Conversations
  • Home
  • Books
  • Sustainability
    • Climate Action
    • Integrity
    • Rubbish Challenge
    • Mental health
    • Consultancy
    • Policy
    • Carbon
    • Waste
    • Plastic
    • Safe-to-fail
  • Creation
    • Awhi: Women in Creation Care
    • Climate Theology
    • Earth Day
    • Wellbeing and Climate Change
    • Heaven and Earth
    • Prayers
    • Worship resources
    • Life, the Universe, and God study
    • Eco Church Story
    • Maori & the environment
    • 12 Motivations for EcoMission
    • Motivation and Calling
    • Eco Mission
    • Eco-Mission in NZ
    • Science
  • Worship
    • Advent & Christmas >
      • Advent
      • Christmas
      • Nativity Plays
    • Easter >
      • Lent: Journey in Psalms
      • Maundy Thursday
      • Good Friday
      • Easter Day
      • Passover meal
    • Pentecost
    • Hold the World Gently
    • Kids & all-age worship
    • Call to Worship
    • Confession
    • Communion
    • Blessings
    • Bilingual & Te Reo
    • Baptism
    • Weddings
    • Funerals
    • Night Prayer
    • Trinity
    • Quiet
    • Worship songs
    • Kids songs
    • More Worship Resources >
      • Creeds
      • Lords Prayer variations
      • Little Linking Bits
      • Celtic Prayers
      • Harvest
      • Healing
      • Commissioning
      • A new ministry
      • Journal Reflection resource for Lent
      • Liturgy of the Elements
      • Spirit who defies defining
      • Pet Blessing
      • Psalms in Worship
      • Ephesians worship resources
    • Poem-Prayers >
      • Pictures in my home
      • Slow things
      • Does the sea love me?
      • Drop
      • Tipped out
      • Silence
      • The Swallowed Sword
      • More of You
      • Sometimes
      • Jerusalem Dawning
      • Hopewell Psalm
      • The Visitor's Psalm
      • The Seagull’s Psalm
      • Leunig
  • Psalms
    • Psalms 1-10 >
      • Psalm 1: The Two Ways
      • Psalm 2: Wrath on a hill
      • Psalm 3: The Shield around me
      • Psalm 4: I rest in you
      • Psalm 5: Coming Home
      • Psalm 6: Worn with weeping
      • Psalm 7: The fury of my enemies
      • Psalm 8: Out of the mouths of babes
      • Psalm 9: The weeds and the wheat
      • Psalm 10: Why, Lord, why??
    • Psalms 11-20 >
      • Psalm 11: The XBox Psalm
      • Psalm 12: As in the days of Noah
      • Psalm 13: How long??
      • Psalm 14: All fall short
      • Psalm 15: Be Do-ers of The Word
      • Psalm 16: Fullness of Joy
      • Psalm 17: Under attack
      • Psalm 18: Part A - In Christ
      • Psalm 18: Part B- The Volcano Psalm
      • Psalm 18: Part C- Jesus’ Resurrection Song
      • Psalm 18: Part D- The Superman Psalm
      • Psalm 19: Song of the Stars
      • Psalm 20: God bless you!
    • Psalms 21-30 >
      • Psalm 21: Honouring a godly leader
      • Psalm 22: The Crucifixion Psalm
      • Psalm 23: A Collection
      • Psalm 24: Lift up the Ancient Doors
      • Psalm 25: The Covenant Way
      • Psalm 26: True North
      • Psalm 27: Take courage, my heart!
      • Psalm 28: Are you listening?
      • Psalm 29: The Hurricane Psalm
      • Psalm 30: Joy in the morning
    • Psalms 31-40 >
      • Psalm 31: Strength in exhaustion
      • Psalm 32: The Horse-Trainer's Psalm
      • Psalm 33: Rejoice today!
      • Psalm 34: Always Praising!
      • Psalm 35: Trapped and slandered
      • Psalm 36: Far-Reaching Love
      • Psalm 37: Keep Calm and Carry On
      • Psalm 38: The Burn-out Psalm
      • Psalm 39: A crisis of purpose
      • Psalm 40: The Mud Psalm
    • Psalm 41-50 >
      • Psalm 41: Bad friends
      • Psalm 42: As a deer
      • Psalm 43: A walk of faith
      • Psalm 44: A formal complaint
      • Psalm 45: The Royal Wedding
      • Psalm 46: We will not fear!
      • Psalm 47: A Shout of Praise
      • Psalm 48: Hymn to Jerusalem
      • Psalm 49: Death and Taxes
      • Psalm 50: True Worship
    • Psalms 51-60 >
      • Psalm 51: Standing under the shower of Confession
      • Psalm 52: God sees through
      • Psalm 53: No God?
      • Psalm 54: Help me now as you’ve helped me before
      • Psalm 55: Betrayed by your best friend
      • Psalm 56: The Worrywort’s Psalm
      • Psalm 57: Wake up the day
      • Psalm 58: The Snake Psalm
      • Psalm 59: Safe in the Tower
      • Psalm 60: The Earthquake Psalm
    • Psalms 61-70 >
      • Psalm 61: Can you hear me, God?
      • Psalm 62: Wait in Silence
      • Psalm 63: Hide and Seek
      • Psalm 64: It's not OK!
      • Psalm 65: He’s got the whole world in his hands!
      • Psalm 66: Come and hear!
      • Psalm 67: All you peoples praise!
      • Psalm 68: Gifts for his people
      • Psalm 69: The Mud Psalm
      • Psalm 70: Hurry up!
    • Psalms 71-80 >
      • Psalm 71: All our lives long
      • Psalm 72: Long live the King!
      • Psalm 73: The Jealous Psalm
      • Psalm 74: Destruction and persecution
      • Psalm 75: The pillars of the earth
      • Psalm 76: Weapons of war
      • Psalm 77: The Sleepless Psalm
      • Psalm 78: Tell our story to our children
      • Psalm 79: The terrible prison
      • Psalm 80: God’s shining smile
    • Psalms 81-90 >
      • Psalm 81: Honey from the rock
      • Psalm 82: The Judge’s Judgment
      • Psalm 83: The enemies of Israel
      • Psalm 84: How lovely is your house
      • Psalm 85: See what God is doing!
      • Psalm 86: An undivided heart
      • Psalm 87: The Census Psalm
      • Psalm 88: The Rejection Psalm
      • Psalm 89: The Chosen One
      • Psalm 90: A puff of dust
    • Psalms 91-100 >
      • Psalm 91: An Invitation to Deeper Prayer
      • Psalm 92: Saying thanks at bedtime
      • Psalm 93: Water rising
      • Psalm 94: Praying for a world in trouble
      • Psalm 95: Come let us sing for joy
      • Psalm 96: Words run out
      • Psalm 97: Rejoice, the Lord is King!
      • Psalm 98: Sing along a new song
      • Psalm 99: If you shake us
      • Psalm 100: The joyful parade
    • Psalms 101-110 >
      • Psalm 101: Call me loyal
      • Psalm 102: The time has come!
      • Psalm 103: Bless the Lord, O my soul
      • Psalm 104: Psalm for Aotearoa
      • Psalms 105, 106 & 107: History Psalms
      • Psalm 108: A wake-up call
      • Psalm 109: SO ANGRY!!
      • Psalm 110: All about Jesus
    • Psalm 111-120 >
      • Psalm 111: Praise the Lord, now and forever!
      • Psalm 112: Welcome to the good life!
      • Psalm 113: From the rising of the sun
      • Psalm 114: Skipping mountains
      • Psalm 115: Toy gods
      • Psalm 116: Death could not hold me down
      • Psalm 117: The Shortest Psalm
      • Psalm 118: Pointing to the risen Lord
      • Psalm 119: The Longest Psalm
      • Psalm 120: Speaking peace at home
    • Psalm 121-130 >
      • Psalm 121: The Bodyguard
      • Psalm 122: The Peace of Jerusalem
      • Psalm 123: Asking for help
      • Psalm 124: Like a mouse
      • Psalm 125: Good Balance
      • Psalm 126: A harvest of joy
      • Psalm 127: The Lord builds the house
      • Psalm 128: Live long and prosper
      • Psalm 129: Attacked and whipped
      • Psalm 130: The Dawn Psalm
    • Psalms 131-140 >
      • Psalm 131: Calm and Quiet
      • Psalm 132: The Forever King
      • Psalm 133: Living in Unity
      • Psalm 134: A circle of blessing
      • Psalm 135: Come on, people, praise!
      • Psalm 136: Endless love
      • Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon
      • Psalm 138: Thank you for your love!
      • Psalm 139: The Omniscience Psalm
      • Psalm 140: Our God saves
    • Psalms 141-150 >
      • Psalm 141: The Goody-good’s Psalm
      • Psalm 142: Brought Low
      • Psalm 143: A Psalm for Easter Saturday
      • Psalm 144: Blessed are God’s People
      • Psalm 145: We will tell your praise
      • Psalm 146: God at Work
      • Psalm 147: The Winter Psalm
      • Psalm 148: Calling all creation!
      • Psalm 149: The Double Edged Sword
      • Psalm 150: Kiwi Praise!?
    • About Psalms >
      • Jesus and Psalms
      • Violence in Psalms
      • History Psalms, a discussion of 105 & 106
      • Brueggeman on Psalms
    • Psalms in Worship
    • Advent & Christmas Psalms
    • Lectionary Psalms
  • Word
    • Te Reo Māori and faith
    • Listen!
    • Nurture the Holy Spirit
    • The Bible >
      • Making Sense of the Bible
      • People and Stories >
        • Three Wise Men
        • Martha and Mary
        • Samuel & David
        • Bit Parts
        • James who??
        • Joseph
        • Peter's Wife
        • Bible Love stories
      • John
      • Acts
      • Christmas
      • Easter
      • Dramatic readings
    • God
    • Jesus
    • Life
    • Church
    • Spirituality
    • Identity
    • End Times
    • Israel >
      • Israel: Tough questions
      • Israel: Stories in Place
      • Theological Alleyways
      • Lovely Ladies
  • Ministry
    • Moving On
    • Ethics
    • Fatigue
    • Spirit ministry
    • Pastoral Preaching
    • Maori Ministry
    • Minister's Grief in Ministry Transition
    • When the shit hits the fan
    • This Sacred Moment
    • Poems on ministry
    • Leadership resources
    • Promoting church
    • Musings
    • Pandemic >
      • Short of Breath Theological reflection
      • Stress
      • Alone Together
      • Pangolins and the Fall
      • Mental Health factors
      • Church response
      • Psalm 91: An Invitation to Deeper Prayer
      • Quiet
      • Solitude
    • Burning Bush
  • Supervision
    • Should I sack my supervisor??
    • Supervision FAQs
    • Supervision with Silvia
    • Why supervision?
    • What to bring to supervision?
    • Methods in supervision
    • Ethics in supervision
    • Pastoral Supervision
    • Qualifications
  • Counselling
    • Counselling with Silvia
    • Non-Anxious Living
    • Relationship Repair Kit
    • Poems on therapy
  • Love
    • Love Poems >
      • How to say 'I love you'?
      • The Fabric of Love
      • Be at home in my heart
      • Falling
      • Out of thin air
      • After the waves
      • Mid-life Menagerie
      • How are you?
      • Vacuum
      • Marriage Maths
    • Marriage >
      • Wedding Vows
      • Anniversaries
      • Ethics & Commitment
      • Expectations
      • Desire
      • Emotional Needs
    • Personality
    • Listening
    • Creativity
    • Laughter
    • Trauma/Recovery
    • Stress
    • Motherhood and Spirituality
    • Growing: Human & faith development
    • Dementia
    • Grief >
      • Experience of grief
      • Making sense of death
      • A Grieving of Poems
    • The hardest thing: youth suicide
  • About
    • Contact
    • Family History
    • Pumpkins on the road
    • Trip >
      • Hong Kong & Freising
      • Italy
      • Israel
      • England
      • San Francisco
      • Ben's page

End Times

This section of teaching material dives right in to some of the hardest to understand bits of our creeds
Picture
Coming, ready or not!?
​
Welcome to Advent. In our church calendar Advent is the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. In our church theology it is a time of waiting. We wait for the Christ child. The themes of Advent stir up longing and hope, a keen awareness that life is not how it should be or how it will be, that we are caught in the in-between times this side of eternity. The prayer of Advent is, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, Come’. 
The trouble is, the four weeks before Christmas don’t feel like that at all. Christmas each year seems to jump out and grab us before we’re quite ready for it. Oh no not Christmas again, already! There’s hardly time for waiting, it’s more - ‘coming ready or not!’. 
Over the last month we have been through a series on the last days, the big tough hard-to-get-your-head-around questions about the meaning of life and ultimate destiny of the universe. Our readings and questions lead us to Jesus’ words we heard this morning. Jesus taught his disciples about a coming day … the very end of our reading says “that day will suddenly catch you”. “That day”. Which day? In my Bible the word ‘Day’ is written with a capital letter. That Day. As Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is about to come. When? You don’t know when, but keep an eye out for any day could be That Day. Jesus did prophecy some sign posts, which could point to the coming of the Kingdom of God, when Jesus himself, the Son of Man, will return in glory … troubles, wars, conflicts, people afraid of the raging tides and the falling of stars.
You probably know folks who see world events through the lens of these verses. Any day, any time now, could be That Day.
I honestly don’t know quite what to make of these teachings of Jesus. I do not dismiss them, but they are not the main way I see the world. I figure that if the Lord is coming back it’s not up to us to try to figure out when or how or where …
What interests me is what Jesus asked of his disciples. In the light of the ultimate future of turmoil and God’s remaking of the universe, what is required of us here and now? That’s the question that interests me.
And Jesus if pretty clear in his teaching about this. Jesus called his followers to live ready. Alert. Don’t get too embroiled with this world, with the troubles or the parties. Don’t live in fear and don’t sobble up your problems with food and wine.
To me Jesus words are pretty clear. Live in this world and invest yourself in doing your best to care for other people and to care for the world, but keep your head up, keep your ear out, keep your eyes open, for there is more to come. There is a Kingdom not of this world which is coming into the world. Jesus said that we who follow him are not “of” this world.
John 15:19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but you are not of the world. I chose you out of the world, and because of this the world hates you.
 
So it’s a ‘both-and’ thing. Yes we get on with life, we do eat and drink, especially at Christmas time. We do tackle the problems of this world, but we are not fully immersed in this life, these problems, this world. We are waiting for the Kingdom of God to sweep everything up and us with it, and while we wait, we get on with it.
My husband’s family have a saying. When things are not entirely in your control they say, “hurry up and wait”.
Sounds like Advent to me. Life rushes on and yet in a Jesus place in our hearts we are waiting. So we say ‘Come Lord Jesus’. Even in the busyness we can rest a while. Even in the stresses and anxieties and so much that is not working out as we think it should, we can trust.
Our Advent candle for today is hope. This is something to lean on as everything else comes and goes. Hope gives us the courage and resilience to wait. Hope is the glimpse of what is coming.
​



CREEDS: a document containing several major creeds as well as the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand's statement of faith.

Seated at the Right Hand of the Father

One of the main claims made in our Bibles and in our Creeds about Jesus is that he is seated at the right hand of God. Not that God has hands, not even a right hand, literally - so that is this word-picture trying to tell us about Jesus and God and where does the Spirit fit in? In this sermon I explore the common understanding of this metaphor as a ThroneRoom, and argue that Jesus might have preferred the metaphor as a dinner party!

I’m still bothered about the throne thing. It just does not work for me very well as a metaphor. I can picture God the Father telling Jesus what to do and Jesus telling the Spirit what to do in a kind of military chain of command … and it just does not feel right to me. How about you?
 
And you know why it does not feel right to have a throne-room metaphor for the Trinity? Mainly because that simply was not how Jesus described the kingdom of heaven. 
​
Picture

Resurrection of the Dead: "But wait there's more!"

​I am embarked on a series of tough questions of theology, questions which lead us through to Advent, those hardest of questions, the ones we normal keep safely tucked away in the too-hard-basket – questions of eternity, destiny, the ending of things and the remaking of things. Questions about where is the universe going? How does our story end? What’s the punch line of it all?
A couple of weeks ago I kicked this off with an odd question – where is God? which got me into a claim that God lives in heaven, with Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father, and that heaven is God’s dimension, which can flow into our world dimension in everyplace and every time, in our hearts and lives through the Holy Spirit.
 
So that’s the first big claim of the Christian faith – that there is a spiritual dimension to life, the universe and everything, and that we call this heaven and we have particular ideas about the values and even personality of this spiritual dimension, that we sum up in the complicated idea that it is Father, Son and Spirit in one God.
 
The second big claim of the Christian faith is that this other-space we call heaven is the reality that we enter when we die. My sermon today is a small attempt to say something about Christian theology about the here-after, the after-life.
The obvious point to begin is that we can’t know what is beyond this life. In a few minutes I can hardly explore the vast body of thinking about what happens to us after we die. All I can hope to do is to ask: what does the Bible say about it?
And I must leave space before I sit down to ask the ‘so what’ question – what does it matter? If we are willing to entertain an orthodox Christian theology of eternal life, if there even is one to be found, how might that affect you and I in our daily lives, this side of eternity?

The Destiny of the Universe and the Second Coming

​I’ve been asking you some tough questions this month. We had: “Where is God?” We had “What happens to us after we die?”. And here’s my tough question for you this morning: “How long have we got?” … as in, when will it all end? And how?
 
If you Google ‘how will the universe end?’ you get a curious mix of possible scientific answers. The possibilities hinge, apparently, on the precise measurement of how fast the galaxies are travelling away from each other, which is complicated because apparently they are travelling away from each other faster and faster, which is, apparently, quite hard to explain and involves something which no one can measure called Dark Energy, which apparently there is quite a lot of in the universe even though no one knows what it is or how to observe it – basically the scientists are all guessing. But the fact remains that the universe is expanding, as in, all the galaxies are flying away from each other quite quickly, which obviously means that eventually everything will be a long way away from everything else and the stars will eventually burn themselves out and even the black holes will implode on themselves until there’s really not a lot left. Apparently, eventually, the universe will just get really cold and really dark. All a bit gloomy really.
 
What you need to know is that this picture of how everything turns out in the end is utterly utterly different from how the Bible pictures how everything turns out in the end.  ...
Two levels of dystopian futures for life the universe and everything … the long view of a universe floating apart becoming cold and lifeless through the eons … and the more immediate view of our planet rapidly losing the beauty and diversity of life that God has created.
Help! We desperately need hope. We are promised hope, it’s part of the Gospel promise, part of the gifts of Advent. Hope is basic, essential to our faith … and we need it now more than ever, surely. Hope is in short supply out there.
 
What, then, is the Christian hope?
I absolutely reject the idea that it is a ticket to “get us out of here” … no way does the Bible paint a picture of a few faithful people getting whisked up into some super-spiritual paradise to live forever with Jesus while the rest of the universe goes to hell in a handcart. That is absolutely not what the Bible teaches.
I also absolutely reject the idea that God has washed his hands of us. It’s common enough in our secular world view to have a vague idea that the universe might have a spiritual creative force behind it, but when we look around at the huge problems that face our world it’s quite understandable to feel that God, if God exists, has left us to our own devices, given us up as a bad job. That is absolutely not what the Bible teaches.
 
So if not those, then what? What does the Bible teach?
I have three claims which I read when I read the Bible. I think the Bible is reasonably consistent about it; the problem is that when we come to those bits of the Bible which talk about this kind of thing we tend to glaze over and skip ahead to bits that make more sense to us. So our Bible readings today are not ones I have preached on before, or even really thought much about. They just don’t fit very well with what feels normal to us. But here goes. Three claims of our Bible regarding the ultimate fate of the universe.
First, that God is capable of stepping in and taking over.
Second, that one day heaven and earth will merge.
and thirdly that faith and hope in the future return of Jesus puts our everyday lives into a different frame of reference.  

Hebrews 12: 22-29
Mark 13: 3-10, 24-27

www.conversations.net.nz
Written by Silvia Purdie 

Resources for life and faith
Proudly powered by Weebly