Dear Friends, April 1st 2009 I came across this question some years ago, and I still find it useful as a litmus test for my Christian faith. "If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" I suspect that already there are a few hackles raised simply because most people reading this have the idea that as long as we've been through baptism, are English, white and don't kick the cat, then our eternal destiny is secure. Faith, and the meaning of faith, is coming under close scrutiny at the present time. Assumptions are being made about belief, be they historic, current, corporate or personal, questions are being asked about what it means to be a Christian. The slogan "Forget Religion - Follow Jesus" may be a little worn now, but it does challenge us to think seriously about our faith - or lack of it. Following Jesus is more, much more than going to Church, though that is not a bad start. Following Jesus is more than belief, it is also about how we behave and how we commit to belonging to God's earthly family. Easter - the Church's festival - brings into sharp focus - personal faith. When Jesus died on that Cross of Calvary He was thinking of us - each one of us - for it was for each one of us that He made that journey. Of course, we can take it or leave it, for God will not force anyone to believe in Him against their will, and He is a great respecter of choices. But we do really need to make up our minds about this. To cruise along through life with the mistaken idea that to go to heaven all we have to do is to be good - whatever good means, is not the same as knowing for certain that we are forgiven by God through the Cross and reconciled to Him because of Jesus. If you were to die tonight and stand before God, and He were to ask you why He should let you into His Heaven, what would you say to Him? Now, there's a question. We might try to bluff our way through but I don't think that will work. However, you might just consider slipping into Church this Easter - the Service times are on the back of this sheet - to see what happens. We do welcome new people into our Churches. If you want to pop in and stay for coffee afterwards we wont jump at you, and we will make you feel welcome on a shared journey of discovery. Richard Simmons The Rectory, Broadwey. ----------------------------------- Dear Friends, Winter 2008/09 It's that time of year again when we get endlessly bombarded with peace and goodwill, which for many of us, may be the last things on our mind. Thank you, but no thank you. That's understandable. With peer pressure on us to spend money we haven't really got we can feel as though it's all become too much. What with that and the fears of redundancy, large heating bills, and long journeys to relatives during the festive season, we might well have reasonable grounds for believing that the ‘real message' of Christmas, if there is one, has passed us by once again. But it need not be like that. There is a poem - spoken from the lips of Jesus, who comes to us as The Prince of Peace, "I have come to bring you peace." I have come to bring you peace. Not the peace of the season, for it is too fleeting, Not the peace of the carol, for it is nostalgic, Not the peace of the greeting card, for it is too slick, Not the peace of the crib, for it is too wistful. Rather, I have come to bring you peace, Peace of the ordinary, the daily, the homely, Peace for the worker, the driver, the student, Peace in the office, the kitchen, the farm. I have come to bring you peace, The peace of accepting yourself as I fashioned you. The peace of knowing yourself as I know you, The peace of loving yourself as I love you, The peace of being yourself as I am who I am. I have come to bring you peace, The peace that warms you at the completion of a task, The peace that invades you at the close of the day, The peace that sustains you at the start of the day, The peace that reinforces you when you are reconciled with one another. I have come to bring you peace. The hopes that we have for ourselves and for our loved ones and for our world, and the fears that we have for the future that is both theirs and ours, are met in the child in the manger. And this Jesus Christ, who comes to us now, comes not as a child - but as the crucified, living, walking with us, Saviour - the Prince of Peace. He knows your pain and your fears, share them with Him. Let Him take them from you, for the Peace of Christmas past, present and future is safe in His hands. Please, if you have never unwrapped God's Christmas gift to you before, now is the time. Richard Simmons The Rectory, Broadwey. ---------------------------- Dear Friends,      October 2008           Wandering around the shops I find it intriguing when I see special areas selling “Designer” clothes. I ask myself - not unreasonably - who designs the ‘non-designer’ ones. I mean, does the material create itself out of absolutely nothing, make itself into a garment in the fashion of the day - and - as if by magic - appear in the shops.   The CERN experiments are taking place to discover - as the BBC reported - ‘what happened after Creation’. That’s an interesting comment. You see, evolution has three issues - how life arose from non life, order from lack of order, intelligence from non intelligence. If there is intelligent design then surely it’s fair to acknowledge that there is an Intelligent Designer. Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive but on parallel paths, one cannot exist and should not try to exist without the other.    Biblical faith, that is believing in the God of the Christian Bible, is not as hard as some would make out. But, because the Bible from beginning to end - and especially in Jesus - challenges us to think through what we believe and how we behave, there is a natural human tendency to react against the call of the Gospel. It can make us feel guilty and uncomfortable, and we would rather make choices that exclude God - our personal Intelligent Designer.           The Creating and Saving God who comes to meet us in Jesus is both ‘There and Here’. He can be known in so far as He reveals Himself to us and He is knowable in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. If intelligence is wisdom, then the very wise God who loves us and desires to engage with us, and who calls on us to respond to Him in Worship and good works, is not to be seen apart from science, but the very author and creator of science itself.                    Richard Simmons : The Rectory, Broadwey. ------------------- Dear Friends, Summer 2008   Once again the news demonstrates to us quite graphically what happens when nature shudders and lets us know that human beings do not have overall control of the world.   It is too easy for rich nations to tell the developing countries of the world that it is they who must make the major effort to pull us all back from the effects of climate change, when it is the rich West and North that has led us to where we are. One reason why there is a world food shortage is that we have forced developing world countries to grow crops for our bio-fuels rather than food for themselves.   The creation narratives tell us that we are here to be good stewards of the earth. It is tragic that those have discredited the Bible have also thrown out the baby of stewardship of creation with the bathwater of faith. This has resulted in the world now having to play catchup for the mistakes of the last 150 years. It has also led us to ignore the Dominical command to be good neighbours, resulting us living by the principle of greed. Consequently, the up and coming generations are now having to pay for our wilful recklessness in the way we have abused the earth’s God given rich resources.   We may wring our hands and regret that we have not followed the Maker’s instructions, having now discovered the perils of not doing so. What did we blind ourselves to when we ignored Jesus calling on us to care for the world around us and to care for each other? We have no-one to blame but ourselves.   When Jesus speaks about human responsibility as well as God’s love and forgiveness, we ought to take Him more seriously, and we cannot expect things to get better until we do.   Richard Simmons : The Rectory, Broadwey. Dear Friends, February 2008 At our Primary School the children have just had a really exciting Science Week. A Planetarium in a large black Tent almost filled our Hall and one by one the classes were taken on an extra-terrestrial journey through space and time. The wonders of the Universe are quite beyond our imagining, though Stargate, Star Trek and Dr Who attempt to take us there. The more we look up at the heavens the more we can be amazed and fascinated at what lies beyond our small world. Carl Sagan who wrote the book Contact on which the film of the same name starring Jodie Foster was based - once said of the heavens... "If there’s nothing out there that’s an awful waste of space." That’s a good analysis of our great interest in the universe. The opening words of the Bible "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth...." make no attempt to tell us the How of creation but they do tell us the Why. They tell us of a loving Creator God who made us in His own image and provided the good earth for which we should be responsible stewards. Sadly and tragically we keep getting it wrong because we don’t follow the Maker’s instructions. To put right our mistakes and the terrible ways in which we relate to the Maker and to each other, He sent His only Son into the world to redeem us and to give us a real offer of a renewed life now and for eternity. The life of Jesus of Nazareth and His death and Resurrection which we recall and celebrate at Easter, gives a clear indication of God’s love for us. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." You see, God loves us so much that He wants us to respond positively to His love. Don’t just sit on the fence or dither, because in your heart you really know that you need to have that God shaped blank in your life spiritually filled and the One who will do that if you let Him is the Risen Lord Jesus. Go for it! Richard Simmons: The Rectory, Broadwey. --------------------------------- Dear Friends, December 2007          Is it just me or does Christmas seem to come around more quickly as you get older? So here we are again in the ‘Christmas Rush’ and hoping that we can get everything ready in time. St Paul, when writing to Christians in Galatia put it like this.          "When the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage.”                                                           In God’s good time comes this Good News that a Saviour has been sent to our world. A Saviour ‘Saves’ that’s what Saviours do, and The Baby of Bethlehem is no exception.    Good Christians all, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice; Now ye need not fear the grave: Peace! Peace! Jesus Christ was born to save! Calls you one and calls you all, to gain His everlasting hall. Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save!   Please don’t think you are not worth saving, you most definitely are, for Jesus Christ - the child from the manger - came to save us all. Though we may struggle with peace in our lives and in our world, Jesus brings us the gift of peace. What we can do is to accept it, unwrap it and allow it to become part of who we are called to be, children of God.  Being English does not automatically make us Christians, that’s not how it works and an annual ‘Nod to God’ is really not enough. This Christmas, among all the choices you will be making, choose to acknowledge Jesus as Your Saviour.   Richard Simmons: The Rectory, Broadwey. ----------------------------------------- My Dear Friends, Autumn 2007 October - already! People say that the older you get the faster time goes by. As we move out of summer (!), the season that leads us into the New Year seems to have a pace of its own. For every season there is a reason. I suspect that this year’s remembrance-tide will focus on the 90th Anniversary of the muddy Battle of Paschendale. But the purposes that lie behind our Churchy calender can help us through the ‘Rush’ and give us a more balanced approach to the annual recollection of past events. All Saints Day, which immediately follows All Hallows Eve, can help us think about heaven. The tragedy of death writ large on the Fields of Flanders caused many people, either to cast away religion, or, to seek a deeper meaning to life which included the eternal destiny of their loved ones. The timing of the 1918 Armistice drew - and still draws - the thoughts of many into life after death. Henry Scott Holland’s words ‘Death is nothing at all’ added to the question that people were asking and still ask, Is there a heaven? The words of Jesus recorded in John 14: 1 - 6, and often used at Funerals, can enable us to see beyond tragedy and towards triumph. George MacDonald put it like this... "If we knew what God knew about death we would clap our hands." Jesus certainly knew about death. The Church’s Year which annually takes us through the birth - life - death - and resurrection of Jesus - can crystalize our images of remembrance and sharpen our focus on God’s eternal purposes of us. Purposes which often seem very puzzling and confusing can be turned into creative and positive thoughts and actions that enable to see that God really does love us despite some evidence that seems to contradict that. Richard Simmons: The Rectory, Broadwey. Summer 2007 Dear Friends, Why do bad things happen to good people? Now, we know that’s not a hypothetical question because of the pain and loss we experience and see in the world around us. The story of Joseph in the Old Testament and brought to life by JOSEPH & THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT may help us understand this question of good and evil. In Genesis 37 - 45 we can read for ourselves what happened. It’s about love, jealousy, treachery, forgiveness and reconciliation. When Joseph is eventually reunited with his brothers who had sold him into slavery he says to them..."It was not you who sent me here (to Egypt) but God." Joseph sees the divine plan unfolding as God works to preserve His people. Moving on some 1400 years and we come face to face with Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. Jesus is nailed there because of what we have done - sinned - and who we are - the redeemed children of God. Once again God brings good out of evil and light out of darkness. I agree with what you’re thinking, that when bad things happen to good people, it’s very hard to make sense of it and we can feel absolutely devastated. When we look in the Bible for answers that will satisfy us we don’t find them. Faith is hanging on in there and trusting that when we get to heaven we will understand why! Even when we’re angry and talking to God or even blaming Him, and at the same time doubting if He exists - some part of us believes - or else we wouldn’t be asking God if He exists - would we? So - Lord - when things go wrong from my perspective - I do believe - Help my unbelief. Richard Simmons: The Rectory, Broadwey. April May 2007 Dear Friends, Last week at Collective Worship in our School I asked the children for images of Easter. Hot Cross Buns and Easter Eggs came as the first two answers. These two enduring images of Easter can help us focus on this momentous event that has affected all of our lives. Walking around most supermarkets you will see rank on rank of brightly packaged Easter Eggs just waiting to be grabbed from the shelf. It is an invitation that few can resist. A few aisles along you will come to the Hot Cross Buns, not quite so appealing to younger eyes as the Eggs, but just as important to the Easter event. A decorated Egg forms an essential part of Easter and helps to remind us that out of a dark and enclosed tomb-like space comes new life. The Resurrection of Jesus stands at the heart of Easter and God’s promise of eternal life. "Because I live’, says Jesus to his followers, ‘You also will live.’ Jesus walked out of that tomb on that first Easter Day to declare that death is not a full stop but a waypoint into the presence of God. It’s a wonderful sign that God will keep His promise to His people for all eternity. On Good Friday, two days before the Easter Eggs we are invited to eat Hot Cross Buns. With the Cross at the centre they remind us that before new life comes pain and loss. On the Cross, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. It is to the Cross we must come to ask forgiveness of our sins and to see the cost of eternity. The Cross is so much more than a fashion accessory, it is the image of a crucified Saviour who gives His life for us. The Lord Jesus who was dead and now is alive calls on us to become Easter People and to live a life of love and forgiveness. Richard Simmons. The Rectory, Broadwey.