Daily Faith
In our series ‘Everday Christianity’, we looked at the importance of allowing our faith to permeate every aspect of our lives and the danger of living compartmentalised lives, relegating our faith to a meeting or two on a Sunday and perhaps a few minutes of prayer and reading the Bible during the week. Christianity is nothing if not holistic; we are urged to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength (Matt 22:37, Deut 6:5), which inevitably ‘overflows’ into our everyday lives.
Daily Faith, 4 sessions of teaching on this issue, will be held on dates in June and July at Leeds Church Institute. The four-session course (which costs £24 if booked before the end of May and £29 after this date) explores what it means to develop a ‘baptised imagination’ in our day-to-day lives, whether we are at work, are unpaid volunteers, carers, parents, students, retired or anything else! It tackles questions such as:
- How can you share your faith as an opera singer (or accountant or teacher or any other profession)?
- What does it mean to be a Christian diplomat (‘ambassadors for Christ’)?
- How can you live out a Christian calling in a call-centre or shop floor?
It unpacks biblical teaching on work, rest and play and uses inspiring stories of Christians who have been salt and light in their day-to-day lives. It challenges the common view of ‘calling’ that focuses only on Christian ministry and provides inspiration and space to explore how to ‘live life in all its fulness’ from Monday to Saturday.
Led by Mark Roques, an author, storyteller and director of RealityBites (which works with schools, churches and the media to communicate the use of the Christian faith effectively in contemporary culture), this course runs on Wednesday 22nd and 29th June and 6th and 13th July from 7 p.m. – 9 p.m. at Leeds Church Institute at 20 New Market Street, Leeds, LS1 6DG. Tickets can be booked here.
Urban Rescue
Urban Rescue is a revival band from Los Angeles and the first ever act signed to Rend Family Records – a partnership between Irish celebration band Rend Collective and Capitol Christian Music Group. With a drummer to rival ‘Animal’ from the Muppets, these guys gave a great introduction to the Rend Collective concert last night.
Their songs:
Rend Collective: irrepressible exuberance and infectious confidence
Last night I had the privilege of worshipping alongside Urban Rescue, Rend Collective and hundreds of other people in Sheffield. It was an experience not to be missed.
Rend Collective, a Northern Irish band with a dazzling array of talent, a plethora of musical instruments and a passion for God and His church, bring to music an irrepressible exuberance and infectious confidence in the goodness of God. Zany, quirky and refreshingly unique (where else would you find confetti showers, bubble bursts and musicians wearing panda heads and a unicorn head? – because ‘seriousness isn’t a fruit of the Spirit, but joy is’), they bring a message of hope wrapped in music that sets your feet dancing and your spirits rejoicing.
Their songs proclaim the freedom that God has purchased for us (‘the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that the sinner is running to God for forgiveness’) and urge us to take the message of radical love and dazzling hope byeond the four walls of church. ‘Worship is simply the soundtrack to our lives as we go into the world,’ we were reminded, with the obversation that we can be quite good at the ‘family’ part but not so good at the ‘going’. The gospel is meant to be lived out by ordinary people in a world that’s full of darkness and pain, for Jesus makes us more than conquerors: these songs provide the soundtrack for our everyday lives.
Their set list (click on the highlighted titles to listen):
Our responses
Looking at other people’s responses to God’s generosity, forgiveness and grace will never be enough, for God speaks to each one of us personally and asks us to respond individually.
The characteristics of extravagance are challenging: we’re taken out of our comfort zone, out of the politeness of the tit-for-tat society we inhabit, away from the world of quid pro quo into the realm of total surrender, radical devotion and actions which may well be misunderstood, frowned upon and opposed.
The responses to extravagance may well be hard to deal with: disdain, disgust, confusion, bewilderment, rebuke, even betrayal. But this story shows us that God’s response to extravagance is worth it. He rejoices; He blesses; He is excited by extravagant worship and passionate devotion to Him and rewards it in ways beyond our wildest imaginings.
So what will our response be? Will we settle for mediocrity? Will we draw back from total surrender, from fervour and passion and emotion because we think it’s messy, reckless, a waste of our time and money? Will we be like Simon or the disciples or even Judas? – full of pragmatism and good reasoning, but ultimately missing the point and having no heart? Will we be like Michal, David’s wife, who despised his extravagant worship of God, greeting him with sarcastic words designed to cut him down to size? (2 Sam 6:20) Will we spend our lives in true British decorum, never really risking anything for God because we’re not really aware of the enormity of the debt He’s cancelled for us and so we love little? Or will we be like this woman, prepared to risk everything, prepared to break open our alabaster jars of expensive perfume, whatever that may look like in our lives, prepared to do anything, absolutely anything, out of devotion to the God who has done everything for us?
E is For Extravagance (2)
The Characteristics of Extravagance
Generosity is one of the hallmarks of extravagance, for the woman in Mark 14:1-11 gives lavishly of probably her most prized possession. She does not count the cost, but responds to the lavish love of God in equally lavish fashion. Generosity is a characteristic of God (see Jn 3:16, Luke 11:13) and for all who see and understand the cost of salvation to God, our heart’s response is to hold nothing back from one who held nothing back from us.
Extravagance doesn’t care what other people think and can look emotional. So often, fear of what others will think of us holds us back from serving God and we are wary of emotion, but God touches every aspect of our lives. Extravagance will risk looking fanatical and extreme because it will keep God as the sole focus of attention; it is single-minded in the pursuit of God.
The Response to Extravagance
Each person in the story responds differently to the woman’s extravagance. Simon’s response is one of disdain and disgust. He knows this woman is a sinner and thinks less of Jesus for accepting her, but Jesus reminds him that it’s all a question of understanding the debt which has been cancelled: ‘whoever has been forgiven little loves little.’ (Luke 7:45)
The disciples respond with pragmatism and rebuke, focussing on the cost of the perfume and the perceived waste of money (Mk 14:4-5). This response, whilst perfectly understandable from a purely logical and rational point of view, fails to take into account the generous heart of God (see 2 Cor 9:6-8) and God’s mathematics, which very often don’t seem to tie in with ours! (see Mal 3:10-12)
Judas, in particular, was incensed by the woman’s actions; it seems that this was the final straw for him, leading him to betrayal (see Jn 12:5-6). He may well have rationalised his attitude in pseudo-concern for the poor, but his heart’s state was not receptive to God’s grace and Jesus’ statement that this parable would be remembered forever seems to have been the thing which finally tipped him into going to the leaders to betray Jesus.
Jesus, on the other hand, responded to the woman with commendation, understanding her heart and investing in her actions an eternal significance which is worth pondering. It seems that God doesn’t mind extravagance and even positively endorses it!
The Consequences of Extravagance
The woman left the encounter with Jesus financially poorer (since the jar and the perfume were gone), but immeasurably richer in other ways. She left with the assurance of sins forgiven and the knowledge that her action had blessed Jesus prior to His death. Jesus invested prophetic significance to the woman’s act of extravagant devotion (Mk 14:9), significance far beyond what she herself had understood or intended. God takes our smallness, our daily gifts of devotion, our loaves and fishes, and He multiplies them and invests in them meaning and significance far beyond our comprehension. Even giving a cup of cold water to a disciple will reap a reward. (Matt 10:42) Our extravagance can never out-give God’s extravagance.
E is for Extravagance
Tonight’s sermon continued the alphabet series, ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith,’ looking at the letter E – E is for Extravagance. The story of the woman who anointed Jesus prior to His death (see Mk 14:1-11, Luke 7:36-50, Matt 26:6-13 and John 12:1-9) is a vivid example of extravagance in action.
Jesus was dining at the house of Simon, a formal occasion shattered by the arrival of a woman who broke her alabaster jar of perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet with the costly perfume, weeping over him and wiping his feet with her hair. Such a ‘lack of restraint in spending money or using resources’ as this woman demonstrated drew different responses from all those present and gives us insight into both the characteristics and consequences of extravagance.
God calls us to live in extravagant surrender: ‘I lay me down, I’m not my own, I belong to You alone.’ (‘Lay Me Down’, Matt Redman & Chris Tomlin)
His love and acceptance of us, His lavish forgiveness, His abundant grace need to lead us to the place of extravagance, for ‘love so amazing, so divine demands my life, my soul, my all.’ (‘When I Survey The Wondrous Cross’, Isaac Watts)