Dear friends,

During my study leave, the age-old question of the relationship between faith and fabric kept me busy. How is what we believe connected to how we live? What is the relationship between God’s gracious and unfathomable act of salvation and our human action for peace, justice, and so on? As Karl Barth asked, how can we do “the little righteousness”?

I was therefore also surprised on Sunday when this question surfaced again as we met with the 20s30s group after church. How are church and my faith connected to everyday life? That this connection matters is, of course, clear throughout the Bible. For centuries, the church has expressed this through the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief). More recently, we have added lex (con)vivendi. That is to say, how we pray and how we worship are intrinsically linked to our life and conduct. And yet, our daily life is grappling with the “how”. How can we, today, give embodied expression to our faith?

I was also surprised to see that….

This week our minister, Marius Louw, invited John-Harmen Valk to write a reflection:

I write this message from Canada in the aftermath of Nicolas Maduro’s capture and amidst the Trump administration’s continued threats to annex Greenland. The country in which I grew up, which in my lifetime has generally enjoyed peace and stability, is on edge. Might we be next?

Nietzsche famously critiqued religion—Christianity most certainly—in two respects. One, for its perceived inability to face reality and to bear it. “And they blink”, he said. Blinking, that automatic twitch in the face of a loud clap, the unexpected, the frightful, and, for Nietzsche, the vain rearguard attempt for consolation and comfort. Two, for its response, resulting from that inability to face reality and to bear it, which he perceived as driven by resentment and bitterness rather than affirmative joy. Nietzsche would, presumably, have sensed resentment coursing through such praise as this: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea”….

Dear Friends,
At the high point of Jesus’ baptism, something remarkable happens:

“Just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

“This is my Son” could well serve as a refrain for the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is the time of the church year when we are invited to see Jesus. To see Jesus as he truly is. First, as a baby lying in a crib, God becoming human in the most unlikely of circumstances. Then, as God revealing Godself in our daily lives, just as God did to the shepherds, the Magi, and so many others…

Dear friends,

Isn’t the best New Year’s resolution to have none at all?

This is the question theologian Dirkie Smit asks in a newspaper column, loosely inspired by Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety. Why do we even care about making New Year’s resolutions, he asks. Is it because we hope for a happier year? Or because we are striving towards a better life, greater hope, or some deeper sense of fulfilment? Perhaps it is because we dream of something different this year and want to invest the time and effort needed to reach that dream. Is this not what lies behind all…

Dear friends,

As we enter the season of Advent we also begin a new year in the life of the Church. Advent offers us a good opportunity for focussed reflection. 

I have therefore put together…

Dear friends,

This Sunday brings us to the final service of the church year. In just a week we step into Advent, the beginning of a new lectionary cycle. If we take the rhythm of the church year seriously, it means we have spent twelve months shaped by the life of Christ. We have waited for his coming, celebrated his birth, listened for epiphany, walked with him through the desert, witnessed his suffering, death, and resurrection, and attended to his daily teachings.

This leads naturally to a simple question: how have you grown in Christlikeness this year? 

The earliest believers were not called Christians. They were known simply as followers of the way. As followers of the way, we attend to the one who leads us. Paul reminds the church that all things hold together in Christ, for he is its head. The church year is meant to bring us back to this centre over and over again. The way we think of Jesus shapes the way we think of the church. Tom Smith puts it well: “Church is the accidental byproduct of people relating to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As we crash into Jesus, a kingdom explosion takes place.” But it is entirely possible to be a church without Jesus, to let programmes, buildings or attendance among other things take the central place that belongs to Christ….

“Sinte, sinte Maarten, de koeien hebben staarten, de meisjes hebben rokjes aan. Daar komt Sint Martinus aan”… These were the words echoing through our streets on Tuesday during the feast of St Martin. The lyrics are not exactly profound, but it is a great atmosphere!

A comedian on Instagram has been sharing real stories of what children received as they went from door to door, rating the treats in several categories.

The first category is the ordinary one. These are the people who hand out a small packet of Haribo or a piece of Celebrations chocolate. Then come those he calls the “light child sadists”. They give apples, mandarins, raisins, or even carrots. It gets worse with the “advanced child sadists” who, according to the stories, hand out pickles or dried prunes. The final category is the “extreme child sadist.” One neighbour greeted the children with a large bucket of sweets, inviting them to take as much as they wanted, only then to ask whether they preferred a treat or to make a donation for hungry children in Africa. Another story tells of a girl who received a luxurious box of Ferrero Rocher, only to discover later that each golden wrapper contained a Brussels sprout….

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday.

We recall the end of the First World War, and we pay tribute to those who sacrificed their lives in that war and every war thereafter. Except for these already important moments, there is something about the Christian theme of remembrance that, I believe, is extremely important for our world today.

Dear Friends,

Christianity, as theologian Robert Vosloo reminds us, can be described as a “religion of memory.” It is bound together by rituals of remembrance. As the words engraved on our communion table read, “This do in remembrance of me”—the same words we will repeat again on Sunday as we share in communion…

Dear Friends,

I came across a quote by Harvey Cox this week that says: “Future historians will record the twentieth century as that century in which the whole world became one immense city.” As we look forward to celebrating Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary this weekend, it raises an important question for a church in the city: what does it mean to celebrate our city? With its long and often complex history, with stories of the good, the bad and the ugly, what are we really celebrating?

Perhaps you do not live in Amsterdam, which is true for many in our congregation, but the question remains just as valid.

This week—while preparing for my sermon, of course—I watched the NPO series Het Verhaal van Amsterdam. We can, I think, be rightly sceptical of a four-part documentary that tries to capture such a long and deep history. It certainly shows the familiar, rosy overview of the city that we all know well. Yet, one does get the sense, as the series aims to show, that Amsterdam has always been a city of migrants and passers-by: people coming and going. No one, they suggest, can claim to be a “real Amsterdammer”…..