It has been a delight, once again, to be able to experience a Christmas Market in the centre of Ashton. An Ice-skating rink, 30 or so Christmas cabins, a beer tent with excellent mulled wine and a stage showcasing many wonder local groups. A tremendous lantern parade before the Christmas lights were switched on. And this year the opportunity for Churches to be involve in events on the main stage. On Sunday 7th December GAP Puppets from St. Mary’s Haughton Green (http://www.gappuppets.com/) were invited by the Town Centre Anglican Churches to lead carol singing.

Did you miss it – sorry! But don’t worry. The Markets are on until 21st December!

Some pictures of the event(s)!

On Remembrance Sunday we join with millions around our world in remembering the many men and women who have given their lives in the different conflicts of the past 100 and more years.  People who either by choice, or through compulsion, have risked their lives in the pursuit of peace and justice.  We owe our freedom to many such people who have stood up against tyranny and oppression – to people who risked everything, laying themselves on the line.

So we remember.

Those who have served on the battlefield or in conflict zones around our world will no doubt tell and re-tell stories of valour and bravery. And for those who served, ‘remembering’ will also bring back to the front of the mind stories of those who did not return. Remembering brings to the surface the naked fear of conflict, the pain of loss and a real sense of comradeship.

But remembering is so very important to us all, not just on Remembrance Sunday, but in all areas of our lives. Remembering leads to the telling of our own stories. Both as individuals and communities. And as we tell our story, we reaffirm our roots, and we define who we are. We put our own lives in context. For in today’s world, where we define ourselves not so much by where we come from as by our networks of friends and acquaintances; today’s world, can so easily become a rootless place where we do not know who we really are.

Our shared memories are our key to understanding ourselves. And our collective memory needs to be sustained by hearing the stories of our past. By hearing from those who went out from us here to serve in different arenas in our world. These stories, these people are so much a part of who we are here in our villages, towns and cities today. They contribute to our history, they strengthen our community spirit.

Our stories are important. Remembering is vital. Nowhere is this more true than in relation to the conflicts with which we have been involved as a nation. Failure to engage with and learn from our past is the height of modern arrogance. We have to hear again the stories of conflict, of bravery, of pain and loss. And we need to allow those stories, … that remembering …, to change us now. It must inform our thinking about the future, it must be allowed to change our wills and our actions.

For today we’re all called to take new & different risks. To act for justice, for peace in society, in the world around us. To work for racial justice, to fight discrimination, to engage with injustice in whatever form it might arise. To look to overcome the barriers which so easily arise between people, and… if necessary to risk our reputations, to be willing to take knocks, sometimes to be misunderstood; even to face persecution.

Where do we find the courage to do this? As Christians we have the promise of God in Christ. ‘Go,’ says Jesus, ‘into all the world, work for the coming of my kingdom, seek first my kingdom, of justice and peace and I will be with you always.’ God does not leave us alone to face new challenges, to risk our lives in the cause of his Kingdom. He promises always to be with us.

Clever questions can catch people out. There’s the old chestnut: “Have you stopped cheating on your wife?” To answer “Yes” implies that you were and you have stopped, to answer “No” implies that you have been and you still are. The is apparently no answer that does not leave you in a bad light, unless you step outside the confines of the question and answer it in your own way – just as politicians do in a radio or TV interview: “I have never cheated on my wife and never will.”

Trick questions that put people on the spot have been around for a long time. So it’s not surprising that Jesus faced some in his time.  There’s one in Matthew 22:15-22, the Pharisees question has a very definite double edge.   The issue of paying tax to the Roman emperor was one of the hottest topics in the Middle East in Jesus’ day.

Israel was an occupied land.  There were taxes on agricultural yield and a personal ‘poll tax’.  That’s why the Romans took a census to count how much tax they could levy.  Paying tax in Roman coin was a threefold burden to the people of Israel: no-one liked paying taxes, Israel hated foreign rule and this tax reminded them of their invaders, and the image of Caesar on the coin was regarded as idolatry, breaking the command about graven images in Exodus.

Jesus appears to be in a ‘lose-lose’ situation when he is asked whether people should pay taxes to the Emperor or not.  If he supported paying tax he would be accused of being unpatriotic.  If he opposed tax-paying, he could be reported as a trouble-maker and rebel.  The question has no right answer.  Either reply is wrong.  ‘Yes’ is religiously offensive. ‘No’ is politically dangerous.

Incidentally, this is all part of an honour/shame conflict being played out between Jesus and the religious leaders – please read some of my other posts to find out more.

Jesus asks whose head is on the coin he is given.  Caesar’s, of course. So Jesus responds, the coin is Caesar’s property, it bears his image, so people should give to him what is his.  It is all right to give back to Caesar what belongs to him.  It is his money – so pay your taxes in the normal way.  That is half of Jesus’ answer.

The other side of the matter is that God should receive his due.  Israel must offer God the worship and service he deserves.  In this case there is no limited tax bill, but a completely open account.  There is only one proper way of responding to God’s generosity – with the worship, love and service of our whole lives.  That’s the other half of Jesus’ answer.

So Jesus neatly turns the question back on his questioners.  What are they giving to God of themselves, their devotion and their obedience?  But his response raises a bigger question – and that is ‘how does one’s civic duty weigh up against one’s duty to God?’

Where do we stand in this?  Should we as Christians be obedient citizens and pay our taxes with an honest and ready heart?  ‘In general, yes, we should’ comes the answer from this passage – unless and until it clashes with our commitment to God.  We’ve seen Christians throughout history who’ve put their commitment to God before their civic duty, and we remember some of those people as saints and martyrs.

There are Christians who openly confess Christ in lands where that is a crime, who defy unjust public policies, who support human rights, and who resist tyranny.  They do it because they believe that Caesar’s rights are limited and that God’s are not.

There are times too when we will have to examine our conscience about issues where our society’s ways and God’s ways diverge. The financial crisis in the banking system is a case in point.  Even if we didn’t really understand the details, it affected us all.

And what might God have to say about the part that society has played in building up the now failing financial systems, or about the actions that bankers have taken on our behalf.  It’s easy to say that it’s the fault of ‘the City’, but maybe we have to look a little closer to home for some of the reasons.

Might people – or even we ourselves – have become too greedy? Might people – or even we ourselves – have become too caught up in wanting to improve our own financial situation without thinking about the impact on others? Might people – or even we ourselves – have become too impatient, wanting everything now even if we can’t afford it – and becoming too used to being in debt?

Perhaps we need to reassess our duty to God. Perhaps we need to continue to say that banks need to be fairer, that they need to be modelled on God’s values. Perhaps we have to be wise where we invest – looking for ethical banking practices; maybe we have to think twice before taking out loans; making investments that serve the good of all not just a few; maybe we have to remember that God is present in all aspects of our lives including our money and that our decisions over money need to be bound up in our desire to live his ways.

Jesus used a single coin to help people think about their relationship with the state and with God.  As we handle the coins in our pockets or our purses, may they be a constant reminder that God is present in all parts of our lives – and that definitely includes our finances.

The last thing we want to do when we have been hurt, is to forgive!

When Peter comes to Jesus to ask how often he should forgive someone – he believes that he is setting a high standard: “How often should I forgive? 7 times?” And Jesus response leaves him reeling – not seven times but seventy-seven times – or in some translations seventy times seven – 490 times. “As often as is necessary,” is Jesus’ response. ‘Keep forgiving until you completely lose count!’

Jesus then tells a story to help us understand that it is because we have been loved so much, forgiven so much ourselves by God, that we should forgive others. Jesus’ story is about a servant who has a wife and children and has overspent on all his credit cards, someone who has maxed out. He has stacked up a huge amount of debt with his boss.

The Boss calls for his servant and demands repayment of what is owed. The servant falls on his knees and begs to be given more time to pay. The master, the boss, feels sorry for his servant and lets him off the whole debt! Just like that! The debt is cancelled. How does the servant feel?

So, here is this happy, free servant. He’s wandering back from the house of his master, his boss, to tell his family the good news. He’s over the moon, he’s delighted, it is wonderful. And he meets a fellow servant of his boss, his master. This fellow servant owes him a few quid.

And the same thing happens; this other servant falls on his knees and begs to be given more time to pay. But what does the first servant do? He grabs him by the neck and shakes him and has him thrown into prison until he can pay the debt.

I think Jesus wants us to ask ourselves this question: Is it reasonable for the first servant to behave this way with the second? Is it fair and right? What do we think?

No, it isn’t. Yet forgiveness remains something we find difficult – often impossible. Not just in our personal circumstances … As we think back over the last 100 years we can remember many seemingly unforgivable acts. The Holocaust, South African Apatheid, The Rwandan Genocide, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Moors Murders, the Shipman affair, 9/11 and 7/7. And as we dwell on those atrocities we feel the pain of those who took the greatest hurt, we feel something of their anger and we feel justified in refusing to allow the possibility of forgiveness to the perpetrators. They are unforgiveable – forgiveness is surely not possible for the Hitlers, the Hutu Interahamwe, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Harold Shipman, for the terrorists who bombed the twin towers in New York or the bus and tube in London, for those who behead their enemies …………

And yet … there is another perspective we have to hear. We have to hear the voices of people like Desmond Tutu who suffered under the injustice of Apartheid, who became Archbishop of Cape Town, who organised the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, who also had a part to play in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide.

In his book, “No Future Without Forgiveness” about the work of reconciliation in South Africa, he talks of visiting Rwanda in 1995 and of speaking in a stadium rally: … “I told them that the cycle of reprisal and counter-reprisal that had characterized their national history had to be broken, and that the only way to do this was to go beyond retributive justice to restorative justice, to move on to forgiveness, because without it there was no future.”

In the 1990s, I remember watching the mother of one of the Moors Murders victims talking about her feelings for Myra Hindley. Her anger was fully justified. No one can rightly argue that she should feel anything else towards those who destroyed her family. However what was just as obvious was that her anger and her ongoing inability to let go, if not to forgive, had a deep effect on her own life, it was evident that over many years she had carried her bitterness and anger. Not a waking moment had gone by without the desire for revenge. And in this sense she was trapped, she was unable to move on. We might reflect that in such circumstances it would be impossible to move on and certainly we have no right to judge, for her life was destroyed when her child was taken from her. But the fact remains, that she was not only devastated by the murder of her child, she was also held trapped by subsequent feelings which would not let her go.

A striking example, in 2011, of a different response, was that demonstrated by Tariq Jahan in Birmingham after the death of his son – killed by a car driven directly at him in what was perceived to be a racist and hate motivated crime. Tariq’s own ability to see beyond his own grief, and his courageous comments to the media, started a very long, and no doubt extremely painful, process for himself, of being able to let go of the anger and bitterness he must feel. But not only did he begin to set himself free, his timely comments set his own community free from a desperate cycle of revenge

These matters are not easy to engage with.

When we think of forgiveness as letting the other person off the hook, of setting them free, then perhaps we can understand and sympathize with a refusal to forgive. But when we realize that a failure to forgive doesn’t so much imprison the one who has harmed us, but rather imprisons us in bitterness and hatred, in a constant desire for revenge – then we have to forgive, we have to let go – for without doing so we cannot move on, we are trapped, we are imprisoned by our own choice. And as a result we continue to give the person who harmed us in the past, on-going power over us. We get hurt again and again.

Put like this, it seems that for our own sanity, forgiveness is ultimately our only option. We have to begin, however hard it is to do so, to find a way to forgive.

Jesus suggests in his story that we’ll only begin to be able to forgive, if we can comprehend how much we ourselves are loved, how much we been forgiven. Jesus says that it is when we know that we are loved without conditions, that we can begin to show that kind of love to others.  The love God has for us is that kind of love.

Every time we have a baptism I am reminded of that love. Baptism is a sign of God’s forgiving, generous love, offered to a child before he or she can possibly have done enough to deserve that love. Our baptism and the repeated occasions when we see a child or an adult baptized are our personal sign of God’s love.

Baptism reminds all of us that we are loved by God – no matter what. It’s a sign that if we give our lives to God, then we’ll begin to understand that we have been loved and accepted from the beginning.

We need to hold onto this truth – that real forgiveness is ours. Baptism is a sign of this.

Our regular Sunday services also allow time for confession and for us to hear God’s words of forgiveness for us. Reminders of just how crucial forgiveness is.

It is in the security and strength of God’s forgiving love that we can be free to love, and that we can begin to forgive others generously in return. Yes, for their sake and for God’s sake, but also perhaps most crucially for the sake of our own health and well-being as well.