Loving relationships

1 Corinthians 13
Love is the one thing you can't be without. 
Everything else – good things that are valuable and even essential contributions to the life of any Church – are worthless, they are nothing, without love.  Tongues of men (eloquent preaching?) And tongues of angels (heavenly language), prophecy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, generosity to the poor and courageous self-sacrifice (Surrendering one's body to be burned).  These are all  examples of power, gifting, and courage; they are all needed.  But they are all pointless without love.

We have been looking at the “Quality Characteristics” of healthy churches: Empowering leadership; Gift based ministry; Passionate spirituality; Effective structures; Inspiring worship; Holistic small-groups; and Need-based mission.  I can see connexions between these and Paul's list in 1 Cor 13: tongues, prophecy, knowledge, generosity...  They all help make the Church  better. Without them, the love can be a squandered resource.  But without love, the other stuff is nothing. 

Without love, the other seven characteristics and all the gifts and gestures in the world,  are

worth nothing.  They are like a computer or tablet without an operating system.  It may be brand new, have the clearest screen, the crispest sound, the latest wi-fi, vast amounts of memory.  But when you switch it on, all you will get is a blue screen.  Yes, all the other technical bits will make the computer work better: a rubbishy screen and tinny speakers will mean nobody can appreciate the wonderful operating system.  But without the operating system, all you have is a big paperweight!  Without love, gifts, planning and sacrifice are worthless.  Without gifts, planning etc., love may be unfocussed. 

So what is love? 
Love is more than a word; it is more than a feeling.  And it is more than a bunch of gestures.  It is more even than simply generosity or self-sacrifice.   What is it?  It is an attitude,  a way of thinking as well as behaving towards other people. What do loving relationships look like?
Loving relationships are ones marked by

• Patience, (literally longsuffering, the willingness to “put up with” people's mistakes and slowness) and kindness,
• Generosity.  Love does not envy (it does not long for what belongs to someone else)
• Humility.  Love does not boast.  Love is not proud (gk means “puffed up” – a difficult word that paul sometimes uses,  with implications of being impossible to challenge or correct.)
• Decency. Love is not rude (behaving unseemly, e.g. sexually inappropriate behaviour.  Same word is used in 1 Cor 7. 36, about a young man “not behaving properly” towards his girlfriend.) Rudeness, isn't jumping the queue, but wandering hands, sexually inappropriate humour.  Love doesn't use people or objectify them sexually.
• Unselfishness. We don't insist on “my own way”  No need to explain: Paul sums that one up perfectly!
• Anger management.

  

  Image by G Lilly

  Love isn't quick to fly off the handle, nor does it keep a grudge going.  Some of us are fireworks: the least provocation and “boom!”  Some of us are like a garden bonfire, that smoulders quietly for days – or years.  And some of are like both: quick starters and slow burners!
• Joy.  Love doesn't feel pleased when someone does something wrong.  We do, sometimes; we say “thank you Lord I am not like that sinner” (Luke 18. 11) and maybe get a secret pleasure from putting them right. Love rejoices with the truth.  When people do well, achieve something, overcome a difficulty, we celebrate with them.
• Strength.  Love always protects.  Or Love bears all things. The  word is related to the word for the flat roof of a house.  Thick, solid enough to keep the rain out, tough enough to walk on.  S of S 2. 4 says “his banner over me is love”.  We need to put a banner, a blanket of secure, protective,  love over one another.
• Full of Faith and hope.  Love believes all things is not about believing the best of people, but about always having faith and being hopeful.  When someone comes to the church door telling me a “sob-story” and asking for money, does loving them mean I will believe their story?  No; loving them means I believe God can do something for them!  It is part of love, to bring faith and hope into our life together. 
• Perseverance.  Gods love never ceases.   And true love never stops loving.  That doesn't mean allowing abuse to happen.  But it does mean we love when we don't feel like loving.

So, those are the kind of relationships we should expect to see in a Healthy Church.  Strong, lasting, faith-filled, generous, tolerant and sensitive relationships. And relationships like that “Never cease.” 

Love is the Kingdom
Paul goes on to talk about various gifts – tongues, prophecy, knowledge – as things that are going to disappear – eventually!  When I was a kid, we were taught, wrongly, that tongues and prophecy would disappear when the bible was completed.  That's not what Paul means at all.  “When the perfect comes” means being fully grown up, the final climax of everything. 
All we do and experience in this life, is like childhood.  When we are in eternity, we will be grown up.  We will think and understand in a different way.  

Now, what we have of Christian experience and knowledge of God, even with the wonderful gift of Scripture, is like looking in a not very good mirror that is just a square of polished brass or silver.  (And they made mirrors like that in Corinth!)   One day, we will understand God, how creation happened,  how Jesus can be both God and man, who the Holy Spirit is; we will understand why God allows suffering.  We have that understanding, and lots more,  to look forward to!   

And when that day comes, there will still be faith, hope, and above all, love.  So loving relationships in the Church, make that Church a foretaste of heaven, right here on earth.  Loving relationships in the Church, mean that the Church is living today in the experience of the Kingdom of God: a church where there are  loving relationships, is one where “our God reigns!” 

© Gilmour Lilly 2015

Need-oriented Mission: Matthew 11. 1-6, 25-30

On one occasion, fairly early on in his ministry (John was still alive) Jesus was travelling in Samaria, and feeling weary, he sat down beside  a well while his mates went shopping.  It was midday, hot, and as Jesus sat, he saw a woman approaching, carrying a water jar.  I wonder what was going through his head? 

Maybe, just maybe, “Come to me all you who are tired and heavily laden.... and I will give you rest...”  We often use these verses in the context of caring for overworked disciples: "Jesus' yoke is ready and his burden is light," we tell people who are too busy, trying too hard and beating themselves up themselves up because they can't do all that they feel is expected of them. I've quoted these verses myself in exactly that situation. But the context of these words was clearly mission.

In Matthew 10, Jesus has sent the Twelve out – on mission trip, to preach, heal the sick, drive out the demons.  Did you ever wonder what Jesus was doing while the disciples were out on mission?   We imagine him taking a few days off. Spending a few days at his Mum's place, maybe playing a few rounds of golf?  But Matthew tells us what Jesus was doing.  Chapter 11 verse 1 says quite clearly,  that “After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee”.  While the 12 were on mission, Jesus was on mission too.

We are on a mission: Jesus has sent us out. And when we are on a mission, Jesus is on a mission too! That is good news because we can't do it on our own. Recognising the truth of the Kingdom, knowing who Jesus is, depends on God revealing truth.  (see v25-27)  We need Jesus to be with us.

So it seems that Jesus is saying “Come to me all who are weary and heavily loaded...” to everyone who is tired and overburdened.  He is saying it to people who don't know him.  He is inviting people to put their faith in him and know his rest: not so much “inactivity;” more relief, from the stresses they are under.   

West were the burdens that Jesus' hearers might be carrying?
Jewish legalism.  Jesus described the Pharisees with their legalistic religion as laying heavy burdens on people.   (See Mt 23. 4).
Greek intellectualism.  The big thing for the Greeks was “the search for truth.”  But the Gospel is not so much for he wise and learned as for the little children.   (v 25f)
Roman tyranny.  Matthew 5.41talks about “going the extra mile” and that relates to something that the Empire could do – and had done, going back to the days of the Persians hundreds of years before Jesus. They could press gang people at random for short spells of forced labour.  Remember they forced Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus' Cross. (Mt 27. 32)

What are the burdens and heavy loads that people have today?  Let me tell you a story about a young refugee. His wife and son are still in his home country, and he is waiting for his asylum case to be decided. He attends a Christian group and is learning about Jesus; and he has started another Christian group in his own flat where he tells his friends what he is learning about Jesus. What is his burden?  What is the heavy load of someone who works on the food industry, has to work long hours on low wages, who can't complain for fear of losing his job: he knows his company gets its business by being the cheapest supplier. What is the heavy load of someone working at Amazon or Sky? What is the burden for a single mum or someone in an abusive relationship? For someone with an ageing parent or a disabled child?  For someone living in Kurdistan, in fear for his life and with no prospects of improvement? What is the heavy load for somebody bereaved in Paris or Garissa (Kenya)? What is the heavy load for a young person caught up in ISIL?  We need to see that, to understand what the burdens are in people’s lives and to start there in reaching out with the Good News.

But the solution to the world's burdens and problems is not political or economic or military. It is not enough to change the government our kill the terrorists. The Problem will always come back. The solution is spiritual. It's not the UN, or the EU or Westminster or Holyrood; it's the Kingdom of God.  The Church's message is not Come to Jeremy (Corbyn) or come to George (Osborn)  but “Come to Jesus”.  We need to establish on our minds the supremacy of Jesus and his sufficiency, the sufficiency and potency of his Kingdom to change lives, circumstances and cultures. The point about verse 27 is who Jesus is.  God the father has committed (literally “handed over”) everything to him.  The father and the Son know each other as a matter of course, because they are the same.  They are God.  Unless God reveals Jesus to us we are only his acquaintances. 

When we come to Jesus, he gives relief, and places his yoke on us, his way of living, his "law", his demands. But Jesus the carpenter places on us an easy, well-made yoke.  He calls us to be learners, or disciples.  The Syriac NT – an ancient language similar to the Aramaic Jesus spoke – says “Come to me and I will rest you; for I am restful and you shall find rest for yourselves.”

So if you are weary and burdened today, Jesus says “come to me and I will give you rest!”  And I want to invite you to put your trust in Him – the Son of God –  for everything. I want to promise that as you put his yoke on you, and become his disciple, his learner, you will find rest.

And for all of us, I want to suggest four processes or habits, four things we can do, to engage in need-oriented mission. 

Image: G Lilly

Practical compassion .  We meet people at their point of need.  
Prophetic challenge. We speak the word of God, not only into people's need of a saviour, but into people's and society's need to repent.
Prayer for our world and for and with people. 
Presenting the Good news – one-to-one graciously presenting people with the truth that God loves them, and that through Jesus' death and resurrection, change is a possibility, and with the opportunity to repent and believe the Good News. 

We can see these worked out in the ministry of Jesus.  His life was empowered by prayer: an ongoing conversation with the Father.  He was constantly ministering to people's practical needs – healing the sick, feeding the hungry; once when he had raised a wee girl from death and people were staring at what had happened, Jesus said “Give her something to eat.”  The practical needs...  HE often spoke with prophetic insight and incisiveness as he proclaimed the Good News. 
Matthew 11. 1-6, 25-30We see several of these habits at work when this woman came to the well and began to draw water (John 4) …  When she arrived,  what were her burdens?  She had a sense of shame and was looked down upon for her lifestyle.  That is why she was at the well in the heat of the day: when everyone else was resting in the shade she could get her water without being looked at and spat upon.  She needed to be accepted and treated as a human being. 

Jesus took practical, sacrificial steps to meet her deepest human needs.  Men treated her as a sex object, women treated her as a slut.  Jesus treated her with respect and dignity, even asked her for a drink.  She was surprised to be asked.  Jesus took her questions seriously and answered them. 

All the while he is presenting the truth about who he is and what he can do. “If you knew who

Image: G Lilly

it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.  The water I give  will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

When the woman heard that she said, “I want this water!”  Then Jesus says the thin the woman has dreaded hearing:  “If you want this water, your husband needs to be in on this. Go and get him!”   The woman is squirming.  I don't have a husband.  And then the embarrassing question becomes a bombshell: “You bet you don't have a husband – you've had five and you're now living with a guy you're not married to.”   Tough words; but they are true: how did Jesus know?   The woman recognises that Jesus is a prophet.  She's intelligent; she's also desperate to change the subject, so the conversation touches on other questions: who's got the right way of worshipping, and the promised Messiah.  Then Jesus tells her “I am the Messiah!”   She is so excited she rushes off to bring her friends to Jesus. 

That's need-based mission at work. 

© Gilmour Lilly November 2015

Inspiring Worship

Introduction: (Allan) What are our reasons for coming to church? Is it out of habit ? Been doing it for years? Take a pew and go through the motions sing a few songs fall asleep halfway through the seven week up for communion single a few more songs then have a chat and a cuppa and a biscuit is that how it's supposed to be? No!

Of course that's not how it is supposed to be. But we don't start with habit, or going through the motions. We may end up like that; but I believe most of us start with a desire to respond to God and to be “inspired”! But things can go pear-shaped quite easily and we end up swapping that sense of expectancy for one of habit. So how can we keep this things healthy and vibrant?

A number of years ago when I was in Gloucester, someone visited our Church and, on her way out said to me “I really enjoyed my worship this morning!” Now, as you know, I am very polite, so I bit my tongue. But what I wanted to say was “Well, it's nice to get a compliment, but we weren't actually worshipping you!”

So the first question I want to ask about worship actually is “Who are we worshipping?” It's important that our worship is focussed on God, not on our own needs or preferences; not on the needs or preferences of any group within the Church; and not even on the needs or preferences of outsiders or “seekers”. It's for God. To quote Mike Pilavachi, it's “For The Audience of One.”

Let's hear God's word.... Deut 6. 4-5, 13-15

Lomond Hill, Fife. Image by G Lilly

In its original context God's people Israel were living in an environment where many gods were worshipped; and as the Lord had revealed Himself to them the idea had slowly dawned in their minds that their god was different: he was the only god they should worship because he was really the only god. When Deut 6. 4 says “The Lord our God is One...” that “One” is important. It's almost like a name for God. He is “The One.” he is “Unique”. His name is Yahweh – the Eternal One, the one who was and is and is to come, the one who uniquely says “I am who I am!” Our first key word then, is The Eternal.

But still for Israel – as we as for us today – there was the constant pressure and temptation to take our minds off the Lord and worship other gods. We may not go down on our hands and knees in front of our computer screens, but it's easy for other things to become idols.

And that asks us – as it should do – a question that goes to the very core of our being. It's about more than “Who is A Church service for?” The Church by the simple fact of worshipping God, fires off this question to the whole of our society: “Who or what do you worship?”

Matt Redman's song says, “I'm coming back to the the heart of worship... and it's all about you, Jesus!”

That brings me to another question: What is worship?

Let's hear God's word again: Romans 12. 1-2

Bread and wine. Image by G Lilly

Remember what we learned last week: The wine is not the bottle. The ESSENCE of worship is not about singing or preaching or raising our hands or kneeling down. That's just the bottle. The wine, the essential core of worship is this: surrendering our lives to God, because of what he has done for us in Christ. The words sacrifice, offer, holy and acceptable (in Romans 12. 1-2) are technical religious words. Literally the Greek means “Present your lives to God, as a living, holy and acceptable sacrifice.”

Worship is not just what happens in here at 11 a.m. it is about the whole of life. It is about our home life; it is about how we spend – and earn – our money; it is about our sexuality, about health, about relationships, about forgiveness, generosity, balancing work and rest. It's about everything. To be a worshipper means that in everything, I give myself to God; in everything I am not accepting conformity to the world but seeking to be transformed.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice... And I believe that, if we could nail that, we would end the whole thing of “Worship wars” that has blighted the Western Church for decades.

So How do we worship? We look at the EXPRESSION of worship...

Let's hear God's Word: Revelation 4. 8-11; Revelation 5. 11-14.

That's a sneak preview of the worship of heaven – and it's pretty way out: it's vibrant, colourful, active, loud, thoughtful, truth-centred.

My Dictionary of bible themes lists the following as aspects of “worship” Adoration, Praise, prayer, asking, blessing, doxology, enquiring of God, lifting up hands, celebration, longing for god, waiting on God, magnifying God, meditation, remembering, study, thanksgiving... sacraments, singing, spiritual gifts. In these and maybe in ways we haven't even thought of we connect with and respond to Yahweh, to Jesus the lamb, to the present Holy Spirit.

There is a prayer – we used it last week – that says it is right that we should worship God “at all times and in all places.” We can worship here in Church – but we can worship in the street, in the park, in the café... And we worship, primarily because Jesus is worthy.

Why worship?

The effects of worship (according to my Dictionary of bible Themes) include: Blessing, Guidance, Joy, Sense of God's presence, Deeper sense of Jesus' Lordship. Boldness in witness: Conviction of sinners.

Let's hear what the Bible says: 2 Chron 5. 13f cf Acts 16. 25f;

That's pretty inspiring. If I were Paul or Silas, chained up in prison, after being whipped, I'm not sure I would feel like singing God's praises, but despite all they had been through, that's exactly what Paul and Silas were doing. When God's people connect with him in worship, somehow we release his power into our situations.

So, Inspiring worship? Do we worship to get inspired? No, we worship because Jesus is worthy, even if we are not. But in worship, in connecting with the Eternal God, and offering our lives to Him, something is going to happen to us, too. We can't worship god and not be changed.

As we worship, we connect with god; we become aware of our own sinfulness; we know God's power to clean us up and forgive us; and we are inspired to serve him in his world.

We finish with the story of how one man was changed and inspired as he connected with God.

Isa 6. 1-8

©Gilmour Lilly November 2015

Matthew 9. 14-17. Effective Structure

He lived in Capernaum, so Matthew (or Levi) who worked for the Romans as a  tax-collector, was a familiar figure. One day, as Jesus was walking past his office, he called him to “Follow me”.  Without a moment's hesitation, Matthew left his office and began to follow, and then threw a party, with Jesus as the guest of honour.  All the outcasts and dodgy types were there.  Jesus was criticised for the company he was keeping, but that was why he was there: for the outcasts, the broken; the people whose lives had fallen apart.  The Kingdom was party-time for those with broken lives, who were ready to make a fresh start.  

But there was another question fired at Jesus – maybe not immediately – but in time. John the Baptist's disciples, hearing about  what was happening, wanted to know why they and the Pharisees were fasting, while Jesus was partying.  Michael Green says “Typical religious people. They engage in all sorts of actions and ceremonies but have not the least idea why they do it.” 

Fasting had originally been something people did in moments of grief or desperation – turning from sin or urgent prayer. The Jewish religion had turned it into a religious exercise.  For them, fasting was just part of the Structure of their religious life.  It went along with going to the Synagogue, and celebrating the great festivals through the year.  It was part of the structure of their faith community.

We talked last week about Spirituality: the processes by which we know God and grow in him.  Structures are what the Church brings to the equation to shape our lives as Christians and our life together.  I suppose they are the “organised” bit in organised religion.  There are structures that exist to manage our life together:  meetings at set times and in familiar places. A news bulletin; rotas for making the tea; Leadership and other Teams, a bank account; Kids' work, house groups, plans for Christmas. It's all part of our “Structure”.

Jesus comes to this old structure of Judaism with a new thing called “The Kingdom of God”.  It's exciting. It's fresh and creative and a bit intoxicating; it's alive and growing.  The Kingdom is often likened to a wedding.  A huge celebration: bigger and better than Mathews big party for Jesus.

And some people thought, “Good!  The Messiah's Kingdom will keep our religion alive. He will make it stronger; we will get rid of the Romans, rule ourselves and maybe rule the world.”  

But Jesus doesn't agree.  That's why he tells these three parables. “You can't call a fast at a wedding banquet.  You can't patch old clothes with new cloth.  You can't store new wine in old wine-skins.”

1.  Fasting wasn’t appropriate when Jesus was there, doing the stuff that shows God's rule. There would be times for fasting – like when Jesus was taken away and put to death as Jesus hints in the parable.  There are still times to fast and times for celebration for the Church today.

2. Patching up the old.  Jesus says you can't use the Kingdom to patch up the old and threadbare structures of man-made religion.  Your old shirt has already been washed many times and shrunk as much as it is going to.  When it gets a hole you patch it with a bit of new cloth, put it in the wash and the new bit shrinks.  You are back where you started, with a hole in your shirt! 

3. New wine in old wine-skins. You can't hope to carry the vibrant reality of the Kingdom in the tired bottles of man-made religion.   New wine is still alive, still fermenting, releasing bubbles of CO2.  Wineskins were made from the skins

Public Domain image

of goats, that were cleaned, tanned, stitched and sealed. New made ones were stretchy but older ones lost that stretchiness. New, fresh, young wine needs new-made, brand-new wine-skins. The wine of the Kingdom is always fresh, young, growing, bubbling and fizzing.  It needs constantly to be put in inventive, new-made wine-skins.

The wine is not the bottle. That is so obvious that I almost missed it until I read what Howard Snyder, a Methodist scholar wrote way back in 1978, “Jesus distinguishes between something essential and primary (the Wine) and something secondary but also

Image by G Lilly

necessary and useful (the wine-skins)”1   The wine is not the bottle, just as the tree is not the plastic sleeve used to protect it when it's a young plant.  As it grows, it outgrows that structure.

That's what Jesus says about structures.  That and very little else.  As far as worship, he gave one instruction: break bread in remembrance of me. As far as leadership, he appointed twelve to be with him and then to be sent out. 

In Acts 1 we find the Church has latched on to … the number 12: the structure.   Then in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit came.  So now the Church had two things:  it had people and it had the Spirit. (An it had the Gospel, and very little else!)  And out of the people, the Spirit made this thing called “fellowship”: koinonia is the Greek word for it.  Snyder says “This is the only explanation for the early Christian community described in Acts. The creation of genuine fellowship is an integral part of the work of the Holy Spirit.”2   The first believers were together; they obviously communicated with each other because they knew about one another's needs.  Snyder says “Communion without communication would be a contradiction in terms.”3  And the Spirit kept moving amongst them.   Paul says"where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3. 17).  And as the Spirit moved, the Church continued to reach its neighbours with the Gospel.  Together, communication, freedom, and mission, were the key words for the earliest Church's life, and their structures were simply there to enable these values. 

What Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles, and indeed the rest of the bible models, is a flexible approach.  The seven were appointed for practical caring ministry in Acts 6 because what they had – the 12 doing all the work – wasn’t' working.  But isn't it interesting, that when the structures embody these values, both in Acts 6 . 7 and in Acts 2. 47, the church's mission leaps forward. 

In the Old Testament, as the people journeyed through the desert, Jethro told Moses to appoint judges because what they had – Moses doing everything – wasn't working. 

Even the physical structure of the Tabernacle was designed to work – to be waterproof when it was up and portable when it was down.  The holiest thing in the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the greatest symbol of God's presence with his people, was designed to be practical. Designed by God himself, overlaid with gold, but with rings and carrying poles built in so it could be carried. It's about structures that work.  The Bible teaches us effective structures.  The test of effective structures are togetherness, communication, freedom and mission.

My Dad's family were hoarders.  In the sixties they still had things like the family's ID cards and ration books.  I still have bits and pieces I have saved up from when I was a teenager. But my Mum wasn't a hoarder. When I was in second year at secondary school, we did woodwork.  I can't remember anything Mr McClymonts taught us about woodwork.  All I can remember is how he swore at my poor workmanship. Each of us made a box for putting shoe polish and brushes in.  Mine wasn't very good, but I eventually took it home and gave it to my Mum.  It was kept, with brushes and polish, under the sink, and I forgot about it until one day, in the 80's I was back home for a family funeral, and wanted to clean my black shoes.  I went looking for the polish box – and Mum had thrown it out when they had moved.  I was a bit put out at the time.  But you know what – she was right.  My joints were not that neatly chiselled out, they were made good with wood-filler, and the whole thing had been given coat of red paint to hide the defects. It was not the kind of thing she was going to put on the coffee table when visitors came round.

We can be hoarders in the way we deal with our structures.   We try to make the new cloth of the Kingdom patch up the old, threadbare structures.  We try to justify the existence of the old wine-skins by putting the kingdom into them.  Sometimes we need to just chuck them out. 

Sometimes we suffer from an obsession with structures.  We forget that the wine isn't the bottle: the tree isn't the plastic sleeve.  Church structures don't have a sort of divine seal of approval on them. Thirty or so years ago some groups of Christians were obsessed with “restoring Biblical structures to the Church.” The one of those groups published a magazine article that asked “Who's got the right Biblical Structure?” And the answer? “Nobody!”  We can be obsessed with new structures when we are thinking “new”. And we can become obsessed with structures when we are thinking “old”. 

It's the new wine of the Kingdom that matters.  We need to create structures that work for the Kingdom: new wine-skins.  Effective structures that bring us together, and enable communication, freedom, and mission. And that brings us back to where we started, with Jesus partying with Matthew the tax-collector and his friends.  The new wine is the generous, vibrant, living Kingdom. the Spirit in the Church, is the spirit of the Kingdom.  And the Kingdom is about the lost. Effective structures are not there to keep the saints in or the lost out.  They need to have doors and windows.  Effective structures let the Kingdom do what it wants, where it wants, where it's needed.


© Gilmour Lilly November 2015