Author: crc

Title: WBB: No one ever said this was going to be easy
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel, 7.22am
Description: 

No one ever said that this was going to be easy.
            Not Paul’s letter to the Romans.
            Not the faith that he there proposes.
            Not the Jesus he calls us to follow.

Romans 6 … things are settled.
            We are saved in Jesus Christ,
            no longer slaves to sin, but slaves of righteousness.

Romans 7 … things are unsettled.
            We are caught between conflicting laws,
            Christ and sin.
And we are all adulterers.

And it all comes down to “dwelling.”
            Romans 7 painfully reminds us that sin “dwells” in us,
            while Romans 8 insists that we are set free from sin
            because the Spirit of God “dwells” in us.

But this still doesn’t make it easy.
            There is still “war in my blood.”
            There is still a royal battle between a mind set on the “flesh”
            and a mind set on the Spirit.
            Death or life.
            War or peace.

Heavy stuff at any time, not least at 7.22 in the morning!

This week I’ll be preaching, David Julien will be presiding, and the band will be playing some Steve Bell for us.

Know anybody struggling with these kinds of tensions in their lives? Bring them along. They’ll be in good company.

In hope,

Brian Walsh

Start Time: 7.22am
Date: 2009-11-17

Title: WBB, Home Wrecking and Christ
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Dear friends:

These days, when I think about marriage or any other relationship of covenantal intimacy, words from a Martyn Joseph song invariably come to mind.

“I would never do anything in this world to hurt you…
But I do.”

The deep sentiment of faithful love meets the reality of pain, hurt and betrayal.

We profess with confidence that we would never do anything in the world to hurt the one we love the deepest, and yet we in fact do hurt that very person.

I think that Paul is on to something like this in Romans 7.

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Title: WBB, Adam and Home
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Adam or Christ? Homewrecker or Homemaker?

Dear friends:

Last week I got to reflecting on reading Romans from the perspective of home, homelessness and homecoming. And I suggested in my WBB sermon (now posted at www.empireremixed.com) that Paul offers the story of Abraham as a family story for the church. Abraham is the father of all of us. In this memory, in this family story, there is the space for making home together.
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Title: WBB, Marriage and Faithfulness
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Description:

Dear WBB friends:

Forgive me for offering a “sermon before the sermon” this week. I know that this is a little long.

It seems that this is the season for weddings in and around the WBB community. Last week we prayed for Bethany Osborne and Ed Miedema and this week we will bless Melissa Graham and Dave Burke.

Now let me candidly admit that I don’t know the “secret” to keeping a marriage healthy. I have no “four easy steps” to marital bliss. In fact, it seems to me that there are no recipes for this stuff and there certainly are no guarantees. So my word to folks entering into marriage is to try to get the starry eyed romantic look off of your face as soon as possible because this business of being married is hard work.

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Title: WBB, Faithfulness and “This is My Story”
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel
Start Time: 7:22
Date: 2009-10-13

Description:

Dear WBB friends:

“Straight, No Chaser” is arguably one of the most important jazz albums ever recorded. Here we meet the piano virtuosity of Thelonious Monk at one of his finest moments. And yet, in the middle of the album we find a song that runs a scant one minute and forty seven seconds: “This is my story, this is my song.”

You might already be humming the tune because you recognize the reference to the chorus of Fanny Crosby’s classic hymn, “Blessed Assurance”:
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Saviour all the day long.

But there is something wrong with this track. Upon first listening it sounds more like an eight year old at her first recital. The piece is played haltingly, tentatively. There are mistakes, even a moment of dissonance. Could this be Thelonious Monk?

Of course, the answer is, yes, this is the great jazz master. But Monk plays the piece with the lack of assurance of an eight year old precisely because he lacks that assurance.

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.”

Well, maybe Monk isn’t so sure.

“This is my story, this is my song.”

The great artist isn’t at all convinced that this is his story, that this is his song.

I don’t pretend to know why Monk struggled with the faith of his youth, or why he felt it important to include this statement on “Straight, No Chaser.” But it isn’t all that hard to empathize with his struggle. There is, after all, a lot of counter-evidence to this story of blessed assurance in the fractured, broken and disappointed stories of much of our lives.

And if you’ve been paying attention at all to Paul’s letter to the Romans over the last few weeks, you will see that the apostle himself can pile up the counter-evidence. I mean, which story is it that we can sing of with such assurance when our lives bear all the marks of sin that Paul has been relentlessly addressing in these opening chapters of the letter?

Well, the time for good news has finally come. While the apostle told us right at the beginning that he “is not ashamed of the gospel” of Jesus Christ, now he begins to unpack just exactly what the good news is all about.

And if I were to put it in a nutshell, it’s this: in the face of our faithlessness, we meet the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Because this one man was faithful, because this one man embodied the faithfulness of God (which is at the very core of who God is!), and because this one man demonstrated what covenantal faithfulness was all about, thereby demonstrating what it means to be most authentically human, there is a path opened to us beyond the dead end of our own sinfulness.

There are lots of songs to sing, lots of stories to believe and to have as foundational to our lives. At Wine Before Breakfast we sing songs about and to Jesus, the faithful one.

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!” Maybe you can’t sing that song with any more assurance than could Thelonious Monk. That’s alright. Some of us can, and we’ll sing it for you tomorrow morning.

So whether you are blessedly assured or deeply confused come on out to Wine Before Breakfast in the morning.

Rebekka King will be preaching (courageous lady!). David Julien will be breaking the bread and pouring the wine. Deb Whelan has written the prayer litany. The Bandhood-of-all-believers will be playing Fanny Crosby, Bruce Cockburn, John Newton and Sinead O’Connor (does it get more eclectic than this?).

And!! And we’ll be praying prayers of blessing over Bethany Osborne and her beloved Ed Miedema in joyful anticipation of their wedding this Saturday.

Rich fare, my friends, rich fare indeed. Come, eat, drink and believe.

Wine Before Breakfast Wycliffe Chapel Tuesday mornings@7.22

In Christ,
Brian

Paul is having an argument.

It is an argument with his fellow Jews in the church in Rome, and maybe it’s an argument that he’s had deep within himself.

So you are a Jew.
And you’ve got the law.
And you boast of your covenantal relationship with God
And you know God’s will.
And you are pretty sure that you are a guide to the blind.
And you are a light to those who are in darkness.
And you are a corrector of the foolish.
And a teacher of children.
And … and … and.

So why the hell don’t you live like it?

What’s the point of being a Jew if you don’t live in covenantal faithfulness?

Now this might seem like an archaic argument that is at best only of historical interest. I mean really, why should we even care about a first century debate like this?

Well because all we need to do is replace the word “Jew” with “Christian” and you can see how devastatingly contemporary this discussion is.

Many of us are still reeling from the death of David Dewees on Saturday morning. And my hunch is that we desperately need to hear of the faithfulness of God in the face of our infidelity, the truth of God in the face of our deceptions, and the restorative justice of God in the face of our injustice.

We will grieve David tomorrow. And we will hear the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, we will attempt to surround ourselves, David’s family and friends and students in prayer suffused with grace.

Andrew will be presiding and preaching.

Please come.

Brian

Start Time: 07:22
Date: 2009-10-06