Christ Church Weekend Away at High Leigh

Once again I was driving the minibus. It seats 15, but was used for some people, and some equipment. We picked it up on Thursday night as before. High Leigh is near Hoddeston, and is a Christian conference centre. It's about an hour from home.

Many things about the weekend evoked memories of last time:

• As you walk through the main part of the house, up to the kitchens there is a faint smell of the diesel engine, presumably the one used to heat the house.

• Sitting looking out to the formal garden (that once was) and the ha ha beyond to keep the cattle out (or the people in), is a lovely sight, and very relaxing.
  

This time Jo came too, so it was very different. Other differences were that all the building work from last time is now completed, there is no longer scaffolding, or any restricted access.
The accommodation is all very comfortable with proper en-suite hotel style rooms. They also have Internet access almost everywhere, though I did not have a laptop.

I did not remember to tell them that I have a restricted diet, so the 'traditional English' food was a bit of a problem. I am not allowed such delicacies as bacon, sausages, eggs, & spotted dick, so I had to choose carefully from the very limited selection.

Friday
The first session introduced the theme for the weekend - Rev 7:17 (Jesus the centre). Our speaker for the weekend was Roger Matthews. He is a very good straight forward speaker. I particularly liked the way he incorporated things that were going on around him into his talks.

Saturday
There were a further two sessions on Saturday Morning, then some free time after lunch. In the free time about 9 of us went to visit the mill which had been restored a few years ago. Saturday teas time brought workshops to prepare things for worship, or sleep for me. I was exhausted.
In the evening there is the entertainment, where various members of the church take part in entertaining the rest of us. This varies from poetry readings through dances, singing and even reaches to stand up comedy. It is always very enjoyable. Jo and I took part for the first time ever. We sung 'Young Ones' and were delayed by a technical glitch, which took the focus and pressure off us. I'm told they couldn't hear me - they don't know how lucky they are! Some of the church folk are genuinely talented, most are just enthusiastic amateurs, but every body gets good applause - its a real family atmosphere. High Leigh now have a bar, and there was just time for a drink before bed.

Sunday
After a late night on Saturday, there is another teaching session on Sunday morning, then after lunch a communion service.

Teaching
I can never be sure how important the teaching is on a weekend away. I think that the weekend must have the family occasion feel to it, and must provide the opportunity for people to focus on God, listen to His promptings, and to learn directly from Him. Nevertheless without a teaching program - why would you go, and how would you create the right feel. We get to hear another voice - someone who we are not used to, someone who's personal agenda doesn't involve our church and its direction. So from that point of view it is very helpful.

There were points in the teaching where I took particular note and learnt things.

"What will be the sign for you that Jesus is at the centre?" we were asked, and the supplementary questions to help us were:

• Where do you ache?
• What do you long for?

Unless you already have that ONE thing, those are quite difficult questions to answer. I'm really still not sure. I'm not even sure that it helps me to get to the answer - there is SO MUCH.

We talked about the things that control us:
Who are the people you HAVE to do things for when they ask?
Work
Money (or the fear of not having enough of it)
Possessions
What keeps you in one place?
Who has told you (possibly when you were very young) that you can't do something?
What are you ashamed of? (perhaps the strongest one)

There's plenty there to make me think and pray.

We were reminded that nothing we can do (or have done) can take us away from Gods love, and from John 10:10 that Jesus does not condemn us.

We were given the Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner", and the acclamation "Jesus is Lord" to reflect on and pray. I have to say that for me trying this walking through the grounds was not a success.

Session two started with a description of the plastic drums, and the statement that we don't have to understand how everything works - or how God does things.

[The band had an electronic drum set - it looks real, but the drums and cymbals are plastic. It make no physical sound, but generated an accurate drum sound when played.]

The session ended saying that Jesus leads the way, our job is to follow. We do not take Jesus somewhere, we go there in response to His leading.

We are then asked to take Jesus round our home town. I wonder how many lead him round - I certainly tried to. Maybe that experience is for another blog.

Sunday was about vocation and calling. After having written for spotlight this month about my first year as a reader I was left asking "What next?", and "What about the plans that haven't happened?" I don't have answers to these question yet either.

"We should be followers of the moving God who causes commotion by going to the periphery to make it a centre of light" - Kazuki Koyama (I hope). It seems to be the quote for the weekend.

Harvest - Matthew 21:33-46 - Parable of the Tenants

Scene Setting
After the Triumphal Entry
Before the crowd
Teaching in the temple courts
Message
Imagery.
Is this just too obvious?
vineyard=Israel
tenants=leaders
son=Jesus (reference to himself as gods son)

Jesus is making reference to the leaders, and very pointedly explaining to them what they are about to do.
Story
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl, who lived happily with her father and mother. Unfortunately her mother died. Her father was devastated, but eventually he decided to re-marry. The young girls new step-mother already had two daughters of her own, but they were not at all beautiful, in fact they were ugly. They also made life very difficult for our young heroine.
Now you should already be tuned in, and will immediately understand any references to fairy god-mothers, or glass slippers.

Source Scriptures
Jesus is using scripture, and the common things around them.
Scripture would have been learned, and all the stories would have been familiar – they would not need to turn to the scroll and read. As JC tells the story it will already be in their minds, like me telling a nursery rhyme.

vs33&34==Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80:6-16
Isaiah 5:1-7

Isa 5:1 I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
Isa 5:2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

Isa 5:3 “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
Isa 5:4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?
Isa 5:5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled.
Isa 5:6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”

Isa 5:7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Ps 80:6-16
Ps 80:6 You have made us a source of contention to our neighbours, and our enemies mock us.

Ps 80:7 Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.

Ps 80:8 You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
Ps 80:9 You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.
Ps 80:10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.
Ps 80:11 It sent out its boughs to the Sea, its shoots as far as the River.

Ps 80:12 Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?
Ps 80:13 Boars from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it.
Ps 80:14 Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine,
Ps 80:15 the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.

Ps 80:16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.

Some commentators believe this story is not an original of Jesus because the imagery is too simple and the correlations too straight forward.
The way scripture is used is enough for me to believe that this is an original. After all what Jesus has done is to fill the minds of his hearer with rich and familiar images, and then go on to tell them just a little more of how the events will occur.

He is making yet another claim that He is the Messiah.

You may say that the Sadducees and Pharisees did not recognise Jesus as the Messiah, that all they saw was a trouble maker. They could not have missed his claims though. That is the source of the trouble throughout His ministry. Had he never claimed to be Messiah things would have been different.

Nevertheless Matthew is clear in the way he writes this story and others, that the Jewish leaders are responsible for not only the death of the prophets, but also of the Messiah.

Mt 23:34.
Mt 23:34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues w and pursue from town to town.
Mt 23:35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
Mt 23:36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.
Mt 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, d but you were not willing.
Mt 23:38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.
Mt 23:39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’

Even so in the story Jesus told today they are clearly identified as guilty, even before the crime is committed.

The prediction is quite clear. Jesus even gets his audience to deliver the punch line. Matthew tells us that the Chief Priests understood. It is a simple enough parable, especially given the two O.T. reading that it is linked to.

In any case Jesus has been preparing his disciples for his death at the hand of the Chief Priests for quite some time – probably about 6 months

Mt 16:21. From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem j and suffer many things k at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, l and that he must be killed m and on the third day n be raised to life.

Mt 17:22-23. When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man l is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, m and on the third day n he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

Mt 20:18. “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death
Mt 20:19 and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged f and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

The story has been told to the disciples and re-told – they didn't get it. The Chief priests didn't get it, or wouldn't get it.

The Chief priests are those who have the Keys to the Kingdom and are the ones who will loose out.

They want to keep the Kingdom (and access to it ) to themselves. Jesus has condemned this already:
Matthew 23:15 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

We are all in danger of doing the same thing.

Too Far?
Here's an example of how this parable is used in completely the wrong way:

Landowner is God.
The tenants are the Jewish people chosen by God to preserve the true faith.
The hedges around the vineyard are the commandments of God given through Moses. The wine press where the juice of the grapes flows is the sacrifice in the Old Testament covenant prefiguring the death on the cross of Jesus Christ;
the tower is the Temple in Jerusalem.
The overseers are the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the Jewish people. The servants of the Householder are the holy prophets.
The Son of the Householder is the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Standing at the head of the Jewish people, the chief priests, scribes, and elders had received the power to prepare the people to accept the Saviour, but they used this power only for their own benefit. God sent prophets to them, but they persecuted and killed them. Thus, they turned out to be murderers of prophets and then murderers of the apostles. Their Saviour they rejected; and leading Him out from their city, they crucified Him. Therefore, the Kingdom of God was taken away from them and given to another people; the Church of Christ was opened to all nations.

This is then used to justify the building of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the temple mount, and claiming that its rightful ownership is the Islamic faith who are the beneficiaries of the Jews loosing their right to the Keys to the Kingdom.

I would not make that claim if there were a Christian church on the site! Indeed the Mosque was once used as a church.

Parables are about people, not things.

The reality is that we have here the oldest story in the world – Adam and Eve. Man wants to be God. The Jewish Chief Priests suffered as much from this as anyone else from Adam, his Son Abel all the way through to Pete Fisher, and the billion babies that have been born since.

We set ourselves up to be God in almost every walk of life. As our knowledge expands, God's role in the things that happen is diminished. We decide whether people live or die – by abortion, or artificial fertilization treatment at one end of life, and by euthanasia (its legal in some countries, and we can travel!) or the administration of existence extending drugs that allow people to live longer in suffering more that they ever used to.
We use up the resources that the earth provides in our belief that we are doing the best thing for our lives. We are damaging the environment that we live in.

Today is our celebration of Harvest. This morning Liz asked us to think about local harvests and global harvests.

That leads to a modern interpretation of this parable. It is based on a more literal reading.
The vineyard is the earth
We are all the tenants
The owner of the vineyard is now on his way back – and we await our fate.

The lesson is the same, but we get there by a completely different route.

God has designed life to work in a particular way, but we have taken it upon ourselves to operate it in another way. A way that we think will benefit us. A way that will benefit us more that is does anyone else. Whether that is being selfish with the material goods of the world, or playing God with other peoples lives, it is not the way that God intended.

That's what the next part of the reading is all about.

Capstone
A capstone would have been placed on the top corner of a building. The literal translation is “head of the corner” and makes the verse a play on words, as the Hebrew for corner is used as a metaphor for leader. If it was badly fitted, it could fall off and crush someone, or if it was badly shaped could cause someone to fall off the roof. Either way they would be badly hurt – if not killed. The reference here originally refers to David, the youngest in his family, and overlooked by everyone except God – who appointed him King over Israel. In our reading today it refers to Jesus.

The reference made an impact with the early church, it appears in Ac 4:11; Eph 2:20; & 1Pe 2:7

The explanation for this is that one way or the other you will be broken when you encounter Jesus. Either you can choose to fall on Him, and allow Him to remove the spirit of this world from your being, or, if you choose not to do that you will be crushed by him. “Every Knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”