Articles published by Matthew Dawkins

Your kingdom come

This is part of a series called “Into the Lord’s Prayer”, looking closer at how we use the framework of the prayer and making it relevant and useful to us today.

Jesus went to great pains to explain to his followers and critics what his father’s “kingdom” was.  There was a great expectation among the Jews of the time that God would come with an army to redeem his Chosen People and give Israel back to them.  They made a mockery of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah, not because he spoke a load of lies but because he didn’t come in force.  How could a man of peace drive out the Romans?  How could a teacher who spoke in parables inspire an army to go to war?  Jesus’ answer was to go right back to the base of their argument and challenge the very core of what they were expecting - God’s kingdom was not what they were expecting.

However, it is not as straightforward as saying that God’s kingdom is heaven, and that one day the world will end and his believers will be in heaven, and that is what we’re praying for.  To a certain extent, yes we are praying for that final deliverance, but I believe the main thrust of this line (and indeed Jesus’ teaching elsewhere) is that God’s kingdom is here on earth.  How does that tally up?  God’s kingdom is not a physical kingdom, and yet is based on earth?

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Hallowed be your name

This is part of a series called “Into the Lord’s Prayer”, looking closer at how we use the framework of the prayer and making it relevant and useful to us today.

Hallowed?  What on earth does that mean?  Even the majority of Christians will probably struggle to answer that question without resorting to a dictionary.  Myself included.  So, for everyone’s benefit, here is a dictionary definition of that word, just for reference:

hallow: to honour as holy, to make holy, consecrate; as adjective (hallowed), greatly revered or respected.

Any clearer?  Maybe a little.  In essence, we are saying that God’s name is holy and that we respect him.  But what exactly does that mean?

As an instruction, it may be taken that we should not swear by taking the Lord’s name in vain.  That’s a fairly well recognised instruction, as seen in the Ten Commandments, but (and I’m aware that I’m pointing the finger here) I know many people who call themselves Christians who say “oh my god” in normal conversation.  Most, if challenged, would probably say it was a slip of the tongue, but in some ways that makes it worse.  For them, the name of the Lord has become so meaningless that when used out of context they hardly even notice whose name it is.

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Our Father in heaven

This is part of a series called “Into the Lord’s Prayer”, looking closer at how we use the framework of the prayer and making it relevant and useful to us today.

You could think of this line as the start of a letter, beginning with the name of the recipient and their address.  The prayer is directed to God, our heavenly Father, who dwells in heaven.  This may sound simple enough, but there are several important things to remember here.

The first thing I want to draw your attention to is the instantaneous contact we have with God.  There are no rituals to perform to get God’s attention (remember Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel?), no lengthy process to make ourselves holy enough to be worthy of talking to God, no waiting for God to be available.  The moment we begin praying, God is listening, right from the first word.  God may be in heaven, but he’s also right here with us, present at all times regardless of whether we’re in church or at home, in a worshipful mood or shouting at other road-users.  It is an honour and a privilege to have this sort of instant access to God, and we should be humble in our prayer that God should allow for this sort of thing, bearing in mind how often we screw up.

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Into the Lord’s Prayer - Introduction

Several years ago I attended a Chaplaincy Assistants’ Conference, hosted by a university chaplaincy that shall remain anonymous, and which was attended by a handful of Chaplaincy Assistants from across the country.  My initial enthusiasm for the day was soon diminished as I realised how little God seemed to feature in the lives of the other people there (again, naming no names).  The conversations revolved around what they DID, not what God was leading them to do.  Right at the end of the day, the person leading the day said “I suppose we ought to finish with a prayer”.  Finally, I thought, God does get a look-in after all.  “Let’s do an ‘Our Father’”, they continued, “an ‘Our Father’ is always good.”  My stomach churned.

In fact, that actually sums up the ignorance of a lot of people both inside and outside the church.  Many think of the Lord’s Prayer as some magical prayer that ticks all the boxes; after all, they think, Jesus prayed it so it must be good.  It’s crammed into almost every liturgy you’ll find in the Anglican Church, and is used widely elsewhere too.  It’s a prayer children are taught to recite off by heart.  It’s recognisable, memorable, traditional.  And, for the most part, misunderstood.

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God the Builder - crutch or scaffolding?

If you take a look at the parables of Jesus you will see a lot of analogies with things people at the time would have known about.  Farming techniques, fishing, dealing with tax collectors, vineyards and olive groves.  All these were common knowledge for the people he was speaking to.  I wonder if the meaning is lost on us sometimes, because we’re not living amongst vineyards and suchlike.  It takes a lot more effort for us to understand the meaning of the parables, because we have to do research into what it was like at the time, and what the significance of everything was.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when the other day I stumbled across an analogy that was scriptural but relevant to our times.  When I say “scriptural”, it isn’t actually in the Bible, but it does tie in nicely with what is said in the Bible.

First, some background.  It was Back To Church Sunday last week, and as part of the service our vicar invited me up the front to answer a couple of questions.  One of them was something along the lines of “what difference does faith make to your life?”  This isn’t an easy questions for me to answer, because I’ve been a Christian so long that I can’t really compare my life now to my life without God.  However, I did think about it (I had been primed the day before to give me a chance to come up with a suitable answer), and stumbled across this little gem, which is shared in church and felt I could share here too.

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A Psalm

Inspired by an afternoon of gardening

Thank you, Lord, for grass.
Thank you for the colour of the bright blue sky,
Thank you for frogs and leeches, tadpoles and pigeons
Thank you for resilient goldfish
Thank you for friends, for teamwork, for laughter
Thank you for cake
Thank you for sunshine, and for shade
Thank you for energy and strength
Thank you for the visible signs of progress
Thank you for items found that were lost
Thank you for ground reclaimed
Thank you for surprises
Thank you for fences fixed and flower beds de-weeded
Thank you for hanging baskets
Thank you for rest and comfort
Thank you for pizza
Thank you for sofas
Thank you, Lord, for all you’ve made and all you’ve provided.

Matthew

In the beginning (You are)

In the beginning was the word
Yours was the first voice to be heard
Created light so we could see
and showed us the way that we should be

You are awesome God   x2

You are the light in darkness
You are out God so generous
You are a tower in times of strife
You are the saving water of life
You are

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Peter stood up

This was originally a sermon, preached by Matthew Dawkins at St Margaret’s Berechurch on 30th March 2008.

Peter. Wasn’t he such a great guy? Peter was one of the Twelve, one of Jesus’ closest friends for three years, someone who saw the miracles and heard the amazing teaching. It was also through Simon Peter, whom Jesus called “The Rock”, that the church was built; after Jesus’ death and resurrection Peter was a pioneer in spreading the gospel and building Christian communities across the known world. And in Acts 2:14-32 we read about Peter’s first sermon, preached to a large crowd gathered in Jerusalem. This wasn’t a sermon Peter would have had time to prepare for, he had no notes to refer to, no stack of commentaries to back him up, he just stood up and preached to the masses, off the cuff. What a fantastic man he was.

Well, not quite. In fact, on closer inspection, the gospels tell a very different story. Peter isn’t documented as someone who lived up to his name. On the contrary, the person we hear far more about is Peter the Blunderer. Peter barged in without thinking, acted with little restraint, and regularly got completely the wrong end of the stick. On many occasions in his ministry Jesus talked about his imminent death, and on one occasion Peter drew him to one side and told him to stop talking such nonsense. Jesus gave him such a strong rebuke: “Get behind me Satan… you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men”. When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet in the upper room it was Peter who objected, saying “No… you shall never wash my feet!” And when Jesus explained what he was doing, Peter replied “then Lord… not just my feet but my hands and my head too”. Peter clearly didn’t understand what Jesus was doing. And then, just a few hours later, as Jesus was being taken before the authorities, Peter denied even knowing Jesus - not just once, but three times.

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The hope of Easter

It is a well-known fact that Christmas has become increasingly commercialised over the last few decades.  The crib scenes have been replaced with tinsel and presents, the family time has been shoved aside to make way for prime television time, and the true meaning has been relegated to an obscure historical artefact amidst the roast turkey and “goodwell to all men”.

It should come as no surprise, then, to realise that Easter has gone much the same way.  As I was driving to church this morning for the Easter Sunday service, I was struck by the absence of cars on the road - ironic that on this Christian holiday, it is the non-Christians who get a lie-in!  Here, again, the reason for the celebration has been lost amongst the chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies, new-born lambs, and two days off work.  All the more reason, then, to reassert the reason for the season, to share the Good News of Easter with those for whom it is nothing more than a brief holiday underscored by an excess of chocolate.

Easter encompasses the climax of our Christian beliefs, the culmination of thousands of years of prophecy, the penultimate act in God’s grand plan for humanity.  I say penultimate, because the final curtain call is yet to come - the Day of Judgement when all are called to account and these busy chapters of life are brought to a close at last.  Right from the very beginning, God has carefully planned and orchestrated all manner of ways of saving us, from individual plight to bringing whole nations out of slavery.  But none compare to the wonder of Easter, both horrible and glorious.

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Part 2: The Journey to Bethlehem

This is the second part of my series looking at the Life and Journeys of Jesus and his family. In this part we look at Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census, prior to the birth of Jesus.

We saw in Part 1 that all these events are likely to have taken place around 8BC; Caesar Augustus decreed in 8BC that a census should be taken, and according to other historical records we can surmise that it was at least 7BC by the time the census was actually in full flow. Taking a census of an entire empire was no easy job, and wasn’t going to happen overnight, so it’s likely that it would have been done in stages, with clearly defined timescales for people to arrange their lives around - after all, everyone had to go to their own home town to register, which could be hundreds of miles travel and would mean leaving everything behind for a significant period of time. The Romans would have known that they would have to allow a significant amount of leeway to allow people to register without losing their jobs and completely ruining the economy. It had to be as painless as possible.

With that in mind, how likely is it that Mary and Joseph would have left it until the last moment to leave Nazareth and go to Bethlehem, knowing that Mary was pregnant? Even back then they were all too aware of how long the gestation period was, and Mary would have had a fairly good idea of when the baby was due to be born. Would they really have set out from Nazareth, knowing that they would only just arrive in time?

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