Steven Croft

Prayers in Rotherham

Thursday 4th September.

This evening between 500 and 600 Christians from across Rotherham gathered in the Minster in the heart of the town to pray together.  It was a remarkable gathering.

Nine days ago an independent report was published.  The report revealed over 1400 instances of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2003.  The town is in shock.  People feel dismayed, ashamed, perplexed and angry.  The effects will be felt for years to come.

This evening the Churches came together simply to pray and to begin a process of healing and rebuilding.  There were two separate gatherings earlier in the evening in one of the local parks and outside the offices of Rotherham Borough Council and people walked from there to the Minster.

The ancient church at the heart of the town was full with standing room only.  Every stream of the Christian church was there: Methodists; URC; Baptist; Pentecostal; Black Majority churches; Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Coptics and Community Churches.

The gathering was not a service in the normal sense.  There was no singing, no sermon, no formal readings.  Groups of priests and ministers from the different churches led prayers from the heart in a whole variety of styles.

There was a whole range of emotion in the prayers.  People expressed anger, disbelief, compassion for the victims, care for the whole community, and questions of different kinds.  We prayed for the police and the local Council.  We prayed for community cohesion and for the Muslim communities.  We prayed for the welfare of the whole of Rotherham.  We prayed (movingly) for the victims and yet also for the perpetrators.  We prayed for a change of atmosphere across the town.  We prayed for the ministers and pastors who will lead their communities forward.  We prayed for the safety and security of children and young people.  We prayed for a new beginning.  We prayed.

Those who came were young and old, women and men, from different races and cultures and backgrounds.

This was the largest prayer meeting I’ve been in the five years I’ve been Bishop of Sheffield.  It was also the most heartfelt and passionate.  There was urgency and sorrow and hope.

It’s just a beginning, of course: the beginning of a long process of rebuilding.  On Tuesday the Minster will be open all day (as it normally is) but with an invitation to all the people of Rotherham to come in and sit for a while and pray and reflect on what has happened.  We will dedicate a special prayer space as a focus for the months to come.

It’s just a beginning but after nine days of reflection on these appalling events, it was a small sign of grace and hope and a willingness to see things change.  Please pray for Rotherham.

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Steven Croft

Psalm 95: the last post!

“Come let us sing for joy to the Lord”

The oracle in verses 8 and 9 leaves us with a question.  How will we respond to the Psalm, today, as we strive to listen to God’s voice?  Like many of Jesus parables, we are invited into the story and invited to respond.  Will we listen and obey and move forward into God’s rest?  Or will our fallow, shallow hearts turn away once again?

But the end of the Psalm also takes us back to the beginning.  Once of the things we often forget when reading the Psalms is that they were written to be set to music.  We have the words.  We know they would be offered in worship by soloists and choirs, by musicians.  But beyond that we know very little about the tunes and the ways they would be delivered.

Sometimes we can infer things from the words of the Psalm.  The opening verses of Psalm 95, we would expect, would be set in a major key, perhaps quite loud, summoning us to worship.  The middle verses might be quieter, encouraging us to still our hearts to listen.  The final verses, the oracle, might be set to a different key, encouraging us to listen, to draw near, to come home.

However, like many modern songs, it’s likely I think that the first half of the Psalm is also a kind of chorus or chant.  At the end of the oracle, as the question hangs in the air, there would, I imagine, be silence and stillness, an opportunity to hear God’s voice.  But then, more quietly and slowly, the musicians take us back to the beginning: “Come let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation:.  The rhythm of our worship is to be caught up in the great conversation: to offer our praise and thanksgiving to God and to listen to his voice each day through Scripture and in Jesus.  The rhythm of our lives is to attend to that voice and to live out what we hear in word and in deed as we journey to that rest which we are promised.

Many thanks for journeying with me through Psalm 95 over this last month.  I wasn’t sure when I began the blog whether it could be sustained or what I would find. It’s been good to know that others have been reading with me across the Diocese and even in other parts of the world.

Come let us sing for joy to the Lord….. Today if you will listen to his voice……

Amen

Postscript: there are several good musical settings of Psalm 95.  The one I have returned to again and again this month has been the song “Come let us worship the LORD” by the Fransiscan, John Michael Talbot.  I commend it to you.

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Steven Croft

The meaning of Rest

“They shall not enter my rest”

The Letter to the Hebrews contains a long reflection, almost a sermon, on the final verses of Psalm 95 (Hebrews 3.1-4.13). The Letter is written to a discouraged community of Hebrew Christians and its purpose is to draw them back to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of the faith.

One of the questions Hebrews grapples with is the question of whether it is possible to begin the journey of faith with God and yet to fall away from God’s love and grace.  The Letter concludes that this is possible and uses the analogy of the Israelites in the wilderness and Psalm 95 as an example.  The generation of the Exodus saw the great miracles of God’s deliverance yet lacked the faith to see the journey through.    God will persist and persist in his faithfulness and love yet if we do not respond there is in the end nothing that can be done.

But where are we going?  What is our destination?  How is the end of the journey described in both Psalm 95 and in Hebrews?  One word is used but it is a very rich one: Rest.  Hebrews expands the term Rest to Sabbath Rest: the peace and stillness at the end of the journey.  Rest describes the reflection which follows the activity of the day.  It describes the holiday at the end of the school term, in the image of C.S. Lewis.  It describes the end of the striving and struggle without and within: the time of joy, of contemplation, of fulfillment, of completion which comes at the end of every life lived in Christ.  It describes the coming of the kingdom of justice and peace to the earth, God’s reign.

The final verse of the Psalm should fill our hearts and minds with that picture and vision of Rest and peace at the end of our days.  That vision is not to distract us from the struggles of this life or dull our longing for justice, but to give us perspective, strength and perseverance within them.  This life is not the end of the story.  There is a better chapter still to come.  The Psalm invites us, once again, as part of our journey to that promised land, to listen to his voice today, to hear God’s word, to respond in faith and to take the next steps with courage, in hope and with joy.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Disturbing the comfortable

“A people whose hearts go astray”

Psalm 95 begins on a note of great comfort and joy and will end on a note of deep challenge.  Like all good preaching, it aims to comfort the disturbed and yet disturb the comfortable.  From verse 8 onwards God is speaking.  The words are a prophetic oracle, sung into the heart of worship, probably by a solo voice, drawing people back to faithful, venturesome, bold discipleship.

The reference now is to a later part of the Exodus story.  We have moved on from the place of Quarrelling and Doubt in Exodus 17.  The people of Israel were to test God in the wilderness again and again – ten times to correspond to the ten plagues brought upon the Egyptians. (Numbers 14.22).

The final testing – the one which finally draws God’s judgement – is the great story of the spies in Numbers 14.  It is a story about doubt and faith.  Moses sends out spies to the land of Canaan. They return and bring back amazing stories of the wonder of the promised land. But the land is filled, ten of them say, with giants who cannot be defeated.

The courage and faith of the people melt away. They rebel and complain and want to return to Egypt.  It is as if the journey has all been for nothing.  They are a people whose hearts have gone astray.

The LORD sees that this generation of Israelites lack the faith to move forward and cross the Jordan.  Their vision and the hearts have shrunk through years of grumbling and complaining.  The best that God can offer then is forty years more wandering in the wilderness, in the half way land between slavery and freedom (14.32-34).

Why are God’s people asked to remember this crisis and this moment of decision as we assemble in worship and come with joy to the LORD?  Character is formed over many years both in people and in communities.  That character is then tested in the moments of crisis and decision which come in every life.  But the formation of character, of strength, of faith, is shaped in the midst of worship as we listen to God’s word.  The Psalm is a call to repentance – so that our hearts may no longer go astray – and also a call to faith.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Building faith to move mountains

“when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work”

From time to time in the gospels, Jesus has a particular rebuke to the disciples.  He calls them men and women of little faith.  They are skeptical about God’s power to change lives.  Their vision of God is too small.  Despite the signs they have seen of God’s love and grace, doubt persists.

Psalm 95 is the same kind of rebuke to people of little faith.  The people of Israel have seen God’s power at work again and again in the account in Exodus in the miracle of deliverance, in the Passover, in the crossing of the Red Sea. Yet still they doubt.  They will receive the law on Sinai.  They will travel in the wilderness experiencing the daily miracle of manna.  Yet still they will doubt and when the moment comes for this generation to enter the land of rest, they will lack the faith to move forward at the critical moment.

This verse offers us a second powerful reason to listen to God’s voice this day and each day.  The first is to help us confront bitterness, grumbling and doubt within.  The second, more positive reason is so that our faith can be strengthened and built up and will shape our lives.

Jesus takes time in the gospels to build the faith of the disciples and the faith of the church.  He encourages Peter to walk on water.  He talks the power of having faith as small as a grain of mustard seed and being able to move mountains.   Hebrews 11 in a similar way offers to a discouraged community a catalogue of models of faith to inspire us and to expand our own vision of what we are called to do and to be.

Testing God is the opposite of faith.  All of us will live today and this week in a world and culture which is largely without faith: which has no expectation of God’s love and grace, no confidence that God will hear or answer prayer, no hope that anything can change.  The Church becomes infected daily with that cynicism and shallow expectation.

As I look back on the last hundred years in the life of this Diocese, I see scores of examples of big, expectant faith – not least in the founding of the Diocese itself and in the planting of so many churches down the years (which continues to this day).  I see faith in building projects past and present, in bold ventures of community engagement, in prophetic witness, in people entrusting their lives afresh to Christian faith, in others investing their lives in ministry. I see faith in the daily, sacrificial giving of the people of God in this place.

And that is why it is so important that we come, daily, to listen for God’s voice, to read the very different world view of the scriptures, to recentre our lives upon faith in God.  As we do that we go out into the world believing and expectant that God is at work:  we look for where God is working and where we can join in.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Bitter, Grumpy and Doubtful?

“as on that day at Meribah, as at Massah in the wilderness”

The story of Meribah and Massah is told in Exodus 17.1-7.  It is the story of the water which flows from the Rock.  One of the things which binds the two halves of Psalm 95 together are the direct references to the Exodus story in the name “Rock of my salvation” in verse 1, in the image of the LORD as shepherd in verse 7 and now the direct link to Exodus 17 in verse 9.

The short interlude between the Israelites crossing the Red Sea in Exodus 14 and 15 and the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai is marked by one thing: moaning and complaining.  This murmuring and complaining among the people of God is traced through three or four different phases.  First comes the complaint about the bitter water at a place called Marah.  Moses throws wood into the water and the bitter becomes sweet.  Second are the complaints about food.  The LORD provides manna and quails to eat.  Third (and in a different place) there is anxiety and fear about water once again and Moses strikes the rock with his staff.

It’s interesting that Exodus remembers the first and last of these places not because of the miracle but because of the complaining which came before the miracle.  Marah means Bitter.  Meribah means Quarrelling.  Massah means Testing.

Bitter, Grumpy, and Doubtful might be the nicknames of people know to us today.  They might be the voices in our own hearts and minds which speak the loudest in times of anxiety and fear and transition.

We need to recognize them for what they are: traces of the old man, the old woman, the old community, hangovers from before the miracle of baptism, signified by the crossing of the Red Sea.  We need to apply to them the medicine of God’s written word and God’s living Word.  The medicine for bitterness is forgiveness: reconciliation with God and others.  The antidote to quarrelling is peace between us and between us and God.  The remedy for testing is faith and trust between people and between the LORD and his people.

Every Church is on a constant journey – each Diocese and each local church – between these points.  We need to hear God’s voice of forgiveness, of peace and of faith speaking to us each day as we travel together.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Listening and the conversion of St Paul

Five years ago today, on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, I was consecrated Bishop of Sheffield.  It was on a freezing cold Sunday morning in York Minster with over 2,000 people present in that great church from all over the Diocese of Sheffield and from different points of connection in my own life.  It was an unforgettable day and one I will remember for the rest of my days.

The past five years have been rich, deep, demanding and humbling.  It’s taken me some time to grow into the ministry and the role.  As I’ve said on other occasions, I’ve found throughout my ministry that stepping into a new role is rather like putting on a coat which is several sizes too big.  When I was a child, it was always the case that a new school blazer had sleeves that were much too long.  I had to grow into them and then out of them before there could be a new one.

The story of the conversion of Paul is connected to Psalm 95 by the theme of hearing God’s voice.  It’s not impossible that both Saul and Ananias had read Psalm 95 in the days before the encounter on the Damascus Road.  Saul hears the voice of the risen Lord speaking to him (though those travelling with him hear nothing).  The voice confronts and shakes Saul to his core.  His whole life is turned around.  The persecutor of the Way becomes its greatest advocate.  The one who seeks to murder others will in time die for his faith.  The voice of God overcomes the hardness of Saul’s heart, he turns from his rebellion, he follows in the Way.

Saul’s conversion is a reminder that the second half of the Psalm, like the first, is not addressed only to those who are already part of God’s people.  The call to come and worship the Lord is addressed to the whole world.  The invitation to listen to his voice is similarly a call not just to the worshippers but to every person God has made to listen, to come into a relationship of love and obedience and to find the source of life.

But what happens to Saul is only part of the story. Fully half of the account in Acts 9 is about another person who listens to the voice of God.  Ananias is listening to God that day.  He hears the call to go and seek out Saul.  He has not hardened his heart to what God may be doing even in this persecutor of the faith.  Listening means obedience.  Because Ananias heard and obeyed, Saul is brought to faith and baptized and begins his ministry.

Pray today and through this coming year that many who are like Saul in your community would hear the voice of God speaking to them as they travel about their business and be transformed.  Pray today and through the coming year that you and I (and many in the church) would hear God’s word to us to welcome specific people into the life of God’s church.I am very thankful that I will be spending the fifth anniversary of my consecration with 200 young people from across the Diocese at our first young people’s development day.  Please pray for us and for me as God helps me to keep growing into the role.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Uncomfortable words

“Harden not your hearts”

The Psalm now commends to us something we need to avoid if we are to hear God’s voice today as we attend to scripture in private prayer and public worship.  Something more than stillness and attention is required.

We are not to harden our hearts: we are to be open to receiving what God would say to us.

The heart in the Hebrew bible is not the centre of romantic love and emotion but the centre of our will: the centre of our being and the place where decisions are made.

To listen without hardening our hearts is to come open to acting on what we hear.  This is not simply listening with a view to saying :”That’s interesting or comforting”.  This is listening with a view to saying: “Now I must do something in response”.  This is listening which is prepared to say: “Here I am, send me”.

One of the images underlying the idea of hard hearts is the picture taken from agriculture.  God tells us through the prophets to “plough up our unploughed ground” within (Jeremiah 4.3 and Hosea 10.12).  Before the seed is sown in the spring, the soil is broken up with the plough. One of the key parts of this operation is breaking up the deeper levels of soil.  Unless this happens the seed lies on the surface and is snatched away (as in the parable of the sower).

Hearts become hard through disobedience (as we shall see in the next verse).  Hearts become hard through pride, thinking too much of ourselves.  Hearts become hard through comfort and overconsumption.

These are the words of Pope Francis in “The Joy of the Gospel”:

“Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor, God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt and the desire to do good fades” (2).

Earlier generations who preached the gospel in Britain knew and understood that a vital part of that preaching of the gospel was to call the Church to repent of their hardness of heart towards God and towards others and to hear God’s voice afresh and in such a way as their own lives would change.  Evangelism is about far more than methods or techniques: it is about the Church becoming absorbed again with the holiness of God.

Repentance for the state of our hearts is therefore part of our response to Psalm 95 and part of our response to the Lord who came and preached in Galilee: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Repentance in Greek is “metanoia”: a change of heart and mind.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

The Voice

Today if you will listen to his voice

This final part of the psalm presumes an ongoing conversation between the LORD and his people, between the LORD and each person who will hear him.  This is the conversation which began in the story of the Garden of Eden as the LORD God walked in the garden in the cool of the evening.  It continued in the call of Abraham and the friendship of Moses.  It continues in the call of the prophets. It is focussed in the person of Jesus, who is God’s living word to us and who enters daily into dialogue and conversation with the Father. It continues in the gift of the Spirit to the Church, the Holy Spirit who comes to lead us into all truth.  It endures through each generation in the prayers and reflection and dialogue of the Church.  The great conversation will continue in heaven at the marriage feast of the lamb, in the great banquet in the City of God.

To pray the psalm is to step into this ancient conversation: to long to hear God’s voice, God’s living word today.  To pray the psalm is also to find help in our listening.

We believe by faith that God is with us at all times.  His Spirit dwells in our hearts through faith.  Christ has promised to be present when only two or three are together.

But certain things are required in order to listen to his voice.  Even though God is with us, we need to come into his presence with thanksgiving. Praise and worship is a stepping stone to stillness.  And then there is the expectant hush: the quietness in which we come to hear God’s voice on the pages of the scripture, in the quietness of our hearts.

The Voice is a (semi-)popular television series in which four celebrity judges look for a new singing talent.  At its best, the Voice emphasizes the beauty and the emotion which can be carried by a human voice.

But the voice of God in scripture is different. Sometimes the voice of God is loud and powerful, like thunder in the mountains (see Psalm 29).  But most often, the voice of God is found not in earthquake, wind or fire (as in I Kings 20) but in the still small voice of calm, speaking within, speaking life to the weary.

Listen to his life giving voice today.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

God speaks

Today if you will listen to his voice

We will look tomorrow at what it means to listen. But today we need to pause and think about the clearest and most profound truth which underlies these words: the presumption on which they are based.

The LORD speaks.

The creator of heaven and earth, who made the sea and all that is in, whose hands shaped the dry land, who redeemed Israel, this God speaks.

The LORD desires to communicate with us, with part of his creation.  The LORD desires to speak with us not simply so that we might hear his commands or even understand his ways.  The LORD desires to communicate with us so that we might know him and be known by him.

Listening to the LORD is not like listening to our commanding officer, or listening to a wise teacher.  Listening to the LORD, at its best, is a conversation with a friend:

“Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33.11.

There are moments in life when God speaks to us directly. There is a place in the Christian life for the guidance of God in our daily living.  The next verses of Psalm 95 are an oracle: words from God spoken in the midst of the worship of God’s people.

But the foundation of listening to the voice of God is the discipline of attending to what God is saying to the Church and to us through the Scriptures, and especially to the Scriptures as they speak to us about God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

It is vital for the health of the Church that we attend to the scriptures both privately and publicly.  They are the means by which we listen to God.  From earliest times, one of the distinctive acts of the Church has been to read the scriptures aloud and reflect on their message. This is the place where we attend to what God is saying.  In our own daily walk with God, reading the scriptures needs to find a place: this is where we listen and ponder the grace of God, and find life and guidance in every situation.  This is the place where we put down deep roots to enable us to flourish even in a dry and barren land (Psalm 1).

But for today, try and catch again the wonder of this thought:  God speaks.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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