One Small Giant Splosh: A Young Man's Baptism

It’s a quiet sunny Sunday afternoon in June – idyllic actually. The white waters, swollen with late rains, race under the old mill bridge; speckled sunlight breaks through upon the swirling waters. 

The grassy slope leads downwards to the mill stream; we line the bank; a brave young man, with earnest face, clambers down the slope and wades into the water, waist deep, and others join him.
 

Passers-by lean idly over the old bridge to take a better view of this unusual Sunday afternoon spectacle in this quiet and scenic spot.

“I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit ...”

I hear the sudden splosh as he is plunged downward, under; somehow that single, brief sound resonates in my ears; it feels alive, electric, purely natural but of great eternal significance – and now he’ s up again, dripping wet, worshipping, trembling with the cold - and clambers out.

A watery death ... down and up ... alive with resurrection life ... to follow Jesus. One small splosh, one giant act, of enormous significance. Here heaven and earth have met, a wonderful supernatural-natural fusion.

 Young man, my friend of many years – you have a single-eye for all that is of God – many a battle fierce awaits – remain surrounded by the strong and stand solidly upon this act, this fact, ‘I’ve died

and risen; everyday - my resurrection day!’

Christian Community: Reflections: The Extra Mile

I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
    I will praise your name, LORD, for it is good.
Psalm 54:6 (NIV)

If you have been living in community for a while you find yourself slotting into the structure: meals, house-family meals (when we share and discuss community matters), celebration of birthdays (when we value the person whose birthday it is and bring them directional words) and gatherings (for worship and mutual inspiration). We need structure in the same way as our bodies need a skeleton!  Indeed, to be part of the community, we have to follow this structure. We sign up for it as a voluntary act but, once in, some, at least, of the structure is mandatory. 

Fair dues, no moans, this is what we signed up for.

This structure is important but it does not make community. 

Within the mandatory there must be the voluntary giving of ourselves and that’s about the choices we make; structure is an aid but it does not ensure community – far from it. The most valuable things that build community (as opposed to a hostel or paid-for living quarters) come from within, our free choices. If structure is the skeleton, our free choices are the blood, the heart, the pulse, the throbbing, pulsating life of the community. 

It’s those extra three minutes we spend listening to someone when bed is calling, it’s the text we send during the working day when we know they need encouragement, it’s the time spent with someone when there is no seeming time - and very often it is the small things that weigh; it’s what we choose to do with our (treasured!) unstructured time that often counts the most. 

The Jews of Old Testament times had plenty of structure in their lives: feast days and festivals, sacrificial offerings, Sabbath keeping, the paying of tithes and so on. The Feast of Booths when they all dwelt in home-made tents (reminiscent of their 40 years sojourn in the wilderness) for a week to celebrate the harvest sounds like pure holiday time to me - family times, no work and a lot of eating! The nation would not have survived without this structure.

Ah ... but I read with interest in the book of Exodus of free will offerings given during the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. ‘And the people continued to bring free will offering morning after morning’ (Exodus 35:29-36:5).  Above and beyond all that was required, the people spontaneously gave. It was the free will offering which brought splendour and beauty to that extraordinary tent in the wilderness.

 During the Feast of Weeks, free will offerings were accompanied by a mandatory instruction: “rejoice before the Lord your God!” (Deuteronomy 16:11) – hardly an irksome one!

 It is ‘free will offerings’ that define a community; it is the deeds that are not required that bring ‘spendour and beauty’ to it - as in the days of the tent in the wilderness; structured requirements only take us so far; performing the ‘ought’ does not bring about flourishing community but generosity does – and not just of material sharing - generosity of heart and time. 

The early church knew about the free-will offering. They shared meals and time and conversation together with ‘glad and generous hearts' (Acts 2:46).  

Our defining moments as communities are when we give what is not required, love when it is not our duty, give when it is not owed. I think this is what Jesus called, ‘the extra mile’ (Matthew 5:41).

Deep Divides and God's Solution: Woolwich, Rwanda

Scenes near Woolwich Barracks last week shocked us all; the sight of that cleaver-bearing young man with blood-covered hands, the astounded onlookers – all on an otherwise ordinary day on an otherwise ordinary British high street. Signs of an alarming disparity of viewpoints have surfaced yet again within our society.

My friend, Rukundo, has seen bloodshed on the streets of his native Rwanda immeasurably worse. In the 1994 genocide he lost 78 members of his family and over half a million of his own countrymen.

Rukundo spoke to us all in our golden marquee on Saturday (the Jesus Fellowship bank holiday weekend) and his message was clear: God’s solution to the deep divides of any society is in the church. All of us in some way are a part of the problem but gladly we can all be part of the solution too.  One verse in John's first letter, says, Rukundo, sums up the whole New Testament:   'And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us.’(1 John 3:23)

 We are in a school of love. The first stage is when we call God my father (an important step) but this must lead to the second stage, the stage of brotherhood when God is ‘our father’ and we live as one God-family. The third stage is – ‘hallowed by Your name, Your kingdom come; not my will but Yours be done!’ This is when everything we are and own is given over to God.

For Rukundo, there is a fourth tribe in Rwanda. This is the Jesus tribe. In 2007 he founded a group called, ‘One Heart One Mind’, with the aim of bringing people together from different churches with a united message: forgiveness and reconciliation must begin in the church where both Tutsis and Hutus and the smaller tribe, the Twas  (considered primitive and inferior by many Rwandans) are called to live in harmony as members of one ‘body of Christ’, as a fourth ‘Jesus tribe’.

Our UK society is a far cry from Rwanda. But the seams are apparent and it appears that fanatical elements on different sides would try and divide us further. We need the Jesus-tribe, every much as Rwanda.

Ah, I see him now in the marquee crowd - a warm, humble, sincere, smiling, African face and the next minute he spots me and gives me a massive bear hug. One of my good friends, indeed.

Rukundo, come again, your message reaches our hearts. We carry the solution, God’s solution, in our land of a multiplicity of creeds and viewpoints and factions and in our small way can make a difference. I so want to belong to a church which together cries, ‘Our father, not our will but Yours be done' and whose heart is fashioned by Jesus, big enough, strong enough, to embrace every kind of person and overcome all that naturally divides. 

And yes, Rukundo, please bring your wife next time and little boy too and anyone else because, our dear African brethren, we have so much to learn from your experience of suffering.