Love & discipline

No, this is not a post for sado-masochism, but a serious reflection, I hope, on the connection between our relationship with God and self-discipline. Many people associate the word discipline with kinky sex or with punishment, and therefore regard it, either, with little seriousness or negatively. But Shelley, at connecT last Sunday night, helped us to see that discipline can be a good thing, especially in our relationship with God. After all, isn't discipline at the heart of Jesus' time of fasting and prayer in the wilderness.

Fasting & prayer doesn't sit well with with our self-gratifying contemporary lifestyles, but the Christian tradition has always valued a time of self-denial & prayer as being crucial for Christian 'discipling'. Love & discipline do go together, as any lover will know. Loving another demands self-denial. No relationship will last if we always put ourselves and our needs first. Neither will it last if we look solely to our own self-pleasure. A relationship, to be healthy, needs sacrifice and self-denial. This is no less true - or perhaps, even more so - with our relationship with God. The focus is taken from ourselves to God and others.

'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me' (Matt 16: 24)

Chris

Love & Eucharist

For the lead up to Lent we have been exploring love. Recently, we did some thinking over the theme of 'Love & Eucharist' and how the two are inseparable. Some of our 'connecT' members were/are nurtured in other traditions than Anglicanism and so the reflection on the place of the 'Lord's Supper' was varied. Some held that the gathering together was the essential part of the celebration, others held that the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ was more important. Others still, suggested that there was no 'real presence' but it was a memorial meal. Others (including me) thought that Jesus was, indeed, present in the bread and wine and also in the community that celebrates. Old debates, aren't they? But what we all agreed about is that love is present when we gather together to celebrate the Eucharist. God's love for us, our attempts at love for God and each other.
Perhaps then, the debates about 'real presence' are superfluous because there isn't a time when God is absent: God fills all things. The Eucharist sharpens our minds to that fact.

Chris