From the minister... 

Dear friends

Over the last six months, we’ve formed a new habit at home. Every evening, we try to make connections, sometimes ending in success and on other occasions in disappointment.

I don’t mean that we finish each day with an abstract conversation about the meaning of life. Instead, I’m referring to a simple but engrossing game published every day by the New York Times, on the same website that hosts the Wordle puzzles that have now become part of many daily routines. ‘Connections’ consists of a grid of sixteen words, the aim of the game being to allocate them into four groups of four which have something in common.

‘Connections’ isn’t the only game which is based on this premise. Some among us may be regular viewers of ‘Only Connect’, the high-brow BBC2 quiz show where guests are invited to find links between apparently unrelated words, its title based on a famous quote by the novelist EM Forster that speaks of the important connection between our heads and our hearts.

Making connections is an important skill. Our mental well-being is connected to our physical health and our mood is linked to our diet. These examples, rooted in personal experience, are likely to resonate with all of us, but we will also be familiar with an interconnectedness that exists in many other aspects of life. In recent years, our lives in the UK have been impacted by rising energy bills caused by war in Ukraine and supply chain shortages that are the consequence of attacks on shipping lanes in the Middle East. As the world is increasingly impacted by climate change, we are realising that our well-being and prosperity cannot occur in isolation from that of people, plants and animals in faraway places. These are all examples of an old truism, that ‘everything connects’.

In the various letters he wrote to the early church, the Apostle Paul recorded no specific views on interconnectedness, but I think it’s safe to say that he would have subscribed to the theory. One of the greatest mistakes we can make about Christianity is to restrict it only to the personal sphere. All too often the gospel is presented in terms of an invitation to individual salvation, as if it’s all about our personal failings and the possibility of eventual new life in heaven, one soul saved at a time. But when we turn to the pages of the New Testament, we find a far bigger story narrated there. 

It cannot be denied that Paul is painfully aware of his individual failings. In Romans 7 he famously describes how his sinful nature means that he struggles to do that which is right, even though he wants to be a better person. ‘I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out’ (Rom 7:18). However, the apostle also situates this inner conflict within a wider context: a whole world which is out of joint from the original design of its creator, where sinful forces conspire against the purposes of God. Paul describes these forces using a variety of terms: ‘the rulers of this age’ (1 Cor 2:6); ‘the powers of this dark world’ (Eph 6:12); ‘the elemental spiritual forces of the world’ (Gal 4:3). Everything connects.

We know this is true because we experience it ourselves, as our daily lives collide with other broken people and with corporate and structural sinfulness: the endless quest for bigger profits that causes us pressure where we work; the prejudice and racism that can capture a crowd and threaten our peace and dignity; the ways that poverty or deprivation become embedded in particular towns or regions, robbing people of opportunity. Everything connects.

However, just as Paul speaks of a whole world captive to sin, he also proclaims a gospel of universal redemption. This gospel is good news for individuals. The despair of Romans 7 and the battle each of us fights against our personal sinfulness gives way to the triumphant words of Romans 8:1–2: ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.’ Meanwhile, a more panoramic description of the work of Jesus is offered in the opening chapter of Colossians: ‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ (Col 1:19–20).

Did you catch that? All things! Not just some things redeemed by God, a few select individuals saved from the wreckage of a world fated to death. Jesus’ triumph is over all the forces of sin, and he now rules ‘far above all rule and authority, power and dominion’ (Eph 1:21). If this is so, then surely it means that the final saving work of God will mean the renewal of every part of his creation, not just our solitary souls. The death and resurrection of Jesus makes possible a world where crowds can no longer be swayed by dark forces and power will never be used to exploit or oppress others. Everything connects.

If time allows, you might want to have a go at making connections yourself. How might your frustration with difficult people change if you saw their actions as part of a bigger story of fallenness within the world? And how might your hope for the future be broadened, if you could remind yourself that Jesus doesn’t just want you to be reconciled to him, but that he wants to reconcile every person and every power to himself?

Wishing you God’s grace and peace Trevor