An amazing weekend...too busy but great fun...
On Saturday I was with the good people of Sheffield Brunswick Methodist Circuit in a small Derbyshire town called Dronfield. It was a Local Preachers Training Day - I was asked to do some talks on 'The Historical Jesus'. I had a really interesting time with them. I kept finding my self going back to Breueggeman's suggestion that all the church is here for is to tell God's story...Jesus as the Revealer. So many of the pictures of Jesus that we ended up with by the end of the day were about Jesus as the bridge between different things - between us and God, between us and salvation, between whatever. Made me think...and sometime soon I need to get hold of Jimmy Dunn's 'Jesus Remembered' - but why is it so flipping expensive?
Of course, I made them think as well! The first part of the day was a trip back through the Jesus Quest and a discussion of what we mean by absolutes and certainty - of what Jesus must have looked like and indeed what Palestine must have looked like in his day. All of this unpeeling was a little uncomfortable for some people. A friend of our College Principal was there and they met up in the evening. When I saw Martyn at worship on Sunday, he said they had been talking about what I had said and had decided that the implications of what I said meant that Jesus never existed and so he was starting a heresy trial! Ha! At last! Much humour...I think!
On Sunday I travelled down to Cambridge to preach in Robinson College with Maggi Dawn. If you're really bored, here's the text of the sermon. It was great to meet Maggi in real life (IRL apparently!). She is a great person who has a fine mind and a good outlook on life. I hope to make some more excuses to come down to Cambridge to continue the conversation we started after the service...
The service...well, it was different. Robed choir and a row of robed fellows including one of Methodism's greatest New Testament scholars Morna Hooker - Lady Margaret Professor of New Testament. Scary fo her to be sat there listening to my ruminations on Nehemiah. But I did have fun! The choir sang beautiful, the hymns were sung with passion and the John Piper windows are amazing. No incense. No bells. No video projector. No choruses or drums. No multi-sensory experiences. Just good honeast worship. It was a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed my preach and raised a few grunts of approval!
Afterwards, coffee and a chat at Maggi's about epistolarity, Steve Chalke's heresy trial, salvation and just about everything else...it is so great to sit and talk and be...rejoice.
Back to the grindstone today. But I look back on a busy weekend and smile...I love teaching, I love preaching, I love meeting really interesting people. A recipe for celebrating life in all its fulness.
Pete
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