This is a thematic sermon based loosely around the texts of Ephesians 1:15-23 and Matthew 25:31-46.
The Gospel text deals with the 'separation of the sheep and the goats'. A number of commentaries suggested that this parable is not about the judgement of Christian believers or about the judgement of Jewish people, but about the judgement of 'the people' - those outside both the Jewish and Christian faith (or, as some suggest, those who have never heard the Gospel message). In any event, this parable should give us some pause about thinking that we can ourselves judge who will be separated out of God's Kingdom.
This is a rather gentle sermon. Some will think it's not hard-hitting enough given the Gospel reading. This particular congregation has been through a lot of loss recently, hence the approach that I've taken here. Ultimately, the Kingship of Christ and the reign of the fullness of the Kingdom of God will be Good News.
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Seize the Day
Carpe Diem. The English translation of this Latin phrase is 'Seize the Day'. And my bet is that most people who know the meaning of this phrase probably know it not because they learnt Latin in school but rather because they are familiar with the film Dead Poets' Society starring Robin Williams.
For those of you who are not familiar with the film, Williams plays one of the central characters: a maverick English teacher named Mr. Keating, teaching in an elite US boys' boarding school in the 1950s. One of Mr. Keating's great personal passions is poetry. But I think that it would be fair to also say that his absolute central personal passion is this phrase 'Carpe Diem' - 'seize the day'.
The film portrays Mr. Keating as a man whose central mission is to help each one of the boys to think for himself and to discover his own unique talents and abilities. And so the scene is set in the film for the inevitable tragedy that is to follow when these boys start thinking for themselves rather than following the paths that their parents have laid out for them and which they expect the boys to follow unquestioningly.
Because once you learn what your passion is, you can never unlearn it.
Paul's Gospel / My Gospel
The Apostle Paul certainly knew what his passion was: the grace and love of God as disclosed in the life and death of Jesus Christ. Once a Jewish Pharisee passionate about God's unswerving love for the Jewish people, Paul's dramatic conversion to Jesus Christ transformed him in a person who became passionate in his conviction that God's unswerving love is for all people regardless of race, gender, or social status.
We might find it difficult to understand Paul's obsession with the Gospel, but imagine growing up being taught that you have the most fantastic treasure on earth because of the circumstances of your birth only to be told later by God himself that, actually, every single person on earth has access to the same great treasure.
Perhaps if we think of the Gospel message - God's Good News - as a treasure we can get some sense of Paul's enthusiasm and why he felt that he literally had to go to the ends of the known earth to tell everyone.
Because once you learn the Good News, you can never unlearn it.
Now, not everyone is as privileged as Paul was to have such a dramatic personal insight into the Gospel.
But I'd like to float the idea this morning that many of us will have our own ideas about what God's good news is - about what the Gospel message is. Or probably more accurately, we will all have our own different insights into the One Gospel.
For Paul, his insight seems to have been something like 'No matter who you are, where you come from, or what your lot in life, God loves you.' For Jesus, I think it was something like 'God is our Loving Father'.
For me, my version of God's Good News is something like 'Where love is, there God is'. For a friend of mine, his version of God's Good News is 'God believes in you'.
Other versions of the Good News that I've heard people talk and preach about are: 'God loves each of us as unique individuals'; 'There is no sin that is too big to forgive'; 'Never stop hoping'; and what I call the 'Footprints in the Sand' gospel: the idea that God is with us in the trials and difficulties of life.
These are all just a few examples of what I'm calling 'personal gospels'.
Each of us has our own unique Good News about God, our 'personal gospels' because we are all different. Taken together, all these billions of unique insights into God's Good News can't even begin to express the totality of who God is. But nonetheless, we try to express the entirety of God's being and his goodness. I think we try because we are human and it's human to want to communicate and share with other human beings.
Christ the King
Today is the celebration of the festival of Christ the King.
It is also the last Sunday in the church year and the Sunday when the Church tries to express in some way or another the inexpressible perfection of God and the hope that he offers to us in Christ.
And so the Church uses the ancient images of the arrival of a perfect Kingdom and a perfect ruler. And we use the images of fair-play and justice for all: images of the poor being fed, the ill being healed, and those who have been unfairly imprisoned being at last treated fairly. And we dream that those who exploit the vulnerable and take advantage of weak will be banished from God's new reality and that justice and peace will reign. We anticipate a future where everyone will be able to 'Seize the Day' - especially those who don't have that opportunity at present because of their life circumstances.
'Christ the King' is a symbol, an image, a human attempt to express something that is essentially inexpressible: God's love, justice and goodness. As human beings, we will never fully understand these things in this life, but we can share our personal good news - our personal insights into God - with each other.
So this is my challenge to us this morning: that we share our personal gospels with each other. Not as an exercise in converting the other person to my way of thinking, but rather as an exercise in me hearing the other person's Good News. Because together, all our personal gospels form a more complete picture of who God is and they help us each to learn and grow. These are examples of treasures that we can share with each other and grow as a Christian community in the process.
Because once you learn more about the Good News, you can never unlearn it.
Conclusion
My prayer this morning for all of us comes from Ephesians: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him, so that, with the eyes of our heart enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. Amen
Showing posts with label Matthew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday 16 November 2008 - No Buried Treasure
This sermon is based on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30
Introduction
For the last two Sundays, the subjects of our Epistle and Gospel readings have been the Second Coming of Christ (and the reign of the Kingdom of God) and our place as believers in that Kingdom (the resurrection life) Today is no exception as the assigned Scripture readings continue to look at these subjects from yet another angle.
As I said last week, Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians is an answer to the concerns of the church at Thessalonica - 'When Christ returns to earth in our lifetime and the Kingdom of God comes, what is going to happen to our brothers and sisters in Christ who have already died?' And Paul's answer to them (he's still expecting Christ to return in his generation) is 'Don't worry, they will not be second class citizens in God's Kingdom but they will also participate fully in the Kingdom life'.
The Gospel as Light of the World
Today's reading from Thessalonians is part of Paul's closing of the letter. And Paul takes the opportunity to remind them that the coming of God's Kingdom has already begun and that they are a part of it. And he uses the images of darkness and light to make his point. In 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 (NIV) he writes: 'But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.'
I suppose that many of the Thessalonians and many people in society today might want to respond incredulously 'How on earth can anyone claim that the Kingdom of God has already begun? Are you blind to all the evil that is going on in the world? Blind to the Roman occupation? Blind to the suffering in the Congo? Blind to people in Gaza who are starving? Blind to the current economic crisis?'
And I think that, theologically, the church's answer is 'No we are not blind to evil and injustice, but we also have hope for the future that God's certain intention is that evil and injustice will end and that they will be replaced by his Kingdom.' We believe that God has promised that as surely as the sunrise follows the nighttime, that evil and injustice will most certainly end. Paul makes this point a number of times in his first letter to the Thessalonians and, now at the end of his letter, he reminds us once again of the Church's glorious hope: The Gospel of Christ is the light of the world and we have been entrusted with that light.
The Gospel as a Great Treasure
In today's reading from Matthew, we have yet another image of the the Gospel message: the image of a great treasure.
How great a treasure is the Gospel? Well, it's like fifteen years' wages for a labourer (one talent). And that's just for starters because, although one of the servants in the story was given 15 years' wages, another servant was given 30 years' wages and still another 75 years'. The message of the Gospel is a huge treasure! As a child might say, the Gospel is as wonderful as a hundred million gazaillon years' wages.
And what does God want us to do with that treasure? God wants this treasure to be invested, he wants the talents to be spread around and wants the light to make the whole world glow But instead of spreading God's light all over the world, the church is often times guilty of hoarding it for ourselves, like a treasure buried for safekeeping.
Don't Bury Your Treasure
So if we are share our treasure better, what might this mean for church-going Christians at a practical level?
First of all, you might be glad to hear that I'm not trying to say that I think we should be out knocking on doors asking people if they've accepted Jesus into their hearts. Personally speaking, I actually think that this form of witnessing comes under the category of the third servant: it's an activity that meets our needs rather than the needs of others. As someone put it, it comes under the category of 'Because I need to tell you this, therefore you need to hear it.' Which is exactly the sort thing that this parable is warning against, I think.
But hold on to your pews because this parable is certainly not meant to make us comfortable or complacent. Rather this parable is a call to believing that the Kingdom of God will come on earth as it is in heaven not by things staying the same but rather by things changing. If the church doing things the way we've always done them were the key to the Kingdom of God, then the Kingdom would have come along time ago.
Now, I have to confess that I don't have any easy answers at a practical level about how to magically turn 10 portions of the Gospel into a great harvest. But I do have a few observations from the text.
First of all, the third servant was following the traditions and customs of his time: valuable treasures were to be buried. It was actually the first and second servants who we acting in a way that the prevailing culture would have called irresponsible.
The third servant was behaving as if God was that 'better safe than sorry' God who I talk about sometimes: He thought that God's main demands on his disciples is that we shouldn't break rules. When, in fact, God's main concern is that we spread his treasures about with abandon.
Church Idols?
But worse than that, the third servant seems to think that the religious customs of his time are not human-made customs, but that they actually are the will of God. I think that perhaps this is a lesson to the church: 'Which of our human customs do we confuse with God's calling? Which of our human customs do we idolise?
I honestly don't think that God cares if we have pews or chairs (although the Methodist Property office certainly does!) I don't think that God cares if we sing traditional hymns or Matt Redman worship songs. I don't think that God even cares if we stop worshipping on Sunday mornings and have a meal and a worship mid-week instead.
Thinking about some of these changes might make us nervous but I think this parable is asking us to stop and consider what it is that we might be doing simply as human custom that hinders the working of the Holy Spirit in us to spread the treasure of the Gospel.
Before I end, I want to say that I don't have a hidden agenda and I'm not to drop a bombshell on you. I'm simply trying to reflect on this passage.
This year, our circuit did a circuit review and, along with other churches in the circuit, we've seen the positive benefits of that exercise. I think it's important that we don't think of review and change as a one-off but rather as something that we must do on an on-going basis as part of our discipleship.
But in the middle of all this remains God's Good News: the coming of the Kingdom has begun and the Kingdom will reign on earth as it does in heaven. If the early church could profess this Good News whilst living in the middle of an occupation army, then we too can profess it in our own circumstances. Our God is a God of freedom and not of fear. His Spirit is there to guide us through the challenge of change. Spirit-led change is an adventure and not a threat.
My prayer this morning is that we will always continue on a journey of trying to discern how we can share the Gospel in a way that serves the needs of others rather than in a way that serves the needs of the Church. And I also pray that we can live joyfully in the freedom of the Holy Spirit so that we are not afraid of change. Amen
Introduction
For the last two Sundays, the subjects of our Epistle and Gospel readings have been the Second Coming of Christ (and the reign of the Kingdom of God) and our place as believers in that Kingdom (the resurrection life) Today is no exception as the assigned Scripture readings continue to look at these subjects from yet another angle.
As I said last week, Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians is an answer to the concerns of the church at Thessalonica - 'When Christ returns to earth in our lifetime and the Kingdom of God comes, what is going to happen to our brothers and sisters in Christ who have already died?' And Paul's answer to them (he's still expecting Christ to return in his generation) is 'Don't worry, they will not be second class citizens in God's Kingdom but they will also participate fully in the Kingdom life'.
The Gospel as Light of the World
Today's reading from Thessalonians is part of Paul's closing of the letter. And Paul takes the opportunity to remind them that the coming of God's Kingdom has already begun and that they are a part of it. And he uses the images of darkness and light to make his point. In 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 (NIV) he writes: 'But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.'
I suppose that many of the Thessalonians and many people in society today might want to respond incredulously 'How on earth can anyone claim that the Kingdom of God has already begun? Are you blind to all the evil that is going on in the world? Blind to the Roman occupation? Blind to the suffering in the Congo? Blind to people in Gaza who are starving? Blind to the current economic crisis?'
And I think that, theologically, the church's answer is 'No we are not blind to evil and injustice, but we also have hope for the future that God's certain intention is that evil and injustice will end and that they will be replaced by his Kingdom.' We believe that God has promised that as surely as the sunrise follows the nighttime, that evil and injustice will most certainly end. Paul makes this point a number of times in his first letter to the Thessalonians and, now at the end of his letter, he reminds us once again of the Church's glorious hope: The Gospel of Christ is the light of the world and we have been entrusted with that light.
The Gospel as a Great Treasure
In today's reading from Matthew, we have yet another image of the the Gospel message: the image of a great treasure.
How great a treasure is the Gospel? Well, it's like fifteen years' wages for a labourer (one talent). And that's just for starters because, although one of the servants in the story was given 15 years' wages, another servant was given 30 years' wages and still another 75 years'. The message of the Gospel is a huge treasure! As a child might say, the Gospel is as wonderful as a hundred million gazaillon years' wages.
And what does God want us to do with that treasure? God wants this treasure to be invested, he wants the talents to be spread around and wants the light to make the whole world glow But instead of spreading God's light all over the world, the church is often times guilty of hoarding it for ourselves, like a treasure buried for safekeeping.
Don't Bury Your Treasure
So if we are share our treasure better, what might this mean for church-going Christians at a practical level?
First of all, you might be glad to hear that I'm not trying to say that I think we should be out knocking on doors asking people if they've accepted Jesus into their hearts. Personally speaking, I actually think that this form of witnessing comes under the category of the third servant: it's an activity that meets our needs rather than the needs of others. As someone put it, it comes under the category of 'Because I need to tell you this, therefore you need to hear it.' Which is exactly the sort thing that this parable is warning against, I think.
But hold on to your pews because this parable is certainly not meant to make us comfortable or complacent. Rather this parable is a call to believing that the Kingdom of God will come on earth as it is in heaven not by things staying the same but rather by things changing. If the church doing things the way we've always done them were the key to the Kingdom of God, then the Kingdom would have come along time ago.
Now, I have to confess that I don't have any easy answers at a practical level about how to magically turn 10 portions of the Gospel into a great harvest. But I do have a few observations from the text.
First of all, the third servant was following the traditions and customs of his time: valuable treasures were to be buried. It was actually the first and second servants who we acting in a way that the prevailing culture would have called irresponsible.
The third servant was behaving as if God was that 'better safe than sorry' God who I talk about sometimes: He thought that God's main demands on his disciples is that we shouldn't break rules. When, in fact, God's main concern is that we spread his treasures about with abandon.
Church Idols?
But worse than that, the third servant seems to think that the religious customs of his time are not human-made customs, but that they actually are the will of God. I think that perhaps this is a lesson to the church: 'Which of our human customs do we confuse with God's calling? Which of our human customs do we idolise?
I honestly don't think that God cares if we have pews or chairs (although the Methodist Property office certainly does!) I don't think that God cares if we sing traditional hymns or Matt Redman worship songs. I don't think that God even cares if we stop worshipping on Sunday mornings and have a meal and a worship mid-week instead.
Thinking about some of these changes might make us nervous but I think this parable is asking us to stop and consider what it is that we might be doing simply as human custom that hinders the working of the Holy Spirit in us to spread the treasure of the Gospel.
Before I end, I want to say that I don't have a hidden agenda and I'm not to drop a bombshell on you. I'm simply trying to reflect on this passage.
This year, our circuit did a circuit review and, along with other churches in the circuit, we've seen the positive benefits of that exercise. I think it's important that we don't think of review and change as a one-off but rather as something that we must do on an on-going basis as part of our discipleship.
But in the middle of all this remains God's Good News: the coming of the Kingdom has begun and the Kingdom will reign on earth as it does in heaven. If the early church could profess this Good News whilst living in the middle of an occupation army, then we too can profess it in our own circumstances. Our God is a God of freedom and not of fear. His Spirit is there to guide us through the challenge of change. Spirit-led change is an adventure and not a threat.
My prayer this morning is that we will always continue on a journey of trying to discern how we can share the Gospel in a way that serves the needs of others rather than in a way that serves the needs of the Church. And I also pray that we can live joyfully in the freedom of the Holy Spirit so that we are not afraid of change. Amen
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday 26 October 2008 - Love & the Great Commandment
The text for this sermon is Matthew 22:34-46
Introduction
In 2005, Channel 4 decided that it was going to conduct a nationwide poll among the British people to come up with a new set of Ten Commandments. The thinking was that the original ten commandments are somewhat out of date and that a new set might be more relevant for the 21st century. If Christianity (and Judaism) is no longer considered relevant by enlightened, modern people, what sort of moral code doe the British public feel speaks to our lives in post-Christian Britain?
Interestingly, the British public came up with 20 new commandments. And if you're ever tempted to accuse preachers of being long-winded, do try to remember the fact that it was the general public who felt that ten commandments weren't enough.)
Here are the 'new' commandments which speak to the British public over and above the outmoded moral requirements of Christianity:
1) Treat others as you would have them treat you.
2) Be honest
3) Don't kill
4) Look after the vulnerable
5) Respect your mother and father
6) Enjoy life
7) Nothing in excess
8) Be true to your own God
9) Be true to yourself
10) Protect your family
11) Look after your health
12) Try your best at all times
13) Don't commit adultery
14) Live within your means
15) Appreciate what you have
16) Never be violent
17) Protect the environment
18) Protect and nurture children
19) Take responsibility for your own actions
20) Don't steal
Love is the Commandment
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus answers the Pharisees' question 'What is the Greatest Commandment' with the formula from Deuteronomy: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself. These two commandments - often called The Great Commandment - are at the very core of the Christian faith and they are at the core of our value system.
I also find it interesting that these two commandments seem to appear in our new, secular commandments - the ones that the public claims actually have relevance to our daily life here and now.
And I find it extremely interesting that 'treat others as you would have them treat you' was thought to be the number one 'new commandment' by the British public.
In some form or another, most of the world's major religions mention this principle - The Golden Rule - as being central to their beliefs. Many forms of paganism, for example, believe that the good you do to others will return to you in like measure but that if you do evil to another human being, seven times the evil you have done to them will come back to you.
A Christian friend of mine once remarked that she liked this pagan principle because it underlines the seriousness of treating other people as you would have them treat you.
I understand what she meant, but I can't help but notice that the Great Commandment doesn't call us to treat our neighbour well because if we don't God will zap us with seven times our own bad behaviour (God forbid!)
Rather the Great Commandments calls us to treat our neighbour well because of Love.
And it suggests to us that there is some kind of important connection between our love for God and his love for us on the one hand and our love for other people on the other hand.
God is Love
Christians believe that love is a force that looks outwards, outside of oneself to the good of the other.
The first of the Great Commandments is to love God with everything that you are: with the centre of your willing and your choosing. This is an invitation to look outside our selves and to focus on the God who loves us and to align ourselves with that love.
But the invitation to love God also comes with the invitation to love other people, to look outside our own interests and even outside the interests of our immediate family and to also take an interest in the needs and well-being of other human beings: People in our community, in other parts of the country and even in other lands.
Created to Love
The Christian author and psychologist M Scott Peck tells a story about one of his clients who felt isolated and cut off from the rest of society.
One day he took her with him to a hospital and asked her to visit with a number of people. (He gave her the excuse that he had to confer with a colleague but, in fact, he had arranged for her to do the visits.) His client visited with these people, who had all been in hospital long-term with serious physical illnesses, and they were very glad of the company. When the visiting finished, he asked his client how she felt and she replied: 'You know, I feel better than I've felt in ages. I don't feel so isolated and I realise that there are other people with problems that are much worse than mine.'
Now, please don't take this as a simplistic 'cure' for depression on my part. My point is simply that I expect that many of us will recognise the truth in that story: that there is a great deal of human satisfaction in looking outside ourselves to the needs of others.
As a Christian, I would say - along with M Scott Peck - that the reason is because God created us this way. We were created to look outside ourselves, to love God and to love our neighbour.
Conclusion
But the wonderful thing about the Great Commandments is that God is at the centre of it all and God is love.
We don't have to worry that every time we miss the mark and fail to do what is right that God or the Universe will return evil to us seven times over. Because at the centre of life, the universe and everything is love. An intentional force that is trying to work all things together for good: God.
My prayer for us this morning is that we may each be strengthened by the love of God and that we may receive more and more of God's love in order to give more and more love to others.
Because at the end of the day and at the end of our lives, what matters most is that we are loved by God and that we love others in return. Amen
Introduction
In 2005, Channel 4 decided that it was going to conduct a nationwide poll among the British people to come up with a new set of Ten Commandments. The thinking was that the original ten commandments are somewhat out of date and that a new set might be more relevant for the 21st century. If Christianity (and Judaism) is no longer considered relevant by enlightened, modern people, what sort of moral code doe the British public feel speaks to our lives in post-Christian Britain?
Interestingly, the British public came up with 20 new commandments. And if you're ever tempted to accuse preachers of being long-winded, do try to remember the fact that it was the general public who felt that ten commandments weren't enough.)
Here are the 'new' commandments which speak to the British public over and above the outmoded moral requirements of Christianity:
1) Treat others as you would have them treat you.
2) Be honest
3) Don't kill
4) Look after the vulnerable
5) Respect your mother and father
6) Enjoy life
7) Nothing in excess
8) Be true to your own God
9) Be true to yourself
10) Protect your family
11) Look after your health
12) Try your best at all times
13) Don't commit adultery
14) Live within your means
15) Appreciate what you have
16) Never be violent
17) Protect the environment
18) Protect and nurture children
19) Take responsibility for your own actions
20) Don't steal
Love is the Commandment
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus answers the Pharisees' question 'What is the Greatest Commandment' with the formula from Deuteronomy: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself. These two commandments - often called The Great Commandment - are at the very core of the Christian faith and they are at the core of our value system.
I also find it interesting that these two commandments seem to appear in our new, secular commandments - the ones that the public claims actually have relevance to our daily life here and now.
And I find it extremely interesting that 'treat others as you would have them treat you' was thought to be the number one 'new commandment' by the British public.
In some form or another, most of the world's major religions mention this principle - The Golden Rule - as being central to their beliefs. Many forms of paganism, for example, believe that the good you do to others will return to you in like measure but that if you do evil to another human being, seven times the evil you have done to them will come back to you.
A Christian friend of mine once remarked that she liked this pagan principle because it underlines the seriousness of treating other people as you would have them treat you.
I understand what she meant, but I can't help but notice that the Great Commandment doesn't call us to treat our neighbour well because if we don't God will zap us with seven times our own bad behaviour (God forbid!)
Rather the Great Commandments calls us to treat our neighbour well because of Love.
And it suggests to us that there is some kind of important connection between our love for God and his love for us on the one hand and our love for other people on the other hand.
God is Love
Christians believe that love is a force that looks outwards, outside of oneself to the good of the other.
The first of the Great Commandments is to love God with everything that you are: with the centre of your willing and your choosing. This is an invitation to look outside our selves and to focus on the God who loves us and to align ourselves with that love.
But the invitation to love God also comes with the invitation to love other people, to look outside our own interests and even outside the interests of our immediate family and to also take an interest in the needs and well-being of other human beings: People in our community, in other parts of the country and even in other lands.
Created to Love
The Christian author and psychologist M Scott Peck tells a story about one of his clients who felt isolated and cut off from the rest of society.
One day he took her with him to a hospital and asked her to visit with a number of people. (He gave her the excuse that he had to confer with a colleague but, in fact, he had arranged for her to do the visits.) His client visited with these people, who had all been in hospital long-term with serious physical illnesses, and they were very glad of the company. When the visiting finished, he asked his client how she felt and she replied: 'You know, I feel better than I've felt in ages. I don't feel so isolated and I realise that there are other people with problems that are much worse than mine.'
Now, please don't take this as a simplistic 'cure' for depression on my part. My point is simply that I expect that many of us will recognise the truth in that story: that there is a great deal of human satisfaction in looking outside ourselves to the needs of others.
As a Christian, I would say - along with M Scott Peck - that the reason is because God created us this way. We were created to look outside ourselves, to love God and to love our neighbour.
Conclusion
But the wonderful thing about the Great Commandments is that God is at the centre of it all and God is love.
We don't have to worry that every time we miss the mark and fail to do what is right that God or the Universe will return evil to us seven times over. Because at the centre of life, the universe and everything is love. An intentional force that is trying to work all things together for good: God.
My prayer for us this morning is that we may each be strengthened by the love of God and that we may receive more and more of God's love in order to give more and more love to others.
Because at the end of the day and at the end of our lives, what matters most is that we are loved by God and that we love others in return. Amen
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Sunday 15 June 2008 - A Dangerous Gospel
This sermon is a thematic sermon loosely based around the day's Gospel reading: Matthew 9:35-10:23
===
Introduction
I suspect that you are probably familiar with the 1930s American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are a couple of friends who go through life together lurching from one disaster to another. These are usually disasters that are often caused by their failure to grasp the consequence of a particular situation. Except that Oliver Hardy always has someone to blame for his own incompetence: his friend Stan Laurel. One of Ollie’s (as he is known) oft-repeated phrases is ‘Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.’
In this morning’s reading, Jesus tells the twelve – and by extension us – that being his disciple is going to get us into one fine mess after another if we decide to follow him. In Matthew 10, verse 16, Jesus tells his disciples: ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves’.
Now like all good Jewish rabbis, Jesus sometimes exaggerates to make a point, but I’m not sure that he’s exaggerating here. At this point in the story of Jesus’ ministry, he is beginning to encounter opposition and I suspect that he is beginning to get an understanding of the very real dangers of proclaiming his counter-cultural message. And I believe that Jesus is very plainly telling the disciples that they will be in the same danger if they follow him: That when they proclaim the message of the Kingdom of God that they too will be like sheep in the midst of wolves.
A dangerous Gospel?
The question I’d like to ask this morning is ‘What is it about the Gospel, what is it about the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message dangerous?’ ‘What is it that makes the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message foolish?’ As Christians in the 21st century, should our message be a dangerous message or was the danger only for Jesus in his time?
This morning, I’d like to point two of the primary ways that I think that the Christian Gospel is both foolish and dangerous. You are, of course, free to make up your own mind and perhaps to think of your own dangers of the Gospel.
Forgiveness
The first ‘way of the Kingdom of God’ that I believe is foolishness is that the Kingdom is based on forgiveness. This is a topic that could be the subject of several sermons and I’m not going to pretend that the practice of forgiveness is easy.
Nonetheless, this is a patently foolish message in all sorts of ways if you start thinking about the practical applications of forgiveness.
Think of all the people in our lives who it would be difficult or impractical to forgive. Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the person who bullied us in school and whose bullying handicapped us in so many ways as we grew into adult life? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the drunk driver who killed or maimed a member of our family? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the individuals who bombed a public square on mothering Sunday or the London tube system during morning rush hour?
It may seem obvious to us that Jesus wanted his followers in his day to forgive their Christian bothers and sisters seventy times seven, but it is equally obvious to us that God understands that some people have hurt us so badly that it is simply not possible for us to forgive them.
As I said earlier, forgiveness is something that can often seem impossible, or at least extremely difficult. I do believe that God understands that it can seem impossible to forgive and I do believe that he will have compassion on those who struggle to forgive and find it difficult.
However, God’s compassion for those who have been hurt does not mean that he lifts the standard. He does not say ‘OK, I understand that it is difficult for you to forgive, so in the Kingdom of God, forgiveness will just be an optional extra’. And I suspect that the disciples were just as challenged as we are at the commandment to forgive seventy times seven and that they felt is was just as impossible as we do.
To proclaim forgiveness in the 21st century is as foolish as it was in the 1st century. Those who proclaim these values wholeheartedly will be like sheep amongst wolves.
Peace & the Rule of God
Another foolish characteristic of God’s rule in the Kingdom is that it is characterised by peace.
Once again, the direct application of Jesus’ teachings on peace seem highly dangerous in our own context today. To make Christ and the Kingdom of God the centre of our political values as well as the centre of our own personal morality would be dangerous as well as stupid.
We can easily accept that Jesus really meant that Rome was an illegitimate government in the eyes of God. We can understand that Jesus thought that the accommodation of the Temple to the prevailing Roman values of the time made the Temple illegitimate. And we can easily agree with Jesus’ opposition to the Zealots’ plan to raise an army of resistance against Rome.
But when we try to apply Jesus’ teaching directly to our own situation, we can see the dangers and complexities very clearly.
We look at our world and feel threatened by terrorism; and we see our precious sons and daughters being killed in foreign lands. We look at our own complicated world, our threatened and threatening world and we think ‘God can’t possibly be asking us to behave as if peace were already upon us; its too difficult.’
The way of peace is not only foolish, it’s downright dangerous. Couple the message of peace with the commandment to forgive others and with the message that the last shall be first and you might end up getting yourself killed just like Jesus. The ways of peace and forgiveness are not practical. They are naïve and idealistic and ‘everyone knows’ that the world does not work this way.
The Good News
But Jesus never said that being his disciple was going to be easy. Jesus tells us that we are going to be sent out on mission without any of the usual resources that the world thinks necessary to do a good job. And he tells us that we are going to be like sheep: targets for all the wolves who think that the way of Jesus is foolish and impractical.
But he also tells us that the world is in need of our mission. We, his followers, may be like sheep amongst the wolves, but at least we have a shepherd: the world does not have a shepherd and it is crying out for guidance. Jesus’ mission of spiritual and physical healing is our mission too. It’s the mission of the Church in the same way that it was the mission of the disciples. God’s determination to bring about the Kingdom of God begins with the twelve tribes of Israel, and it reaches fulfilment in the death and resurrection of Christ.
This is the Good News and it’s the Good News that we as a Church are sent out to proclaim. Just like the twelve disciples who Christ commissions here, Jesus’ mission is carried forward by us – the Church of Christ in every age. In this reading, we understand that our mission will not be easy but we are promised that it will be worthwhile; the healing of body, mind and spirit are always worthwhile.
Faith in Jesus will make our mission possible, but it won’t make it easy and it certainly will not earn us the world’s stamp of approval. Nonetheless, just like each one of the disciples, each of us has been called personally into our discipleship.
My prayer this morning/evening is that we may each be given the grace to follow where God leads us. I pray that we may be faithful messengers of his Good News and that our lives reflect God’s love, forgiveness and peace. Amen
Introduction
I suspect that you are probably familiar with the 1930s American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are a couple of friends who go through life together lurching from one disaster to another. These are usually disasters that are often caused by their failure to grasp the consequence of a particular situation. Except that Oliver Hardy always has someone to blame for his own incompetence: his friend Stan Laurel. One of Ollie’s (as he is known) oft-repeated phrases is ‘Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.’
In this morning’s reading, Jesus tells the twelve – and by extension us – that being his disciple is going to get us into one fine mess after another if we decide to follow him. In Matthew 10, verse 16, Jesus tells his disciples: ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves’.
Now like all good Jewish rabbis, Jesus sometimes exaggerates to make a point, but I’m not sure that he’s exaggerating here. At this point in the story of Jesus’ ministry, he is beginning to encounter opposition and I suspect that he is beginning to get an understanding of the very real dangers of proclaiming his counter-cultural message. And I believe that Jesus is very plainly telling the disciples that they will be in the same danger if they follow him: That when they proclaim the message of the Kingdom of God that they too will be like sheep in the midst of wolves.
A dangerous Gospel?
The question I’d like to ask this morning is ‘What is it about the Gospel, what is it about the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message dangerous?’ ‘What is it that makes the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message foolish?’ As Christians in the 21st century, should our message be a dangerous message or was the danger only for Jesus in his time?
This morning, I’d like to point two of the primary ways that I think that the Christian Gospel is both foolish and dangerous. You are, of course, free to make up your own mind and perhaps to think of your own dangers of the Gospel.
Forgiveness
The first ‘way of the Kingdom of God’ that I believe is foolishness is that the Kingdom is based on forgiveness. This is a topic that could be the subject of several sermons and I’m not going to pretend that the practice of forgiveness is easy.
Nonetheless, this is a patently foolish message in all sorts of ways if you start thinking about the practical applications of forgiveness.
Think of all the people in our lives who it would be difficult or impractical to forgive. Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the person who bullied us in school and whose bullying handicapped us in so many ways as we grew into adult life? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the drunk driver who killed or maimed a member of our family? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the individuals who bombed a public square on mothering Sunday or the London tube system during morning rush hour?
It may seem obvious to us that Jesus wanted his followers in his day to forgive their Christian bothers and sisters seventy times seven, but it is equally obvious to us that God understands that some people have hurt us so badly that it is simply not possible for us to forgive them.
As I said earlier, forgiveness is something that can often seem impossible, or at least extremely difficult. I do believe that God understands that it can seem impossible to forgive and I do believe that he will have compassion on those who struggle to forgive and find it difficult.
However, God’s compassion for those who have been hurt does not mean that he lifts the standard. He does not say ‘OK, I understand that it is difficult for you to forgive, so in the Kingdom of God, forgiveness will just be an optional extra’. And I suspect that the disciples were just as challenged as we are at the commandment to forgive seventy times seven and that they felt is was just as impossible as we do.
To proclaim forgiveness in the 21st century is as foolish as it was in the 1st century. Those who proclaim these values wholeheartedly will be like sheep amongst wolves.
Peace & the Rule of God
Another foolish characteristic of God’s rule in the Kingdom is that it is characterised by peace.
Once again, the direct application of Jesus’ teachings on peace seem highly dangerous in our own context today. To make Christ and the Kingdom of God the centre of our political values as well as the centre of our own personal morality would be dangerous as well as stupid.
We can easily accept that Jesus really meant that Rome was an illegitimate government in the eyes of God. We can understand that Jesus thought that the accommodation of the Temple to the prevailing Roman values of the time made the Temple illegitimate. And we can easily agree with Jesus’ opposition to the Zealots’ plan to raise an army of resistance against Rome.
But when we try to apply Jesus’ teaching directly to our own situation, we can see the dangers and complexities very clearly.
We look at our world and feel threatened by terrorism; and we see our precious sons and daughters being killed in foreign lands. We look at our own complicated world, our threatened and threatening world and we think ‘God can’t possibly be asking us to behave as if peace were already upon us; its too difficult.’
The way of peace is not only foolish, it’s downright dangerous. Couple the message of peace with the commandment to forgive others and with the message that the last shall be first and you might end up getting yourself killed just like Jesus. The ways of peace and forgiveness are not practical. They are naïve and idealistic and ‘everyone knows’ that the world does not work this way.
The Good News
But Jesus never said that being his disciple was going to be easy. Jesus tells us that we are going to be sent out on mission without any of the usual resources that the world thinks necessary to do a good job. And he tells us that we are going to be like sheep: targets for all the wolves who think that the way of Jesus is foolish and impractical.
But he also tells us that the world is in need of our mission. We, his followers, may be like sheep amongst the wolves, but at least we have a shepherd: the world does not have a shepherd and it is crying out for guidance. Jesus’ mission of spiritual and physical healing is our mission too. It’s the mission of the Church in the same way that it was the mission of the disciples. God’s determination to bring about the Kingdom of God begins with the twelve tribes of Israel, and it reaches fulfilment in the death and resurrection of Christ.
This is the Good News and it’s the Good News that we as a Church are sent out to proclaim. Just like the twelve disciples who Christ commissions here, Jesus’ mission is carried forward by us – the Church of Christ in every age. In this reading, we understand that our mission will not be easy but we are promised that it will be worthwhile; the healing of body, mind and spirit are always worthwhile.
Faith in Jesus will make our mission possible, but it won’t make it easy and it certainly will not earn us the world’s stamp of approval. Nonetheless, just like each one of the disciples, each of us has been called personally into our discipleship.
My prayer this morning/evening is that we may each be given the grace to follow where God leads us. I pray that we may be faithful messengers of his Good News and that our lives reflect God’s love, forgiveness and peace. Amen
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sunday 28 May 2008 - God's Good Gifts
Today's Sermon is based on Matthew 6:24-34
Introduction
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the American children’s novel from 1910 named ‘Pollyanna’.
The central character, Pollyanna, is orphaned at a young age and is sent off to live with her dour spinster aunt who doesn’t seem to have a kind or cheerful bone in her body. Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centres around what she calls ‘The Glad Game’. The Glad Game was taught to Pollyanna by her father and it consists of trying to find something to be glad about in every situation.
So, when her aunt gives her a stuffy attic room to live in without any carpets or pictures, Pollyanna is glad for the beautiful view over the town from the room’s window. When her aunt punishes her by forcing her to have only bread and milk for dinner in the kitchen with the servant Nancy, Pollyanna is glad because she likes bread and milk and she likes Nancy.
Slowly, Pollyanna’s cheery personality has a positive effect on her aunt’s New England town and even her dour aunt begins to lighten up a bit. But then tragedy strikes and Pollyanna is hit by a car and loses the use of her legs. For a long time, she can’t find anything to be glad about. But then all the people of the town come to visit and to tell her what a positive effect she had has on their lives.
And being a children’s story, of course there must be a happy ending. Improbably, the doctors discover a new miracle cure for Pollyanna’s legs and everyone lives happily ever after.
Despite many people questioning its literary merit, the novel was so popular that there were 13 sequels written by different authors, but there were also a number of children’s games produced, some of which were still being sold in the 1960s.
And the novel also had an effect on the English language, bringing us the terms ‘Pollyanna’, ‘pollyannaish’ and ‘pollyannaism’. These terms are now most often used pejoratively to refer to someone who is unrealistically and cheerfully optimistic – about a situation or a person – despite all evidence to the contrary. More positively, a ‘pollyannaish’ person is simply someone who is optimistic and generous in spirit.
Irresponsibility or Aestheticism?
This morning’s Gospel reading tells us about how the birds of the air and the lilies of the field do not toil for what they need. And, if we were going to take this reading as a straight-forward moral instruction from God, it would be easy enough to make a Pollyanaish interpretation in the negative sense of the word.
We could use this reading as a license for irresponsibility: ‘I’m not going to worry about anything. There is no need for me to make any provision for the future or to take responsibility for my own day-to-day needs. Let the other poor drones work hard, I’m going to take it easy and let other people provide for me.’ And that might have actually happened in the early Church. It might have been the reason that Paul was compelled to write to the church in Thessalonica saying that brothers and sisters in Christ were not allowed to free-load off other believers and that ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat’ (2 Thess 3:10)
Still another way to interpret this Gospel reading would be to understand it as an instruction to self-denial of all worldly possessions. Some early Christians – like the Desert Fathers and Mothers – took this second understanding and adopted lifestyles which rejected family, permanent housing, and all but the most basic food and clothing. Working with a different understanding of what we would now call ‘science’, they believed that when a person truly became united with God in this life, that he or she would no longer need to eat.
Trusting in the Goodness of God
However, I’m not convinced that this reading is recommending a totally aesthetic lifestyle on the one hand or that it is condoning irresponsibility and free-loading on the other. I think that this morning’s Gospel reading is recommending to us a different way – the ‘positive’ way of being Pollyannaish, if you like.
This text paints a beautiful picture of God’s good creation and, in so doing, I believe that it points us in a poetic manner to the goodness of God and to his good provision for us. However, this text is not simply calling us to a naïve and irresponsible lifestyle. Connected with trust in God is also our responsibility to use the resources that we have been blessed with in a Godly way.
This morning’s Gospel reading begins with the text: ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve god and wealth’.
So our enjoyment of God’s good creation is to be accepted in light of the knowledge that everything that we have comes from him. Our primary focus is not to be the accumulation of God’s blessings, it’s not to be the accumulation of wealth, but rather our primary focus is to be God and his will.
The Good News in this morning’s reading is that whether a person is poor in body or in spirit or rich in body and spirit, Jesus tells us that God cares about us and that all he has created is for our nourishment, our benefit and our enjoyment. For those who are poor in body, mind or spirit, trusting in God’s good provision requires faith – sometimes a great deal of faith. It requires a ‘Pollyannaish’ approach to life in the good sense of the word. It requires a person to focus on the eternal, enduring promise of the Gospel that ‘God is Good’ and to count their blessings in the midst of trouble. This is not an easy thing to do; but it is when we are poor in body, mind or spirit that we understand very clearly how trust in God brings us hope where trusting in worldly wealth and resources cannot.
Of course, disciples of Christ who are rich in body, mind or spirit are also invited to trust in God’s good provision and to celebrate all our blessings. But our discipleship and our commitment to God’s Kingdom also call us to share our blessings with others. Those of us who are rich need to guard against the prevailing values of society. Because these values are centered in the accumulation and the protection of individual wealth: the complete opposite of God’s values. We cannot serve both God and wealth.
But when we do share our riches - our money, our time and our other resources - we will receive the additional blessing that comes from sharing our good gifts with others. Because a celebration is only a celebration when it can be shared.
Conclusion
Jesus enjoyed God’s good gifts and he enjoyed sharing them with others. In a few minutes, we will celebrate at Lord’s Table. Some use the word ‘Eucharist’ which means ‘grateful’. And some use the word ‘mass’ which smeans ‘sending out’.
Whatever term you use for this celebration, I pray that this morning we will joyfully celebrate our communion with each other and with Christ. And my prayer is that we will be sent out from this place to be grateful witnesses to the blessings that God has bestowed upon us. Amen
Introduction
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the American children’s novel from 1910 named ‘Pollyanna’.
The central character, Pollyanna, is orphaned at a young age and is sent off to live with her dour spinster aunt who doesn’t seem to have a kind or cheerful bone in her body. Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centres around what she calls ‘The Glad Game’. The Glad Game was taught to Pollyanna by her father and it consists of trying to find something to be glad about in every situation.
So, when her aunt gives her a stuffy attic room to live in without any carpets or pictures, Pollyanna is glad for the beautiful view over the town from the room’s window. When her aunt punishes her by forcing her to have only bread and milk for dinner in the kitchen with the servant Nancy, Pollyanna is glad because she likes bread and milk and she likes Nancy.
Slowly, Pollyanna’s cheery personality has a positive effect on her aunt’s New England town and even her dour aunt begins to lighten up a bit. But then tragedy strikes and Pollyanna is hit by a car and loses the use of her legs. For a long time, she can’t find anything to be glad about. But then all the people of the town come to visit and to tell her what a positive effect she had has on their lives.
And being a children’s story, of course there must be a happy ending. Improbably, the doctors discover a new miracle cure for Pollyanna’s legs and everyone lives happily ever after.
Despite many people questioning its literary merit, the novel was so popular that there were 13 sequels written by different authors, but there were also a number of children’s games produced, some of which were still being sold in the 1960s.
And the novel also had an effect on the English language, bringing us the terms ‘Pollyanna’, ‘pollyannaish’ and ‘pollyannaism’. These terms are now most often used pejoratively to refer to someone who is unrealistically and cheerfully optimistic – about a situation or a person – despite all evidence to the contrary. More positively, a ‘pollyannaish’ person is simply someone who is optimistic and generous in spirit.
Irresponsibility or Aestheticism?
This morning’s Gospel reading tells us about how the birds of the air and the lilies of the field do not toil for what they need. And, if we were going to take this reading as a straight-forward moral instruction from God, it would be easy enough to make a Pollyanaish interpretation in the negative sense of the word.
We could use this reading as a license for irresponsibility: ‘I’m not going to worry about anything. There is no need for me to make any provision for the future or to take responsibility for my own day-to-day needs. Let the other poor drones work hard, I’m going to take it easy and let other people provide for me.’ And that might have actually happened in the early Church. It might have been the reason that Paul was compelled to write to the church in Thessalonica saying that brothers and sisters in Christ were not allowed to free-load off other believers and that ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat’ (2 Thess 3:10)
Still another way to interpret this Gospel reading would be to understand it as an instruction to self-denial of all worldly possessions. Some early Christians – like the Desert Fathers and Mothers – took this second understanding and adopted lifestyles which rejected family, permanent housing, and all but the most basic food and clothing. Working with a different understanding of what we would now call ‘science’, they believed that when a person truly became united with God in this life, that he or she would no longer need to eat.
Trusting in the Goodness of God
However, I’m not convinced that this reading is recommending a totally aesthetic lifestyle on the one hand or that it is condoning irresponsibility and free-loading on the other. I think that this morning’s Gospel reading is recommending to us a different way – the ‘positive’ way of being Pollyannaish, if you like.
This text paints a beautiful picture of God’s good creation and, in so doing, I believe that it points us in a poetic manner to the goodness of God and to his good provision for us. However, this text is not simply calling us to a naïve and irresponsible lifestyle. Connected with trust in God is also our responsibility to use the resources that we have been blessed with in a Godly way.
This morning’s Gospel reading begins with the text: ‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve god and wealth’.
So our enjoyment of God’s good creation is to be accepted in light of the knowledge that everything that we have comes from him. Our primary focus is not to be the accumulation of God’s blessings, it’s not to be the accumulation of wealth, but rather our primary focus is to be God and his will.
The Good News in this morning’s reading is that whether a person is poor in body or in spirit or rich in body and spirit, Jesus tells us that God cares about us and that all he has created is for our nourishment, our benefit and our enjoyment. For those who are poor in body, mind or spirit, trusting in God’s good provision requires faith – sometimes a great deal of faith. It requires a ‘Pollyannaish’ approach to life in the good sense of the word. It requires a person to focus on the eternal, enduring promise of the Gospel that ‘God is Good’ and to count their blessings in the midst of trouble. This is not an easy thing to do; but it is when we are poor in body, mind or spirit that we understand very clearly how trust in God brings us hope where trusting in worldly wealth and resources cannot.
Of course, disciples of Christ who are rich in body, mind or spirit are also invited to trust in God’s good provision and to celebrate all our blessings. But our discipleship and our commitment to God’s Kingdom also call us to share our blessings with others. Those of us who are rich need to guard against the prevailing values of society. Because these values are centered in the accumulation and the protection of individual wealth: the complete opposite of God’s values. We cannot serve both God and wealth.
But when we do share our riches - our money, our time and our other resources - we will receive the additional blessing that comes from sharing our good gifts with others. Because a celebration is only a celebration when it can be shared.
Conclusion
Jesus enjoyed God’s good gifts and he enjoyed sharing them with others. In a few minutes, we will celebrate at Lord’s Table. Some use the word ‘Eucharist’ which means ‘grateful’. And some use the word ‘mass’ which smeans ‘sending out’.
Whatever term you use for this celebration, I pray that this morning we will joyfully celebrate our communion with each other and with Christ. And my prayer is that we will be sent out from this place to be grateful witnesses to the blessings that God has bestowed upon us. Amen
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday 6 April 2008 - Baptism
This was a sermon for a baptism. Readings were 1 John 4:6-16 and Matthew 19:13-15
Introduction
We have come here this morning as we do every Sunday morning to worship God as a Christian community, to praise God, to pray together and to sustain and support each other in our Christian life.
And this morning we are especially blessed to welcome the family of L who has just been baptised and, through his baptism, welcomed into the world-wide Church of Christ.
This morning’s reading from the first letter of John gives us a very good summary of the core beliefs of the Christian faith: That God loves each and every one of us because he made us. That God showed his love for us through Jesus. And that God lives in us and that he calls us to be agents of his love in the world.
So, I want to think about each of these things very briefly this morning in light of L’s baptism.
God loves us because he made us
First of all: God loves us because he made each and every one of us.
The baptism service that we witnesses this morning is a wonderful sign of God’s love for each and every one of us. In the service, we heard that everything that God has done for L – and for us, of course – was done before he (or we) could even know anything about it.
The offer of God’s love never depends on anything that we do, it is simply there, like the love of a good parent. God’s love doesn’t depend on our good behaviour; it doesn’t depend us loving God back; it doesn’t depend on anything. God simply loves us because he created us. And God loves everything that he created.
Just like a good parent wouldn’t say: ‘I’m not going to love you until you clean up your room’, God doesn’t make his love dependent on our good behaviour. God simply loves us because he created us.
We heard in this morning’s short reading from Matthew that God wants to give his love to little children, but he also wants to give his love to adults, even those who might think that they are no longer loveable.
God Showed his Love for Us Through Jesus
Secondly: God showed his love for us through Jesus.
On the one hand, this is a simple statement, on the other hand, there is an awful lot in it. There is enough material here for many sermons and we only have a few minutes.
In Jesus, God was born into the world as a small baby, and, like L here today, he was dependent on human beings in order to grow into an adult. Not only did Jesus come to teach us, but in some sense he also learned from us and was dependant on us.
But Jesus did also come here to teach us. He was a healer and someone who forgave sins.
Imagine what the world would be like if every single person imitated Jesus and devoted their life to healing rather than harming and to forgiving rather than holding grudges.
But human beings didn’t embrace Jesus’ message of healing and forgiveness. Instead, we rebelled against who he was and we killed him.
And there is something about that death of Jesus that brought hope into the world. We killed God, we thought that we killed healing and forgiveness and hope, but God had the final word at Easter. The resurrection is God’s demonstration that healing and hope and forgiveness will always be his final word to humankind.
And so today we have baptised L into God’s world of healing and hope and forgiveness.
We are Called to Live As Christ Lived
And finally, we are called to live as Christ lived.
When an adult is baptised, he or she receives confirmation directly after the baptism according to the ancient pattern. This confirmation is the adult person’s declaration that they intend, with God’s help, to try to live the sort of life that Jesus lived.
L, of course, can’t make that decision for himself and so today is he has been baptised into the sign and symbol of God’s love. As a baby, L’s ‘job’ right now is to be loved and cherished and to grow up surrounded by the love of God and of family.
And so baptism is a fitting sacrament in light of L’s age and L’s ‘job’.
But it is the hope and prayer of the church that, as he grows up, he will learn about the love of God and that he will want to be confirmed and to make a public commitment as a follower of Christ.
Because Christianity isn’t just for babies and children. As we grow older, we wrestle with life issues that are complex and don’t always have easy answers. Things like uncertainty, fear, disappointment, and health issues. As Christians, we believe that we have guidelines by which to negotiate difficult life situations.
Life doesn’t always provide easy answers in these situations, but not only do we have our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we can share our burdens and struggles, but we also believe that we have the help and power of the Holy Spirit through prayer and fellowship.
Conclusion
So this morning we have participated in L’s baptism as a Christian community and we have welcomed him into the house of God via the sacrament of Baptism.
This sacrament expresses the love of God, freely given to all of us before we even knew anything of it.
In a few minutes we will celebrate another sacrament: the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is also a place where human beings are freely invited into the love and forgiveness of God. This God’s celebration banquet where all are welcome. With God, there is no such thing as an invited guest or an uninvited guest, but all are welcomed provided that it is their intention to meet with Christ and accept the hospitality of his table.
So it is my prayer this morning that, just as L has met with God in the sacrament of Baptism, that the rest of us may also meet with Christ in this service of worship and at the Lord’s Table. As God’s family, we come to his meal, we celebrate his presence and his love among us, and we welcome our brother L and his family into the presence of the living God.
Introduction
We have come here this morning as we do every Sunday morning to worship God as a Christian community, to praise God, to pray together and to sustain and support each other in our Christian life.
And this morning we are especially blessed to welcome the family of L who has just been baptised and, through his baptism, welcomed into the world-wide Church of Christ.
This morning’s reading from the first letter of John gives us a very good summary of the core beliefs of the Christian faith: That God loves each and every one of us because he made us. That God showed his love for us through Jesus. And that God lives in us and that he calls us to be agents of his love in the world.
So, I want to think about each of these things very briefly this morning in light of L’s baptism.
God loves us because he made us
First of all: God loves us because he made each and every one of us.
The baptism service that we witnesses this morning is a wonderful sign of God’s love for each and every one of us. In the service, we heard that everything that God has done for L – and for us, of course – was done before he (or we) could even know anything about it.
The offer of God’s love never depends on anything that we do, it is simply there, like the love of a good parent. God’s love doesn’t depend on our good behaviour; it doesn’t depend us loving God back; it doesn’t depend on anything. God simply loves us because he created us. And God loves everything that he created.
Just like a good parent wouldn’t say: ‘I’m not going to love you until you clean up your room’, God doesn’t make his love dependent on our good behaviour. God simply loves us because he created us.
We heard in this morning’s short reading from Matthew that God wants to give his love to little children, but he also wants to give his love to adults, even those who might think that they are no longer loveable.
God Showed his Love for Us Through Jesus
Secondly: God showed his love for us through Jesus.
On the one hand, this is a simple statement, on the other hand, there is an awful lot in it. There is enough material here for many sermons and we only have a few minutes.
In Jesus, God was born into the world as a small baby, and, like L here today, he was dependent on human beings in order to grow into an adult. Not only did Jesus come to teach us, but in some sense he also learned from us and was dependant on us.
But Jesus did also come here to teach us. He was a healer and someone who forgave sins.
Imagine what the world would be like if every single person imitated Jesus and devoted their life to healing rather than harming and to forgiving rather than holding grudges.
But human beings didn’t embrace Jesus’ message of healing and forgiveness. Instead, we rebelled against who he was and we killed him.
And there is something about that death of Jesus that brought hope into the world. We killed God, we thought that we killed healing and forgiveness and hope, but God had the final word at Easter. The resurrection is God’s demonstration that healing and hope and forgiveness will always be his final word to humankind.
And so today we have baptised L into God’s world of healing and hope and forgiveness.
We are Called to Live As Christ Lived
And finally, we are called to live as Christ lived.
When an adult is baptised, he or she receives confirmation directly after the baptism according to the ancient pattern. This confirmation is the adult person’s declaration that they intend, with God’s help, to try to live the sort of life that Jesus lived.
L, of course, can’t make that decision for himself and so today is he has been baptised into the sign and symbol of God’s love. As a baby, L’s ‘job’ right now is to be loved and cherished and to grow up surrounded by the love of God and of family.
And so baptism is a fitting sacrament in light of L’s age and L’s ‘job’.
But it is the hope and prayer of the church that, as he grows up, he will learn about the love of God and that he will want to be confirmed and to make a public commitment as a follower of Christ.
Because Christianity isn’t just for babies and children. As we grow older, we wrestle with life issues that are complex and don’t always have easy answers. Things like uncertainty, fear, disappointment, and health issues. As Christians, we believe that we have guidelines by which to negotiate difficult life situations.
Life doesn’t always provide easy answers in these situations, but not only do we have our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we can share our burdens and struggles, but we also believe that we have the help and power of the Holy Spirit through prayer and fellowship.
Conclusion
So this morning we have participated in L’s baptism as a Christian community and we have welcomed him into the house of God via the sacrament of Baptism.
This sacrament expresses the love of God, freely given to all of us before we even knew anything of it.
In a few minutes we will celebrate another sacrament: the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is also a place where human beings are freely invited into the love and forgiveness of God. This God’s celebration banquet where all are welcome. With God, there is no such thing as an invited guest or an uninvited guest, but all are welcomed provided that it is their intention to meet with Christ and accept the hospitality of his table.
So it is my prayer this morning that, just as L has met with God in the sacrament of Baptism, that the rest of us may also meet with Christ in this service of worship and at the Lord’s Table. As God’s family, we come to his meal, we celebrate his presence and his love among us, and we welcome our brother L and his family into the presence of the living God.
Sunday 23 March 2008 - The Good News of the Resurrection
This is a sermon for Easter Sunday based on the resurrection story in Matthew 10:1-8
Introduction
During Friday’s episode of the BBC’s production of The Passion, there is an interesting scene in which Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and John run to tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus has been crucified.
The disciples express disbelief at first and then when the reality hits them, they seem at a loss as to what to do. One disciple says that he is going to go back to Galilee and resume his former life with his family and his trade. Another protests, ‘No! We promised to be Jesus’ disciples and to spread his good news to the whole world and that’s what we have to keep doing!’
The reply comes back ‘What Good News? Follow Jesus and be crucified?’
Whilst the above scene is based on some information from scripture, it’s not actually a story that the bible itself tells, but it struck me that this was a very good question indeed: ‘What Good News? Follow Jesus and be crucified?’
Because Christianity often gives the impression that the Good News of Christianity is that Jesus died for us. True enough, but only half a truth.
Also, given the fact that the BBC production was written by writers who are not, for the most part, followers of Christ, it made me wonder about what message the non-Christian world has about the Good News of the gospel.
Because I think we’ve been really good at communicating the message of Jesus’ crucifixion. And I think that we’ve been absolutely terrible at communicating the message of Jesus’ resurrection.
And I suspect that I know why that might be. ‘Jesus died in order that you might be reconciled with God’ is an idea that everyone can understand. People might not agree with it, people might not like it, but it has some grounding in our own experience.
We can understand the idea of a third party making a large sacrifice to reconcile us with someone with whom we have been estranged. That idea isn’t too far outside of human experience.
And, although I’ve met a handful of people in my life who claimed that they don’t believe that Jesus ever lived, by and large if you tell an unbeliever that Jesus was born, had a ministry and was crucified, it’s likely that most of them will agree with you.
But try proclaiming to an unbeliever: ‘Jesus has risen from the dead!’ From the point of view of the world, it’s just ludicrous. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ At best you’ll be seen as superstitious and a bit dim, at worst you might be regarded as someone with a shaky grasp on reality.
Resurrection is Key
My claim to you on this wonderful Easter morning is that ‘Jesus has risen from the dead!’ is a vitally important part of the Good News of Jesus Christ. It’s as important as the message that ‘Jesus died to reconcile us to God’. The two ideas are part of one message and they should not be separated.
I guess that you could argue that without the crucifixion there would be no resurrection and that would, of course, be true. But death is a normal expectation of human experience. How many people expect resurrection?
St. Paul said it best: ‘If Christ be not raised, then our faith is in vain.’ Go back in your imagination to that earlier scene between the disciples just an hour or two after Jesus’ crucifixion and picture again one disciple asking the other ‘What good news?’
Sure, there is good news (small letters) in Jesus’ preaching: God loves you and forgives your sins, with God’s forgiveness a new start is possible. Take care of each other as you would have others take care of you and love one another as Jesus loved you.
Nice ideas – inspiring ideas even – but without the resurrection they aren’t Good News (capital letters), they aren’t anything more than inspiring ideas.
Jesus didn’t just give us inspiring ideas: he brought those inspiring ideas to life.
Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that he breathed the breath of life into these inspiring ideas.
Because without resurrection, death has the final word. A world without resurrection is a world where cynicism, cruelty and despair have the final word and where hope, self-giving love, and morals will all ultimately die.
In a world without resurrection, the question ‘What good news?’ makes absolute sense. In fact, before the resurrection, it is the only question that makes sense.
But, after the resurrection, in a world where life has the last word, it is only self-giving love and hope that make sense. The resurrection demonstrates the authority of Jesus and the resurrection causes something to happen in the cosmic reality that brings love and hope into their full, everlasting, potential.
The resurrection demonstrates unmistakably that the God who we worship is first and foremost a God of life. He is not a God of death or destruction or even a God of pointless despair.
But a God whose ultimate purpose and desire is to weave all things together for good. God’s desire is not to give us any old life, but abundant life, life as it was meant to be. In a post-resurrection world, the answer to the question: ‘What good news?’ is that Christ has risen so that the world might have life in all its fullness. Individuals as well as all creation.
But there is more Good News, although we mustn’t jump ahead too far into the story. Because Jesus is alive and not dead, he can be with us.
There is another scene in The Passion, where Jesus tells his disciples that he is going away and that they will not be able to follow him where he is going. This scene depicts a well-known passage in the Gospel of John that is often read at funerals.
But BBC production uses different words than we are used to in the Gospel of John. And the disciple says ‘But you can’t go away. We need you here with us to help us find God.’
The joyful thing about the resurrection is that Jesus is here with us to help us find God. We don’t have to try find God on our own – something that is impossible anyway – because Jesus is here to help us.
As is made clear in the Gospel of John, after the resurrection, Jesus’ Holy Spirit is here with us, guiding us every day. Helping us find God.
Conclusion
The Christian Faith proclaims the Good News not only of Jesus’ death but of his resurrection.
We proclaim the good news that not only are love and hope alive but that, by the power and sustenance of God, they will live forever.
And we proclaim the Good News that our brother Jesus has risen and that we too will rise again into a New Creation.
Brothers and sisters, Christ has risen.
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Introduction
During Friday’s episode of the BBC’s production of The Passion, there is an interesting scene in which Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and John run to tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus has been crucified.
The disciples express disbelief at first and then when the reality hits them, they seem at a loss as to what to do. One disciple says that he is going to go back to Galilee and resume his former life with his family and his trade. Another protests, ‘No! We promised to be Jesus’ disciples and to spread his good news to the whole world and that’s what we have to keep doing!’
The reply comes back ‘What Good News? Follow Jesus and be crucified?’
Whilst the above scene is based on some information from scripture, it’s not actually a story that the bible itself tells, but it struck me that this was a very good question indeed: ‘What Good News? Follow Jesus and be crucified?’
Because Christianity often gives the impression that the Good News of Christianity is that Jesus died for us. True enough, but only half a truth.
Also, given the fact that the BBC production was written by writers who are not, for the most part, followers of Christ, it made me wonder about what message the non-Christian world has about the Good News of the gospel.
Because I think we’ve been really good at communicating the message of Jesus’ crucifixion. And I think that we’ve been absolutely terrible at communicating the message of Jesus’ resurrection.
And I suspect that I know why that might be. ‘Jesus died in order that you might be reconciled with God’ is an idea that everyone can understand. People might not agree with it, people might not like it, but it has some grounding in our own experience.
We can understand the idea of a third party making a large sacrifice to reconcile us with someone with whom we have been estranged. That idea isn’t too far outside of human experience.
And, although I’ve met a handful of people in my life who claimed that they don’t believe that Jesus ever lived, by and large if you tell an unbeliever that Jesus was born, had a ministry and was crucified, it’s likely that most of them will agree with you.
But try proclaiming to an unbeliever: ‘Jesus has risen from the dead!’ From the point of view of the world, it’s just ludicrous. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ At best you’ll be seen as superstitious and a bit dim, at worst you might be regarded as someone with a shaky grasp on reality.
Resurrection is Key
My claim to you on this wonderful Easter morning is that ‘Jesus has risen from the dead!’ is a vitally important part of the Good News of Jesus Christ. It’s as important as the message that ‘Jesus died to reconcile us to God’. The two ideas are part of one message and they should not be separated.
I guess that you could argue that without the crucifixion there would be no resurrection and that would, of course, be true. But death is a normal expectation of human experience. How many people expect resurrection?
St. Paul said it best: ‘If Christ be not raised, then our faith is in vain.’ Go back in your imagination to that earlier scene between the disciples just an hour or two after Jesus’ crucifixion and picture again one disciple asking the other ‘What good news?’
Sure, there is good news (small letters) in Jesus’ preaching: God loves you and forgives your sins, with God’s forgiveness a new start is possible. Take care of each other as you would have others take care of you and love one another as Jesus loved you.
Nice ideas – inspiring ideas even – but without the resurrection they aren’t Good News (capital letters), they aren’t anything more than inspiring ideas.
Jesus didn’t just give us inspiring ideas: he brought those inspiring ideas to life.
Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that he breathed the breath of life into these inspiring ideas.
Because without resurrection, death has the final word. A world without resurrection is a world where cynicism, cruelty and despair have the final word and where hope, self-giving love, and morals will all ultimately die.
In a world without resurrection, the question ‘What good news?’ makes absolute sense. In fact, before the resurrection, it is the only question that makes sense.
But, after the resurrection, in a world where life has the last word, it is only self-giving love and hope that make sense. The resurrection demonstrates the authority of Jesus and the resurrection causes something to happen in the cosmic reality that brings love and hope into their full, everlasting, potential.
The resurrection demonstrates unmistakably that the God who we worship is first and foremost a God of life. He is not a God of death or destruction or even a God of pointless despair.
But a God whose ultimate purpose and desire is to weave all things together for good. God’s desire is not to give us any old life, but abundant life, life as it was meant to be. In a post-resurrection world, the answer to the question: ‘What good news?’ is that Christ has risen so that the world might have life in all its fullness. Individuals as well as all creation.
But there is more Good News, although we mustn’t jump ahead too far into the story. Because Jesus is alive and not dead, he can be with us.
There is another scene in The Passion, where Jesus tells his disciples that he is going away and that they will not be able to follow him where he is going. This scene depicts a well-known passage in the Gospel of John that is often read at funerals.
But BBC production uses different words than we are used to in the Gospel of John. And the disciple says ‘But you can’t go away. We need you here with us to help us find God.’
The joyful thing about the resurrection is that Jesus is here with us to help us find God. We don’t have to try find God on our own – something that is impossible anyway – because Jesus is here to help us.
As is made clear in the Gospel of John, after the resurrection, Jesus’ Holy Spirit is here with us, guiding us every day. Helping us find God.
Conclusion
The Christian Faith proclaims the Good News not only of Jesus’ death but of his resurrection.
We proclaim the good news that not only are love and hope alive but that, by the power and sustenance of God, they will live forever.
And we proclaim the Good News that our brother Jesus has risen and that we too will rise again into a New Creation.
Brothers and sisters, Christ has risen.
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday 20 March 2008 - Maundy Thursday Meditation
This meditation is a bit difficult to communicate 'in writing'. It alternates with scripture readings and hymns (not indicated here). In the service, the whole story moved toward the celebration of The Lord's Supper.
===
Exodus 12:14-20, 26-27
Passover. A terrifying night. We’re huddled inside our home, the only home we have ever known. A lamb has been slaughtered; its blood painted on the front door, the body has been roasted and consumed. But we can’t quite believe what’s happening all around us.
It’s the middle of the night, but we’re not asleep in our bed. Our bellies are full – but we wonder how long it will be before they are full again. Because we’re dressed and packed for a long journey: a journey into the unknown.
All around us in the darkness of the night, we hear the screams of our neighbours. And we know that all of the firstborn males – men and boys who we know – have died. The angel of death has mercifully passed over our houses – the houses of Israel – just as Moses and Aaron said he would. But that does not make this night any less terrifying.
This is the day of redemption: the day that Israel will be delivered from slavery. But it’s not a comfortable redemption: death surrounds us everywhere we turn.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? As the reality hits home, we laugh at ourselves for such an innocent assumption. We had longed for our freedom, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
But God is wise. Had we known that night what would become of us, we might have chosen to stay in Egypt; we might have chosen death for ourselves.
For close to forty years we have endured hunger, thirst, and great illness. In our anger and confusion we turned our backs on God more than once. But despite our faithlessness, God has been faithful to Israel. He has kept his promise, his covenant. In the fire of our trials and in God’s faithful provision for us, we have learned that redemption is not just physical, but also spiritual.
There is no such thing as redemption easily won. In order for there to be new life, the old life must be left behind. In order for death and the fear of death to be conquered, it must be faced.
One thing we have learned: when you pray for redemption, be careful what you pray for.
Matthew 26:14-35
We arrived in Jerusalem a few days before Passover to celebrate the festival in the Holy City. Like our ancestors before us, we’d travelled a long way. Perhaps not physically, but spiritually. And like our ancestors before us, we had reason to wonder whether we had gone on a futile journey.
The journey wasn’t the one that we originally expected. And now we were deeply sad, bone-weary and more than a little bit frightened. What had begun with so much hope and energy looked like it was going to end in defeat, despair and death.
We remembered that, thousands of years ago, the Angel of Death passed over the homes of our ancestors… Yet, death seemed to be lurking just outside the door that night, biding his time, waiting for the right moment. We could almost see and hear the Angel of Death moving in the night shadows. We prayed fervently that he would pass over our doorpost that evening even as we wondered whether an agent of death might be lurking inside.
Passover – ha! – the festival of redemption. For us, it was looking more like a festival of defeat. Our ancestors might not have known where they were going, but at least they knew that they were escaping slavery, escaping death. It was beginning to look more and more like we had walked right into the jaws of death and would not be able to escape.
It had begun to dawn on us – and we kept pushing the horrible idea from our minds – when Jesus said that he was going to suffer and die, that he actually meant it in a literal way. If ever there was a time for Jesus to proclaim himself as Messiah and call down an army of angels, now was the time. If ever Israel was to be redeemed, now was the time.
As we ate, Jesus picked up the bread and gave thanks, nothing surprising in that. But our breath almost left our bodies as he picked up Elijah’s cup, poured wine and drank from it. He was proclaiming himself Messiah! It was what we’d been waiting for!
Then he told us that the bread was his body and the wine his blood. And we knew. Somehow we just knew.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? As the reality hit home in this terrible moment, we laughed at ourselves for such an innocent assumption. We had longed for our redemption, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
Matthew 26:69-75, 27:1-10
I wonder who it is you identify with in this story? I suspect that most people identify with me – Peter. I reckon that you can imagine what it was like to be in such a position: surrounded by people; not knowing who might be hostile and who might be a friend.
My life might have been in danger; I didn’t know. And so I took the safe route: I denied that I even knew him. Ha! That was a bit of a joke, the servant girl sussed me out right away by my Galilean accent. At the end of the day, there was no hiding who or what I was.
But Jesus forgave me. After his resurrection, he gave me the opportunity to heal. He let me tell him three times that I loved him. That’s what he was like and that’s what being his follower is about: forgiveness.
But what about Judas? You might not feel that you can identify him, but I can. I lived with him for three years: The thirteen of us: we travelled together, ate together, laughed together and cried together. I loved Judas like a brother. We all did. Believe me when I tell you that Judas loved Jesus; he wasn’t so different from the rest of us.
What it was that caused Judas to betray Jesus to the authorities, I don’t know. Perhaps he was disappointed with the course that events were clearly taking. Perhaps he was coerced. Perhaps he was afraid. Whatever it was that caused him to betray Jesus, clearly the whole situation caused him great agony.
The events surrounding Judas’ suicide haunt me even to this day. Because I loved him, I can identify with him. We even heard that Judas repented of his terrible deed. The only difference between him and me is that Judas couldn’t or wouldn’t imagine the possibility that he could be forgiven. And the results were tragic.
Did Jesus have to go to the cross in order that the world can be forgiven? I don’t know.
What I do know is that Jesus submitted himself to the worst that human nature could dish out: Denial. Betrayal. Shame. Humiliation. Rejection. Excruciating Physical pain. And he forgave. Even as he hung on the cross, he forgave.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? We had longed for our redemption, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
===
Exodus 12:14-20, 26-27
Passover. A terrifying night. We’re huddled inside our home, the only home we have ever known. A lamb has been slaughtered; its blood painted on the front door, the body has been roasted and consumed. But we can’t quite believe what’s happening all around us.
It’s the middle of the night, but we’re not asleep in our bed. Our bellies are full – but we wonder how long it will be before they are full again. Because we’re dressed and packed for a long journey: a journey into the unknown.
All around us in the darkness of the night, we hear the screams of our neighbours. And we know that all of the firstborn males – men and boys who we know – have died. The angel of death has mercifully passed over our houses – the houses of Israel – just as Moses and Aaron said he would. But that does not make this night any less terrifying.
This is the day of redemption: the day that Israel will be delivered from slavery. But it’s not a comfortable redemption: death surrounds us everywhere we turn.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? As the reality hits home, we laugh at ourselves for such an innocent assumption. We had longed for our freedom, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
But God is wise. Had we known that night what would become of us, we might have chosen to stay in Egypt; we might have chosen death for ourselves.
For close to forty years we have endured hunger, thirst, and great illness. In our anger and confusion we turned our backs on God more than once. But despite our faithlessness, God has been faithful to Israel. He has kept his promise, his covenant. In the fire of our trials and in God’s faithful provision for us, we have learned that redemption is not just physical, but also spiritual.
There is no such thing as redemption easily won. In order for there to be new life, the old life must be left behind. In order for death and the fear of death to be conquered, it must be faced.
One thing we have learned: when you pray for redemption, be careful what you pray for.
Matthew 26:14-35
We arrived in Jerusalem a few days before Passover to celebrate the festival in the Holy City. Like our ancestors before us, we’d travelled a long way. Perhaps not physically, but spiritually. And like our ancestors before us, we had reason to wonder whether we had gone on a futile journey.
The journey wasn’t the one that we originally expected. And now we were deeply sad, bone-weary and more than a little bit frightened. What had begun with so much hope and energy looked like it was going to end in defeat, despair and death.
We remembered that, thousands of years ago, the Angel of Death passed over the homes of our ancestors… Yet, death seemed to be lurking just outside the door that night, biding his time, waiting for the right moment. We could almost see and hear the Angel of Death moving in the night shadows. We prayed fervently that he would pass over our doorpost that evening even as we wondered whether an agent of death might be lurking inside.
Passover – ha! – the festival of redemption. For us, it was looking more like a festival of defeat. Our ancestors might not have known where they were going, but at least they knew that they were escaping slavery, escaping death. It was beginning to look more and more like we had walked right into the jaws of death and would not be able to escape.
It had begun to dawn on us – and we kept pushing the horrible idea from our minds – when Jesus said that he was going to suffer and die, that he actually meant it in a literal way. If ever there was a time for Jesus to proclaim himself as Messiah and call down an army of angels, now was the time. If ever Israel was to be redeemed, now was the time.
As we ate, Jesus picked up the bread and gave thanks, nothing surprising in that. But our breath almost left our bodies as he picked up Elijah’s cup, poured wine and drank from it. He was proclaiming himself Messiah! It was what we’d been waiting for!
Then he told us that the bread was his body and the wine his blood. And we knew. Somehow we just knew.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? As the reality hit home in this terrible moment, we laughed at ourselves for such an innocent assumption. We had longed for our redemption, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
Matthew 26:69-75, 27:1-10
I wonder who it is you identify with in this story? I suspect that most people identify with me – Peter. I reckon that you can imagine what it was like to be in such a position: surrounded by people; not knowing who might be hostile and who might be a friend.
My life might have been in danger; I didn’t know. And so I took the safe route: I denied that I even knew him. Ha! That was a bit of a joke, the servant girl sussed me out right away by my Galilean accent. At the end of the day, there was no hiding who or what I was.
But Jesus forgave me. After his resurrection, he gave me the opportunity to heal. He let me tell him three times that I loved him. That’s what he was like and that’s what being his follower is about: forgiveness.
But what about Judas? You might not feel that you can identify him, but I can. I lived with him for three years: The thirteen of us: we travelled together, ate together, laughed together and cried together. I loved Judas like a brother. We all did. Believe me when I tell you that Judas loved Jesus; he wasn’t so different from the rest of us.
What it was that caused Judas to betray Jesus to the authorities, I don’t know. Perhaps he was disappointed with the course that events were clearly taking. Perhaps he was coerced. Perhaps he was afraid. Whatever it was that caused him to betray Jesus, clearly the whole situation caused him great agony.
The events surrounding Judas’ suicide haunt me even to this day. Because I loved him, I can identify with him. We even heard that Judas repented of his terrible deed. The only difference between him and me is that Judas couldn’t or wouldn’t imagine the possibility that he could be forgiven. And the results were tragic.
Did Jesus have to go to the cross in order that the world can be forgiven? I don’t know.
What I do know is that Jesus submitted himself to the worst that human nature could dish out: Denial. Betrayal. Shame. Humiliation. Rejection. Excruciating Physical pain. And he forgave. Even as he hung on the cross, he forgave.
Why did we ever think that redemption would be comfortable? We had longed for our redemption, but foolishly we had not imagined that it would come at such a terrible cost.
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 - Epiphany Story
The following sermon is a sermon for Epiphany and it's based on a poem by Ian M Fraser entitled: The Strange Coming. This poem appears in Hay and Stardust and is copyrighted and so I cannot publish it here.
The poem was read before the sermon and each section of the sermon is based on a verse of the poem. I've tried to make up for the fact that I can't publish the poem on the web by giving a precis of each verse after each section of the sermon.
The Gospel for Epiphany Sunday is: Matthew 2:1-12
===
Introduction
The Gospel of Matthew says that we were ‘Magi’ or, ‘Magoi’ in the original language. That’s a difficult word to translate into the language that you use today, but I confess that I rather like the term ‘wise men.’
I’ve heard some of your people calling us ‘astrologers’ but from what I understand of your culture, that’s not really a word I’d like to use myself. Yes, we looked up into the heavens for signs and portents.
And yes, we believed that we could understand more about God’s creation by observing the stars, but that’s what all our best knowledge told us. In our country and in our time and in our place, we weren’t engaging in pointless superstitious pastimes, we were genuinely trying to understand the heavens and the earth as best we could through observation: rather like your scientists.
And we – my travelling companions and I – we were also particularly interested in the will and purposes of God. We set our sights on the heavens not just literally but metaphorically. We were not only looking at the stars from a ‘scientific’ point of view; our band of companions was also praying for the will of God to be revealed in the history of humankind and in our lives.
Men Rode Rough
It was after one such prayer that a number of us received the message from God to being our journey. But where should we journey to?
Now some months earlier, a new star had appeared on the horizon. It had long been a belief of wise people everywhere that a bright new star in the sky was a heavenly messenger of change. Several of us looked at each other seeming to ask the same question: ‘Do you think we should follow the star?’
But how do you follow a star? Following a star might seem like a nice, literary, romantic notion but – just try it yourself – it’s not all that easy in practice!
Several of our company pointed out the folly of our plan: Travelling is dangerous. Even though there were a couple of dozen of us – by the way, where did you get this notion that there were only three Magi? Matthew never said that – look it up! … Even though there were a couple of dozen of us, travel was always dangerous at the best of times. Ordinary people would try not to travel more than a day’s journey if they could avoid it because of the dangers involved.
Of course, even in our culture, we had our frequent travellers. They were usually armies or traders of expensive goods. Armies travelling was no problem. They could usually take care of themselves – at least until they got to the battlefield! And if you were trading in expensive goods, travel was worth the risk. Sure there were bandits, but if you divided your goods amongst a long caravan and you sent along enough slaves whose lives were expendable, usually enough of the goods and money got back home to make the trip worthwhile.
That was the usual custom of our day: Ordinary people would not expose themselves to the dangers of travel if they could help it. But armies travelled. And the slaves of rich traders travelled.
The glory of a victorious battle was worth the cost. The riches of a successful business trip was worth the cost.
(First verse of poem suggesting that human beings have a love of gain but that Jesus came to this world as a vulnerable being)
Came Frail Truth
What was the journey like?
Well, the phrase ‘We walked by faith, not by sight’ comes to mind. Sure, we had the star, but it really only helped us to keep in a general Westerly direction.
It was a journey unlike any other we’d ever been on because no one in our party had ever set out on a journey to find God in man made manifest before. No one knew exactly what the location of our destination was. No one knew the specific roads we should take and no one knew the dangers along the way.
At every crossroads, we stopped to pray. Sometimes the answer to our prayer was as obvious as the message that had started us off on the journey in the first place. Sometimes the answer to our prayer was dim and we simply had to try a route and see if it worked. If it didn’t work out, we had to return to where we had diverted and start again. Other times, it seemed to us that our prayers weren’t answered at all and that that specific leg of the journey was totally a matter of trial and error.
And then, of course, some parts of the journey were simply a lot more difficult than others. We had to forge some deep waters and climb some steep hills. Several times we were threatened by bandits and once we had to fend off an actual attack.
In these more dangerous parts of the journey, we sometimes lost heart but we continued to try to encourage each other in our faith and in our prayer. There were many times when it was so difficult that we wanted to give up. But we had set our sights on the truth and on the light of God’s promise of salvation and we kept that vision before us as we journeyed on.
(Second verse of poem suggesting that lies can be powerful and truth can be frail.)
Greed and Fear Yield to Wonder
You might call us the original hippies. I’d like to think that our band of travellers was one in a long line of people who were genuine seekers after God and who were ready to follow the truth no matter how difficult or inconvenient.
Our world really wasn’t so different from yours, you know. Certain details might have changed over the last 2000 years, but like you we lived in a society where people trusted in the prevailing culture of the day.
The values of our band of travellers may have been different but we couldn’t help but be affected by the views of everyone around us.
Our quest for truth, our quest for God, didn’t make sense; or so everyone told us. ‘You’re well off. You’re respected. Stay home and enjoy the fruits of your acquired wisdom.’ They said.
You see, our society really only respected the kind of wisdom that helped people make sense of their situation so that they could attain power, influence and money. Of course, it was considered better to gain wealth and power by honest means – or, if not honest, at least by not overt dishonesty or robbery. But gaining power and influence by bending the truth beyond all recognition was still considered better than having nothing.
To give up everything and to go on a journey for the sake of God and his Truth – like we did – was considered mad. Especially when a person had no idea exactly where they were going, no map for the journey and no certainty of getting there.
(Third verse of poem suggesting that ‘the way of the world’ is greed and that God’s way is wonder.)
Broken Folk Healing
We got there eventually, of course. Or, at least we think we did. Well as I said before, how do you really know where a star is pointing?
What we do know is that being in the presence of this young child was like experiencing an epiphany. I suppose that a lot of new parents and grandparents feel that way only, of course, this was not our child.
Somehow, he seemed to be a child for the world, for the universe. A child for generations long since dead and a child for generations still to come.
Very quietly the Spirit of God seemed to speak silently to each of us and said: ‘My presence is in this place.’
I think Mary and Joseph and all the other visitors heard the voice too because a great sense of peace came upon all of us.
In this small child’s helplessness, we understood that God is present with all who are helpless. After our long journey, we understood that our journey had not been in vain, however purposeless the world might believe it to be. As we gathered with Jesus’ other visitors – most of them considered undesirable and on the margins of society – the first inkling of understanding passed across our spirits.
(Fourth verse of poem suggesting that the marginalised rejoice in the coming of the Messiah)
There, in the presence of this young child Jesus, we began to understand God’s purposes for his universe – for his New Creation.
That’s the story of our Epiphany. What’s your story?
The poem was read before the sermon and each section of the sermon is based on a verse of the poem. I've tried to make up for the fact that I can't publish the poem on the web by giving a precis of each verse after each section of the sermon.
The Gospel for Epiphany Sunday is: Matthew 2:1-12
===
Introduction
The Gospel of Matthew says that we were ‘Magi’ or, ‘Magoi’ in the original language. That’s a difficult word to translate into the language that you use today, but I confess that I rather like the term ‘wise men.’
I’ve heard some of your people calling us ‘astrologers’ but from what I understand of your culture, that’s not really a word I’d like to use myself. Yes, we looked up into the heavens for signs and portents.
And yes, we believed that we could understand more about God’s creation by observing the stars, but that’s what all our best knowledge told us. In our country and in our time and in our place, we weren’t engaging in pointless superstitious pastimes, we were genuinely trying to understand the heavens and the earth as best we could through observation: rather like your scientists.
And we – my travelling companions and I – we were also particularly interested in the will and purposes of God. We set our sights on the heavens not just literally but metaphorically. We were not only looking at the stars from a ‘scientific’ point of view; our band of companions was also praying for the will of God to be revealed in the history of humankind and in our lives.
Men Rode Rough
It was after one such prayer that a number of us received the message from God to being our journey. But where should we journey to?
Now some months earlier, a new star had appeared on the horizon. It had long been a belief of wise people everywhere that a bright new star in the sky was a heavenly messenger of change. Several of us looked at each other seeming to ask the same question: ‘Do you think we should follow the star?’
But how do you follow a star? Following a star might seem like a nice, literary, romantic notion but – just try it yourself – it’s not all that easy in practice!
Several of our company pointed out the folly of our plan: Travelling is dangerous. Even though there were a couple of dozen of us – by the way, where did you get this notion that there were only three Magi? Matthew never said that – look it up! … Even though there were a couple of dozen of us, travel was always dangerous at the best of times. Ordinary people would try not to travel more than a day’s journey if they could avoid it because of the dangers involved.
Of course, even in our culture, we had our frequent travellers. They were usually armies or traders of expensive goods. Armies travelling was no problem. They could usually take care of themselves – at least until they got to the battlefield! And if you were trading in expensive goods, travel was worth the risk. Sure there were bandits, but if you divided your goods amongst a long caravan and you sent along enough slaves whose lives were expendable, usually enough of the goods and money got back home to make the trip worthwhile.
That was the usual custom of our day: Ordinary people would not expose themselves to the dangers of travel if they could help it. But armies travelled. And the slaves of rich traders travelled.
The glory of a victorious battle was worth the cost. The riches of a successful business trip was worth the cost.
(First verse of poem suggesting that human beings have a love of gain but that Jesus came to this world as a vulnerable being)
Came Frail Truth
What was the journey like?
Well, the phrase ‘We walked by faith, not by sight’ comes to mind. Sure, we had the star, but it really only helped us to keep in a general Westerly direction.
It was a journey unlike any other we’d ever been on because no one in our party had ever set out on a journey to find God in man made manifest before. No one knew exactly what the location of our destination was. No one knew the specific roads we should take and no one knew the dangers along the way.
At every crossroads, we stopped to pray. Sometimes the answer to our prayer was as obvious as the message that had started us off on the journey in the first place. Sometimes the answer to our prayer was dim and we simply had to try a route and see if it worked. If it didn’t work out, we had to return to where we had diverted and start again. Other times, it seemed to us that our prayers weren’t answered at all and that that specific leg of the journey was totally a matter of trial and error.
And then, of course, some parts of the journey were simply a lot more difficult than others. We had to forge some deep waters and climb some steep hills. Several times we were threatened by bandits and once we had to fend off an actual attack.
In these more dangerous parts of the journey, we sometimes lost heart but we continued to try to encourage each other in our faith and in our prayer. There were many times when it was so difficult that we wanted to give up. But we had set our sights on the truth and on the light of God’s promise of salvation and we kept that vision before us as we journeyed on.
(Second verse of poem suggesting that lies can be powerful and truth can be frail.)
Greed and Fear Yield to Wonder
You might call us the original hippies. I’d like to think that our band of travellers was one in a long line of people who were genuine seekers after God and who were ready to follow the truth no matter how difficult or inconvenient.
Our world really wasn’t so different from yours, you know. Certain details might have changed over the last 2000 years, but like you we lived in a society where people trusted in the prevailing culture of the day.
The values of our band of travellers may have been different but we couldn’t help but be affected by the views of everyone around us.
Our quest for truth, our quest for God, didn’t make sense; or so everyone told us. ‘You’re well off. You’re respected. Stay home and enjoy the fruits of your acquired wisdom.’ They said.
You see, our society really only respected the kind of wisdom that helped people make sense of their situation so that they could attain power, influence and money. Of course, it was considered better to gain wealth and power by honest means – or, if not honest, at least by not overt dishonesty or robbery. But gaining power and influence by bending the truth beyond all recognition was still considered better than having nothing.
To give up everything and to go on a journey for the sake of God and his Truth – like we did – was considered mad. Especially when a person had no idea exactly where they were going, no map for the journey and no certainty of getting there.
(Third verse of poem suggesting that ‘the way of the world’ is greed and that God’s way is wonder.)
Broken Folk Healing
We got there eventually, of course. Or, at least we think we did. Well as I said before, how do you really know where a star is pointing?
What we do know is that being in the presence of this young child was like experiencing an epiphany. I suppose that a lot of new parents and grandparents feel that way only, of course, this was not our child.
Somehow, he seemed to be a child for the world, for the universe. A child for generations long since dead and a child for generations still to come.
Very quietly the Spirit of God seemed to speak silently to each of us and said: ‘My presence is in this place.’
I think Mary and Joseph and all the other visitors heard the voice too because a great sense of peace came upon all of us.
In this small child’s helplessness, we understood that God is present with all who are helpless. After our long journey, we understood that our journey had not been in vain, however purposeless the world might believe it to be. As we gathered with Jesus’ other visitors – most of them considered undesirable and on the margins of society – the first inkling of understanding passed across our spirits.
(Fourth verse of poem suggesting that the marginalised rejoice in the coming of the Messiah)
There, in the presence of this young child Jesus, we began to understand God’s purposes for his universe – for his New Creation.
That’s the story of our Epiphany. What’s your story?
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
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