The Narrow Path

  Saturday, September 30, 2023 Psalm 72 1 Kings 15:25-16:7 Matthew 8:23-34 Observance: Jerome, priest and biblical scholar (d. 420) When they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their district. Take a walk through the shops – in the midst of all the cheap plastic Halloween decorations, you may spy the countdown to Christmas. For those of us Christians who use the liturgical calendar, this comes as a double shock – here we are, reclining in Ordinary Time, not even thinking about All Soul’s Eve, let alone Advent, and yet salesman would have us open our wallet in celebration of the Incarnation! Yet, like Christmas, Jesus is coming. The one like a Son of Man, whom Daniel saw in his dream while serving in that alien ancient civilisation of Babylon, will return on the same clouds of heaven which swept Him up after His resurrection. Unlike Christmas, we do not know how many sleeps we have left before that great and terrible Day. Demons, terrified at the appea...

  Friday, September 29, 2023 Psalm 69:1-16 1 Kings 15:9-24 Matthew 8:5-22 Observance: Michael and all angels Nevertheless, Asa was wholehearted with the LORD throughout his life. Perfection is impossible this side of the resurrection. But, if this life is lived in obedience and submission to the Holy Spirit, it is a life of movement towards that perfection. God is fashioning each one of His people into the perfect and spotless bride of Christ. There are two dangers when considering our movement towards perfection; two extremes. One is to fall too far into worry. While we should never dissemble or cloak our sins before Almighty God, and to mourn over our sins brings our thinking into line with God’s way of thinking, to remain in that misery is a trap. Because once we have repented, and those sins have been covered by the blood of the Lamb, they are forgotten; dead; gone; never to be seen again. We mourn so that we may dance. The other danger is to bec...

  Thursday, September 28, 2023 Psalm 71 1 Kings 14:19-15:8 Matthew 7:24-8:4 Nevertheless for David's sake did the Lord his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem. How much of our understanding of salvation comes from our culture, and how much comes from the Bible? The lone soul – the one who was lost, and is now found – answers the call and walks up to the altar of the Lord and declares themselves as a faithful soldier of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist would be pleased, and indeed, there is rejoicing in heaven. (Luke 15:7) But when John was baptising in the Jordan, the individuals he was calling to repentance would have been scandalised, because their culture defined salvation as something that happened to the group, not the individual. They would not have been out of place in that thinking, either. Abijam, despite the sins of himself and his father, was allowed by God to rule, and was buried in the graveyard of kings. It was Abijam’s connection to the group, the ...

  Wednesday, September 27, 2023 Psalm 68:1-20 1 Kings 14:1-18 Matthew 7:6-23 Observance: Vincent de Paul, priest and worker with the poor (d. 1660) Enter through the narrow gate. “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways.” So begins the earliest catechism of the Christian church, the Didache . The narrow gate, the way of life, the path of pilgrimage and discipleship, is the path of strife and struggle. The broad path, the way of death, the path of pleasures and pride, is the path of comfort and consumption. One is the path of great accomplishment, of duty, valour, honour. The other path is cowardice, the path of selfishness and self-aggrandisement. The path to life is a race that we run, says St Paul. It is the valorous and dutiful soldier standing his post. It is standing for; standing for goodness, for loveliness, for holiness, for joy. There is plenty of space on the broad path; no-one looks out for ...

  Tuesday, September 26, 2023 Psalms 65; 70 1 Kings 13:20-34 Matthew 6:25-7:5 Observance: Lancelot Andrewes, bishop of Winchester (d. 1626) Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Two prophets; two men entrusted with the word of God. In former times, God spoke through the prophets. Who among us today could possibly understand what it is like for God to speak in such a way? In these later times, God has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. And for us living 2,000 years after the Incarnation, God speaks to us through His word: these pages of scripture. When we handle these texts, it is the same as if God spoke to us to one of the prophets of old. It is the same God using the same voice. We are in no way sympathetic to a teacher of the word who lies about what God is saying in the Bible. How much more unforgivable is the crime of the old prophet, who lied to the one who prophesied against Jeroboam? Jealous to meet this man who had also hea...

  Monday, September 25, 2023 Psalms 62; 63 1 Kings 13:1-19 Matthew 6:16-24 Observance: Sergius of Moscow, abbot and teacher (d. 1392) Treasures in heaven. The Lord Jesus is calling us to both a way of life as well as the place in which to live it. This place He speaks of, heaven, is not just a mindset. Being a “good person” (Luke 18:19) is more than a reward in itself – and the reward for doing good is more than being sent to a place where we don’t have to worry about doing good all the time. Living in the way of the kingdom of heaven is a reward in itself, of course. But it is more than doing good so that good is done in return. And it is more than being freed of a guilty conscience from not being good enough. All of us mourn over evil, no matter how seemingly trivial. All of us yearn for an existence where evil is not only absent, but unheard of. Living in the way of the kingdom is a life where evil is a non-entity: a life where the word is not even know...

  Saturday, September 23, 2023 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 1 Kings 12:18-33 Matthew 6:5-15 But you, when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. All of us have two faces. Each of us step in two worlds. There is the world of the public: the face we put on for the world. The career that defines us. The humour we laugh at; the music we dance to; the friends we cultivate; the image we would like to project. Then there is the secret world; the world of secrets. It is not such a romantic place as one would think; Hell is not a Raymond Chandler novel. In fact, those things that live in the secret world are still out in plain sight for people to see. But they happen at night, or in specific places. We’ll let them out in front of certain people but not others. Our Father sees what is done in secret. He sees the things that we do that we only do in front of certain people or in certain places. But listen to this teaching from Jesus: in te...

  Friday, September 22, 2023 Psalm 51 1 Kings 12:1-17 Matthew 5:43-6:4 Do not sound a trumpet before you. Every Anzac Day, all the nations brass bands and pipe bands, after playing their local dawn service, congregate in the closest regional centre for a big parade in the middle of town. Most of this time is spent pawing the dirt in the muster area waiting your turn; a good parade organiser makes sure there are plenty of military groups in between in each band. Sometimes, however, the nightmare situation happens, and two bands are set off with few or no soldiers in between them. There is always one band clearly more superior than the other: the better band is left blowing over the top of the lesser band, and the lesser band is stuck doing little more than miming on their instruments. When Jesus says we should not sound a trumpet when we give charity to the poor, one of the things He is doing for us is saving us from embarrassment. Because on the final day, the...

  Thursday, September 21, 2023 Psalm 50 1 Kings 11:26-43 Matthew 5:27-42 Observance: Matthew, apostle, evangelist and martyr The Mighty One, God, ADONAI, is speaking. Consider all the things in this world that try to speak over the top of God. It is morning: your brain is telling you to think about what you have planned today. Your body is telling you that you really want to do that thing that you know you will regret. That screen in your pocket wants you to touch it. God? God is infinite; God will be there waiting. For now, I want to do that thing. But of what worth are all those impulses? Why are they so seductive? How could the siren song of the quick fix ever possibly compare to the symphony of heaven that is being played out across the universe just for you? “Listen, my people, I am speaking” says God. “Our God is coming and not staying silent. With a fire devouring ahead of Him and a great storm raging around Him, He calls to the heavens above an...

  Wednesday, September 20, 2023 Psalm 48 1 Kings 11:1-25 Matthew 5:13-27 Observance: John Coleridge Patteson, first bishop of Melanesia, martyr (d. 1871) Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion. The kingdom of heaven is a beautiful place. It is a spiritual place; the place where all the things that are good and lovely happen. There is forgiveness; there is peace. It is a place of no more tears. The kingdom of heaven, because it is a spiritual place, is also a physical place. God has shown us, with the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the peak revelation, that spirit and matter are so closely connected that that which is truly spiritual can be considered as the material made perfect. This is why there is such a clear link between Zion and God – it is the place where God’s blessings are strongest. There is also a strong connection between spiritual despair and the places outside Zion. King Solomon loved that which was bet...

  Tuesday, September 19, 2023 Psalm 45 1 Kings 10:14-29 Matthew 4:23-5:12 Observance: Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 690) Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Anglican theologians, used to use the word Joy as if it were synonymous with Reality. That is, where we are currently living is but a shadow; certainly we are made of stuff, and can use our body to interact with other stuff. But it is not complete. When we get those glimpses of heaven – that overwhelming sense of joy, whether it be during a piece of sacred music, or quiet time out in the bush – we are experiencing true reality. We can think of it this way, if it helps: the kingdom of this world is almost like vapour; while there is some sense of something here, it is wispy and transparent. The kingdom of heaven, by contrast, is really solid ground, really firmly rooted trees, really cheerful bird song, really vibrant c...

  Monday, September 18, 2023 Psalms 41; 44:1-9 1 Kings 10:1-13 Matthew 4:12-22 Observance: John Ramsden Wollaston, priest and missionary of Western Australia (d. 1856) At once they left and went with Jesus. In the movie The Silence of the Lambs , there is a character with a certain problem from which the movie gets its title. This character claims that he suffers every waking moment with sound of lambs crying in his head, and the only way to silence those lambs is to perform acts more horrible than the sound he hears. It is a problem not so very far from all of us. God has set eternity in the hearts of all people (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We know that we are made for something great; but when we look out at the world around us, our natural eyes cannot help but be sucked down into the misery that nips at our heels. When, as a child, we heard these stories of the first disciples following Jesus, did we have any idea of just how amazing it must have been for these...

  Saturday, September 16, 2023 Psalm 38 1 Kings 9:15-28 Acts 28:17-31 Observance: Ninian of Galloway, bishop and missionary (d. 432) Preaching the kingdom of God with all confidence, no man forbidding him. So ends the Gospel of the Holy Spirit; the book of the Acts of the Apostles; the life of Paul. Would Paul have written this himself it may have had even fewer personal details. Because, what use is the knowledge of his younger years? What benefit would we gain from knowing his end, grisly or otherwise? Anything good in Paul’s life was but a reflection of the ultimate Good to whom he gave his life. What is to be our legacy? What will be on our headstone? “Beloved mother”; “Father of many” – would that we were more like Paul, remembered only for a single-minded determination to preach Christ crucified and to make Him known. If we are called to be a mother, let it be a beloved mother, known as such because of the love shown to us by the Lord which we ...

  Friday, September 15, 2023 Psalm 37:1-17 1 Kings 9:1-14 Acts 28:1-16 Observance: John Oliver Feetham, bishop and bush brother (d. 1947) You will never lack a man on the throne of Israel. Christianity is the revelation that God does not make us choose between matter and spirit, but rather has created and blessed both. The promise of the hope we have is that one day, in the new creation, matter and spirit will be reunited perfectly. Gone are the days of trying to escape from our bodies to that higher plane, or rejecting a higher plane altogether and embracing the lusts of the body to the extreme. Matter and spirit, in perfect union, perfectly displayed by the incarnate Word made flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. It follows, then, that every aspect of human life, the natural universe, and our society all rest in this reality: that God cares about it. The Lord has returned to Solomon in a dream, giving His king a restatement of the covenant of love. Should God’s peo...

  Thursday, September 14, 2023 Psalm 34 1 Kings 8:54-66 Acts 27:22-33 Observance: Holy Cross Unless these men remain aboard the ship, you yourselves cannot be saved. Do we really live in a dog-eat-dog world? How far can we carry the law of the “survival of the fittest” until we run into so many exceptions that the rule is disproved altogether? How easily solved would so many of our problems be, should certain individuals be removed from our personal social equation? And yet even the basest instinct within ourselves is repulsed at the idea of leaving people behind. When conflict arises and personalities clash, Jesus’ teachings to forgive and reconcile are not a divine law to be followed with grumbling. Because what if we were to simply cut certain people out of our lives? Would that solve anything? Or would there just be a wound in everyone’s soul where that relationship used to be? The spiritual healing that comes from reconciled relationships is mor...

  Wednesday, September 13, 2023 Psalm 35:1-17 1 Kings 8:37-53 Acts 27:13-32 Observances: Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr (d. 258); John Chrysostom, bishop and teacher (d. 407) I pray that what I prayed for them might also happen to me. The prayer of a Christian is far more than a therapeutic exercise. Here on earth, where the kingdom is breaking forth, we send our prayers to our heavenly Father because we know that He hears them. Innumerable examples across the Old Testament from the mouths of prophets, priests, kings and peasants, confirmed by the words of the Lord Himself, teach us that “up there”, in that lovely place where God’s glory is undimmed, the cries of the people boom. God also gives us what we ask Him for. We pray, not only because we know God hears us, but because He listens with a loving ear. And we know that love is more than a feeling: love does things. We can be confident of this, no matter our sorry state, because Christ is sitting t...

  Tuesday, September 12, 2023 Psalm 31 1 Kings 8:22-36 Acts 27:1-12 Observance: Ailbhe, bishop (d. c. 526) Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants. When it comes to heroes in the Bible, people of God whom we read about and look up to and try to emulate, we are not short of choice. But so many of them can seem holy to an unreachable degree. Moses had an inner strength to which we should aspire; but do any of us really have the bravery to wish to go through what he did? John the Baptist, the standard-bearer and herald of the incarnate Christ, had a job description higher than that of the angels; but how willing really would we be to throw out all our soft clothes for a tunic of goat hair, or swap a diet of meat and three veg for insects? Solomon is one of those heroes that, if we look past his opulent wealth and position of authority, is actually quite relatable. He is a true renaissance man; someone who looked critically at himself, ap...

  Monday, September 11, 2023 Psalms 28; 29 1 Kings 7:51-8:21 Acts 26:19-32 Observance: Deiniol, bishop (d. 384) “ Short time or long – I pray to God not only you but all who are listening become like I am, except for these chains.” The great many blessings of being under the protection of the blood of the Lamb fill our hearts with joy and peace. To have the Almighty Creator of the universe, the One who sits above the flood, filling the temple of our being with the cloud of His presence is what it truly means to be human. Every day is filled with adventure; every night turns to the rest of the victor. Certainly there are chains: sometimes they are physical chains, the suffering of being a Christian among people who do not love the Lord. Sometimes they are spiritual; the attacks of the powers of the air who try to distract us from the One we love. But they always fall away. Our Rock of Ages always frees us; always brings us out of the pit of despair. A...

  Saturday, September 9, 2023 Psalm 22:1-22 1 Kings 6:1-7:1 Acts 26:1-18 Observances: Ciaran of Clonmacnoise (d. c. 545); Charles Fuge Lowder (d. 1880) That the whole house might be perfect. Mark how important Solomon’s Temple is in the history of the people of God. We can date its construction precisely; this is no hotel-motel that Yahweh stays in when He comes to visit during school holidays. It is the ending of such transience, of both God and God’s people. No longer drawing people away from their homelands, no more enslavement, no more wandering through the desert, no more battles. God’s people have come home, and here is God’s house in the middle of them all. Such was the moment when God opened our eyes; such will be the moment we finally enter the new heavens and the new earth. Everything had been prepared beforehand: there was no sound of mason’s tools to disturb the pleasant peace of the house of the Lord. God chose those whom He will save from bef...

  Friday, September 8, 2023 Psalms 20; 21 1 Kings 5 Acts 25:13-27 Observance: Birth of Mary, Mother of the Lord I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God. How big do you dream? Try this experiment on yourself: next time you are walking down the street, observe where your eye level sits. Do you watch your feet move around the cracks in the footpath? Do you do that trick where you stare blankly into the middle distance, so as to avoid making eye contact with passers-by? How do you think that relates to your spiritual aims, and the requests you make of God? Solomon dreamt big. He knew perfectly well that the God of his nation was also the God of the entire universe. No house would be entirely suitable, nor appropriate. But by golly he was going to give it a red-hot go. And just look at how much work he put into it: an entire nation of people were hired to provide the best timber on the planet. His own nation too was put to work, either a...

  Thursday, September 7, 2023 Psalm 19 1 Kings 4:20-34 Acts 25:1-12 A heart as vast as the sandy beach by the sea. During an interview about the movie Star Wars , the actor Mark Hamill once recounted a conversation he had with the movie’s director, George Lucas. He had asked the director about the introduction of the movie’s villain, Darth Vader; specifically, Mark asked George if there shouldn’t be some sort of discussion between side characters on just how nasty and terrifying the villain was. The director replied that the villain was dressed in black, he was to stand against a white background, and his enemies were to cower in fear: the audience would understand. In describing the impressiveness of Solomon as king, the author of 1 Kings seems to be stretching himself to the limits of language. It is one thing to read this text; it must have been quite another to actually live as one Solomon’s subjects who “ate, drank and enjoyed themselves”. How much more d...

  Wednesday, September 6, 2023 Psalm 18:1-31 1 Kings 3:16-28 Acts 24:10-27 Observance: Allen Gardiner, missionary, founder of the South American Mission Society (d. 1851) But when Paul began to discuss the coming Judgement, Felix became frightened. One thing is for certain: judgement is coming. This is something everyone knows. Christians may be more certain about some of the finer details, but every single human nonetheless contains within themselves the basics of right and wrong, and a conscience. Some may have done a very good job of denying to themselves their own conscience, while others may have successfully hardened their hearts against the possibility that there even is such a thing as right and wrong. But self-delusion does not prove a negative; therefore: judgement is coming, and everyone knows it. What will we do when it comes? Everything that has been hidden will be revealed, and what was whispered will be shouted from the roof-tops. Will we ca...

  Tuesday, August 5, 2023 Psalms 15; 16 1 Kings 3:1-15 Acts 23:25-24:9 And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. There is nothing that excites that child-like sense of fantasy quite like the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp. Even as an adult, who wouldn’t like to be able to summon their own genie and have their top three wishes fulfilled? Perhaps, as we get older, the idea of a magic lamp turns more into the idea of the enchanted monkey’s paw; each time a wish is granted, a finger curls, and a curse is attached: a reminder to be careful what we wish for. If we could ask for anything we wanted, in the full knowledge that it would be granted entirely, what would we ask for? Something permanent, surely. But the problem is, anything could be lying around the corner of the journey of life, and we don’t know what we don’t know. Solomon asked God for wisdom; understanding just enough of the immense burden of responsibility placed upon him...

  Monday, August 4, 2023 Psalms 11; 12 1 Kings 2:28-46 Acts 23:12-24 Observances: Oengus Mac Nisse of Dalriada, bishop of Connor (d. 514); Birinus, bishop of Dorchester (Oxon), apostle of Wessex (d. c. 650) Bring him through safely to Felix the governor. An English comedian once remarked on his dress sense: "One of the codes I live my life by is that my appearance should be in no way noteworthy. But then again, not so unnoteworthy as to be, in itself, noteworthy." Such might be, for some, the ideal Christian life. Pride, hanging as it does so menacingly in the corner, is our constant reminder of the dangers of self-aggrandisement. Honour is a zero-sum game: the more we get, the less is given to God. Marching in a glorious parade of Roman soldiers, the peak military force of the greatest empire that ever was, mustered specifically to protect one person, that person being you: such an event would take a lifetime of political wrangling and skulduggery. To ...

  Saturday, September 2, 2023 Psalms 5; 6 1 Kings 2:13-27 Acts 23:1-11 Observance: Lucian Tapiedi and the Martyrs of Papua New Guinea But let all who take refuge in you rejoice. When you think about how God is spirit, what is the mental image that comes to mind? We do so very much like to talk about how God is incorporeal and immaterial. But does that run the risk of our understanding of God as being less than something? We are material; so does that mean God, being immaterial, is like us, just missing the physical bits? C. S. Lewis observed that this type of language, while technically correct, causes us to subconsciously miss out on the true wonder of God’s nature. He suggests that we need a different prefix: rather than immaterial, God is transmaterial, or supermaterial. God is not so much incorporeal as supercorporeal. Where we live, in this world that is a shadow of God’s glory, the original image that is casting that shadow is just like ours, but supremely...