgement – sweeps through the building it will destroy the cheap combustible materials. The building will crumble back to its foundations. The picture of using gold, silver and precious stones instead introduces an echo of the Temple, the place where the worship of God was central.

Paul is not of course arguing that the church taps should be gold-plated. Those responsible for the taps and much more are challenged about how they are building the church. Our generation likes to look back on past ones and highlight their blind spots, perhaps even pulling down the statues of former heroes. Are we equally humble about the possibility that what we claim is gold will be seen to be straw?

One of the most stimulating and challenging aspects of regular contact with the World Church is to encounter different perspectives on what is of lasting value. Some British Christians seem very quick to decide any advice from another continent can be discounted as merely a result of their misguided culture; such friends do not always recognise how much of what is claimed as important in European churches is seen by a Pacific Islander as a terrible corruption of the Gospel, a result of our culture of individualism and consumerism.  

For Paul, the judgment is for God to make, so we can spend energy not on criticising others’ false gold as much as on examining our own handiwork. We may need to dig down into our foundations rather than assume the fashionable is always golden.

Prayer

Lord God
We want to honour Jesus Christ, the foundation that has already been laid.
We thank you for those who built more good foundations for us.
Give us wisdom to build well on the best of them, resisting the allure of the easy and the quick.
Give us discernment to recognise false gold, however seductively packaged.
And when you come to judge our imperfect efforts, please do it with mercy.
Amen

1 Corinthians 3: 1-9

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?  For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labour of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Reflection

Any public speaker knows that there is nothing like a good metaphor to change the way we see the world, and even, some would say, to change the world itself. We all like to hear facts, opinions and stories, but most of us, if we are really to develop our thinking and our being,  are truly shaped by metaphors.

I wonder if we can even begin to estimate how much of our faith world is shaped by the metaphors Paul uses. There are countless ones in his writings even just to describe the church; living stones, a family, betrothed to Christ… These are so familiar to us. And even within these few verses in this letter he has us as infants, milk fed not ready yet for solid food, as seedlings in need of watering, as God’s field, and as God’s building.
 
These particular metaphors show how Paul sees our belonging to Christ as something that will always involve growth and development. Just as babies grow into adults, as seedlings grow and flower, as fields move from seedtime to harvest, and as buildings emerge from their foundations, so following Christ is like an organic process of growth and change. It’s much more like that, you might say, than signing once for all on a dotted line, or being converted from one state to another.

So, on this day, perhaps we might reflect on what growth the Holy Spirit is nurturing in us right now (the word ‘growth’, in this context is of course already a metaphor, if a deeply buried one). If prayer is like sunbathing, then how can we turn our faces towards the energy that will help us to grow in Christ, to grow as human beings?
 
Prayer

O God,
nurturer of my humanity
and tender carer of my flesh and spirit,
give me courage this day
to let myself be grown in you,
that I may become
more fully your creation
and more completely myself,
in the name of Jesus,
on whose path I long to walk.
Amen.

1 Corinthians 2: 14 – 16

Those who are unspiritual[e] do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually.  Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
 ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.

Reflection

Nicky Gumble shares the story of a South-American au-pair taking the Alpha Course. She got a bit exacerbated by children, running riot in the house. She exclaimed quite passionately: ‘what are you doing, on earth?’ She rather meant: ‘what on earth, are you doing?’ Christians, immersed in the Spirit’s culture, should not be surprised and disheartened that the world around does not understand their beliefs and actions.  Paul makes the challenging point that people who do not have the Spirit of Christ, are alien to Kingdom culture and thus unable to grasp Kingdom realities. Similarly, a blind person cannot fully appreciate a beautiful outfit, and a deaf person cannot give credit to the best symphony.

The church of Corinth was largely made up of gentiles. As their church planter, Paul wanted to equip them to live for Christ and by Christ’s Spirit in a secular and polytheistic society. The previous verses suggest that there are divisions in the congregation because of disagreements over issues such as the message of the Cross. I am also convinced that sharing in the Spirit of Christ increases harmony and unity in relationships.

God’s will can be challenging, demanding and even controversial.  As we seek to honour Christ in all we do, the Spirit can give us the grace to accept God’s will and leading, even when they sound like foolishness to the world around us. To people who struggle to understand the Bible and its relevance for their lives, my advice is to always seek the Spirit’s assistance through prayer before, during and after they read.

When we go through rough seasons of life, when things around us are bewildering, the Spirit of Christ can share God’s wisdom and heart with us, so that we can persevere when others would give up.
 
Prayer

Christ, our way, our truth and our life,
thank you for sharing your heart and mind with us.
In confusion, may your Spirit bring clarity and peace.
In division, bind us together through unity in diversity.
When ridiculed for being faithful to you,
grant us the grace to keep our eyes fixed on you.
When we feel lost and shaken,
may your Spirit be our anchor and compass.
Amen.