This sermon is based on Mark 1:29-39 and Isaiah 40:21-31
===
Introduction
This past July, the BBC ran a special documentary programme celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the NHS. Whilst I expect that there might be people in the congregation this morning who can remember the creation of the NHS (but, of course, only as very small children!) I found the programme fascinating. Particularly as a lover of history and as a foreigner.
I was by no means surprised to learn that the British Medical Association initially opposed the formation of the NHS. But I was surprised to find out that the NHS was actually conceived of and implemented within what seemed like a very short space of time. (18 months?)
One of the stories I found interesting was the account of the number of people who flocked to their local doctor's office on the day the NHS began. If I remember the programme correctly, the number of people with untreated medical conditions who presented themselves at doctors' surgeries far exceeded the NHS's pre-opening estimates.
There were far more people than anyone had previously imagined living with chronic medical conditions that they could not afford to have treated. For example, there were people living with enormous hernias. One of the most heart-breaking accounts was the large estimate of the number of children who had previously died with appendicitis whilst their parents treated their bad tummy aches with castor oil because there was no question of being able to afford to take their child to the doctor.
One of the most heart-warming accounts was that of a receptionist in a doctors' surgery who told stories of patients bringing presents to the surgery for the first few years of the NHS - so amazed and delighted were people to finally have access to health treatment.
Everyone was yearning for healing.
Jesus - Healer of the World
In this morning's Gospel reading, we are being put on notice that Jesus is the healer of the world.
This is is the second miracle story in the Gospel of Mark.
We heard the first story last week - the story of the casting out of the demon in the Synagogue. Last week, you might say we had a healing of the mind. This week, we have a healing of the body. And a little bit further on in the Gospel of Mark, we will have a healing of the spirit when Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic.
But Jesus' ministry is not going to be settling down in Capernaum and setting up shop as a healer and a wise man, even though the presence of the crowds indicates that Jesus could make quite a pleasant living that way.
Jesus takes time out from the demands of the crowd to pray and he comes back convinced that travelling and preaching are also part of his calling and his ministry. His calling is not just the healing of individuals, but also the healing of the world.
And his ministry is going to be an unconventional one.
Ultimately, it will be a scandal, because the healing of the world will come not through the creation of world peace and harmony. Rather the healing of the world will come through a death on a cross.
God the Redeemer
The good news of Jesus Christ that Mark proclaims in his Gospel is the same good news that the Church has proclaimed since the first Easter Sunday. It is the same good news that helped the people of Israel to keep the faith in exile in Babylon: The Good News is that God is our healer and our Redeemer as well as our Creator.
This has been the witness of the people of God down through the ages: that God will save and heal his people and his creation.
Sometimes stories of miraculous healings like that of Simon's mother-in-law can be difficult to hear, particularly for those of us - and I expect we're the majority rather than the minority - who know someone who could do with a miraculous healing right now.
And I don't have any easy answers for us about the problem of pain and suffering or why some people recover from illness and others do not.
What I can do, however, is point us all to this morning's reading from Isaiah and say: 'These people knew what it meant to suffer. They knew what it meant to be homeless, rootless, without inheritance and without hope. They knew what it meant to feel abandoned by God but still they professed their trust in God's faithfulness.'
If Mark's story sounds a bit too much to modern ears like it is asking us to believe in a God who waves a magic wand and makes all pain and suffering go away, then the story of the exile in Isaiah should reassure us that the core of our faith is not based on magic tricks.
The faith professed in Isaiah is not the faith of a people whose God has magically made everything better. Rather it is the faith of a suffering people who nonetheless believe that the Lord will renew their strength until they are no longer weary.
Ultimately, Mark will reveal that the unconventional thing about Jesus' story is that he will not save Israel by healing everyone. He will not save Israel by putting peace in the hearts of humanity nor will he save Israel by making it immortal.
What is unconventional and unexpected about the story of Jesus is that he is going to save the world by dying himself. This is at the heart of the scandal of the cross: that Jesus heals us from sin, death and the power of evil not by obliterating them but by entering into them himself.
Our hope lies in Jesus not because he makes suffering go away, but because he enters into human suffering.
Conclusion
Everyone yearns for healing.
Some of us here may be praying for a kind of healing for ourselves or our loved ones and the answers to our prayers will not be as we hope.
But I believe that God nonetheless offers a kind of healing that is appropriate for each person. And I believe that God has promised that, ultimately, his kingdom will come and that his whole creation will be healed.
My prayer for each of us this morning is that we may be given the eyes to see the healing that God makes available for each of us and our loved ones. And I pray that, like Israel in exile, we will be given the strength to wait with joy and expectation for the coming of God's Kingdom. Amen
Showing posts with label Isaiah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isaiah. Show all posts
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday 14 December 2008 - Pointing to Good News
This is a bit different. Sometimes rather than having a sermon, we do discussions and I don't post these as they are just notes. In this particular case, I was preaching in a church that's not my own so I didn't have the confidence to go with a full-fledged discussion in case the congregation didn't talk enough!
Discussion
Today is the third Sunday of Advent and it is traditionally the Sunday that focuses on the work and mission of John the Baptist.
And this morning we have two scripture verses. One from John about John the Baptist himself and one from Isaiah. The emergence of John the Baptist into the life and times of the Jewish people signalled the end of prophetic silence. In John, God began to speak to the Jewish people again through prophets.
This morning, I wanted to begin with a discussion about prophecy. What does prophecy mean to you? Who is a prophet? What does a prophetic message sound like? Are there prophets in the church today?
OT prophets were rooted in the history of Israel. Came from different traditions and had some different understandings of that history. All of the prophets believed in the election of the people of Israel by God as his people. Covenant - spelled out mutual obligations. Their concerns were all about the breeches in the covenant.
One of the big prophetic disagreements was whether God would remain faithful to his covenant if the people of Israel broke their covenant (Isaiah & Ezekiel - yes; Jeremiah - possibility that God would dessert)
Christians believe that God's final word through the prophets was one of hope and promise. No matter what the people did, God would remain faithful. For Christians, John the Baptist is part of the beginning of this new era of God's faithfulness.
Sermon
Introduction
Today's Gospel reading points us to John the Baptist and it is something of a remarkable reading. The reading is remarkable in that it is really the only passage in Scripture that tries to deal theologically with John's mission and identity. But the passage seems to be a lot more concerned with telling us who John is not rather than telling us who John is. It's not so much concerned with exalting John as an important prophet but with saying emphatically that John is not the Messiah.
I think that this possibly because the function of a prophet is to point away from himself or herself and to point to toward God. And John's function, as the first prophet the Jewish people had in a number of centuries, was to point to Jesus as the fulfillment of God's promise to all of humankind - a promise that he was going to keep through the Jewish people.
Pointing Toward God
All of this reminded me of another sign pointing to God, although I'm fairly certain that's not what its sponsors intended.
The sign - or rather signs - that I'm thinking of were the ones that the British Humanist Association put on the side of London busses in October. You probably read about them because they received the endorsement of Richard Dawkins, the scientist and high-profile atheist. The signs read: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'
I wonder if you'll think I'm off my trolley for saying that these signs point to God? Perhaps you think that they point away from God, and not to God.
But I think that they do point to God - or rather to 'A' god. And I'd venture to say that this god is the god that many people who don't have a faith believe in (if that makes any sense!) But even worse, it's the god that they think we believe in.
'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'
Implicit in this statement is the idea that if there is a God, then my friend, you'd better be worried and you better not be enjoying yourself! This is the picture of God as the Great Referee in the sky. An all-powerful being whose job isn't to teach us, to nurture us or even to sympathise with us. God is the Great Referee whose job is simply to watch us playing out our lives and to blow the whistle and impose a penalty whenever we set a foot wrong. If we receive too many penalties then eventually we will be out of the game: plenty of things to worry about, then.
Waiting for God
So, here we are in Advent, and the Church is waiting for God to come down to earth, to come and mingle with us, to walk with us, talk with us, and participate in our life. But if the British Humanist Society's view of God is right then we'd all better duck and cover.
I'm sure we all know - or know of - at least one individual in our lives who is always critical. Someone with an uncanny knack to see the flaws and mistakes of others and who is not willing to overlook them, but who is more than happy to point out those shortcomings to anyone and everyone who will listen. If God is like that, then who would want to have anything to do with God?
If our message is 'There probably is a God. So be very worried and stop enjoying yourself!' then who in their right mind would want this God to arrive? Who in their right mind would want to have Advent - a season of four weeks eagerly anticipating the arrival of this disapproving kill-joy?
Insiders or Outsiders?
But my question is: what are we doing as the Christian church that puts forward a different image of God? Not what are we preaching, but what are we doing? How are we behaving as Christians? How do we treat others?
Do we wholeheartedly communicate the message that God loves people who are not like us? Or do we communicate the message that God will love you if - and only if - you become like us?
One of the most frequent criticisms people outside the church tell me is that church people are hypocrites. When I ask people what they mean, they often can't answer or they respond with a story about how they have been disappointed by the church in some way. But I wonder if they mean something like: 'You tell me that God loves me just as I am, but you act like he'll only love me if I'm like you'.
Do we really treat people outside the church or of other religions as individuals who are created in the image of God? Do we treat them as individuals who God knows and loves just as he knows and loves us? Or do we assume that we have all the answers about God or about 'religion' because we are Christians and they are not?
Here are just two examples of the sort of thing that I mean:
First Example. When we complain that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because this is no longer a Christian country, what do we mean by that? That we are moral and that others are not? At a recent bible study, someone noticed that the author of a book we were using actually made the claim that since morality comes from God, only Christians can be moral people.
Second Example. The President of Conference recently told a story of a Methodist congregation in what is now a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. The congregation had sold its church hall about 30 years ago and the hall has been resold twice and was now home to a Muslim school where children are taught the Koran. The Methodists have no idea how to engage with their Muslim neighbours because they believe that their reason for relating to this Muslim school would be to convert them to Christianity. So their message is 'You're not worth getting to know unless you become like us.' Now I'm quite sure that this isn't the message that this congregation wants to communicate, but that's what's happening.
I think it's things like this that communicate to others the message that 'God will only love you if you're like us'. Or to use the Referee metaphor: 'God will only love you if you're part of the team.'
However, in today's reading from Isaiah it is not those with the power and status of the established Babylonian order who receive God's loving care but rather those who are outside.
With Human Dignity
I guess I'm asking the question, 'Do we treat other people - people of different faiths and people of no faith - as dignified human beings who are as loved by God as we are?'
When the Christian church is being all that she can be, it is one of the few places in our society where an individual can go and be himself or herself without a mask and without playing a role. Church is one of the few places where we can be just ourselves without being a client, a patient, an advertising target, an employee, a charity case or an expert.
If you want to know my answer to the question: What is our purpose if it is not to increase our numbers, if it is not to promote revival, if it is not to get other people to join us? My answer is: Our purpose is to love other people unconditionally, to really believe and to treat each person as if he or she was a precious child of God for whom God earnestly desires healing, freedom and wholeness. In this way, the church can be truly prophetic and the church can truly point to God.
Conclusion
My prayer is that each of us will truly take on board the extent of God's amazing unconditional desire for healing and wholeness as expressed in the reading from Isaiah. I pray that each of us may be able to own it for ourselves and that, in our joy and gratitude, we will be able pass on that love to others.
God probably does exist. So rejoice and celebrate his amazing love. Amen
This church has no children on a Sunday morning, so the Discussion happened in the 'children's slot' early in the service and the sermon came in the usual slot. The texts are: Isaiah 61:1-11 and John 1:6-8, 19-28.
====
Today is the third Sunday of Advent and it is traditionally the Sunday that focuses on the work and mission of John the Baptist.
And this morning we have two scripture verses. One from John about John the Baptist himself and one from Isaiah. The emergence of John the Baptist into the life and times of the Jewish people signalled the end of prophetic silence. In John, God began to speak to the Jewish people again through prophets.
This morning, I wanted to begin with a discussion about prophecy. What does prophecy mean to you? Who is a prophet? What does a prophetic message sound like? Are there prophets in the church today?
OT prophets were rooted in the history of Israel. Came from different traditions and had some different understandings of that history. All of the prophets believed in the election of the people of Israel by God as his people. Covenant - spelled out mutual obligations. Their concerns were all about the breeches in the covenant.
One of the big prophetic disagreements was whether God would remain faithful to his covenant if the people of Israel broke their covenant (Isaiah & Ezekiel - yes; Jeremiah - possibility that God would dessert)
Christians believe that God's final word through the prophets was one of hope and promise. No matter what the people did, God would remain faithful. For Christians, John the Baptist is part of the beginning of this new era of God's faithfulness.
Sermon
Introduction
Today's Gospel reading points us to John the Baptist and it is something of a remarkable reading. The reading is remarkable in that it is really the only passage in Scripture that tries to deal theologically with John's mission and identity. But the passage seems to be a lot more concerned with telling us who John is not rather than telling us who John is. It's not so much concerned with exalting John as an important prophet but with saying emphatically that John is not the Messiah.
I think that this possibly because the function of a prophet is to point away from himself or herself and to point to toward God. And John's function, as the first prophet the Jewish people had in a number of centuries, was to point to Jesus as the fulfillment of God's promise to all of humankind - a promise that he was going to keep through the Jewish people.
Pointing Toward God
All of this reminded me of another sign pointing to God, although I'm fairly certain that's not what its sponsors intended.
The sign - or rather signs - that I'm thinking of were the ones that the British Humanist Association put on the side of London busses in October. You probably read about them because they received the endorsement of Richard Dawkins, the scientist and high-profile atheist. The signs read: 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'
I wonder if you'll think I'm off my trolley for saying that these signs point to God? Perhaps you think that they point away from God, and not to God.
But I think that they do point to God - or rather to 'A' god. And I'd venture to say that this god is the god that many people who don't have a faith believe in (if that makes any sense!) But even worse, it's the god that they think we believe in.
'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'
Implicit in this statement is the idea that if there is a God, then my friend, you'd better be worried and you better not be enjoying yourself! This is the picture of God as the Great Referee in the sky. An all-powerful being whose job isn't to teach us, to nurture us or even to sympathise with us. God is the Great Referee whose job is simply to watch us playing out our lives and to blow the whistle and impose a penalty whenever we set a foot wrong. If we receive too many penalties then eventually we will be out of the game: plenty of things to worry about, then.
Waiting for God
So, here we are in Advent, and the Church is waiting for God to come down to earth, to come and mingle with us, to walk with us, talk with us, and participate in our life. But if the British Humanist Society's view of God is right then we'd all better duck and cover.
I'm sure we all know - or know of - at least one individual in our lives who is always critical. Someone with an uncanny knack to see the flaws and mistakes of others and who is not willing to overlook them, but who is more than happy to point out those shortcomings to anyone and everyone who will listen. If God is like that, then who would want to have anything to do with God?
If our message is 'There probably is a God. So be very worried and stop enjoying yourself!' then who in their right mind would want this God to arrive? Who in their right mind would want to have Advent - a season of four weeks eagerly anticipating the arrival of this disapproving kill-joy?
Insiders or Outsiders?
But my question is: what are we doing as the Christian church that puts forward a different image of God? Not what are we preaching, but what are we doing? How are we behaving as Christians? How do we treat others?
Do we wholeheartedly communicate the message that God loves people who are not like us? Or do we communicate the message that God will love you if - and only if - you become like us?
One of the most frequent criticisms people outside the church tell me is that church people are hypocrites. When I ask people what they mean, they often can't answer or they respond with a story about how they have been disappointed by the church in some way. But I wonder if they mean something like: 'You tell me that God loves me just as I am, but you act like he'll only love me if I'm like you'.
Do we really treat people outside the church or of other religions as individuals who are created in the image of God? Do we treat them as individuals who God knows and loves just as he knows and loves us? Or do we assume that we have all the answers about God or about 'religion' because we are Christians and they are not?
Here are just two examples of the sort of thing that I mean:
First Example. When we complain that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because this is no longer a Christian country, what do we mean by that? That we are moral and that others are not? At a recent bible study, someone noticed that the author of a book we were using actually made the claim that since morality comes from God, only Christians can be moral people.
Second Example. The President of Conference recently told a story of a Methodist congregation in what is now a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. The congregation had sold its church hall about 30 years ago and the hall has been resold twice and was now home to a Muslim school where children are taught the Koran. The Methodists have no idea how to engage with their Muslim neighbours because they believe that their reason for relating to this Muslim school would be to convert them to Christianity. So their message is 'You're not worth getting to know unless you become like us.' Now I'm quite sure that this isn't the message that this congregation wants to communicate, but that's what's happening.
I think it's things like this that communicate to others the message that 'God will only love you if you're like us'. Or to use the Referee metaphor: 'God will only love you if you're part of the team.'
However, in today's reading from Isaiah it is not those with the power and status of the established Babylonian order who receive God's loving care but rather those who are outside.
With Human Dignity
I guess I'm asking the question, 'Do we treat other people - people of different faiths and people of no faith - as dignified human beings who are as loved by God as we are?'
When the Christian church is being all that she can be, it is one of the few places in our society where an individual can go and be himself or herself without a mask and without playing a role. Church is one of the few places where we can be just ourselves without being a client, a patient, an advertising target, an employee, a charity case or an expert.
If you want to know my answer to the question: What is our purpose if it is not to increase our numbers, if it is not to promote revival, if it is not to get other people to join us? My answer is: Our purpose is to love other people unconditionally, to really believe and to treat each person as if he or she was a precious child of God for whom God earnestly desires healing, freedom and wholeness. In this way, the church can be truly prophetic and the church can truly point to God.
Conclusion
My prayer is that each of us will truly take on board the extent of God's amazing unconditional desire for healing and wholeness as expressed in the reading from Isaiah. I pray that each of us may be able to own it for ourselves and that, in our joy and gratitude, we will be able pass on that love to others.
God probably does exist. So rejoice and celebrate his amazing love. Amen
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sunday 16 March 2008 - Thunder of Hope
This is a sermon for Palm Sunday. I attempted to use the whole service to bring the congregation into the events of Holy Week, beginning with the Palm Sunday readings, transitioning from triumph to the self-examination of Holy Week via the sermon and the symbolically proceeding into the rest of the week via the Lord's Supper.
The sermon is based on Isaiah 50:4-9 and Matthew 21:1-11
===
Introduction
I turned on the television the other day to amuse myself whilst doing some ironing and I found myself watching a travel channel. The location that this particular programme was set in was Capetown, South Africa. And a resident of the city named Clive was talking about the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
Clive was standing in a square in the city and he pointed to a balcony where Mandela had spoken to the people. He had been in the square on the day of Mandela’s release from prison and he said that there had been about 100,000 people there that day and that the excitement had been tangible.
With an animated voice, Clive described how the air had bristled with electricity and with hope. He said, ‘Finally, after many years of Apartheid, this was the day that the people of South Africa were going to get their rightful government.’
Mandela opened his mouth to speak and Clive remembers him saying to the nation: ‘We must go forward in reconciliation and forgiveness. If we are to have any hope of a future, we must learn to forgive each other in order to rebuild the new South Africa.’ The people cheered and began to chant over and over two words: ‘Grandpa Mandala’.
And then my ears perked up as Clive continued to describe the mood of the crowd. You could see by his bright face and his animated eyes that it had been a great day, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Clive said that the crowd was like thunder, like an earthquake, it was almost as if the heavens and the earth moved, so great was the hope and the expectation on that historic day in Capetown.
My ears perked up because his is how Matthew described Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
This morning’s reading translated it rather weakly: ‘the whole city was stirred’, but the Greek word translated as ‘stirred’ is one that is used for the ground tremors that happen during an earthquake. The picture that Matthew is trying to paint of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is the same sort of picture that Clive was painting about the day that Nelson Mandala was released from prison. An historic, once-in-a-lifetime experience of a great man bringing the promise of peace and of a bright future to a weary and worn-out nation. An almost supernatural sense of hope for life as it is meant to be. A new beginning. A day where everyone present could feel the electricity in the air.
Jesus failed?
The ironic thing is, of course, many people would see Mandela as having succeeded where Jesus failed.
Mandela – and, of course many other South Africans committed to peace and reconciliation – succeeded in an environment where defeat almost seemed inevitable. Seventeen years after Mandela’s release from prison – whilst the situation in South Africa is far from perfection – certainly history has shown that the worst-case scenario has been avoided.
On the other hand, in our story today, Jesus only has five days to live after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Most people would have thought twice before challenging both the Temple authorities and the authority of Imperial Rome. Common sense tells us that making a name for yourself as someone who stands up to a ruthless regime is a fairly stupid thing to do.
But according to Matthew, the first thing that Jesus does after entering Jerusalem is to go into the Temple and knock over the tables of the money-changers. He then curses a fig tree – the symbol of the Jewish people. He attracts sufficient attention to himself that the Chief Priests and the elders ask him who he thinks he is – by what authority does he do these things?
Jesus does not give them a direct answer but proceeds to tell a number of parables that suggest that the prevailing values system does not encourage people to be genuine followers of God. This section of Matthew’s story ends with Jesus denouncing the Scribes and the Pharisees and predicting the downfall of Jerusalem.
Not exactly a way to win friends and influence people. If we go by the picture that Matthew paints, it’s hardly surprising that Jesus was executed.
The Kingdom Come is Coming
But what has all this ‘politics’ got to do with Christianity? Isn’t the Good News of the Gospel that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins? And aren’t the events of Holy Week the tools that the Father used to get Jesus on to the cross so that we could be saved?
Absolutely, the cross and the crucifixion are vitally important in the story of salvation. But the opposition of Jesus’ own people and of the Roman Empire were not just divine stage-sets whose sole purpose was to get Jesus on the cross so that you and I could go to heaven.
The truth is that much of what we think of as reality and as ‘the way things are’ today stand in opposition to the way that God wants the world to be. The same sin and violence that put Jesus on the cross exists today. And this is the reason that Christians believe that it is our sin – my sin and your sin – that put Jesus on the cross. And this is the reality that we are asked to think about during Holy Week.
Of course, we also know about Easter: we know that after the crucifixion, comes the resurrection. The resurrection keeps us from despair and from believing that God will allow sin and violence to have the final word in creation.
But, during Holy Week, we are invited to linger in the events of Jesus’ suffering. We are invited to contemplate the violence in the world and the violence in our own souls. We are invited to identify and confess our sins.
We remember that, although the Kingdom of God has broken into the world, it is not yet fully realised and so there is still pain and brokenness on this earth. And we remember that God came to be with us in the pain and suffering of our world. He walks with us and he suffers with us, although he could have chosen not to.
And Jesus doesn’t just walk with those suffering physical pain: he walks with those who cannot get justice for themselves. He walks with those who, through no fault of their own, must live lives of shame and humiliation.
And, as Christians, we journey with Jesus and Jesus with us. He walks with us in our sorrows and he asks us to walk with others in theirs. He forgives us when, in our weakness, we fall short and he calls us into a life of love and self-giving.
Conclusion
A week from today, we will once again hear the thunderous, earth-shaking cries of hope: this time, of a hope that has triumphed over sin and death. For now, we set aside a week of our lives to contemplate the love of a God who suffers both with us and for us.
And as we do so, I invite you to join me in my prayer that the God who journeys with all people will make his light known in the darkest of places. Amen
The sermon is based on Isaiah 50:4-9 and Matthew 21:1-11
===
Introduction
I turned on the television the other day to amuse myself whilst doing some ironing and I found myself watching a travel channel. The location that this particular programme was set in was Capetown, South Africa. And a resident of the city named Clive was talking about the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
Clive was standing in a square in the city and he pointed to a balcony where Mandela had spoken to the people. He had been in the square on the day of Mandela’s release from prison and he said that there had been about 100,000 people there that day and that the excitement had been tangible.
With an animated voice, Clive described how the air had bristled with electricity and with hope. He said, ‘Finally, after many years of Apartheid, this was the day that the people of South Africa were going to get their rightful government.’
Mandela opened his mouth to speak and Clive remembers him saying to the nation: ‘We must go forward in reconciliation and forgiveness. If we are to have any hope of a future, we must learn to forgive each other in order to rebuild the new South Africa.’ The people cheered and began to chant over and over two words: ‘Grandpa Mandala’.
And then my ears perked up as Clive continued to describe the mood of the crowd. You could see by his bright face and his animated eyes that it had been a great day, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Clive said that the crowd was like thunder, like an earthquake, it was almost as if the heavens and the earth moved, so great was the hope and the expectation on that historic day in Capetown.
My ears perked up because his is how Matthew described Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
This morning’s reading translated it rather weakly: ‘the whole city was stirred’, but the Greek word translated as ‘stirred’ is one that is used for the ground tremors that happen during an earthquake. The picture that Matthew is trying to paint of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is the same sort of picture that Clive was painting about the day that Nelson Mandala was released from prison. An historic, once-in-a-lifetime experience of a great man bringing the promise of peace and of a bright future to a weary and worn-out nation. An almost supernatural sense of hope for life as it is meant to be. A new beginning. A day where everyone present could feel the electricity in the air.
Jesus failed?
The ironic thing is, of course, many people would see Mandela as having succeeded where Jesus failed.
Mandela – and, of course many other South Africans committed to peace and reconciliation – succeeded in an environment where defeat almost seemed inevitable. Seventeen years after Mandela’s release from prison – whilst the situation in South Africa is far from perfection – certainly history has shown that the worst-case scenario has been avoided.
On the other hand, in our story today, Jesus only has five days to live after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Most people would have thought twice before challenging both the Temple authorities and the authority of Imperial Rome. Common sense tells us that making a name for yourself as someone who stands up to a ruthless regime is a fairly stupid thing to do.
But according to Matthew, the first thing that Jesus does after entering Jerusalem is to go into the Temple and knock over the tables of the money-changers. He then curses a fig tree – the symbol of the Jewish people. He attracts sufficient attention to himself that the Chief Priests and the elders ask him who he thinks he is – by what authority does he do these things?
Jesus does not give them a direct answer but proceeds to tell a number of parables that suggest that the prevailing values system does not encourage people to be genuine followers of God. This section of Matthew’s story ends with Jesus denouncing the Scribes and the Pharisees and predicting the downfall of Jerusalem.
Not exactly a way to win friends and influence people. If we go by the picture that Matthew paints, it’s hardly surprising that Jesus was executed.
The Kingdom Come is Coming
But what has all this ‘politics’ got to do with Christianity? Isn’t the Good News of the Gospel that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins? And aren’t the events of Holy Week the tools that the Father used to get Jesus on to the cross so that we could be saved?
Absolutely, the cross and the crucifixion are vitally important in the story of salvation. But the opposition of Jesus’ own people and of the Roman Empire were not just divine stage-sets whose sole purpose was to get Jesus on the cross so that you and I could go to heaven.
The truth is that much of what we think of as reality and as ‘the way things are’ today stand in opposition to the way that God wants the world to be. The same sin and violence that put Jesus on the cross exists today. And this is the reason that Christians believe that it is our sin – my sin and your sin – that put Jesus on the cross. And this is the reality that we are asked to think about during Holy Week.
Of course, we also know about Easter: we know that after the crucifixion, comes the resurrection. The resurrection keeps us from despair and from believing that God will allow sin and violence to have the final word in creation.
But, during Holy Week, we are invited to linger in the events of Jesus’ suffering. We are invited to contemplate the violence in the world and the violence in our own souls. We are invited to identify and confess our sins.
We remember that, although the Kingdom of God has broken into the world, it is not yet fully realised and so there is still pain and brokenness on this earth. And we remember that God came to be with us in the pain and suffering of our world. He walks with us and he suffers with us, although he could have chosen not to.
And Jesus doesn’t just walk with those suffering physical pain: he walks with those who cannot get justice for themselves. He walks with those who, through no fault of their own, must live lives of shame and humiliation.
And, as Christians, we journey with Jesus and Jesus with us. He walks with us in our sorrows and he asks us to walk with others in theirs. He forgives us when, in our weakness, we fall short and he calls us into a life of love and self-giving.
Conclusion
A week from today, we will once again hear the thunderous, earth-shaking cries of hope: this time, of a hope that has triumphed over sin and death. For now, we set aside a week of our lives to contemplate the love of a God who suffers both with us and for us.
And as we do so, I invite you to join me in my prayer that the God who journeys with all people will make his light known in the darkest of places. Amen
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sunday 13 January 2008 - The Baptism of Jesus
This is a sermon on The Baptism of Jesus based on Matthew 3:13-17 and Isaiah 42:1-9.
===
Matthew 3:13-17
I remember the day well, even though it was many years ago. I was a disciple of John then – John the Baptist as you call him.
John was a unique and charismatic figure in the life of the people of God. He’s been viewed by many as the last in the line of the Prophets. At the time I began following John – before Jesus came along – there were a number of us who were beginning to wonder whether John was the Messiah.
You see, John ticked all the boxes of what many of us thought the Messiah would look and sound like. John lived in the desert, wore rough clothes, ate locusts and wild honey and constantly called the Jewish people to repentance.
There were many of us who believed that if one Jewish man could keep all of the Law for just one day, then the Kingdom of God would come to earth. Some thought that John would be the man to keep all of the Law and that, in his keeping of it, he would be given divine success in calling the whole nation to repentance. Anyway, I followed John because it was clear to me that the power of God’s Spirit was with him, whether he was the Messiah or simply a great Prophet.
So it was a thrill to go down to the River Jordan and listen to John. He preached ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ and hundreds, if not thousand, of people would respond to his call to repent and be baptised.
One day, though, I was surprised when a man came to John to be baptised and John started insisting that he didn’t need to be baptised. Since everyone needs repentance, I wondered about the identity of this man who John seemed to think had no need for repentance.
Of course these many years later, I now know that the man was Jesus, the Messiah, who we as Christians now profess to be both Son of God and Son of Man. Clearly on the day that Jesus presented himself for his baptism, John was confused, possibly feeling humble and inadequate and trying to work out why it was that the Messiah would need to be baptised. Jesus simply stated that his baptism was needed to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ – a statement that I’ve had thirty years to think about!
Jesus’ baptism was, of course, the beginning of his ministry. And obedience to the Father was a mark of Jesus’ mission here on earth, so perhaps it was appropriate that Jesus begin his ministry by behaving in obedience to the Father’s will. To tell you the truth we’re still trying to figure this one out. By ‘we’, I mean me and the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re trying to come to grips with what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. If Jesus was divine, as we believe him to have been, perhaps his baptism was simply following a script that he and the Father had established before the foundation of the world.
But I’m not sure that his baptism was just about inaugurating his ministry. The appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the presence of the Father’s voice were certainly confirmations of Jesus’ divine mandate but I think that there was something more to his baptism than that.
Maybe the question isn’t ‘What did it mean for the man Jesus to be divine?’ Maybe the question is ‘What did it mean for God to become a human being?’
When we – ordinary people – are baptised, we say that as we go under the water that we are dying to ourselves and rising to Christ. We also say that the water washes away our sins; it’s as if our sins drop to the bottom of the river and are washed away in the current. But, of course, Jesus didn’t need his sins washed away.
This is what I wonder, though: What if all those human sins – the ones I’ve pictured washing away in the current of the Jordan river – what if, instead of being washed away, they attached themselves to Jesus during his baptism? What if, for our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might be made righteous?
I hope you understand that I’m not saying that this ‘literally’ happened. I’m thinking of this as a sort of picture or metaphor. But I’m trying to say that there was something important about Jesus’ ministry that was not just about understanding human sin-and-suffering - but actually experiencing human sin-and-suffering even though Jesus was divine.
And just as, in baptism, we die to ourselves in order to live for Christ, so I think maybe at his own baptism Jesus died to himself in order to fulfil the will of the Father, or what he called ‘all righteousness’.
Well, it’s been good chatting with you. I’ve not thought about these things for a long time and I’m an old man now. I think I’ve made my brain hurt and I wonder if yours hurts too. If I could, I’d invite you into my house for a meal and fellowship, but as that’s not possible, I thought that perhaps we could take a brake and have a song.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Of course, we in the early church only had the Hebrew Scriptures. In my time we didn’t have any scrolls of what you now call the books of the New Testament. We had to try to understand Jesus and his mission in the light of Old Testament. And the image of the Servant in Isaiah was a picture that was familiar to us.
Remember that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet just hours before he died. And Jesus constantly said that the last would be first and the first would be last. And so it’s not surprising that we in the early church turned to images of the servant and the suffering servant in order to try to understand Jesus’ mission.
Isaiah 42:1 reads: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Now, back in the old days, before Jesus came along, we Jewish people understood this image of the Servant to have a double meaning: The Servant was, some thought, a promise of a future Messiah. But it was also an image of the role that Israel would play in bringing about God’s kingdom.
So it’s hardly surprising, then, that when we came to understand that Jesus was the Messiah, that we understood these texts to be talking about Messiah Jesus and about his followers as the people who would bring about God’s kingdom.
Did you notice, that at Jesus’ baptism, the Father uses similar words as Isaiah? This is my son in whom I am well pleased; This is my servant in whom my soul delights. As a friend of mine joked: ‘God has a good working knowledge of Hebrew scripture.’1
Through my eyes, friends, this is a wonderful passage, especially as I read it in the light of Jesus’ baptism. This is a glorious promise of salvation and justice for a people in exile. And it’s not the kind of justice that will sweep the earth burning everything and everyone in its path, but rather a justice with kindness that acts on behalf of those who have already been broken by the sins of the world.
This is a picture, not of a conquering hero, but of a saviour who takes on my sin and who knows exactly what it means to struggle on earth as a finite human being with limited knowledge. To me, this is a picture of a God in the mess with me. It’s not a God who observes the pain of being human, but it’s a God who experiences the pain of being human. In Jesus, God knows by experience what it means to be rejected and hunted down and what it means to be God-forsaken. 2
But, of course, there is the other side of the coin: our calling to be like Jesus. Just as Israel was called to be like the Messiah, so in Jesus is the Christian church called to be like Christ. Christ was baptised into our sin and we were baptised into Christ’s holiness so that we too could take part in his resurrection.
And so it’s my prayer this morning that the story of the Baptism of Christ will inspire us all to remember our own Baptism. May we give God thanks for loving us so much that he became human and took our sin on himself in order to destroy it on the cross.
And I pray that we will dedicate ourselves anew to being the instruments of God’s justice on earth and that we will be kind and gentle in our dealings with others so as not to further hurt those who have already been broken by sin. Amen
---
1 From the article ‘Descent into the depths’ by John Pridmore in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 18.
2 From a letter to the editor written by Jeremy Craddock in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 15.
===
Matthew 3:13-17
I remember the day well, even though it was many years ago. I was a disciple of John then – John the Baptist as you call him.
John was a unique and charismatic figure in the life of the people of God. He’s been viewed by many as the last in the line of the Prophets. At the time I began following John – before Jesus came along – there were a number of us who were beginning to wonder whether John was the Messiah.
You see, John ticked all the boxes of what many of us thought the Messiah would look and sound like. John lived in the desert, wore rough clothes, ate locusts and wild honey and constantly called the Jewish people to repentance.
There were many of us who believed that if one Jewish man could keep all of the Law for just one day, then the Kingdom of God would come to earth. Some thought that John would be the man to keep all of the Law and that, in his keeping of it, he would be given divine success in calling the whole nation to repentance. Anyway, I followed John because it was clear to me that the power of God’s Spirit was with him, whether he was the Messiah or simply a great Prophet.
So it was a thrill to go down to the River Jordan and listen to John. He preached ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ and hundreds, if not thousand, of people would respond to his call to repent and be baptised.
One day, though, I was surprised when a man came to John to be baptised and John started insisting that he didn’t need to be baptised. Since everyone needs repentance, I wondered about the identity of this man who John seemed to think had no need for repentance.
Of course these many years later, I now know that the man was Jesus, the Messiah, who we as Christians now profess to be both Son of God and Son of Man. Clearly on the day that Jesus presented himself for his baptism, John was confused, possibly feeling humble and inadequate and trying to work out why it was that the Messiah would need to be baptised. Jesus simply stated that his baptism was needed to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ – a statement that I’ve had thirty years to think about!
Jesus’ baptism was, of course, the beginning of his ministry. And obedience to the Father was a mark of Jesus’ mission here on earth, so perhaps it was appropriate that Jesus begin his ministry by behaving in obedience to the Father’s will. To tell you the truth we’re still trying to figure this one out. By ‘we’, I mean me and the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re trying to come to grips with what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. If Jesus was divine, as we believe him to have been, perhaps his baptism was simply following a script that he and the Father had established before the foundation of the world.
But I’m not sure that his baptism was just about inaugurating his ministry. The appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the presence of the Father’s voice were certainly confirmations of Jesus’ divine mandate but I think that there was something more to his baptism than that.
Maybe the question isn’t ‘What did it mean for the man Jesus to be divine?’ Maybe the question is ‘What did it mean for God to become a human being?’
When we – ordinary people – are baptised, we say that as we go under the water that we are dying to ourselves and rising to Christ. We also say that the water washes away our sins; it’s as if our sins drop to the bottom of the river and are washed away in the current. But, of course, Jesus didn’t need his sins washed away.
This is what I wonder, though: What if all those human sins – the ones I’ve pictured washing away in the current of the Jordan river – what if, instead of being washed away, they attached themselves to Jesus during his baptism? What if, for our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might be made righteous?
I hope you understand that I’m not saying that this ‘literally’ happened. I’m thinking of this as a sort of picture or metaphor. But I’m trying to say that there was something important about Jesus’ ministry that was not just about understanding human sin-and-suffering - but actually experiencing human sin-and-suffering even though Jesus was divine.
And just as, in baptism, we die to ourselves in order to live for Christ, so I think maybe at his own baptism Jesus died to himself in order to fulfil the will of the Father, or what he called ‘all righteousness’.
Well, it’s been good chatting with you. I’ve not thought about these things for a long time and I’m an old man now. I think I’ve made my brain hurt and I wonder if yours hurts too. If I could, I’d invite you into my house for a meal and fellowship, but as that’s not possible, I thought that perhaps we could take a brake and have a song.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Of course, we in the early church only had the Hebrew Scriptures. In my time we didn’t have any scrolls of what you now call the books of the New Testament. We had to try to understand Jesus and his mission in the light of Old Testament. And the image of the Servant in Isaiah was a picture that was familiar to us.
Remember that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet just hours before he died. And Jesus constantly said that the last would be first and the first would be last. And so it’s not surprising that we in the early church turned to images of the servant and the suffering servant in order to try to understand Jesus’ mission.
Isaiah 42:1 reads: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Now, back in the old days, before Jesus came along, we Jewish people understood this image of the Servant to have a double meaning: The Servant was, some thought, a promise of a future Messiah. But it was also an image of the role that Israel would play in bringing about God’s kingdom.
So it’s hardly surprising, then, that when we came to understand that Jesus was the Messiah, that we understood these texts to be talking about Messiah Jesus and about his followers as the people who would bring about God’s kingdom.
Did you notice, that at Jesus’ baptism, the Father uses similar words as Isaiah? This is my son in whom I am well pleased; This is my servant in whom my soul delights. As a friend of mine joked: ‘God has a good working knowledge of Hebrew scripture.’1
Through my eyes, friends, this is a wonderful passage, especially as I read it in the light of Jesus’ baptism. This is a glorious promise of salvation and justice for a people in exile. And it’s not the kind of justice that will sweep the earth burning everything and everyone in its path, but rather a justice with kindness that acts on behalf of those who have already been broken by the sins of the world.
This is a picture, not of a conquering hero, but of a saviour who takes on my sin and who knows exactly what it means to struggle on earth as a finite human being with limited knowledge. To me, this is a picture of a God in the mess with me. It’s not a God who observes the pain of being human, but it’s a God who experiences the pain of being human. In Jesus, God knows by experience what it means to be rejected and hunted down and what it means to be God-forsaken. 2
But, of course, there is the other side of the coin: our calling to be like Jesus. Just as Israel was called to be like the Messiah, so in Jesus is the Christian church called to be like Christ. Christ was baptised into our sin and we were baptised into Christ’s holiness so that we too could take part in his resurrection.
And so it’s my prayer this morning that the story of the Baptism of Christ will inspire us all to remember our own Baptism. May we give God thanks for loving us so much that he became human and took our sin on himself in order to destroy it on the cross.
And I pray that we will dedicate ourselves anew to being the instruments of God’s justice on earth and that we will be kind and gentle in our dealings with others so as not to further hurt those who have already been broken by sin. Amen
---
1 From the article ‘Descent into the depths’ by John Pridmore in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 18.
2 From a letter to the editor written by Jeremy Craddock in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 15.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Sunday 6 January - Covenant. New School
The sermon below is a sermon for 'Covenant Sunday'. The texts on which it is based are: Exodus 24:3-11, Jeremiah 31:31-34, Romans 12:1-2 and John 15:1-10.
===
Introduction(1)
Imagine with me, if you will, a luxury block of flats in the centre of your favourite holiday city or town. Imagine the view from the top floor of this block of flats: where ever your favourite place is.
Perhaps it’s a beautiful view overlooking hills or even mountains. Perhaps the view is one of lakes or the ocean shore. Where-ever it is, imagine the beauty that you find in that view and the sense of God’s good creation.
Now, I want to introduce you to two new residents in this block of flats: Harry and Emma. Harry lives in Flat number 12 which he just purchased.
When he moved in, he signed a tenancy agreement. He agreed to pay the management company a certain fee every year for the maintenance of the structure of the building and for the upkeep of the common areas. He agreed that he would not make any modifications to the structure of his flat without first consulting the owner of the leasehold. He agreed that his floors would be sound-proofed or carpeted. And he agreed that he would own no dangerous pets.
Now Emma lives in flat number 14 and she didn’t make any such agreement with the leaseholder. In fact, she’s made no agreement with anyone. Emma gets to live in flat number 14 without having signed a tenancy agreement and without having to take responsibility for anything in her flat. In fact, Emma doesn’t even have to make her own meals!
Have you guessed it yet? Emma is only a few weeks old and she lives with her parents. Oh, I forgot to say that Emma is adopted.
The Old Testament Covenant
This morning, we have heard two readings about the theme of ‘covenant’ in the bible.
In the Old Testament, there are many places where we read of an approach to Covenant that sound like the sort of tenancy agreement that Harry entered into: God sets out certain conditions which his people agree to just like a tenancy agreement. The usual format is: ‘I (God speaking) will be your God and you shall be my people’. We’ve heard this format in this morning’s reading from Exodus.
So, it can seem to us that if we break our end of the bargain, if we break our tenancy agreement, then the covenant is broken and we will be evicted.
There are a number of times in the Old Testament where either Israel or Judah are told that punishment will come upon them – or has come upon them - because they have broken their Covenant with God. This is the old form of covenant relationship: a relationship between God and his people under the Law.
The New Covenant
But even before the birth of Christ, we have a biblical witness to a new form of Covenant relationship with God and this New Covenant was expressed in our reading from Jeremiah.
In fact, these verses from Jeremiah are considered to be the key verses in explaining the concept of ‘The New Covenant’ and the key to the entire covenant is actually in the very last phrase that was read: ‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.’ This idea of forgiveness is actually the foundation on which the New Covenant rests.
Unlike the Old Covenant, in the New Covenant, our relationship with God is no longer based on the condition that we keep up our end of the bargain. God knows that we can’t be like Harry: we are not going to be a good tenant who keeps his tenancy agreement.
The foundation of the New Covenant is that God forgives first. Once God forgiveness has been granted to us by God, the New Covenant have a firm foundation on which to rest.
God knows that we are actually like baby Emma. Not only can’t we keep up a tenancy agreement, we aren’t even in a position to sign one. Like baby Emma, we are simply incapable of making such an agreement. Just like baby Emma, we need someone else to do it for us.
To stretch this analogy just a bit further let’s imagine that Emma’s adopted father is actually the son of landlord. The building will eventually belong to Emma’s dad, and there is no question that anyone will ever demand that baby Emma be responsible for keeping up the tenancy agreement.
It’s as if, because God knew that there is no chance of any of us ever being able to keep such an agreement, that he decided to adopt us. Because of our adoption as sons and daughters, our inheritance – as it were – becomes part of who we are; it is written on our hearts.
Or, to use the image from today’s Gospel reading, through the forgiveness mediated by Christ, we are grafted on to Christ, who becomes our support and our nourishment. Our relationship with Christ is not dependant upon our clinging on to the vine. It exists because we have been grafted on to the vine. Christ supports us, not the other way around.
The Covenant Prayer
What has any of this got to do with the Covenant Prayer?
Well, I think it’s important for us to understand that we are making this prayer under the New Covenant.
We are not ‘making a decision to have a relationship with God’ in this prayer; we are not chasing God down the street and saying ‘Hello! I’ve decided that I want to have a relationship with you now.’ Doing this would be trying to have a relationship under the Old Covenant.
We’d be acting as if we were in a position to keep all these promises under our own strength – as if we were Harry, who could keep his tenancy agreement.
What we are doing when we pray the Covenant Prayer is acknowledging that our relationship with God already exists and that we are aware we had nothing to do with bringing it about. We’re acknowledging that we are like baby Emma: living in a relationship with God because he was gracious enough to adopt us and to offer us a permanent tenancy with him.
When we pray, ‘I am no longer my own but yours’ we’re not saying ‘Once I belonged to myself but now I’ve decided to turn myself over to you.’ We are acknowledging that we understand that we’ve always belonged to God in the first place.
When we pray the Covenant prayer, we don’t give God the gift of ourselves. When we pray the Covenant prayer, we say that we understand that we’ve always belonged to God, that whether we are troubled or at peace, that whether we have work to do or no work to do, that we understand that the Covenant is there and always will be.
As the introduction to the prayer tells us, we are simply accepting our place within a Covenant which already exists because God himself brought it into being.
Preparation for the Prayer
In a few minutes, I will invite those of us who wish to do so to make the covenant prayer.
I invite you now to turn to page 7 in your pink books where the text of the covenant prayer can be found. We will have a few moments of silence to give us all an opportunity to read this prayer and for each of us to consider the manner in which we might make it. As you read, I invite you to read the prayer as if the prayer were God making a promise to you – because that’s what he’s already done.
May the grace of the Triune God be with us all in our consideration. Amen
(1) Credit for the illustration: Rev Andrew Sails, Mint Methodist Church, Exeter, http://www.themint.org.uk/z146.htm
===
Introduction(1)
Imagine with me, if you will, a luxury block of flats in the centre of your favourite holiday city or town. Imagine the view from the top floor of this block of flats: where ever your favourite place is.
Perhaps it’s a beautiful view overlooking hills or even mountains. Perhaps the view is one of lakes or the ocean shore. Where-ever it is, imagine the beauty that you find in that view and the sense of God’s good creation.
Now, I want to introduce you to two new residents in this block of flats: Harry and Emma. Harry lives in Flat number 12 which he just purchased.
When he moved in, he signed a tenancy agreement. He agreed to pay the management company a certain fee every year for the maintenance of the structure of the building and for the upkeep of the common areas. He agreed that he would not make any modifications to the structure of his flat without first consulting the owner of the leasehold. He agreed that his floors would be sound-proofed or carpeted. And he agreed that he would own no dangerous pets.
Now Emma lives in flat number 14 and she didn’t make any such agreement with the leaseholder. In fact, she’s made no agreement with anyone. Emma gets to live in flat number 14 without having signed a tenancy agreement and without having to take responsibility for anything in her flat. In fact, Emma doesn’t even have to make her own meals!
Have you guessed it yet? Emma is only a few weeks old and she lives with her parents. Oh, I forgot to say that Emma is adopted.
The Old Testament Covenant
This morning, we have heard two readings about the theme of ‘covenant’ in the bible.
In the Old Testament, there are many places where we read of an approach to Covenant that sound like the sort of tenancy agreement that Harry entered into: God sets out certain conditions which his people agree to just like a tenancy agreement. The usual format is: ‘I (God speaking) will be your God and you shall be my people’. We’ve heard this format in this morning’s reading from Exodus.
So, it can seem to us that if we break our end of the bargain, if we break our tenancy agreement, then the covenant is broken and we will be evicted.
There are a number of times in the Old Testament where either Israel or Judah are told that punishment will come upon them – or has come upon them - because they have broken their Covenant with God. This is the old form of covenant relationship: a relationship between God and his people under the Law.
The New Covenant
But even before the birth of Christ, we have a biblical witness to a new form of Covenant relationship with God and this New Covenant was expressed in our reading from Jeremiah.
In fact, these verses from Jeremiah are considered to be the key verses in explaining the concept of ‘The New Covenant’ and the key to the entire covenant is actually in the very last phrase that was read: ‘For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.’ This idea of forgiveness is actually the foundation on which the New Covenant rests.
Unlike the Old Covenant, in the New Covenant, our relationship with God is no longer based on the condition that we keep up our end of the bargain. God knows that we can’t be like Harry: we are not going to be a good tenant who keeps his tenancy agreement.
The foundation of the New Covenant is that God forgives first. Once God forgiveness has been granted to us by God, the New Covenant have a firm foundation on which to rest.
God knows that we are actually like baby Emma. Not only can’t we keep up a tenancy agreement, we aren’t even in a position to sign one. Like baby Emma, we are simply incapable of making such an agreement. Just like baby Emma, we need someone else to do it for us.
To stretch this analogy just a bit further let’s imagine that Emma’s adopted father is actually the son of landlord. The building will eventually belong to Emma’s dad, and there is no question that anyone will ever demand that baby Emma be responsible for keeping up the tenancy agreement.
It’s as if, because God knew that there is no chance of any of us ever being able to keep such an agreement, that he decided to adopt us. Because of our adoption as sons and daughters, our inheritance – as it were – becomes part of who we are; it is written on our hearts.
Or, to use the image from today’s Gospel reading, through the forgiveness mediated by Christ, we are grafted on to Christ, who becomes our support and our nourishment. Our relationship with Christ is not dependant upon our clinging on to the vine. It exists because we have been grafted on to the vine. Christ supports us, not the other way around.
The Covenant Prayer
What has any of this got to do with the Covenant Prayer?
Well, I think it’s important for us to understand that we are making this prayer under the New Covenant.
We are not ‘making a decision to have a relationship with God’ in this prayer; we are not chasing God down the street and saying ‘Hello! I’ve decided that I want to have a relationship with you now.’ Doing this would be trying to have a relationship under the Old Covenant.
We’d be acting as if we were in a position to keep all these promises under our own strength – as if we were Harry, who could keep his tenancy agreement.
What we are doing when we pray the Covenant Prayer is acknowledging that our relationship with God already exists and that we are aware we had nothing to do with bringing it about. We’re acknowledging that we are like baby Emma: living in a relationship with God because he was gracious enough to adopt us and to offer us a permanent tenancy with him.
When we pray, ‘I am no longer my own but yours’ we’re not saying ‘Once I belonged to myself but now I’ve decided to turn myself over to you.’ We are acknowledging that we understand that we’ve always belonged to God in the first place.
When we pray the Covenant prayer, we don’t give God the gift of ourselves. When we pray the Covenant prayer, we say that we understand that we’ve always belonged to God, that whether we are troubled or at peace, that whether we have work to do or no work to do, that we understand that the Covenant is there and always will be.
As the introduction to the prayer tells us, we are simply accepting our place within a Covenant which already exists because God himself brought it into being.
Preparation for the Prayer
In a few minutes, I will invite those of us who wish to do so to make the covenant prayer.
I invite you now to turn to page 7 in your pink books where the text of the covenant prayer can be found. We will have a few moments of silence to give us all an opportunity to read this prayer and for each of us to consider the manner in which we might make it. As you read, I invite you to read the prayer as if the prayer were God making a promise to you – because that’s what he’s already done.
May the grace of the Triune God be with us all in our consideration. Amen
(1) Credit for the illustration: Rev Andrew Sails, Mint Methodist Church, Exeter, http://www.themint.org.uk/z146.htm
Sunday 23 December 2007 - When We Cannot Save Ourselves
This sermon is for the 4th Sunday of Advent. It's based on the following texts: Isaiah 7:10-17 and Matthew 1:18-25
===
Introduction
Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent and this season of repentance and preparation for the birth of Christ is drawing to a close. This year is another year when Christmas day follows on quite quickly from the last Sunday in Advent and so, rather than 4 or even 6 days of final preparation, we plunge headlong from the last week of Advent into Christmas day without a lot of time to think.
The American theologian Walter Brueggemann had this to say about Advent: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
In today’s Old and New Testament readings, we hear stories of two people who probably felt very much under siege. One, quite literally.
King Ahaz
The first person was King Ahaz of the Kingdom of Judah. The holy city of Jerusalem was part of the kingdom of Judah and Judah was threatened by her enemies: the Kingdom of Israel was one of these enemies and Syria was another.
The King was worried that his country would be attacked at any moment and he wanted to make an alliance with the kingdom of Assyria in order to strengthen his strategic position. But the prophet Isaiah comes to the king and tells him, basically, ‘Don’t worry, God will protect Jerusalem and, just so you can be sure this is the hand of God, ask for a sign and it will be granted to you.’
Ahaz declines to ask God for a sign and Isaiah tells him, then God will give you this sign anyway: a young woman is going to have a son and she will name him Immanuel – God with Us. Before this boy is about two years old, the age when children begin to have a sense of self, all of your enemies will have ceased to be of any threat.
Basically, Isaiah says to king Ahaz, don’t try to take the matter into your own hands, simply trust in the Lord and within the next two to three years, you will see that your kingdom has remained intact.
I don’t know if they had the saying then, but I imagine king Ahaz might very well have been thinking ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’. In fact, this may very well have been why he declined to ask for a sign: because he wanted to take matters into his own hands. King Ahaz was not known for being the most pious of Judah’s kings – it was he who introduced the worship of the Baal into the kingdom. King Ahaz probably preferred to take matters into his own hands rather than to trust in God to save his kingdom. He didn’t seem to think that there was much use in trying to find God’s will in his situation; he wanted to save himself.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Joseph of Nazareth
And then, in this morning’s Gospel reading, we have Joseph. Matthew chooses to tell the story of Jesus’ identity and ancestry by having the angel announcing the conception of Jesus to Joseph rather than to Mary. And the angel tells Joseph not to be afraid.
I imagine that Joseph must have been quite afraid actually, and the passage gives us some indication of his dilemma. We are told that Joseph is a man who keeps the Jewish law – he is a ‘righteous’ man. And the law as set out in Deuteronomy is that a betrothed woman who becomes pregnant by another man is to be stoned at the city gate.
The passage also gives us strong evidence that Mary’s stoning would not be acceptable to Joseph, but we can be certain that the requirement to keep the law would have weighed heavily upon him. It was certainly a huge dilemma: the requirement of the law on one hand and the compassion of a good man on the other hand. Which option should Joseph choose? If ever there was a situation where a person could not save themselves, this must be a prime example.
And at the point when it appears that there is no way out of this predicament, an angel of God appears to him and presents him with an utterly preposterous story: That Mary has not been unfaithful and that the baby she is carrying is going to be both Saviour and God With Us – Jesus and Immanuel.
And somehow, by the time the angel leaves, Joseph is at peace and he is ready to stand by Mary as her husband. Joseph was ready. His heart was open and, unlike Ahaz, he was alert to be able to see God working in a new way.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Are we Ready?
So the question for this morning is: Are we ready? Are we ready for the saving one? Are we alert to God’s presence all around us? Do we understand that Immanuel, God with Us, is present in our lives even when we may be having trouble perceiving him?
The thing that I find slightly frustrating about the story of the annunciation to Joseph is that he apparently goes from a fairly intense wilderness experience to complete peace in God’s purposes in just eight short verses. If you take the story at a very literal level, Joseph lays down to bed one night wracked with emotional pain and, by dawn, he is at peace with the very difficult task that God has given him to do.
Most of the time, real life is not that way at all and, coming to a place of peace with the events of our lives is often extremely difficult and takes a lot more than just a few hours between dusk and dawn. When circumstances are difficult for us or for those we love, it can be hard to see God in it and don’t we sometimes wish that an angel would appear and say ‘Fear not’ and make all our anxieties go away?
But this story isn’t meant to be a novel and it’s not meant to spin out the situation so that readers enter into Joseph’s anxiety and struggle in real time. This story is meant to be a narrative about who God is and what his purposes are for humanity and for his creation.
God himself will enter into the world and so the child is to be named Immanuel, God with Us. Secondly, the child will be the saviour of his people and so he will be named Yesuha – Joshua or Jesus. The child’s ancestry will be both human and divine.
Matthew spends the first part of Chapter 1 outlining the genealogy of Joseph and Jesus: a genealogy meant to emphasise that God’s purposes for his creation are to be displayed in his covenant relationship with Israel. God’s character and identity are intrinsically bound up with the people of Israel, with human history, and with God’s physical creation. God’s promise to all of humanity is that God is here and his Spirit is with us.
The Good News of Advent
Walter Brueggemann said: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’ This is both a call to preparation and, it’s also a promise.
It is a very real part of the human faith experience that there are times when we find it difficult to perceive God’s presence at all, never mind perceiving him as being present all around us.
Like King Ahaz, we might be tempted to think that there is something that we can do to save ourselves, when in reality there is nothing we can do.
Like Joseph prior to the angel’s visit, we may sometimes find ourselves in a state of fear and anxiety.
The Gospel story this morning is not telling us to ‘snap out of it’ and help ourselves. The Gospel story this morning assures us that God has made a promise for Good with humanity and that God has kept his promise in the birth of his Son.
God is here with us. Immanuel, fully present in our humanity. Salvation is here in the birth of Jesus: Salvation from sin and guilt, Salvation from death and destruction, from poverty, sickness and hunger, from despair and hopelessness.
Whether or not we perceive God’s presence, whether or not we feel God’s presence, God’s promise is there and it has been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In a few minutes, we will come to the Lord’s Table where we remember that Jesus promised to be with us whenever we celebrate this sacrament in remembrance of him. As we remember, we use real, physical things – bread and wine – the common foods of our everyday life.
And we remember that the God of Moses brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and that, in Christ, his covenant with humanity has been fulfilled.
As we remember Jesus’ promise to be with us in the Lord’s supper, I pray that our hearts will also be ready to receive the love of God in Christ as he comes to us in the birth of the baby Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man. Amen
===
Introduction
Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent and this season of repentance and preparation for the birth of Christ is drawing to a close. This year is another year when Christmas day follows on quite quickly from the last Sunday in Advent and so, rather than 4 or even 6 days of final preparation, we plunge headlong from the last week of Advent into Christmas day without a lot of time to think.
The American theologian Walter Brueggemann had this to say about Advent: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
In today’s Old and New Testament readings, we hear stories of two people who probably felt very much under siege. One, quite literally.
King Ahaz
The first person was King Ahaz of the Kingdom of Judah. The holy city of Jerusalem was part of the kingdom of Judah and Judah was threatened by her enemies: the Kingdom of Israel was one of these enemies and Syria was another.
The King was worried that his country would be attacked at any moment and he wanted to make an alliance with the kingdom of Assyria in order to strengthen his strategic position. But the prophet Isaiah comes to the king and tells him, basically, ‘Don’t worry, God will protect Jerusalem and, just so you can be sure this is the hand of God, ask for a sign and it will be granted to you.’
Ahaz declines to ask God for a sign and Isaiah tells him, then God will give you this sign anyway: a young woman is going to have a son and she will name him Immanuel – God with Us. Before this boy is about two years old, the age when children begin to have a sense of self, all of your enemies will have ceased to be of any threat.
Basically, Isaiah says to king Ahaz, don’t try to take the matter into your own hands, simply trust in the Lord and within the next two to three years, you will see that your kingdom has remained intact.
I don’t know if they had the saying then, but I imagine king Ahaz might very well have been thinking ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’. In fact, this may very well have been why he declined to ask for a sign: because he wanted to take matters into his own hands. King Ahaz was not known for being the most pious of Judah’s kings – it was he who introduced the worship of the Baal into the kingdom. King Ahaz probably preferred to take matters into his own hands rather than to trust in God to save his kingdom. He didn’t seem to think that there was much use in trying to find God’s will in his situation; he wanted to save himself.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Joseph of Nazareth
And then, in this morning’s Gospel reading, we have Joseph. Matthew chooses to tell the story of Jesus’ identity and ancestry by having the angel announcing the conception of Jesus to Joseph rather than to Mary. And the angel tells Joseph not to be afraid.
I imagine that Joseph must have been quite afraid actually, and the passage gives us some indication of his dilemma. We are told that Joseph is a man who keeps the Jewish law – he is a ‘righteous’ man. And the law as set out in Deuteronomy is that a betrothed woman who becomes pregnant by another man is to be stoned at the city gate.
The passage also gives us strong evidence that Mary’s stoning would not be acceptable to Joseph, but we can be certain that the requirement to keep the law would have weighed heavily upon him. It was certainly a huge dilemma: the requirement of the law on one hand and the compassion of a good man on the other hand. Which option should Joseph choose? If ever there was a situation where a person could not save themselves, this must be a prime example.
And at the point when it appears that there is no way out of this predicament, an angel of God appears to him and presents him with an utterly preposterous story: That Mary has not been unfaithful and that the baby she is carrying is going to be both Saviour and God With Us – Jesus and Immanuel.
And somehow, by the time the angel leaves, Joseph is at peace and he is ready to stand by Mary as her husband. Joseph was ready. His heart was open and, unlike Ahaz, he was alert to be able to see God working in a new way.
‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’
Are we Ready?
So the question for this morning is: Are we ready? Are we ready for the saving one? Are we alert to God’s presence all around us? Do we understand that Immanuel, God with Us, is present in our lives even when we may be having trouble perceiving him?
The thing that I find slightly frustrating about the story of the annunciation to Joseph is that he apparently goes from a fairly intense wilderness experience to complete peace in God’s purposes in just eight short verses. If you take the story at a very literal level, Joseph lays down to bed one night wracked with emotional pain and, by dawn, he is at peace with the very difficult task that God has given him to do.
Most of the time, real life is not that way at all and, coming to a place of peace with the events of our lives is often extremely difficult and takes a lot more than just a few hours between dusk and dawn. When circumstances are difficult for us or for those we love, it can be hard to see God in it and don’t we sometimes wish that an angel would appear and say ‘Fear not’ and make all our anxieties go away?
But this story isn’t meant to be a novel and it’s not meant to spin out the situation so that readers enter into Joseph’s anxiety and struggle in real time. This story is meant to be a narrative about who God is and what his purposes are for humanity and for his creation.
God himself will enter into the world and so the child is to be named Immanuel, God with Us. Secondly, the child will be the saviour of his people and so he will be named Yesuha – Joshua or Jesus. The child’s ancestry will be both human and divine.
Matthew spends the first part of Chapter 1 outlining the genealogy of Joseph and Jesus: a genealogy meant to emphasise that God’s purposes for his creation are to be displayed in his covenant relationship with Israel. God’s character and identity are intrinsically bound up with the people of Israel, with human history, and with God’s physical creation. God’s promise to all of humanity is that God is here and his Spirit is with us.
The Good News of Advent
Walter Brueggemann said: ‘Advent is being ready for the saving one who will come when we cannot save ourselves.’ This is both a call to preparation and, it’s also a promise.
It is a very real part of the human faith experience that there are times when we find it difficult to perceive God’s presence at all, never mind perceiving him as being present all around us.
Like King Ahaz, we might be tempted to think that there is something that we can do to save ourselves, when in reality there is nothing we can do.
Like Joseph prior to the angel’s visit, we may sometimes find ourselves in a state of fear and anxiety.
The Gospel story this morning is not telling us to ‘snap out of it’ and help ourselves. The Gospel story this morning assures us that God has made a promise for Good with humanity and that God has kept his promise in the birth of his Son.
God is here with us. Immanuel, fully present in our humanity. Salvation is here in the birth of Jesus: Salvation from sin and guilt, Salvation from death and destruction, from poverty, sickness and hunger, from despair and hopelessness.
Whether or not we perceive God’s presence, whether or not we feel God’s presence, God’s promise is there and it has been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In a few minutes, we will come to the Lord’s Table where we remember that Jesus promised to be with us whenever we celebrate this sacrament in remembrance of him. As we remember, we use real, physical things – bread and wine – the common foods of our everyday life.
And we remember that the God of Moses brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and that, in Christ, his covenant with humanity has been fulfilled.
As we remember Jesus’ promise to be with us in the Lord’s supper, I pray that our hearts will also be ready to receive the love of God in Christ as he comes to us in the birth of the baby Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man. Amen
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Sunday 2 December 2007 - Swords into Ploughshares
The texts for this sermon are: Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44
Introduction
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. So reads the second half of Isaiah 2: verse 3.
I suppose it’s the sort of thing we expect to hear from a prophet. And, given that this first Sunday in Advent is devoted to The Prophets, we probably don’t find this verse terribly surprising at first glance.
But what is surprising about this morning’s reading from Isaiah is the fact that much of Isaiah’s prophecy is directed toward calling Jerusalem to repentance. Jerusalem, in Isaiah’s day, is an unending problem from God’s point of view. Jerusalem is a symbol of self-sufficiency and a national, self-serving religion. It is a symbol of country’s focus of faith in the nation rather than faith in God.
Yet despite all these problems, Isaiah is given to see a picture of a new Jerusalem where God resides and where people of every nation acknowledge God as their Lord. In the new Jerusalem which Isaiah has seen, it is God whose judgement and arbitration of all nations has resulted in international peace. And is because of the rule of God that nations are able to exchange weapons for tools of peace.
In this morning’s Gospel reading, we are told that, as we look forward to the coming of the Lord, we are to keep awake and to keep ready. Our waiting and our readiness are not to be passive things, but they are to be active things.
So what does any of this mean for us? And how does it affect our lives today?
Well, the Gospel message is not all about pie in the sky by-and-by. I think perhaps that we are told about the coming Kingdom of God not so much to provide us with information as with motivation.
Motivation
It can be hard to stay motivated, however.
Perhaps our difficulty in staying motivated is a case of remembering how things were in the past in church and wishing that they could be that way again. Or perhaps it’s a case of feeling that decency is society is deteriorating in comparison with the way it was in our youth.
We might sit here and think ‘Well, it’s easy for Isaiah to talk about the coming reign of God when swords will be turned to ploughshares, because he lived in a time when people feared God. Isaiah didn’t have to face the problems that we have today.’ Well, listen to Isaiah just one chapter later (Isaiah 3:5): The people will be oppressed, everyone by another and everyone by a neighbour; the youth shall be insolent to the elder, and the base to the honourable.
That hardly sounds like The Good Old Days. And it hardly sounds like Isaiah doesn’t have a clue about the sort of issues that we are facing today. And yet, even in the middle of all this, Isaiah claims to have seen a vision of a world at peace. He claims to have seen a vision of people labouring for the production of food rather than for the production of weapons of war.
How can we catch a glimpse of that in a world where there is new unrest in the Philippines, in Pakistan and in Burma? Not to mention old unrest in Korea, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and the Holy Land? How can we catch a vision of a world turned toward the purposes of God in a society where the church ain’t what it used to be?
How can we keep our eyes on this New Jerusalem – on the purposes of God – without losing our motivation? How can we see God’s vision if it doesn’t necessarily look like what we’re expecting?
Guns into Sewing Machines
The image of ‘swords into ploughshares’ is a powerful one and one Christian charity in Mozambique used this idea in a very literal way when the decades-long civil war in that country ended. The charity, the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM), was sponsored by Christian Aid and they recount the story of a man named Sousa Manuel Goao.
Senhor Goao was kidnapped at gunpoint by rebel forces in 1981 when he was 23 years old. He was forced to march 150 miles bare-footed to a training camp near the South African border. The prisoners were barefooted to prevent them running away but anyone who did attempt to escape was shot in front of the other prisoners. In order to survive, the rebels had to hunt wild animals, raid farms or attack civilians.
The war lasted 18 years and ended in 1992 but the United Nations forces which were meant to disarm both sides failed to find most of the weapons in the country, as most of them had been hidden and people were afraid of being reported to the government. But later in the decade, CCM came up with the idea of collecting weapons themselves. In 2001, Senhor Goao handed over his guns to CCM and in return, he received three sewing machines.
CCM is a small organisation, and it was working with a couple of old trucks that keep breaking down – but it nonetheless managed to collect more than 100,000 guns, hand grenades and rocket launchers. It was far more successful than the official agencies because former rebels feared being prosecuted by the government.
CCM provided former soldiers with ploughs, bicycles and sewing machines and these tools made the difference between life and death for many of the people who had nothing. When CCM wondered what it was going to do with all the weapons, it came upon the idea of disarming them, cutting them up, and giving the metal to local artists who turned them into sculptures. They even made chairs and coffee tables out of cut-up Kalashnikovs.
Mozambican Bishop Dinis Sengulane said the following about the CCM project: ”I say to people that sleeping with a gun in your bedroom is like sleeping with a snake: one day it will turn round and bite you. We tell people we are not disarming you. We are transforming your guns into ploughshares, so you can cultivate your land and get your daily bread. We are transforming them into sewing machines so you can make clothes. The idea is to transform the instruments of death and destruction into instruments of peace and of production and cooperation with others.”
Conclusion: Keep the Faith
This is one very powerful – and almost literal example – of turning swords into ploughshares.
The call from the Prophets on this first Sunday in Advent is a call to keep the faith. It’s a call to keep faith in God and in his purposes for the New Jerusalem when swords will be turned to ploughshares and where Christ will reign as the Prince of Peace. And it’s a call to keep this faith even when we are tempted to think that faith is not possible.
Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God grows from small mustard seeds. This morning, we have heard some examples of how small seeds can grow. Sometimes we have the satisfaction of seeing our seeds grow into healthy plants. Sometimes we don’t even have the opportunity to see them germinate.
But we are nonetheless called as Children of God to keep on planting the seeds. If we remain alert and on watch, we will find our opportunities.
We are told about what is to come not to provide us with information, but with motivation. If we keep our eye on the prophets’ vision of the New Jerusalem, our motivation will remain strong.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, I pray that each of us can stay focused on the image of God’s Kingdom. And I pray that we may each be empowered to acts of kindness and mercy and to keep faith in the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amen
Readers of The Church Times will recognise an illustration from John Pridmore's commentary this week. I think Pridmore's commentaries are truly inspirational and I try not to write my sermon before reading them. Long may he continue to write!
====Introduction
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. So reads the second half of Isaiah 2: verse 3.
I suppose it’s the sort of thing we expect to hear from a prophet. And, given that this first Sunday in Advent is devoted to The Prophets, we probably don’t find this verse terribly surprising at first glance.
But what is surprising about this morning’s reading from Isaiah is the fact that much of Isaiah’s prophecy is directed toward calling Jerusalem to repentance. Jerusalem, in Isaiah’s day, is an unending problem from God’s point of view. Jerusalem is a symbol of self-sufficiency and a national, self-serving religion. It is a symbol of country’s focus of faith in the nation rather than faith in God.
Yet despite all these problems, Isaiah is given to see a picture of a new Jerusalem where God resides and where people of every nation acknowledge God as their Lord. In the new Jerusalem which Isaiah has seen, it is God whose judgement and arbitration of all nations has resulted in international peace. And is because of the rule of God that nations are able to exchange weapons for tools of peace.
In this morning’s Gospel reading, we are told that, as we look forward to the coming of the Lord, we are to keep awake and to keep ready. Our waiting and our readiness are not to be passive things, but they are to be active things.
So what does any of this mean for us? And how does it affect our lives today?
Well, the Gospel message is not all about pie in the sky by-and-by. I think perhaps that we are told about the coming Kingdom of God not so much to provide us with information as with motivation.
Motivation
It can be hard to stay motivated, however.
Perhaps our difficulty in staying motivated is a case of remembering how things were in the past in church and wishing that they could be that way again. Or perhaps it’s a case of feeling that decency is society is deteriorating in comparison with the way it was in our youth.
We might sit here and think ‘Well, it’s easy for Isaiah to talk about the coming reign of God when swords will be turned to ploughshares, because he lived in a time when people feared God. Isaiah didn’t have to face the problems that we have today.’ Well, listen to Isaiah just one chapter later (Isaiah 3:5): The people will be oppressed, everyone by another and everyone by a neighbour; the youth shall be insolent to the elder, and the base to the honourable.
That hardly sounds like The Good Old Days. And it hardly sounds like Isaiah doesn’t have a clue about the sort of issues that we are facing today. And yet, even in the middle of all this, Isaiah claims to have seen a vision of a world at peace. He claims to have seen a vision of people labouring for the production of food rather than for the production of weapons of war.
How can we catch a glimpse of that in a world where there is new unrest in the Philippines, in Pakistan and in Burma? Not to mention old unrest in Korea, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and the Holy Land? How can we catch a vision of a world turned toward the purposes of God in a society where the church ain’t what it used to be?
How can we keep our eyes on this New Jerusalem – on the purposes of God – without losing our motivation? How can we see God’s vision if it doesn’t necessarily look like what we’re expecting?
Guns into Sewing Machines
The image of ‘swords into ploughshares’ is a powerful one and one Christian charity in Mozambique used this idea in a very literal way when the decades-long civil war in that country ended. The charity, the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM), was sponsored by Christian Aid and they recount the story of a man named Sousa Manuel Goao.
Senhor Goao was kidnapped at gunpoint by rebel forces in 1981 when he was 23 years old. He was forced to march 150 miles bare-footed to a training camp near the South African border. The prisoners were barefooted to prevent them running away but anyone who did attempt to escape was shot in front of the other prisoners. In order to survive, the rebels had to hunt wild animals, raid farms or attack civilians.
The war lasted 18 years and ended in 1992 but the United Nations forces which were meant to disarm both sides failed to find most of the weapons in the country, as most of them had been hidden and people were afraid of being reported to the government. But later in the decade, CCM came up with the idea of collecting weapons themselves. In 2001, Senhor Goao handed over his guns to CCM and in return, he received three sewing machines.
CCM is a small organisation, and it was working with a couple of old trucks that keep breaking down – but it nonetheless managed to collect more than 100,000 guns, hand grenades and rocket launchers. It was far more successful than the official agencies because former rebels feared being prosecuted by the government.
CCM provided former soldiers with ploughs, bicycles and sewing machines and these tools made the difference between life and death for many of the people who had nothing. When CCM wondered what it was going to do with all the weapons, it came upon the idea of disarming them, cutting them up, and giving the metal to local artists who turned them into sculptures. They even made chairs and coffee tables out of cut-up Kalashnikovs.
Mozambican Bishop Dinis Sengulane said the following about the CCM project: ”I say to people that sleeping with a gun in your bedroom is like sleeping with a snake: one day it will turn round and bite you. We tell people we are not disarming you. We are transforming your guns into ploughshares, so you can cultivate your land and get your daily bread. We are transforming them into sewing machines so you can make clothes. The idea is to transform the instruments of death and destruction into instruments of peace and of production and cooperation with others.”
Conclusion: Keep the Faith
This is one very powerful – and almost literal example – of turning swords into ploughshares.
The call from the Prophets on this first Sunday in Advent is a call to keep the faith. It’s a call to keep faith in God and in his purposes for the New Jerusalem when swords will be turned to ploughshares and where Christ will reign as the Prince of Peace. And it’s a call to keep this faith even when we are tempted to think that faith is not possible.
Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God grows from small mustard seeds. This morning, we have heard some examples of how small seeds can grow. Sometimes we have the satisfaction of seeing our seeds grow into healthy plants. Sometimes we don’t even have the opportunity to see them germinate.
But we are nonetheless called as Children of God to keep on planting the seeds. If we remain alert and on watch, we will find our opportunities.
We are told about what is to come not to provide us with information, but with motivation. If we keep our eye on the prophets’ vision of the New Jerusalem, our motivation will remain strong.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, I pray that each of us can stay focused on the image of God’s Kingdom. And I pray that we may each be empowered to acts of kindness and mercy and to keep faith in the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amen
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