Show Compassion In The Face OF Need

1 Kings 17: 17-24, Luke 7: 11-17

Raising the dead by a touch or a word is quite some trick, yet just because today’s account of the raising of the widow’s son makes it to the pages of the New Testament, we should be honest enough to admit that for many modern Christians there is still so much uncertainty about what is described perhaps we should concede it may not even have happened in the way Luke appears to claim.

Of course we might always attempt to intellectualize what we read about this strange happening. For example it is true that in a previous age, such apparent events as the dead returning to life, were not unknown if only because then without modern medical techniques, death was difficult to distinguish from unconsciousness. This situation continued right through until comparatively recently and as a consequence in old style church burial grounds particularly in England, there was a covered Lych gate (literally a corpse gate) at the entrance to the grave yard, where the coffin or bier was delivered the evening before a funeral and some social histories say that someone (often a deacon) would be delegated to sit beside the deceased overnight in case the body recovered.

But even if there were some natural science explanation for this instance of Jesus returning the widow’s son to life, there is far more to this story than faith-healing writ large. We should for example note that the son is in effect resuscitated not resurrected to immortality. Presumably some years later, as for all mortal human beings, there would be another funeral for the widow’s son– but this time with no unexpected reprieve.

Here, despite my training as a primary science teacher, and my belief in the scientific world, I am not using this as an excuse to rubbish faith healing. Sick people – and in some instances very sick people with a claimed incurable condition – have been known to unexpectedly recover. To many scientists, the jury is still out on whether or not faith can affect this healing process. Anyway the recently deceased can occasionally be brought back to life. There are many recorded instances of people whose hearts have stopped having been resuscitated and there is always room for the unexpected, even if the miracle is only that someone cared enough to make the effort.

Yet at the very least we would be wise to not assume anyone with sufficient faith could perform the same miracle in the same way Jesus was reported as doing.

But let’s go back a step to think why Luke was recording this miracle of Jesus in the first place. Its context is provided by the section of the story that follows today’s account of the raising of the widow’s son. John the Baptist had heard of the many strange and wonderful things that had been apparently happening for Jesus, and although the stories circulating about Jesus suggested his behaviour was rather different from what the Jews taught would be the characteristics of the Messiah, John decided to send his disciples to find out if this Jesus was the one.

Jesus, as enigmatic as ever, did not give a direct answer. They asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”

Notice it was his actions rather than his title – many of which had a common theme of acts of compassion – which marked him as the Messiah. As intending followers of the Messiah, might it be that we learn from Jesus’ answer? For us today the question is not – are you the Messiah?  but “ Are you a Christian?”

But dare we answer in the same way as Jesus: “Stick around, watch and decide for yourself!” Would we be brave enough to expect people to judge us by our actions?

Whatever Jesus was doing in his actions, as far as Luke was concerned, Jesus was showing genuine compassion to the widow who would have been entirely dependent on her son, whose death would presumably have left her with no hope of support. We might also wonder if Luke was helping his readers understand that Jesus was a prophet.

We should not be surprised that the crowd responds to the action of raising the widow’s son by saying Jesus is a prophet. After all it was in the same general area of the country that, years before, Elijah also raised a widow’s son.

The crowd are reported as accepting the event as confirmation that Jesus is a prophet. The modern commentators are clearly divided about what actually happened. Some are happy that this be accepted as a dramatic miracle – and others insist that it is a purely symbolic story to show the sort of attitude Jesus had to the needy. Regrettably I don’t have a TARDIS that would allow me to go back and see for myself which version is true.

For what it is worth, I suspect Luke at least, believed that this story was an accurate account, but since it came from an age of oral traditions, it is also likely that the story had been already been shaped by the need for symbolism.

But if this story is to have meaning for us, it would not do to place too much emphasis on the miracle part, if only because such gifts are not readily apparent in those such as ourselves. Putting it directly, we are not Jesus.

What is clear however is that the world in which we live follows the laws of nature, and nature has no regard for what we might want to happen. A tornado can form in response to atmospheric conditions and wreck a town in Oklahoma, killing innocent young children as well as adults, and prayer does not change the course of the tornado. An earthquake can destroy the heart of one city and leave other cities unscathed, and there seems no correspondence between the force of an earthquake and the number of believers in the vicinity.

Some might want to feel that an earthquake is a consequence of God’s judgment on human behaviour, but the physics of reaction to stresses and fault lines on the Earth’s crust seems a more logical explanation. In the same way, a much needed parent can contract terminal cancer as a consequence of a stray mutation, and a widow’s son can still die in accordance with the happen-chance of nature for no apparent faith related reason.

Just as misfortune follows the application of natural law, natural law limits us on what forms of cure are available. Even Jesus was demonstrably limited in how much suffering he could address. Whatever means Jesus might have had to alleviate the suffering of those poor and needy souls he was able to help, presumably there were also many in Palestine who remained un-helped. Today’s gospel report focuses on Jesus using a wondrous intervention for this particular widow but we should note that the many thousands of people facing similar disasters on the face of the planet were not thereby relieved of their suffering.

We must also be honest enough to admit, no matter what Jesus may have been able to accomplish in his day, we ourselves have no access to magical short-cuts, and indeed as Bill Loader has pointed out in his commentary on this passage: “failure to see this can make us seem naive if not offensive in the face of real human need and those struggling it. It can also lead people to consign Jesus to the world of fantasy and irrelevance”.

Ultimately, if our attention is only on Jesus and his actions as a way of finding and admiring his strange abilities to affect unexpected cures and miracles, we would have missed his intention. His intention seems rather that he came bringing a message of hope and promise to people desperately in need of hope. His challenge to his disciples – and I guess that includes a challenge to those of our generation who wish to follow, is that they – and hopefully we ourselves, should take over the task of living and sharing this gospel.

If there is a message for us to take from the story of raising the widow’s son it may simply be that since Jesus showed compassion to this situation of need, since our faith teaches that even the least among us have real value,  then we too must respond as best we can when in turn such situations confront us.  We must see the hundreds of people fleeing their war torn country with nothing but the clothes on their backs, as refugees in need of compassion and help, and not as “immigrants” who want to drain our resources and take what some believe is rightly theirs. We must see those in need of help from foodbanks, most of whom are working for less than a living wage, as genuine people who have reached the lowest point in their lives, and not as lazy scroungers.  We must truly see everyone as individuals and not as the faceless and the nameless who are easily vilified and rejected.

True we may not be able to do much to help the dead, but inspired by Jesus, we may at least attend to some needs of the living. If the gospel is to continue to have meaning, Jesus’ care for the needy must continue to hold a central place. And if we chose to hold back from involving ourselves with this aspect of mission, who else is there to take our place?

What Happens When The Wheels Fall Off

2 Kings 4: 8-37

This evening we’re going to look at faith and life of the Shunnamite woman; the woman who made a room for Elisha, who made space for the presence of God and was rewarded with a child.

Today I want to talk about being prepared for THAT moment; that moment when the wheels fall off. That moment when we’re disappointed, grieving, struggling. Because often that is the moment we need to be prepared for. You see we live in the middle – Jesus came and died on the cross to reconcile us to God, He won the victory and reigns – BUT we await His return and the manifestation of His Kingdom on earth… We live in the middle. In a broken world. A fallen world.

We love those highlight reels and gold star moments where we’ve reached the mountain top and we’ve found success and happiness… and we rejoice in those and they deserve claps and happy dancing… but life isn’t just mountain tops and successes … it’s the climb…

You might be facing health issues; Relationship crises; Financial problems. You might be feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by past mistakes or feel that the future is so unknown that even Captain Kirk would be daunted.

I want to be sensitive – because life is life. I don’t want to trivialise anyone’s experience. Filled with joy and grief. Gain and loss. Some losses are so private and personal and painful that we can’t wrap words around them. You may feel that you’ve fallen so hard that there is no recovery.

I am hoping today that you’ll be encouraged that you’re not alone and that God has a plan, even in this.

I have a few points that can help us in the crisis time to not only survive but to thrive through it.

1. PERSPECTIVE MATTERS

One September, in 1963, 4 young men set off in a car in Spain for a night out. It was a journey they would never forget.

Julio was one of the 4 young men in the car.  His dream was to become a professional football player and play for the team he had loved as a boy, Real Madrid.  His dream was just beginning to be realized.  He had real talent and had just being signed as a goalkeeper and was tipped to be the future number 1 goalkeeper for Spain’s national team. At around 2am the car Julio and his friends were in was in a serious accident.  Julio woke up in hospital and was told by his doctors that he was semi paralysed and would be confided to a bed for 18moths for recovery followed by rehab, but that the prognosis wasn’t good.  They thought it would be unlikely he would walk again.  His football career was over. At night, during those 18 months, Julio would listen to the radio and write poems, sad, reflective, romantic poems. One of his nurses after reading one of his poems gave him a guitar and suggested he turn his poems into songs. Singing began as a distraction for Julio, a way of forgetting his dream and happier days as an athlete.  But as time went on singing became more of a passion.

After 18 months in the hospital Julio looked for a singer to sing the songs he had written, but heended up performing them himself. Chances are you may have heard Julio singing. Julio Iglesias is the biggest selling recording artist in the history of Latin American music.  He lost a dream, but found a new one.

Sometimes we may never know the WHY something happens. But we can always know the WHO. And we can be confident that God is always with us.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned or scorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. Isaiah 43:2

When the wheels fall off, when our worst nightmare happens, when you are in the storm or the fire – God is there. God may put us through a trial that seems beyond what we can handle but never beyond what HE can handle. God is with you in your darkest hour. With so much instability and fear in the world today, we must cling to Jesus and fix our eyes on Him and view life through the eyes of trust and faith. God is always good. In every challenge and every circumstance, He is good. He can always be trusted.

Perspective matters. Perspective changes death into life. Perspective changes hopelessness into hope. Fear into faith. Crisis into. Lost dreams into hit songs.

Instead of letting difficulties draw you into worrying, try to view them as setting the scene for God’s glorious intervention.

2 Respond vs React

How often do we REACT instead of RESPONDING to things going on in our lives?

There are those who are:

1 The Sky is Falling Reactors – These people panic. When a problem arises they feel an urgency that if things aren’t fixed immediately then they are doomed

2 Eeyore reactors- These people shut down when problems arise. Eeyore reactors retreat. They let the anxiety of the problem pull them into a funk and then invite everyone to join the pity party.

3 The Fix It Reactors– who jump into overactive problem solving

4 The Silent but Violent Reactors- who stuff so much down and in and suppress how they feel until they explode, who go into silent mode with their voice but everything else gets noisier (aka putting the plates away in the cupboard…)

and

5 The Stuff It Reactors– who go all kind of Yippee–ki–yay on those around them.

Now I’d like to put my hand up and say that I do all five of them. And sometimes at the same time. Sometimes it’s not pretty! There are a myriad of ways we can react… but the point is that often when we’re reacting we often disengage the brain and the spirit.

Action first. Thought second. And sometimes those raw reactions and emotions lead us on a trail running from God instead of running TO God.

Now I’m not saying we become happy clappy “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine” fakers, with a ready smile painted on – God created us as emotional beings and our emotions are not wrong – but they are indicators not determinators. Emotions shouldn’t determine how we act and how we speak and how we believe. They shouldn’t determine what our next step is or where our help comes from.

Reacting has a vantage point of right here right now and it can escalate the conflict and cause damage that we may not have intended and spiral us off into a direction we were not planning on walking in.

Even when I’m freaking out and running away, God loves me. Even if I’m swearing up a storm and lashing out, God loves me. But He knows those things aren’t useful to me. They’re not beneficial. His grace is there to carry me.

In our confusion and our pain and our anger, in our reacting God loves you, is with you and is faithful.

Today is an invitation to examine our own hearts. Is how I am reacting and responding WHO I want to be? Who Jesus wants me to be? Today I have a choice to courageously embrace God and His ways. To choose to trust Him. To run to Him instead of away from Him. To practice trust. To grow faith. To store up in silence what I will need for the storm.

3 Internally Prepare

The Shunammite woman leaves her son and heads straight for the one place she knows she will find answers and hope; at the prophet’s feet.

She KNEW what she had to do in her storm. Find God. Connect with God.

When the wheels fall off I want to be like the Shunammite woman. She says it is well three times until she gets to the feet of Elisha. Her husband asks her how things are. Elisha’s servant asks how her husband is. How her son is. It is well she responds. Her son is dead and she says it is well. There was something within her that said I WILL TRUST GOD.

One of my favourite and stage plays is Les Miserables. So when the film came out I rushed to see it with my Dad, who also adores the stage musical. I cried through most of it, both when I saw it on stage and on the screen. In the cinema, when the credits had rolled and the lights turned on, I was still crying, with a napkin stuffed into my mouth to stop the sobs escaping. I cried when I told people about it. I cry when I hear some of the songs. And, despite having watched it several times, I still cry every time.

Anyway, cos I am a geek, I did some research about the actors and the making of the movie and read how Hugh Jackman of Wolverine fame, prepared for his role as the lead character Jean Valjean:

This is what he said: ‘I knew I had to go to extremes in my preparation and prove I could multi-task. When I went to the gym, I would sing loudly as I chalked up high-speed miles on the running machine or as I bench-pressed. The people around me probably thought I was crazy, but I felt I had to do it. You’re pushing, you’re pulling, you are lifting, you are carrying and you are singing at the same time.”

He prepared his body and his voice to film the movie, where he lifts incredible things and scales walls and gets his wolverine on. He stored up in the silence what he would need for the storm.

Likewise in our lives. The internal condition of our heart will affect how we walk through the difficulties of life. The internal condition of our heart will determine our capacity for whatever comes our way.

I ask myself… do I trust God? With my family? With my bank account? With my health? With my future? When it really counts, do I belong to Him?

Dealing with the unexpected doesn’t mean we have to be unprepared, because God is never unprepared.

There are many ways that you can develop your internal condition – that you can develop your faith. Basically have a relationship with God. Pray. Read your bible. Have worship times. These are things you hear ALL THE TIME. But I want you to understand this, it’s not some checklist that scores you gold stars and brownie points with God. It’s not some barter exchange thing – one song, one prayer, one chapter a day = a good car parking space and good weather. Our God is so gracious and wonderful and it’s breathtaking and wonderful in a very real way that God invites us to draw near to Him, to experience Him, to know Him as a very real and involved and personal Father. Personal connection time is not an optional extra but a necessity.

God’s Word and God’s truth enables us to be prepared to decide, think, act and speak in a world where we are not sovereign. It teaches us how to live in the middle of the storm.

The internal condition of your heart is strengthened yes by the things we do to draw near to God, like how Hugh Jackman ran and sang at the same time to prepare for Les Mis, but in greater reality it comes by knowing God, knowing who He is and How He moves and that He is trustworthy.

In a way, internal conditioning doesn’t come from what WE do but from ALL that HE has done.

If you will trust Him, He will get you through this. He will empower you for THIS moment. The truth you store up in silence comes back to you in the storm as a life raft – equip yourself today for your tomorrow.

4 Trust in the promise maker

The Shunnamite woman’s son was cold and laid out. Dead. But it’s not over until it’s over. It’s not even over when they’re in the ground as Lazarus proves to us. As Jesus proves!

At your crunch point, when the wheels fall off, you have got to trust and have faith. Sounds bossy of me to say you have got to. But seriously. You have got to. Because that’s what will sustain you and get you through.

When God looks at you He is not angry or picking a fight or out to mess things up. He loves you. He is pleased with you. His love is so expansive – so high, so wide, so deep. It’s demonstrated upon the cross when Jesus took all the penalty and punishment that you and I deserved. At the Cross all of the death/shame/condemnation that I deserved went to Jesus and all of the love/favour/righteousness that Jesus has as the Son of God comes to me. Jesus sets us free. He pours grace out upon us. He restores us. He makes us whole. His blood is enough to save us and He is enough to sustain us in every situation.

God’s grace saved us. God’s grace keeps us. God’s grace will sustain us and empower us in THAT moment.

Living in middle, in this fallen world, can be difficult yes. But I know the end of the book. Jesus wins. Jesus has won. Jesus is victorious. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Salvation belongs to our God! He is the alpha and omega, creator of the universe. He died and rose again and defeated sin and death and is seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning. He is coming again! In every situation Jesus can win. In your marriage He can win. In your employment He can win. In your health He can win. In your darkness He can win.

You see getting thru the hard parts and the dark parts of our life isn’t about gritting our teeth and putting our big girl pants on and just doing it. It’s about having a real and living hope in Jesus, and understanding that He holds onto us and that IN HIM we can have peace and salvation and life and hope.

There are many problems I cannot solve or fix – but I can take them to the one who can. Jesus.

The difference between you and the Shunnamite woman might just be time. We read the end of her story, of how Elisha lay upon her son and prayed, how the son sneezed 7 times and then came alive and how Elisha returned her son to her resurrected.

Your story is unfolding. Your resurrection might be around the corner. You might be like Julio Iglesias – writing poetry from a hospital bed, wondering what tomorrow holds after the unexpected.

You might be like Hugh Jackman, running and singing your heart out, reading your Word and storing up His promises in your heart

Your resurrection might be tomorrow. In five years. In fifteen years. Will you trust God in your today?

This evening I don’t know what you face. But Jesus does. And He invites you to trust Him and to have hope. For when the wheels fall off, Jesus will be there.

 

Clean Your Plate!

John 6: 52-58

A friend of mine called last week. She asked, “How are you?” It’s a common question, one we ask and are asked every day. You and I both know the standard answers and I gave them. I said, “Fine. I’m doing well. Things are really busy right now. I’m good.” She laughed and said, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

I suspect I’m not the only one who’s had this type of conversation. Most of us have these kind of conversations several times each day. We offer the usual answers. Sometimes we add something about our family, our health, where we have been, or what we have been doing. More often than not those conversations focus on the circumstances of life. We might be fine and busy, getting our work done, meeting deadlines and commitments, fulfilling obligations, volunteering our time, and loving and caring for our families but there is a difference, a vast difference, between doing life and having life within us.

Doing life or having life; that’s the issue Jesus is concerned about. That’s the focus of today’s gospel. It is important enough that it has been the subject of the last several Sundays of gospel readings. Each week has brought us closer to the unspoken question behind today’s gospel: Is there life within you?

That’s a hard question and one which many will avoid or ignore. They will turn back and walk away rather than face the question. “Fine,” “busy,” “good,” and “doing well” do not answer the question. They cover it up. The question pushes us to discover the hunger within us and the life Jesus wants to feed us. That’s what Jesus has been after these last few weeks.

Three weeks ago 5000 hungry people showed up. They were fed with five loaves and two fish. They didn’t understand. They thought it was about loaves and fish. It was really about life and where life comes from. Two weeks ago Jesus challenged us to consider the bread we eat. Is it perishable bread or does it endure to eternal life? Last week Jesus declared himself to be the bread of life, the living bread they came down from heaven.

Today he says, “Eat me. Drink me.” This is the only way we ever have life within us. Jesus is very clear and blunt about it. His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. Any other diet leaves us empty and hollow, hungry and bereft of life.

There is a Steven Spielberg movie from the 1980s called Cocoon – in it three old men, tired of being old, sneak off from their retirement village one afternoon for a stolen dip in a nearby pool. It is an indoor pool, in one wing of a huge house that is apparently used only at night. Ignoring the strange glow near the bottom, they slowly, painfully enter the pool at the shallow end. They have a wonderful time, floating in the water. Back home that afternoon they feel better than they have in years, so good in fact that they decide to do it again the next day and the next. Very soon it becomes clear that this is no ordinary pool. The same men who were creaking down the steps only days before are now doing cannonballs and back flips off the diving board. Back at the retirement village they are eating spicy Mexican food, dancing the tango, and flirting with their wives.
To anyone who has ever grown tired of being old or feeling old, it is a delightful fantasy- a pool in which old age is washed away. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!? Hundreds of years ago, tribes of Indians in Central America and the West Indies believed a spring like that existed in the Bahamas Islands. Spanish explorers tried to find it. Ponce de Leon searched in Florida for a fountain of youth that would make those who bathed in it forever young. Can you imagine wrinkled skin becoming instantly taut and toned again? Arthritic joints growing suddenly supple and strong? Or the pleasure of leaving your cane in the corner, throwing your pills away, but still keeping your free bus pass? If all that were really possible, wouldn’t it be worth a search for the fountain of youth?
But when you talk to young people, they will quickly tell you that youth isn’t all its’ cracked up to be. Yes, you can get out of a chair without groaning, but you can’t show off pictures of your grandchildren. And then there are all those things to worry about: Will I be able to go to university? Will I get a decent job? Will I ever get married? Will there ever be peace? Will this pimple on my nose be gone before my date on Saturday night? Ask a thirteen- year-old if she would like to stay thirteen forever and she will answer in one word: no. Although a youthful body would certainly have its advantages, it is not really eternal youth we’re looking for. It’s something else

What we want is that something I discovered whilst stargazing in the Sinai desert with my daughter by my side and when the two of us were snorkelling in the Red Sea surrounded by hundreds of different sea creatures – the true “life doesn’t get much better than this” moments; moments that, young or old, are about real living, experiencing life. We get a taste of it when we love so deeply and profoundly that everything about us dies, passes away, and somehow we are more fully alive than ever before. Sometimes everything seems to fit together perfectly and all is right with the world; not because we got our way but because we know our self to be a part of something larger, more beautiful, and more holy than anything we could have done. We are tasting life. There are moments when time stands still and we wish the moment would never end. In that moment we are in the flow, the wonder, and the unity of life, and it tastes good. This is what fills our memories and our scrapbooks. This is what brings a smile to your face a three o’clock on Monday afternoon. This is life. And if we want anything to last forever, it is this. Not youth but Life.

So, I don’t think Jesus could have come to us with any more provocative invitation than the one He brings; the offer of eternal life. And this sixth chapter of John is filled with references to that offer.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever”.
And when Jesus talks about living forever, you can be sure that He is not talking about merely existing forever. This is the same Jesus who says, in chapter ten of this same Gospel, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” – Abundant life is made up of those moments when you want to take a deep breath and hold it; When you want time to stand still for just a little while; those “life doesn’t get any better than this” moments.  All those moments when you think to yourself, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s real living, and we would do almost anything to make it last forever. Almost anything.

Jesus is talking about more than just physical or biological life. He’s talking about that life that is beyond words, indescribable, and yet we know it when we taste it. Most of us spend a fair amount of time, energy, and prayer trying to create and possess the life we want. In spite of our best efforts, sometimes we live less than fully alive. Sometimes the outside and inside of who we are don’t match up. We ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my life?” We wonder if this is all there will ever be. Is this as good as it gets? We lament at what has become of us and our life. Nothing seems to satisfy. We despair at what is and what we think will be. Despite family and friends we find no place in which we really belong.

Those questions and feelings are not so much a judgement on us, but a diagnosis of us. They are symptoms that there is no life in us. We are dying from the inside out. There is, however, treatment for our condition and food for our hunger. Life in Christ, not death in the wilderness, is our destiny. The flesh and blood of Christ are the medicine that saves; what St. Ignatius called “the medicine of immortality.” One dose, however, is not enough. We need a steady diet of this sacred medicine, this holy food.

Jesus is our medicine and our health. He is our life and the means to the life for which we most deeply hunger. We don’t work for the life we want. We eat the life we want. Wherever human hunger and the flesh and blood of Christ meet, there is life.

In the eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood he lives in us and we live in him. We consume his life that he might consume and change ours. We eat and digest his life, his love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his way of being and seeing, his compassion, his presence, and his relationship with the Father. We eat and drink our way to life. So leave nothing behind. Push nothing to the side. Clean your plate!

“Whoever eats me will live because of me,” Jesus said.

 

 

 

 

 

Preserve The Unity And Prepare For Ministry

Ephesians 4: 1-16

I’ve just enjoyed watching Wimbledon. I like tennis, but one of the things I miss about watching my beloved rugby is that element of teamwork.  I like team sports better than individual ones, so I’m happy now that the Ashes are on. Anyway it’s been said that Christianity is not an individual sport, but a team game. More like cricket or rugby than tennis or golf. And that’s because Jesus’ death doesn’t just bring us individually to God, but binds us together in Christ. This is why in chapter 4 of Ephesians, Paul talks about living a life worthy of the calling you have received in the context of the church. When most people talk about church in our culture, they are referring to a building. But in the Bible, ‘church’ is not a building, but a people; a gathering of God’s people. There are a number of different pictures of church in the Bible, and one of the most common is of a body, Christ’s body. And that’s important because Paul uses that body image throughout chapter 4 because you can’t think about living as a Christian without understanding that you are now living as part of Christ’s body.

We do, of course, need to be slightly careful in how far we push this picture of the body. A preacher was speaking on this passage once and began pointing at different members of the congregation and saying, ‘some of you are the hands, you do the practical work in our congregation. Some of you are the heart; you’re the compassion of our fellowship’. And he should really have stopped there. But he continued, ‘some of you are the appendix. We didn’t know we had you until you gave us so much trouble! Some of you are the false teeth. Sometimes you’re in, other times you’re out! And some of you are the tonsils. Frankly we’d be better off without you!’

We can’t push the image too far, but we must recognise that to live as a Christian is to live as part of the body of Christ. One body made up of many different parts. That’s what we are at here at St Faith & St Laurence. And to help us live that out, I want us to think about and do two things from these verses. Preserve the unity and prepare for ministry.

Have you seen the British Gas advert which shows a family living in a house which is on its own little planet? When something goes wrong with the gas it’s as if their whole world has been turned upside down and British gas come and turn it the right way up again. It’s actually a very graphic picture of our world and society. We’re all on our own planets, operating our completely individual existences. We seem to be living in very confused times because on one hand we’ve never been more connected. With the internet, mobile phones, and quick and readily-available travel we can connect with people anywhere, anytime. Yet we’ve never been more isolated and individualistic. It’s as if everyone is living, like the British Gas advert, on their own little planet. But Christianity cannot be lived out like that. Church is not a group of isolated little planets, but one united body joined together in Christ. Being joined to Christ means we are one in Him. Paul uses the word “one” seven times:  one Holy Spirit, one body of the church, one hope of eternal life, one Lord, Jesus Christ, one faith, one baptism, and one God, who planned this unity through the gospel and accomplished it by sending His Son. And so, we already have unity. We don’t have to create it. Our job is as Paul writes to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. It’s worth saying that Paul’s focus here is unity within the local church. He is not concerned here with the wider partnership of God’s people, such as locally with other churches in Harborne, or regionally within the Diocese or even nationally and internationally with other Anglican churches. Paul is talking here about relational unity within each local church. That’s because whilst the church is spiritually in heaven it is physically expressed in local churches, like ours. We are the body of Christ. However, a united body does not mean a uniform body. We don’t have to all dress alike or speak alike to preserve the unity. We don’t have to all like the same style of music, agree on every single theological point or have the same gifts to preserve the unity. We don’t have to stop being English or French, rich or poor, male or female. No, the body of Christ is a united body not a uniform body. It’s striking isn’t it, that instead of achieving unity by making us all the same, God achieves unity by making us all different and giving different gifts to each one of us for the building up of the one body. The question is: how do we preserve the unity we already have in Christ? Well, living out v1-2 would be a great help – “living with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love”. Notice how all of those things are to do with how we treat others in the body. Being humble means valuing others above yourself. Being gentle, is not about being weak, but meek. Being patient is about continuing to love someone who lets you down, or as Paul says at the end of v2, ‘bearing with one another in love’. I must confess if I was asked to describe myself in three words, humility, gentleness and patience would not be at the top of the list! But those words were used of the Lord Jesus. He humbled himself to death for our sake. He was utterly powerful and yet beautifully gentle and tender. He was patient with his opponents and with us now. And he continues to love us even though we mess up time and again. Humble, gentle and patient is what Jesus is like and it’s what we must strive to be like, now that we’re in Him. So if we want to maintain the unity we have in Christ here at St Faith & St Laurence, we must display the family likeness of Christ. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be part of a church family where we look to the interests of others first, not ourselves. Where, we tenderly care for one another in real practical ways. And where, even if I mess up, you are going to be patient with me and love me. Preserve the unity – because that is part of what it means to live a life worthy of the calling we have received.

Now moving on to preparing for ministry and we’re thinking particularly about v12 here, but before we get to the heart of this point, we need to see how Paul gets there. In v7, Paul moves from talking about the unity of Christ’s body to talking about the different gifts that Christ has given within the body. Not wealth or land, as other conquering kings might have given – but people; people with the responsibility for proclaiming God’s word. But why does Christ give these gifts to his church? The answer is v12. ‘To prepare God’s people for works of service’ – or more literally, ministry. I don’t know what your view of Christian ministry is. Some people think of it rather like a bus. The congregation are the passengers who get on the bus and sit passively in rows of seats, simply enjoying the ride, being driven along by others. That is the view of Christian ministry in many churches. It is something done to you by the ‘minister’. But a better picture of Christian ministry is more like a football match! Imagine Wembley Stadium and in the stands are our non-Christian friends, family and work colleagues, watching what is happening on the pitch. Playing on the pitch are not the Bishops, Vicars and Curates but you, the congregation. You are the ones living out your lives in front of a watching world. Evangelists and preachers are like player coaches whose role is to stand on the touchline, encouraging and equipping the congregation to play. But here’s the issue, we are all involved. Word gifts are a kind of catalyst that lead to the ministry of the whole people of God; to prepare them for ministry. This should radically affect our view of ministry and our involvement in the body because it shows us that ministry is not done to you in order to make you a comfy passenger. Ministry is done for you in order for you to become a gospel partner. So can I ask you if you think of yourself as a minister? If you’re a Christian, you should, because it is as we each do our works of ministry within the body that the body of Christ is built up.

So what does this look like in practice? What are these works of service or ministry we should be preparing for? For some it will be leading Sunday Club or church services. For some it will be leading intercessions, offering prayer ministry, or hosting home groups. For some it will be speaking with people after a Sunday service to make them feel welcome. Others might do things more informally, by simply phoning a friend up, going for a coffee and talking about the sermon they heard on Sunday. Others might be devoted prayers, praying regularly for things. Others might have time to help with Stay and Play or Messy Church. The list is massive! And every Christian should be involved.

So if we are to live a life worthy of the calling we have received we must endeavour with all our hearts to preserve the unity of the church and all of us must be ministers of the church using the gifts that God has given us.

Amen.

 

Jesus’ Ministry Of Reconciliation

I wrote this sermon in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. Since then, there have been so many more atrocities that could be added to the list – London, Manchester, Barcelona, Charlottesville – but the message remains the same.

2 Corinthians 5: 11-21

‘Je suis Paris; ‘Ana Beirut; ‘Ana Baghdad;’ ‘I am the world’

This weekend the world has looked on as terror gripped the streets of Paris for the second time this year. 129 innocent lives were lost, an enormous security operation mounted and apprehension, fear and a sense of not knowing quite what would happen next gripped the population of not only France, but the rest of the world. It is a little over ten years since the bombings and then failed bombings of the tube and buses in London and I am sure that many of us remember the aftermath of these days and weeks in the heat of the Summer of 2005.

What happened in Paris, and around the world, in the aftermath of the attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, restaurants, and Stade de France was an outpouring of solidarity. The banners, posters, twitter messages, etc. stating ‘Je suis Paris’, mirroring the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’ that began when earlier this year there were similar shootings at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo because they published a cartoon of Mohammed. These slogans expressed solidarity amongst individuals. People from all around the world, of all races and religions began to identify themselves with the victims. They were not themselves directly the victims, but the pain and, indeed the terror wrought by terrorism, was felt widely and keenly. (We can now add many more locations to the list: Manchester, London, Barcelona, Charlottesville)

I know I am know jumping ahead and skipping quite an important part of the church calendar but please forgive me – in just 7 weeks it will be Epiphany and during the weeks after Epiphany the Church’s focus is on the gradual revelation of who Jesus really is. The portions of scripture – Bible readings – that we hear at this time every year show how, bit by bit, people came to realise the significance of the man Jesus and his true identity as the Son of God, God in human form, the Lord and the messiah or saviour.

We will hear the story of his baptism by his relative John the Baptist. Jesus approaches John and is baptised by him in the river Jordan. As he comes out of the water there was what we call a ‘theophany’ – a revelation of God in the world. Jesus saw the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove and a voice came out of heaven – You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased. It is not clear who else heard the voice or saw the dove. This is not the point where Jesus becomes the Son of God, because he is the eternal Son of God, but in this episode the barrier between heaven and earth is broken and Jesus’ true identity is affirmed. And from this point onwards his ministry becomes public. The one who led a life largely unnoticed to this day from here becomes public and begins the journey to the cross and resurrection when the fullness of his glory is revealed for all to see.

But the baptism of Christ was not without controversy. St Matthew’s gospel tells us that John would have prevented Jesus from being baptised, saying that he, John, should rather be baptised by Jesus. And this is not surprising. John, after all, preached a message of repentance, of turning away from sin, with baptism as sign of this repentance. Yet Jesus was one without sin – recognised as such by John. He did not need to repent. He did not need to be baptised.

But Jesus in his incarnation, in that act of becoming human that we celebrate at Christmas, states his solidarity, his oneness, with human beings. Though without sin he became one of us, and we are human, fallen, frail and liable to sin. Through being baptised and entering into the reality of our world he says ‘Je suis Paris’. ‘I am Charlie, I am Vicky, I am Lilibeth, I am Paul, I am Alan, I am Pat etc etc. I am with you.’

And Jesus’ solidarity and association of himself with us, weak though we are, went all the way to death. On the cross he submitted to the ultimate frailty of death, but in his resurrection triumphed even over that. As St Paul put it ‘he made him to be sin who knew no sin.’

But Paul goes on to add ‘so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ The solidarity of Christ with humanity, his self-emptying, shown to us in his baptism, brings with it something greater. And that is our mutual solidarity with him. For by his becoming human, by the uniting of heaven and earth in him, we can become like him. In baptism the effects of sin are washed away. St Ignatius of Antioch, leader of the Church in Antioch and Syria in the earliest days of the Church believed that Jesus was baptized not to wash away his sins but to sanctify the waters for our baptism that we might become like him. And the voice that comes from heaven – ‘you are my Son’, you are my daughter, is a voice that speaks to us. Jesus is the eternal Son of God but through him we can all become children of God and heirs too – heirs of the inheritance of eternal life. So listen. Listen for that voice that speaks to you and to me ‘You’. ‘You’. You are my Son, You are my daughter, The beloved. In you I am well pleased.

Yesterday all over France, and this afternoon in a large demonstration in Paris people have and will, again, make that statement of solidarity ‘Je suis Paris’. They will identify with the victims of terror in the concert hall, in the stadium, on the Paris streets.

This solidarity is a reflection of the divine solidarity that exists in baptism between heaven and earth; between Christ and his people; between the church on earth and the church in heaven. Those who are baptized become part of something much greater, as adopted children of God we acquire countless brothers and sisters, throughout the world and throughout time.

And I for one pray that that solidarity will be transformative – and something from which we and people in other places can learn – bringing about greater tolerance and understanding and a greater commitment to living in peace and mutual support – learning that the way to settle debates is rather through the pen, and the conversation, than down the barrel of a gun.

For the identification of Jesus with us through his baptism brings about a transformation. He became like us that we might become like him. And it is to a life of being more like him that he calls us. Amen.

A Christian Response To The Rise Of Poverty & Hunger In The UK

A couple of weeks ago, Lilibeth and I were in Egypt, and like Moses we took a trip into the Sinai desert, although under very different circumstances.  We went on an excursion to visit with a Bedouin tribe and unlike Moses, we made our own bread in the traditional way of mixing the ingredients, shaping them into flatbread, and cooking it over a fire.

Bread is common to every person throughout the world. Whether you bake bread over a fire in a third World country or in a bread-maker in your well-equipped kitchen, bread is a staple of life. But not everyone has bread to eat, in fact there are many in the world who hunger.

Hunger – We hear this word an awful lot but what does it actually mean?  When we talk about hunger in the UK today we rarely mean malnutrition on a large scale as witnessed in some parts of the famine-hit or war-torn parts of the world, although we are seeing a growing number of cases. Nor does it mean the levels of poverty and inequality that was prevalent during previous centuries when the workhouse was the only option for many.  It does not even mean the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of the welfare state. It is a relative concept.

Hunger in the UK is on the rise – there are huge numbers of families living below the poverty line.  Every day we see headlines about the rising number of people having to use foodbanks just to survive.  Over 1 million people were given emergency food parcels from foodbanks in 2014-2015, up from 61,000 in 2010-2011.  Let us now clear up one of the myths about foodbanks, they are not there to support benefit scroungers and lazy people, many foodbank clients are working, they are low income families hit by a crisis that is not their fault such as redundancy, reduced working hours or something as seemingly small as an unexpected bill. Others are victims of domestic violence who have had to flee their home, or people hit by illness. Often foodbank clients face decisions between eating and paying the rent. Some are so desperate that they consider stealing to feed their children. A recent report by Netmums found that 1 in every 5 mums regularly skips meals to feed their children. Foodbanks meet mothers in this situation every day. Less than five per cent of foodbank clients are homeless, the majority are working families.

We also read daily about cuts to benefits for the disabled and sick, people being told they are fit to work when they are physically not able and when they can’t work they are refused any state help at all.  Bishops and Archbishops have written to the Government to highlight the injustice of some of the cuts and how they disproportionately target the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

How does seeing these headlines and hearing these appalling figures make us feel as Christians?  Jesus was criticised when he reached out to heal the blind and the sick, the marginalised of his time. His critics said, “It’s their own fault” – they are in sin or it’s the sin of their parents. We hear that so often about people who are unemployed or claiming benefits or even those who are working but forced into using foodbanks or payday loan companies. “It’s their own fault” we hear, they are often demonised and pilloried by society in the same way as the sick and the lame were in the time of Jesus. But when we look behind the headlines the vast majority of those claiming benefits or using these services are in real need. Yes there are some people who do play the system and claim benefits that they are not entitled to but it is a mere 0.5% of the total welfare bill of our country, not that the media would have you believe that!

Poverty and hunger is not about people not being able to afford things that we take for granted such as TVs, treats for the children, holidays, but it is a far-reaching and damaging condition.  Children who go to school without breakfast will achieve far less in school and will leave with no qualifications meaning they will be trapped in low-income jobs or unemployment.  And so the cycle of poverty and hunger continues – people feel trapped and hopeless.

There is real hunger in England. Not a relative measure but urgent and desperate need brought about through a complex web of factors. And hunger and poverty, real poverty, is increasing in England despite many people beginning to feel that the “austerity” is over.

As Christians we must act to try and eradicate poverty and injustice, we are compelled to do so throughout Scripture:

Matthew 25: 45

⁴⁵ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

 

Luke 4:16-19

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

There are far more throughout the Old and New Testaments, far too many to mention, but as a Christian and as a disciple, I feel that it is my duty to do what little I can to try to eradicate poverty and hunger.

So what is it that we can do?  First of all we can support our local foodbank by donating food or even volunteering to collect and distribute food to clients.  We can lobby our MPs to ensure that companies pay a living wage, a wage that means hard working families have enough money to pay for their most basic needs.  We can also lobby them about ensuring that any changes to benefits are fair and that tax loopholes are closed so that the wealthiest of companies and people pay their fair share of taxes. We can also talk to people and help to dispel the myths about those who are living in hunger, that generally they are not scroungers and they do not deserve it, but are people in genuine need. And finally we can follow the lead of our Lord, as Jesus himself instructed us when he said that the second most important commandment was to love our neighbour as ourselves. – The most destructive factor in poverty is having no one to turn to. As Christians, we must be inspired by the gospel imperative to treat each person as someone of worth. We must offer personal support and a real hand of friendship that invites and welcomes people who have become marginalised into relationships that give hope – we must be good neighbours.

Amen.

Forgiveness Is A Gift

Matthew 6: 5-14

One unusually bright moment in the long history of the troubles in Northern Ireland came in 1987. It followed a particularly black moment, the bombing of a peaceful Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen, in which ten innocent people died and many more were injured. Gordon Wilson held his daughter Marie’s hand as they lay trapped under the mountain of rubble. He was brought out alive, she died. Only hours later, interviewed by the BBC, he refused to express any bitterness towards the murderers of his daughter, saying that angry words could neither restore his daughter nor bring peace to Northern Ireland: ‘I have lost my daughter and we shall miss her. But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. That will not bring her back.’ These were spontaneous words, spoken from the heart, and remarkable for that. Some people might think them superficial: could real forgiveness in such circumstances be so immediate and apparently easy? I am almost sure that I could not be as easily forgiving if someone did something dreadful to my daughter, I obviously don’t know for sure, and God forbid that I ever have to find out, but I am convinced that I could not let go of my grief long enough to forgive, well certainly not with such immediacy. For others, there would be no desire to forgive, preferring instead to hold on to their bitterness as a way of keeping their loved one alive. These are perfectly normal reactions; after all we are only human.

 

In the weeks that followed the death of his daughter, Gordon Wilson had to struggle to be true to his words. It helped to have said them; he knew they were right and he could hold onto them as he tried to come to terms with his daughter’s death. He was misunderstood, even ridiculed for not wanting revenge. That it seemed beyond comprehension to many highlights how alien forgiveness is to many people faced with such loss.

 

Most people, of course, believe in forgiveness up to a point. If the offence is fairly trivial, if there are excuses for such behaviour, and if the offender really regrets it, says sorry and means it. But for most of us forgiveness quickly runs out. Some things are just too serious for forgiveness: I can never forgive him for that, people say. I wonder why some people feel they have to forgive and others can’t? Perhaps it is because the forgivers can’t face bearing a grudge for the rest of their lives, for a grudge is, of all life’s burdens, one of the heaviest to carry.  Would you believe that scientists have found this to be true of gorillas too?  Those in the field of forgiveness research (yes, it does exist!), have watched apes and seen them going through very specific “forgiveness rituals” after one has injured another, apparently because, without this, the tribe would break up.  So the need to forgive is hard wired into their brains as part of evolution.

As human beings, we too need our reconciliation rituals; they are fundamental to our social stability.  Cooperation is a key element in the success of Team Human.

The reason for this, not surprisingly, lies in the brain.  When someone hurts us deeply it arouses all sorts of emotions – anger of course, but also fear that our customary pattern of life will be destroyed forever.  These emotions come from the most primitive part of our brain, the amygdala, which are responsible for the “fight or flight” reaction to a crisis.  Every time we go over the ways in which we have been hurt, the brain secretes the chemicals which bring these emotions up again, which is physically and emotionally damaging.  Whereas forgiveness is associated with reductions in blood pressure, and improves cardiovascular reactions to stress – in other words, we are less likely to die of a heart attack if we forgive our enemies.

But forgiving somebody is very difficult, nigh on impossible in some cases. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa showed that it is no use telling anyone they must forgive; they have to feel ready to forgive.

 

Right down through human history, right through the Bible, there have been laws to stem the spirals of injuries and retaliation, laws which limit vengeance to proportionate retaliation, criminal justice systems which take the matter out of the sphere of personal revenge and into that of impartial justice. Human societies couldn’t survive without such strategies of law and justice and punishment. But Jesus is in the business of proposing a more radical strategy, one which halts the spiral of evil entirely and puts in its place a spiral of healing and reconciliation. In N Ireland in 1987 one particular advance of hatred and evil stopped with Gordon Wilson, with a man who refused to continue it, refused to add hatred to hatred. The same can be said of Tariq Jahan, when he called for an end to the rioting and bloodshed following the death of his son, Haroon, during the Birmingham riots.  We can’t trace the spiral of healing that started with these acts of forgiveness, but we can be sure there was one, less obvious and less newsworthy than the continuing violence.  Gordon’s forgiveness may not have affected his daughter’s killers in the least (though of course we cannot know that), and in that case we might say it failed – at least to attain its most desirable end. But it wasn’t by any means wasted. Violence isn’t deterred by failure, nor should forgiveness be. Forgiveness needs to be as determined as hatred. But for many of us, forgiveness often seems quite out of reach – not just for monstrous evils but even for the relatively trivial things we hold against each other.

However, God has forgiven us everything, the whole of the vast debt of sin that we owe. We are the recipients of God’s mercy and generosity on a mind-blowing scale. But if that’s the case, ought it not to change our whole lives? God has torn up the pages of our debts. So for us now not to forgive those who wrong us is quite outrageous. To insist, as it were, on our rights not to be generous, our right to feel hurt and resentful, our right to seek redress – all that is to live as though the extraordinary fact of God’s forgiveness of us had never happened.

 

So must we forgive others – however often, to any extent? Yes, because God has forgiven us to an unimaginable extent. God has forgiven us and he means his forgiveness to overflow into our dealings with each other; he forgives us so that forgiveness should become the principle by which we live our lives.

 

But can we forgive? Can we get over all the hurt and resentment? Can we bring ourselves to forgive? Again the answer is that it’s God’s forgiveness that makes us forgiving. It’s the experience of being forgiven that enables us to treat other people generously, compassionately, forgivingly.

What happens if instead we refuse to forgive? It’s one thing to want to forgive but to find it hard; another thing not to want to forgive, to set our face in hatred against the possibility of forgiveness. We can do it with the most minor hurts and injuries. We nurse grudges. That word nurse that we sometimes use in that way is very apt. We tend and nurture our resentments; we deliberately help them to take root and to grow. We don’t want to give them up because we find them in an odd sort of way comforting or pleasing. Of course, for some, particularly in the face of great loss, their grudge is a way of keeping someone alive.

 

But here then comes the hardest and most insightful element of what Jesus says about forgiveness. People who can’t forgive others are people who can’t accept God’s forgiveness themselves. If being forgiven enables you to forgive, conversely also refusing to forgive inhibits you from receiving forgiveness. Forgiving and being forgiven belong inseparably together. You can’t have one without the other,.

 

In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer – “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” – Forgiving and being forgiven belong together. But what precisely is the force of that ‘as’: Forgive us as we forgive others? Does God really make his forgiveness conditional? Only if we forgive others will God forgive us? It seems to be what Jesus is saying: “if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you. I don’t think it means God waits for us to be forgiving before he forgives us. God forgives us and our forgiveness of others follows, as the result. But God’s forgiveness of us can’t take effect unless we actually accept it. And accepting it makes us forgiving. By refusing to forgive others we also refuse God’s forgiveness. The connection goes both ways.

 

To forgive, however, is emphatically not the same as to excuse. Forgiveness implies wrongdoing and guilt. Otherwise there would be nothing to forgive. So forgiveness isn’t pretending that no wrong has been done. And forgiveness can’t be properly accepted without acknowledging that one has done wrong. So forgiveness isn’t at all a matter of taking evil lightly. When fully effective, it is God’s surest way of destroying evil.  So being forgiving does not meant to treat wrongdoing as only a matter of personal preference. The truly forgiving person is hurt by evil, outraged by evil, angry at injustice and cruelty, but chooses not to play evil’s game, not to let evil provoke evil.

 

When I say that to forgive is not the same as to excuse, I don’t mean there aren’t ever excuses. When we think about the everyday wrongs we all feel others do us, we very often should consider that others may not be as culpable as we think. We mistake people’s motives, we ignore the pressures they’re under, and so on. If we understand, often we can forgive more easily. But, still, it is not true that to understand all is to forgive all. I’m not sure who said that, but I don’t believe it!  There are serious evils that forgiveness certainly does not condone, serious evils that forgiveness fully recognizes in the act of forgiving those who do them.

 

I find it helpful to think of forgiveness as gift. It’s the gift God gives us to pass on to others. It’s gift because it doesn’t arise out of or follow from what has happened. It’s not the natural response. It’s something fresh from outside, and so it’s the new element that can change situations. It interrupts the otherwise endless spiral of evil and starts something new and transformative. It even interrupts the ordinary course of justice. It admits the claims of justice but brings something more than justice into the situation. It’s the miracle cure we should never have thought there could be had not God given it to us.

Forgiveness liberates. Forgiveness is the one thing that truly frees us from the entail of the past. It’s very noticeable if you think about people who’ve suffered some serious injury or injustice, especially if it’s involved losing a loved one – such people feel very strongly the need for some kind of closure to the experience. To see justice done in the outcome of a court case, a government enquiry, an inquest – people look in various ways for some way of letting go of the matter, allowing the dead to rest; a closure so that their lives are not forever burdened with the wrongs of the past. They know that bitterness left to linger and to fester can poison a whole life. They long for revenge, or for justice, or for some definitive verdict on the matter … as though these things close the whole chapter. Experience shows they do not. Forgiveness is the one form of closure that leaves no unfinished business to go on nagging at our lives. Full and complete forgiveness, that is. That may take time; it may take a long time; it may even take a lifetime. Not everyone is a Gordon Wilson, for many different reasons, all of which are valid in the light of our humanity. But forgiveness is the process of true and full healing.

 

So, whatever stage we are at with our forgiveness – whether we make excuses but don’t forgive, whether we want to forgive but are too hurt or wounded to do so, or whether we hold onto our grudges and do not want to forgive, it is vital that we pray to God to ask him for help – help to forgive, and even help to want to forgive; for even a small piece of God’s grace that we receive daily.

Who Is Jesus Christ?

Philippians 2: 1-11

Who is Jesus Christ? Of all the questions that might be posed to modern men and women, none is more important than this. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the central question of history and the most important issue anyone will ever face. Who is Jesus Christ? Where did he come from? Why did he come? And what difference does his coming make in my life?

In the end, every person must deal with Jesus Christ. No one can escape him. You can avoid the question, or delay it, or postpone it, or stonewall it, or pretend you didn’t hear it. But sooner or later you must answer it, whether it be now while on earth or later after death.

It’s certainly not a new question. It’s as old as the coming of Christ to earth. Once when Jesus took his disciples on a retreat to a place called Caesarea Philippi, he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” They offered four responses: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets (see Matthew 16:13-16).

Across the centuries the discussion has continued. Visit any Internet religious chat room and you’ll find a bewildering array of opinions regarding Jesus. Here are some contemporary answers to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” A good man … The Son of God … A Prophet … A Galilean rabbi … A teacher of God’s Law … The Embodiment of God’s Love … A Reincarnated Spirit Master … The Ultimate Revolutionary … The Messiah of Israel … Saviour … A first-century wise man … A man just like any other man … King of Kings … A misunderstood teacher … Lord of the Universe … A deluded religious leader … Son of Man … A fabrication of the early church.

 

It is said that in the days before Elvis Presley died, he had been reading a book called The Many Faces of Jesus. That title stands as a fitting symbol of the confusion surrounding Jesus in our time. Two thousand years have passed and still we wonder about the man called Jesus.

That takes us back to Caesarea Philippi. After Jesus asked for the opinions of others, he turned to his men and asked for their answer: “But you, who do you say that I am?” In the end, each of us faces the same question. We can’t get away with quoting the opinions of others. You have to make up your own mind.

So let’s go back to the original question. Who is Jesus Christ? Thankfully, we don’t have to wonder what the Bible says about Jesus. Our text contains a remarkably clear answer to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” Verses 6-11 are a short course in Christology. Nearly all the truth about Christ is found in these verses—his eternal pre-existence as God, his voluntary taking on of human flesh, his coming to earth as a servant, his humiliating death on the cross, and his exaltation in heaven.

So let’s look at these verses and see who Paul tells us Jesus was and what he did.

1. Verse 6 – What He Was

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” Paul begins by stressing the eternal pre-existence of Jesus as God. Before Jesus came to the earth he existed as God in heaven. This is Paul’s version of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The phrase “being in the form of God” is nothing less than a direct assertion of Deity. In Greek philosophy the word translated “form” means “the real essence of a thing.” In this context it means that Jesus possessed “the specific character of God.” Whatever it is that makes God God, Jesus possessed that same essence. Whatever you can say about God, you can also say about Jesus. He was all that God is and possessed all that God had. He was 100% God and nothing less. God’s omnipotence was his, God’s sovereignty was his, God’s holiness was his, God’s eternity was his, God’s wisdom was his, and God’s justice was his.

He was truly “equal” with God, which makes the next statement all the more remarkable. He did not regard his position as God as something “to be grasped.” He didn’t try to hold on to his glory but willingly laid it aside. He did not assert his rights although he had the right to claim his rights. This forms the foundation for everything else Paul will say about him. It also tells us what Jesus was thinking before he was born in Bethlehem. There was no compulsion, no argument, no claiming his prerogatives, no pleading with the Father to “send someone else.” He voluntarily travelled the distance between heaven and the bloody cross. He did it willingly and without hesitation.

1. Verses 7-8a – What He Became

“But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man” (vv. 7-8a).

This is concerned with the “Incarnation”—God coming to the earth in human flesh. Four phrases tell us how it happened. First, Christ “made himself nothing.” Some translations say, “He emptied himself.” In contemporary terms the eternal Son of God “became a nobody.” When Christ came to the earth, he laid aside his “divine insignia.” Imagine a general taking off his uniform and dressing as a man on the street. You wouldn’t know the difference. Is he still a general? Yes. Is he in uniform? No. Christ came wearing the uniform of a common man while bearing within himself the high rank of Almighty God!

Second, he took “the very nature of a servant.” That is, he entered humanity at the lowest level—as a humble slave. Notice the word “form” again. He didn’t merely appear as a servant. He took on himself all that a servant is and does. He didn’t stop being God when he became a servant. He “put on” servanthood without “putting off” Godhood. He laid aside his outward glory without laying aside his deity.

Third, He appeared “in human likeness.” He became a man fully and truly without ceasing to be God. The word “likeness” means that to all outward appearances he was merely a man, but in reality he was more than a man. He was God in human flesh.

Fourth, he was “found in appearance as a man.” If you and I had seen him in the first century, we wouldn’t have said, “There goes the Son of God.” He didn’t look any different from anyone else. He was a man—but the rest of his identity was hidden from view.

Some years ago Josh McDowell wrote a fine little book called, “More than a Carpenter” I like that title because it sums up a huge spiritual truth. Jesus is always “more than.” He’s more than a teacher, more than a healer, more than a miracle-worker, more than a rabbi, more than Mary’s son, and more than a man. He is God in human flesh.

III.   Verse 8b – What He Chose

“He humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (v. 8).

We’ve forgotten what crucifixion was like in the first century. It was a punishment so barbaric that the Romans reserved it for the very worst criminals. No Roman citizen could be crucified except on direct order of the emperor.

Death on a cross is hard for us to understand. We’ve sanitized the cross and domesticated it. We gold-plate it and wear it around our necks. We put it on earrings and on our stationery. We hang ornate crosses in our sanctuaries and on our steeples. We build churches in the shape of the cross. All of this would have been unthinkable in the first century. So terrible was a crucifixion that the word was not even spoken in polite company. If we want a modern counterpart, we should hang a picture of a gas chamber at Auschwitz in front of our sanctuary. The very thought sickens us. But that’s what the cross meant for Jesus.

Why did he do it? Why did he shed his blood on the cross? This week I learned where the vaccine for yellow fever comes from. In 1927 a man named Asibi, a West African native, came down with yellow fever. Unlike so many others, he did not die. Because his system had conquered the disease, Asibi’s blood contained the antibodies which the doctors used to develop a successful vaccine. That vaccine has saved the lives of untold numbers of people around the world. Each dose of vaccine can be traced back to Asibi’s original blood sample. One man’s blood has saved the lives of millions of people.

In a mysterious way we cannot understand, that is exactly what the blood of Jesus Christ did for us. His blood saves the lives of untold millions of people. His blood is the perfect “vaccine” against the disease called sin.

1. Verses 9-11 – What He Gained

“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (vv. 9-11).

Here is the final stage in the “career” of the Son of God. Having returned to heaven in triumph, God “highly exalted him.” The phrase means that God gave him back all that he relinquished when he left heaven to come to earth. In this case it means that he gained something he didn’t have before. He gained something because he came back to heaven with something he didn’t have before: his humanity. He left the Son of God and returned the Son of God and the Son of Man. We now have a man in heaven, Christ Jesus, who is our Advocate and Friend.

Verse 9 also tells us that God gave him “the name that is above every name.” What did God give him that he didn’t have before? He couldn’t give him supreme glory—he already had that. He couldn’t give him deity―he already had that? But there is one thing he didn’t have that he now has by virtue of his triumphant return to heaven. God has ordained that eventually he will be universally recognized as the Lord of heaven and earth. Many people didn’t recognize him when he walked on the earth. People today still don’t recognise him, but a day is coming when that will change forever.

When that day finally arrives, “every knee will bow” and “every tongue confess” that Jesus Christ is Lord. I think we should understand this as not merely figurative, but as sober and literal reality. All creation will physically bow before the Son of God and acknowledge his lordship. Note how universal this will be. It will include all creatures “in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” No one will be left out—all will be included in the universal declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Recently a friend said to me in all seriousness, “If you ever mention Jesus to me again, I will never speak to you again.” When such moments come, we need to respond with these verses in mind, I said “I don’t want to lose your friendship but I must tell you the truth. You were made by Jesus Christ. You owe your life to him. One day you will stand before him as your Judge. Sooner or later every knee will bow before him and confess that he is the Lord. You can bow before him today as your Saviour or you can face him one day as your Judge. But you cannot escape him. The choice is yours.”

Let’s summarize what this passage is telling us about Jesus Christ.

1)   What He Was — Fully and Completely God!

2)   What He Became — A man while retaining his deity.

3)   What He Chose — To die a humiliating death on the cross.

4)   What He Gained — The highest place/the greatest name/universal honour.

This is the Christ of the Bible. This is the Jesus we worship. This is the true Christ of the Christian faith. This is the One in whom we have believed. He and He alone is our Lord and Saviour. Millions of Christians unite in worshipping him in every nation on every continent. He and He alone is the Lord.

Amen.

God Has His Reasons

Amos 3: 1-8

Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist – to him we owe the modern theory of probability, and the invention of an early calculating machine. Yet this supremely logical thinker wrote in his book of “Thoughts”, “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of”.  He recognised that there are areas where logic cannot probe, and love is above reason’s power to describe.  He was also a deep Christian thinker, who believed that the God of love has his reasons for doing what He does, which feeble human minds can never entirely grasp.  This is not to say that God behaves illogically; only that mere logic can seldom discover what God’s purpose is in anything that happens, until God Himself reveals why he allowed it.

The prophet Amos was saying something like this when he wrote, “Does disaster befall a city, unless the Lord has done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.”  This isn’t to say that God wants to destroy the places where people live.  Amos has just written about all the cities, enemies of Israel and Judah, which in his time had been notorious for sin and dissolute living.  He lists them one by one, and then describes how they were destroyed, by natural accident or an invading army.  His Jewish readers must have been preening themselves when they heard this, imagining that God would never let disaster befall his own chosen people.  No such luck, says Amos. God has his reasons, and he tells the prophet what they are, even of nobody else can understand.

Now some Christian preachers and alleged followers of Christ have taken this too far – they’ve pronounced that HIV/AIDS is a punishment on the world for homosexuality; that the Haiti earthquake showed God’s wrath against their devotion to voodoo; the wild fires in Australia were God’s punishment for the Government allowing too many immigrants into the country; even as recently as last week, a UKIP councillor claimed that the floods were a result of the UK Government passing the equal marriage law.  All of this paints a very unattractive picture of a petty and spiteful God.  It would be more trusting to say that God, who can do anything, wanted a world where people could learn to love.  So he allowed an apparently random process of earthquake, wind and rain to produce a planet where life could emerge and evolve into humans with the power to reason, and the ability to choose.  Without the earthquakes there would be no mountains, and without mountains there would be no rivers, and without rivers there would be no life on our planet.  Without the changeable climate, the plants wouldn’t grow; without giving humans the freedom to hate and to hurt one another, they’d never learn to love.  So God doesn’t want pain and suffering, but he has his reasons for allowing it, in fulfilment of his plan to bring us to faith in him and to eternal life.  We may not fully understand those reasons, but we must believe they exist.

Try explaining that to someone who is in pain, who has just lost a loved one, or whose house is flooded with no end in sight.  The emotions are almost too raw to bear at that moment, and it becomes easy to blame God for what has happened, or blame those people in society we don’t like for bringing God’s wrath down upon the world.  Later, however, they may become more objective.  It is better still, however, if we think about it before the suffering comes.  So God reveals his secret reasons to his prophets that we may learn from them to trust God to bring good out of evil.  What Amos calls God’s punishment is really an inevitable process of cause and effect – if A happens then B will inevitably follow.  “Do two walk together unless they have made an appointment? Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey? Does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it?”  Or as we’d say today, selfish behaviour is self-destructive.  Those who disobey God’s command to love their enemies will inevitable bring suffering on others, and ultimately on themselves.  Those who do not listen when God tells us to take care of the planet; those who do nothing to halt global warming are adding to the likelihood of further earthquakes, tsunamis and floods, bringing misery to millions.  Unless the sin is dealt with, this may lead to the destruction of cities and even civilizations, as history has shown us.  This perspective may encourage those who are suffering to be patient and trusting; and it encourages us to listen to the words of the prophets, and deal, before it’s too late, with the sin in our oppressive society and in our own selfish hearts. Listen to God’s word, take care of the planet and above all, make peace with your enemies here and now because you may have to share eternity with them hereafter.

We Are All “Foreign” Before God

Isaiah 56

As part of my daily routine, I receive and read an e-mail newsletter called Heartlight.  I was struck this past week by the heartfelt confession of a member of the Anglican Church in Canada called Joe. He was recounting a tale from earlier years in his life, one that he wasn’t all that proud of now, but one he valued for the lessons it taught him and the change of attitude that it worked in his life.
It happened while he was a student at university.  He was involved in lots of different societies so had lots of separate groups of friends.  Amongst his friends from the politics society was an openly gay young man with whom he had a lot in common and they became good friends.  Unfortunately not everyone was as welcoming and inclusive, especially the president of the Christian Union, who was also amongst Joe’s friends albeit in a totally separate group.  But being a small campus, one day the inevitable happened.  Joe was walking along when he spotted his gay friend walking towards him; their eyes met, recognition was made and the young man characteristically raised his hand in greeting. But just as Joe was raising his own, the familiar voice of his friend the Christian Union president called out from across the quad.  It’s in shame that Joe remembers what happened next. He halted his greeting before it reached shoulder height, dropped it quick as a flash, and turned to cross the street to shake the esteemed president’s hand. Basking in the glow of attention from the president, he wrote off the dignity and significance of another whom he had called “friend.” It’s embarrassing for Joe to remember now, but imagine how dehumanizing to the other young man. Imagine how it must have felt.

I don’t think it’s hard for us to imagine because we’ve been there – befriended only to be dumped when our acquaintance’s circumstances changed or when their good fortune returns or when someone they conclude to be more “acceptable” arrives.
That is the fear on the part of foreigners and God’s concern for them that we heard about in our Isaiah reading this evening. Israel’s circumstances were about to change. God was promising release. Their time of bondage would end. He is going to restore them, but He doesn’t want the foreigners who have joined themselves to His people, who have turned away from their false gods and embraced Him as their saviour and king to think that they’ll now be forgotten, written off as after thoughts. Nor were these concerns misplaced.
Again and again God warned his people not to compromise the practice of their faith by associating with foreigners or creating alliances with other nationalities. They were to remain God’s chosen, rather “unique” people.

Nevertheless, they were God’s chosen “unique” people in order to be a “light to the Gentiles.” Just a few chapters before this Isaiah had spelled out His plan. From the 49th chapter verse 6 he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” From the 14th chapter we also hear: “The Lord will have compassion on Jacob; once again he will choose Israel and will settle them in their own land. Aliens will join them and unite with the house of Jacob.” They were God’s people, separated; but with a purpose – to prepare a way by which God’s saviour would be brought to the whole world.

Unfortunately, they often missed this. They would miss it again in the days to come. Think of the Samaritan woman at the well. The idea that Jesus, a Jew, would be talking to her – why she’s beside herself. She can’t imagine such a thing happening because, Gentiles, especially Samaritans, were despised in those days. That’s what makes the story of the Good Samaritan such a powerful one. The fact that one of the Pharisees Jesus was talking to had to admit that the Samaritan who took pity on the man beaten by the road was more of a neighbour than his fellow Jew was hard to admit, though the circumstances Jesus drew in that story left no other choice.

And I suppose some might point to the meeting of Jesus and the Canaanite woman and say, “Heh, doesn’t Jesus do the same? And at first glance it may appear so, after all he does say, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” But look again. Jesus acts the way he does not to belittle her, but to encourage her to greater faith; a faith which he commends to her in the end.

The point of all this is that God’s people missed this part of God’s word of promise. They grew to ignore their God-given mission to be lights to the world, missionaries of God’s grace. Instead they grew to think of themselves as the sole object of God’s love and refused to associate with foreigners at all.
I find it disturbing that still today that some groups in society still feel that they are not welcome in the Church (and I don’t mean our church but the Church as a whole), or maybe they just feel that they are not welcome because the Church communicates that they’re “not good enough” to fit in. Let me tell you another story from the diary of the young man Joe that we heard about earlier.   Much later in his life he became a minister of the church and went to live in the United States with his wife Carolyn.  One day he was talking to some members of his new church and describing a wedding that he had been asked to perform while still in Canada. The “wedding chapel” was an old cabin on the side of a mountain in the sagebrush just beyond the timberline. The bride was twenty-seven years old, and the groom was forty-seven. They already had two children, and the bride was seven months pregnant. But they were getting married because, as brand-new Christians, they had come to believe that the Lord wanted them to quit living “common law.” Of the handful of wedding guests, five or six were alcoholics, some were drug addicts, and one woman was a prostitute who had often sold herself for a case of beer. Another man was on parole – attempted murder. At the end of the ceremony, instead of kissing the groom, the bride shouted, “Where’s my rolling pin? I’ve got a license now!” A sordid bunch; Not respected by many. Yet, all except two had recently come to Christ and it was one of Joe’s favourite weddings.
But in Indiana when he and his wife described those mountain nuptials, one man stood rather defiantly and asked, “Don’t you ever bring any good Canadian people to Christ?”

It’s the kind of question that’s been asked in many ways, in many churches around the world. “Why are you marrying that couple in church when they’ve been living together for years?” “Why is that fellow getting a Christian burial? He never crossed the threshold of the church until a week before He died.” “Why should we allow two people of the same gender to get married?” “Why should I forgive someone like that? Look at what they’ve done.” “Why should we baptise that child, their family never come to church?” They’re the kind of questions that say, “No foreigners welcome.” “If you’re not someone like us, then you’re not someone at all.” But the truth is none of us really are, at least not in God’s book.

Look at us by nature. R. Scott Richards has got it right when says in his book, “Myths the World Taught Me” – “every one of us starts life as a little savage, completely selfish and self-centered. We want what we want when we want it. Deny us these once, and we seethe with rage which would be murderous were we not so helpless. We are, in fact, dirty; no morals, no knowledge, no skills; children born delinquent. And if permitted to continue every one of us would grow up a criminal – a thief, a swindler, or worse.” That’s what we all are except that God, quite often with the help of family and friends, intervenes in our life by the power of His word for positive change. When we exclude others, when we cut them off, when we fail to let go of our prejudices, we’re actually in jeopardy of cutting ourselves off. We’re in jeopardy because we are not acknowledging that we too were foreign until our faith in Christ brought us to God.
So we must remember that God alone is righteous and holy, and that we are all “foreign” before Him, and thus we would remain if not for the grace of God which has made us righteous by faith in Christ and His cross and gathers us together in His love. On the cross Jesus bore away our “foreign-ness” before God, He himself taking our place that all might be given the right to become God’s children. He took every one of our sins, even our exclusive attitudes towards others, and made us clean. He made us righteous in His sight, and this not only to save us for eternity, but in the hope that we will live this out ourselves by welcoming everyone into the family of God.
It’s part of the joy of the Gospel. None of us are excluded – not for our past, not for our family history, not because we are physically weak, not because our names aren’t among the socially elite, not for who we love, or where we come from, nor for the colour of our skin. God’s promise is that we’re all welcome, that we all belong, by virtue of our faith in Christ, the one who has welcomed us through baptism and bids us to his table to share in his sacrificing love. Sinners all, made righteous in Christ’s blood; and in this gracious righteousness we look at others in new ways. We see them as we are, another sinner for whom Christ died, another one lost who needs God’s grace, a potential brother or sister in God’s house forever.

God’s plan is to gather still more besides us whom he already has gathered. And the joy of it is that he would use you, once foreign yourselves, now brought near; once lost but now found and fashioned into tools of the Spirit to gather even more – people of every walk in life, peoples of every nation in the world – He would use us to gather them all to the joys of knowing Christ Jesus and the eternal blessings that spill forth from His Church.

Amen.