Reflections...

What are we here to do as Christians, as a church? I start with praise, because I think that praise and reflection of glory back to God, are the central mission of us as Christians and as a church. 

So, what do you think about praising? Some people are very generous with praise, and some are very critical…Praise can have different occasions to be heard.

When, then, is it good to praise? When you want someone to move forward, to grow, then praise is good, right? Like the other day, I received exercise lessons from a trainer, to do things like pushups, and squats.  I was not that good, but after every single repetition of exercise, the trainer said, “That’s nice.” “That’s good.” It was very relieving and encouraging!

In the Bible, too, we are called to praise, to praise God, over and over. We know that we should praise God. So many of the hymns and psalms are praising God, and calling us to priase God together. God is the one with no imperfections, there’s no way we can criticize God. God is the one we worship, the one who gave us life and all blessings, and of course all of nature, all the earth and sea and sky. We are called to pray and to praise. But in our everyday Christian life, we pray, and prayer can contain different things, like praise, requests, or thanks or intercessions… .but we tend to mainly make requests: please heal my sickness, please heal my sister in the hospital, please let me get the promotion at work, and so on… 

So it is a good time for us to remember the centrality of praise. The Psalms are full of praise. Psalm 97 is a wonderful one which reminds us that the whole earth is involved in praising and glorifying God. 

God reigns. God has perfect wisdom, He is the master. 

And in the following verses, we see all the elements are called, are under God, praising God.

Psalms 97:3-6 – 3Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. 4His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. 5The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. 6The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see His glory.

These are wonderful eloquent words, which open our hearts to feel we are with the world, to praise Him. And there are so many other Psalms we can read, to be inspired with the magnificent imagery and emotion. so many are filled with words of praise for God. 

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But maybe in the old days, the days of these Psalms, people thought and spoke like that, it was easy and common to praise God, but it might not feel so natural or easy for us nowadays to pray like that, and be so poetic! How about us now? 

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We can praise him individually, in our prayers, in our songs, in our conversations. God is merciful, God is good always. 

For me, it helps a lot to listen to those praise songs, like by Hillsong – there will be one later. But we also can praise him together, as a community. Through worship and through our fellowship and through our building up of every part of the church for God’s mission on the earth.

What after all, is Worship? Sunday worship.

It is the time that we gather as a community of believers and worshippers.

Worship is a little different from praise: it is the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for God. It is “losing oneself in the adoration of another”. When you worship God, you lose yourself in Him. So, this is collective.

So when we praise, how can we praise? Do we simply say “ah…. Perfect. Ah….. Good, Good, Wonderful… .there is beauty… there is aroma…. There is grace”….No! We want to say who is good, who is perfect, who is gentle, who is the one giving us grace?

We need to say the name of God, we need to praise by name, the Holy, Beautiful and Fragrant name of God. God demands us in the Bible all the time: say my name. Call me, call on me, do not call Baal, or any other god. So how can we praise God?

Of course we can say “praise God”, we can say “Hallelujah”… 

But as we can see from the Psalms – we are called to praise by saying how perfect he is, how good he is, how he shows His goodness, His greatness.

The name of God , the name of Jesus, the name of the Holy Spirit – we name what we praise, we praise by naming.

Let’s look again at Psalm 97.

Holy God. Beautiful God, precious God, faithful God, God of yesterday, today and tomorrow, God of Love, God of Grace, Almighty God.

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So, naming, and allowing the named one to receive praise, and to receive praise that is related to their special attributes, is something we are all called to do, for God, for Jesus, for the Holy Spirit.

So, how about our sisters and brothers in the church? We must unite as one in Jesus.

We must unite in Jesus who is the vine, and we be the branches. So we name and praise each other, as brothers and sisters. We practice naming and praising each other. Why? Because we are all reflections of God, to each other.

When I see you, my sister, or you, my brother, I see you as a child of God, who God loves, and who I must respect. God loves you, I must love you. When Jesus said, “Abide in me,”, He is telling us to be like this.

So, allow each of us to know each other’s names, and how you are part of the branches of the vine of Jesus. For example, Doris Lee – what is Doris Lee doing? Name and praise each one, so all can see each person’s reflections of God’s glory. Name each person on the committees of the church, all the volunteers and staff of the church. It’s so glorifying to God, if we see and recognize each other, and name each other for each of our gifts and what we have done. So let me practice “praising by name” with the gardening group which I’ve helped to build up, and together with whom we’ve built up the church garden.

Naming is important. Names are the entry point to communion as sisters and brothers in Christ. Names are the entry point to friendship. Names are the entry point to praise, acknowledgement, understanding of the beauty and riches of one’s own place.

Talking about plants, the biologists and ecologists who study them reverently search for new species and assign new names to them, and find their unique qualities. This is a way to appreciate biodiversity. It makes you love nature. So, just like when we are gardening in the church, if you don’t know their names, as amateurs, it’s hard to know how to care for them. So, truly truly, the start is to identify, to know the name of the plant. Yes, some people may learn by instinct, how to correctly water, provide light, provide nutrients and right soil for them – but for most of us average people, the name is the beginning – once you know the name, you can search online or in books about each plant’s unique attributes, and their seasonality – do they flower once a year? Several times a year? Or once in several years? Do they need fertilizer? How frequently? All these can be well learned – once you have identified the plant by name. You can search with Google Lens or with Plant.net, how to correctly care for the plants.

So, looking back at how our gardens developed:

Before, when I first came to the gardens last year, there were many plants in the church, like cassava, ginger, this was the starting point…. And they were being cared for by one sister, Jhessi, who is still in our group now.

Then, at the end of last year, I began to join an activity group of gardening, under the Peacemaking Ministry, and there were refugee and church members including some like Othmane and others, who helped to build up the garden. By April this year, we got more plants, from donations, and it got quite complex…. Now we have long beans, bananas, okra, tomatoes, and figs. So we have more and more harvest.

So here, I would like to name, and praise and raise up, our current members: Khalid, Ihab, Jhessi and Tamer. There were many also before, like Othmane, Promise, and Asma…All are asylum seekers, with different kinds of hardships, but they have diligently giving with their hearts to the garden. I hope all of you have the chance to visit the garden. We also have a garden table, donated by Mercy. So I’m naming them and praising them – why? Because they have so many gifts, knowledge of plant care, and they are contributing to our church. These plants here all around us, they add life to our church, and we need to take care of them every day. And these brothers and sisters are doing this together as a team. We always feel our sister- and brotherhood.

But we should keep our focus. Gardening in our church is not just for our personal enjoyment, it’s not just a hobby. This is our church, and our church garden. And what is our mission? It is to reflect praise and glory back to God. How do we reflect praise and glory back to God? It is by abiding in Jesus, being the branches of the vine, by working together to do the purpose of the church:

Proclaim the Gospel! Nurture believers! Engage in mission! And respond to human need, working for justice and peace for all!

This is fundamental to our church, this is in our Constitution.

So let us praise by name, praise the name of God, who gave everything to each of us. He is the Almighty, He is blameless, and He forgives us all the time.

And let us learn the names of our neighbours, and help each other learn the names of our neighbours! We don’t compete, to know the most people. Let us make a genuine community of Christ, so we can bear more fruit – more groups, more baptisms, more volunteers, more faithful.

And, some may believe you can never criticize, you should only praise, but I don’t think this way. Instead, quoting Warren Buffet, a billionaire: praise by name, criticize by category. So, may criticize the work, the output, the way of something being done, but not the person. I think this is healthy, because sometimes we still want work to be done well, for the group. So, praise by name, but criticize by category.

And, finally, coming back to our theme of Eco-concern Sunday: learn and delight in the names and unique qualities of the plants and animals around us. Check yourself how you feel, when you see the plants in our church without names, and later after we do more labelling, how you feel when you see them with their names. With names, you can appreciate them more fully – it is a way of appreciating biodiversity, and becoming a truer steward of the earth, and more righteous and just steward for God’s sake. This way, we can fully reflect grace back to God, and we can do as He commanded – abide in Him, and be the branches of His vine.

So you are invited to practice praise and naming in the church and church gardens. You can join our composting activity coming up, and other activities on gardening and conservation; and also join us when we add labels to the plants, in upcoming weeks. 

Let us close with prayer.