Turkey Blog 1: Cappadocia Cave Churches

This is a blog written in a cave in Urgup Turkey by very tired traveler who spent most of the day walking around a UNESCO Heritage site at Gorme that has dozens of small cave churches. We arrived at the hotel at Midnight after an exhausting flight from Calgary so this is not by best writing.

Cappacocia is in the Eastern side of Turkey, South of the Black sea and West of Syria and Iraque. It famous to Western Christians for the “Cappadocian Fathers, Basil and the two Gregories” who helped settle a huge theological controversy in the late 300s. They also helped save the Eastern Orthodox church from completely losing the Holy Spirit as happened in the Western Church. It was a time of great military conflict and later of Moslem invasions that meant having a safe place to hide was important. Nature provided a solution in this part of the world through massive volcanic eruptions that produced thick layers of ash with different kinds of minerals that later hardened into tufa rock which was easy to carve. Over the Centuries people discovered they could cut homes and storage places into the rock and hide from invaders.

Religious communities formed around the teachings of the Cappadocian Fathers near the modern town of Gorme where they cut small chapels into the soft rock. Some of these are quite elaborate with stone columns left in place to remind the monks of churches in other places that needed columns to hld up the roof. They also cut refectories – eating halls kitchens and storehouses into the rock. The churches are decorated with beautiful paintings of Bible stories. Since there were no books the  story of the Faith had to be passed down orally. The pictures on the walls and ceilings of the churches are like our stained glass windows. If a picture is worth a thousand words then these churches have many thousands of words of teaching that they used to teach the faith to children and converts. This is what we have sadly almost lost in my generation.

Now to bed – wake-up for balloon ride is at 4.15 am. Blessings, John in Capaddocia+

How Do You Become Pure and Holy? (Easter 6)

If nothing impure or unholy is allowed into the new heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation) it is very important that we understand how to become pure and holy. The Good News is that Jesus will help us by forgiving the sins we repent and confess. Jesus will come and live in the hearts of those who really love Him. Our love of Jesus is measured by how well we keep his commandment to love God and one another. Since we are human we need help in discerning our sins and overcoming our self-deception. Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to guide us, comfort us and remind us of His teachings.

1. Jesus will come and live in the hearts of those who love & obey Him

Jesus is teaching us that our faith or trust in Him must be more than head knowledge. It must lead to real love. Real love is not what we desire for ourselves – that is lust. Real love is an emotional desire for the good of the other. Sacrificial love is putting the need of the other person and your desire for their good before your own needs. The more we know Jesus and understand His teachings from Bible reading, prayer and our worship experiences; the more we come to love Him and obey His teachings:

·         Love God – more than we love alternative idols:

o    Material things

o    Work / Career

o    Political heroes

o    Sports

·         Love what God has done – creation, reading about God in Bible

·         Love what God values:

o    Truth vs deception and lies

o    Holiness vs unholy, divided, impure, mixed

o    Peace not conflict and division

o    Order, justice – not disorder and injustice

o     Forgiveness not anger, hatred and revenge

·         Love your neighbour – sacrificial love based on their need

o    Respect personal value as child of God – physical needs

o    Honour by respecting reputation vs false witness, gossip

o    Respect property (stealing, coveting)

o    Respect marriage relationship (adultery)

o    Respect humanity by forgiving (vs un-forgiveness)

·         Love one another in the fellowship of the church community

o    Particularly tested by people we do not really like

Jesus helped people see how holy God is and how important it is that we be clean and holy if we are to be in the presence of God. The Holy Spirit cannot come and live on a spiritual garbage dump. If we want to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we have to provide a clean environment.

2. The Holy Spirit will come and guide us in our spiritual battle

Love is the Blessing of a Community (Easter 5)

Jesus gives His followers a new Commandment. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 14.34) This is a dramatic moment. Jesus is not just giving some pastoral advice. As devout Jews His followers were already under  the 10 Commandments. Five of these specify how Gods’ people were to love one another by not stealing, lying or harming others. Something special is going on here. Jesus is stepping into His divine role and making a new Covenant that alters the Covenant of Moses. The old Covenant was with the whole Hebrew people. The new  Covenant of Jesus is with a community of His disciples. It is with individuals who put their trust in Him personally. This is not an academic thing. This is a personal Covenant relationship with Jesus and with others who believe in Him. Christians are a covenant community of love.

1. Love means extending yourself for others

We often use the word “love” carelessly. Jesus is teaching His followers a new definition of “love”. There was in fact a new Greek word “agape” that is used primarily in the New Testament to describe the self-sacrificial love Jesus modeled. Christian love is about serving the deepest emotional and physical needs of the other person. This is very different from our ‘love of ice cream’. When we say we love ice cream we are describing what we want to get for ourselves. This is selfish love or desire. The Christian Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck defined Christian love as “extending yourself  for the other person”. Jesus wanted this kind of self-less love to be the sign of a Christian community. Deep down inside many people want to belong to a community with this kind of caring love even more than they want forgiveness and the hope of eternal spiritual life. This deep desire for intimacy with God and others is what Jesus built His church on.

2. Love is a sign of the presence of God

Church Development 101 – Love Jesus, Feed Lambs, Take Care Of Sheep

The Readings (Acts 9.1-20; Rev. 5.11-14 and John 21.1-19) are all about the beginning of new ministries. The Christian ministry of Paul begins with a dramatic conversion experience. In Revelation we are beginning the End Time ministry of Jesus and in John we have just read about the re-instatement and are commissioning of Peter as the first leader of the Christian Church. It cannot be a co-incidence that this is my first teaching as the newly anointed Interim Priest at St. Magloire’s in Drumheller, Canada. These Readings will guide us in our mission of re-developing our Christian ministry in this place – and could help many others in declining churches.

1. Paul, Jesus and Peter were Anointed by the Holy Spirit for Ministry

The key question facing us here is “What does God want to do in this place?”

We could call a Vestry Meeting or do a survey but that would not necessarily tell us what God wants to do here. It would tell us what some people think God wants to do – but what if they were wrong? We would end up working against God and frustrated. Paul, Jesus and Peter were all chosen and anointed by God not because they were popular or educated. They were chosen because they loved God more than others. There is a process of spiritual entropy in churches where the initial fire of the Holy Spirit begins to fade in people’s hearts as customs become entrenched and personal ambition and politics gradually replace spiritual anointing. So our first task is to come to terms with history and confirm that God has really chosen each of us to re-develop this Parish at this time. For my part, Lucille and I have both felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit in the work we have been doing over the past few weeks to prepare for this Interim Ministry. Please pray about this.

Spiritual Life Comes Through Believing in the Heart

(Bible teaching notes for Easter 2, 2010 by Rev. John Gishler)

The Easter stories teach us that there is a big difference between believing something to be true in your head and believing something to be true in your heart. This is the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. Spiritual life comes through believing deep in your heart – in your personal spirit, the part of you that survives physical death; that Jesus rose from the dead as the ‘first fruits’ or model for all those who put their trust in Him. We need to do more that affirm this as a theological creed. We need to be willing to bet our lives on it.

1. Thomas was prevented from believing by his pride

We are all a little like Thomas. It is hard for us to believe in something we have not seen or experienced ourselves. Thomas was probably a little insecure. He could not trust the witness of the other disciples. We can suspect from our own experience that pride made Thomas look down on the other disciples as easily fooled or confused. Thomas was making a terrible judgement of his friends. He is revealing a shocking lack of trust. In modern language we would say Thomas had ‘trust issues’. His lack of trust had apparently excluded him from the fellowship of the disciples. There is a huge lesson in this for the disciples – and for all believers. Belief in the Resurrection is not easy. Most people are very sceptical of the miraculous. The disciples had personally seen Jesus raise Lazarus form the dead. The Resurrection should not have been so difficult for them to believe. The lesson for the disciples – and us, is that we all have to wrestle with unbelief on some level during our spiritual life journey.

2. Believing leads to binding together and forgiveness

The disciples who believed had not all seen Jesus themselves. They had simply believed Mary who had seen Jesus and John and Peter who had seen the empty tomb. The difference is that they believed Mary and the evidence of John and Peter. This teaches us the importance of community and personal relationships in helping other people come to belief in Jesus. The other disciples knew Mary personally. They knew they could trust her as a witness. They also knew Jesus personally. They knew they could trust Him to do what He said. The disciples were a community, a fellowship like ours, where everyone was connected emotionally and spiritually. This connection included being connected emotionally and spiritually to Jesus. Because they believed in Him as Saviour they could purify themselves spiritually by confessing and taking their personal sins to Jesus for forgiveness. The disciples were modelling a community of believers living in right relationship to God through their belief in the heart in Jesus.

3. Forgiveness leads to spiritual peace, joy and life in the Holy Spirit

Like us the disciples were able to get rid of the poison of guilt, shame and bitterness that eat away at our souls. These are the burdens that many people carry around in their daily lives. These burdens suck the peace and joy out of people’s lives. They can reduce our lives to endless frustration. The Good News is that when a person believes in their heart in the Resurrection of Jesus – and all the other teachings, they enter a personal relationship with Jesus that binds them into a new spiritual community. This relationship connects them to a way of cleaning out their spiritual garbage. As the spiritual garbage is cleaned out the Holy Spirit can be invited in to bring spiritual peace and joy. The Holy Spirit is a sign that the person believes from the heart and is in this relationship. Many people are not aware that they have this gift. It is the still small voice in your head. This is what gives us spiritual life. The Holy Spirit flows like living water through our soul, helping us see our sins and healing our brokenness.

Jesus taught us the importance of spiritual cleansing and forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer. If we believe from the heart and want to grow in spiritual life we need to forgive those who trespass against us. These are the people who upset our spiritual peace. Our un-forgiveness has power over us. This is the only requirement for participation in the Covenant of Jesus. We demonstrate our belief in our spiritual life by passing on the grace of forgiveness that God has given us - to others.

Spiritual life comes through believing in the heart!

Easter - The Good News of Reconciliation

There are three huge questions:
·         Can we really believe the Good News of Reconciliation?
·         What does the Good News of Reconciliation mean?
·         How do we apply the Good News in this Church?

 1. Can we really believe the Good News of Easter?

The Good News of Easter is that God raised Jesus from physical death to authenticate all Jesus teachings and to create a new way for individuals to be reconciled to God through personal faith and trust in Jesus. Post-Enlightenment people have trouble with the miraculous and tend to dismiss the Resurrection – and its’ implications for salvation as myth. How do we know this is not a myth?

·         Biblical consistency suggests this is not a heroic myth – confusion among apostles sounds like real people

·         Biblical accounts of Resurrection appearances sound real

·         Lives were dramatically changed – stories of martyrs

·         2,000 years of personal experiences of the divine including near death experiences

 

2. What does the Good News of Reconciliation mean?

“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15.22) explains how we die spiritually by our rebellion against God and need reconciliation IN CHRIST to have eternal spiritual life.

Lenten Question: How Have I Responded To Jesus?

(Homily notes for Lent 5, Yea C 2013 by Rev. John Gishler)

In Lent we are always looking for self-examination questions to help us get rid of our spiritual garbage and develop a richer spiritual life. The Readings assigned for Lent 5 help us do this by reminding us that God was doing a new thing in Jesus and by giving us dramatically different ways in which people responded to the Earthly Jesus. The question is where does my response come on the scale between the responses of Mary and Judas?

1.  Isaiah prophesied (43.16-21) that God would do a new thing

•  New as in different from the Covenant of Moses / The Law   
•  Not a replacement but an addition to, a deepening
• Water in the desert = new spiritual life in a wasteland
•  Hebrew Religion had become a barren wasteland for many
• Not unlike our own time when personal Christian Faith has become a dry wasteland distorted by compromises and conflicts over doctrine and practice for many people
• We all need to constantly review and renew our Faith

 2. Mary responded to Jesus with extravagant love

• She honors Jesus by breaking a $ 50,000 bottle of perfume, anointing his feet and wiping them with her hair as a sign of her love.
• She probably gave him everything she had, holding back nothing, including her pride
• She anointed his feet – the standpoint of Jesus, who he was
• Reminds us of “How beautiful are the feet of one who brings good news” (Romans 10.15) – the Good News of Divine Forgiveness
• Woman’s Hair also a sign of the glory of God in creation
• Honouring Jesus as more than ‘a good teacher’ – God with us