Anglican Mainstream

We are glad and sad. Your decision and timing are correct. God will work with us as we walk through the next days and weeks and months and years.  The Lord never tells us what is going to happen. He promises to be with us as we walk with him. That is how you will know who your true brothers and sisters are.

Now to the future and what needs to be done.

I grew up by the sea. As we landed at Vancouver airport., looked as though we would land where my house was, by the sea.

I read the life of a great sea captain.  This man never set off on a voyage without going into his cabin without removing a book from a black box in a big chest. He would read, close his eyes and put the book back.   No one asked what this was about. On his death at sea, after his burial, his 2 i/c looked at the book.  It had a single entry, "starboard is on the right, port is on the left."

Let us remember in these days of clever people that there are truths which we must observe.  These are not secrets for certain people. They are clear directions for all people.  "Starboard is on the right, port is on the left."

The charge Jesus is giving to us

The words Jesus is giving to us. As Jesus faced the multitude, hungry and seeking and in great need. He turned to his disciples and said, you give them something to eat.  Jesus and his disciples faced a great multitude with a great need. There are many people in need physically and spiritually.  There were very few resources. There was a handful of disciples.  None of them would have been approved by the diocesan board of ordination.  There were very few resources and a handful of loaves and fishes.  But Jesus was there.

But God.  That is the point at which everything changes. We all have to get to the end of ourselves.  You re right you have no where else to go but God.  The presence of Jesus converts the great need into a great opportunity.  The great need we face becomes a great opportunity. You can see it as something impossible or the opportunity God has presented us with.

God is presenting us with an opportunity to say to an old and sad world with all its sense of nowhere to go, we have got to the end of our resoruces.  We have done all we can to transform this world, we have ended up where we started. We thought education would change everything.  But we do things as badly as the people before us, just more quickly.  This has happened because people have departed from the way God has provided through Jesus.  God has spoken through the word incarnate.

This great difficulty we are facing is God’s opportunity. Please see it as that. At moments like this the Lord will surprise everyone.  His authority.  He had every right to do what he wanted to do.  Jesus never justified himself.  Jesus has the power to do whatever he wants to do.

Jesus did what he wanted to do because he cared.  He does what he does because he loves us.  God is love. We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and strength. We are stuck because we do not know how to do it.

You always find mixed motives in yourself.  We cannot hope to love, or consider how to love till we have accepted God’s love. To love you have to be loved. The first challenge we face is to be loved. Love those who disagree with us.  Lets love them.  Lets make sure that that love comes out in everything we do.  They are in a terrible place because they are denying the love of the Son of God.

We have to do something. The disciples were not volunteers.  Once you have been called you are involved.  You have been commissioned which means you are accountable.  You are called to obey. To do what God wants you to do.  We are living in the creation of God where God has spoken and we are called to obey.

It is dangerous to be a bishop because you think you might have got somewhere.  When I went to my first primates meeting:  I got on my knees and said I do not know what to do.   Greg ( that’s what he calls you) when I called you and you said yes Lord, did you know what it would involve. Nothing has changed.  So get on with it.

God chooses to share his power and authority with us not to swan around and wear it like a badge.  There is a great multitude with a great need. There are few resources.   But Jesus’s  presence transforms that great need into a great opportunity.  Most people give 2 loaves and half a fish and hang on to the others in case something goes wrong.  Jesus wants all of it.

When you give Jesus all you have , he gives you far more than ever you imagined.  Give him everything you have got – he has a wonderful gift of multiplying it in a wonderful way.  Those are the people Jesus likes to work with.

One of my predecessors was born in the inhospitable area of Argentina. His mother said to David – "put the cups and saucers and plates out and we will have tea".  One fell on the floor and cracked.  His mother told him to throw the plate into the pit.  Years later when he was grown up and a bishop he rode in to that area with friends on horses.  The indigenous people welcomed him.   They had communion.  When the time came for communion they had a tree trunk. He began the communion service – when he saw the paten in his hands, he was looking at the cracked plate he had thrown away a few years before. God had given him a picture of his own life and the lives of many. God takes us in his hands and uses us to bring broken people to his broken body

Affirm your desire to take the hands of a loving God.  There is hope, there is life and love and a way forward.  Lets do it with joy and enthusiasm. 

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