Sunday 24 February 2007 - The Temptations of Being Human

The text for tomorrow's sermon is based mainly on Luke's account of the Temptation of Jesus: Luke 4:1-13.

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Introduction – Setting the Scene

Imagine with me, if you will, a scene about 40 minutes into a 2-hour movie. We – the audience – have been closely following the development of the main character.

Armed with the screen-writer’s exposition and with a little help from the narrator, we already understand that the central character is someone very special. And right now, 40 minutes into the film, the anticipation is building. The script and the acting and the music all indicate that something very impressive is about to happen that is going to change the course of the film. From this point forward, nothing is going to be the same.

And then it happens – that compelling, mysterious event that we’ve been waiting for – Jesus is baptised. The background music swells dramatically and triumphantly. The heavens are opened. A great light pours forth and the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus. And a voice from heaven – somehow both quiet and thundering at the same times – declares “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased!”

Ahhh. So that’s it! That’s the revelation we’ve been waiting for. Mystery solved. The audience sits back in their seats and people relax a bit, content in the knowledge that they now understand who this man is. As the voice-over narrator reads the genealogy of Jesus, one or two people contemplate whether to get out of their seats to buy some Malteasers.

But wait! The scene once again changes dramatically and abruptly. The music is loud, poignant - at once both threatening and hopeful. Clearly the drama is not yet over!

Jesus is going to be tempted by the personification of all Evil – the Devil himself. Jesus, Son of Adam, Son of God will be put to the test.

And at the end of this testing, we will know the answer to the question: “What kind of a Messiah is Jesus going to be?” Is Jesus going to the sort of Messiah that many of his contemporaries are expecting – one who uses power to free the Jewish people from the hands of an occupying force? Or is he going to be the sort of Messiah that is indicated in the Gospels – a Suffering Servant Messiah? Is Jesus going to be a Son-of-Adam Messiah or a Son-of-God Messiah?

Well, of course, we know the answer. We’ve heard this story told many times, those of us who have been Christians all our lives. Jesus is going to be the Suffering Servant Messiah. He’s going to suffer and die on the cross and all who believe in him and call on his name will be saved.

The thing is, the temptations of Jesus are not just temptations that were specially designed in order to try to invalidate his Messiahship. These temptations are at the core of what it means to be a human being living in a sinful world. And if Jesus was fully divine, he was also fully human.

By human standards, these three temptations are subtle, reasonable and are considered by many to be best-advised. Evil is powerful when it weaves its way into our standard operating procedures and when it presents itself as “the way things are”.

The First Temptation

The first temptation that Jesus is presented with is the temptation of “The Lord helps those who helps themselves”. Just in case I need to say it in so many words, this saying comes from popular culture and is most emphatically not to be found anywhere in the bible.

It is in Jesus’ response to this temptation to turn a stone into bread that we can understand the precise nature of the temptation. Jesus responds by quoting from Deuteronomy 8: Moses’ warning to the people of Israel not to forget God in times of prosperity. A person does not live by bread alone, Jesus responds

The first temptation is the ever-present temptation that humanity has to try to help itself. To forget that everything that we have is given to us by God. It’s the temptation to think that we are in control of our lives, to think that the good things in our lives are there not as gifts from God but because we deserve them.

Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we repeat the words “Give us this day our daily bread” Yet, generally speaking, our lives are not dominated by people going around saying: “I’m so thankful for everything that I have, that I sometimes can’t take it all in!” or “There are just no words that will express the feelings of thankfulness that I have.”

What we do hear are lots of cultural messages that encourage us to spoil ourselves because we’re worth it. We hear messages telling us to take a well-deserved holiday or to buy ourselves a well-deserved treat.

Now, I’m not saying that God wants us to be miserable or to suffer simply for the sake of suffering. I am saying that God-followers are called to remember the truth that all good things in our lives are blessings from God.

Although our culture gives us the seemingly reasonable message that we deserve what we have and that our lives are under our own control, disciples of Jesus are called to remember the truth of God’s sovereignty.

Jesus’ Messiahship will not be based on his reliance on his own power. Jesus’ Messiahship is going to be based in his humanity. He will conduct his Messianic mission as a human being living in radical obedience to his heavenly Father. Jesus’ Messiahship will be a witness to his faith in the sovereignty of the Father.

The Second Temptation

The second temptation is the big one – the temptation to wield power over other human beings. Jesus has just indicated his faith that everything human beings have comes from God, but now the Devil is claiming to have power over the things of this world and he is encouraging Jesus to choose to be the kind of Messiah that uses might on the side of right.

Jesus responds by quoting from the Great Commandment – the foundational principle of both Judaism and Christianity – “Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him”.

Jesus was being tempted to be the kind of Messiah that many people in his time were waiting for – a powerful King. However, Scripture tells us clearly that Jesus was being called to be a Suffering Servant and not a powerful King. And it’s not just because Jesus had to die to atone for our sins; it’s also because servanthood is the very nature of Christian discipleship The way of the world is to wield power; the way of Christian discipleship is to be a servant.

Our culture holds fast to the idea of using might in the cause of right. One of the commentators on this passage – John Pridmore in The Church Times - writes the following: ‘The same seductive voice seeks to persuade the Church, as it sought to persuade the Lord of the Church, to be a power for good - to be a power for good. To use power to achieve what must be done may be a necessity for the army, but for the Church to do so is always idolatry. The temptation to "worship the devil" is not to do weird things in the woods at midnight. It is the temptation to stride the corridors of power. And, ever since the conversion of Constantine, there has been little evidence of the Church's attempting to resist it.’

I said earlier that these temptations are subtle, reasonable and considered by many to be best-advised. I said earlier that evil is most powerful when it weaves its way into our standard operating procedures and when it presents itself as “the way things are”.

The use of might for the cause of right is hugely seductive because the alternative seems totally impractical, unrealistic and even suicidal. I do like John Pridmore’s observation that. ‘the temptation to "worship the devil" is not to do weird things in the woods at midnight.’ The temptation is simply to follow the way that seems most “realistic” and “practical” in our sinful world.

The Third Temptation

The third temptation has to do with putting God to the test.

Jesus was tempted by an action that most of us would find easy to resist. I’ve not yet heard of many people tempted to throw themselves off tall buildings. The interesting thing about this temptation, though, is that whatever the outcome, Evil would have won.

Jesus’ survival would not have been regarded as an oddity in his culture – it would have been proof of Jesus’ political Messiahship and it would have gained him the power offered by the second temptation. Had Jesus not survived the fall, his death would not have been a victory over sin, death and the power of Evil; it would simply have been pointless.

However, the temptation to test God is something to which ordinary human beings are tempted. This is the temptation to demand that God must “magically” intervene in a situation and sort things out in the manner which I think is best.

Human beings have many different ways of putting God to the test in this way.

The so-called “Prosperity Gospel” is one way in which people of faith may put God to the test. The “Prosperity Gospel” gets preached in different ways in different situations but it sounds something like this: “God wants everyone to be happy and healthy and wealthy. All you have to do is speak in tongues or give half your salary to the minister or believe the right things about healing ministry and all your problems will be solved.”

The other way that people put God to the test is by rejecting God or not believing in God because God has not intervened to “magically” sort out their problems. So some people will say that they have turned their back on God because he allowed a loved one to die. Other people will say that because there is so much suffering in the world, they are forced to believe that God does not exist.

All these ways are ways of putting God to the test, of demanding that God do things our way.

Conclusion

Perhaps unique amongst all human beings, Jesus overcame all these temptations. He chose to become fully human and to trust in God for his needs in full obedience; he chose to ascribe all power and sovereignty to the Father; he chose to believe in a God who does not need to be put to the test.

In overcoming these temptations, Jesus not only defined the nature of his Messiahship, he also became an example to us.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent and so I think that is it fitting that we look at our human nature in the mirror of Jesus’ example and in the light of human temptations.

I do, however, want to remind you that, as you examine your consciences during Lent, that you remember where this season is leading: to an empty tomb and a living Lord.

With the Israelites of old, Christianity proclaims that God is steadfast, abounding in mercy and most of all – full of grace – despite the unfaithfulness of his people. We believe that God offers forgiveness to all through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the cornerstone of our faith.

The examination of our consciences during Lent is the stuff of discipleship but it is our trust in God’s offer of forgiveness that makes us free to repent in the first place!

During Lent, I pray that we remember that we do not presume to come to the Lord trusting in our own righteousness, but only in the mercy and forgiveness that was brought into the world through our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

Sunday 11 February 2007 - Injustice is on borrowed time

This is a short sermon aimed at adults (and whoever else doesn't fancy a kip) at an all-age communion service. The texts are: Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26.

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We’ve spent some time this morning discussing how God wants us to be rooted and grounded in him and in his way of doing things. The passage we read from the prophet Jeremiah tells us that the person who follows the ways of God “Shall be like a tree planted by water….It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green.”

But this passage also raises the issue for me of whether being a follower of God means that you won’t have any hardship, that you won’t have any illnesses and that life will be one big bowl of cherries. Because in real life things don’t always seem to work out that way. There is even a popular saying that acknowledges this phenomenon: “No good deed ever goes unpunished”.

It would have been easy to take the Jeremiah passage and preach to you that following God is the path to happiness or to self-actualisation. But had I done that, I would not have been preaching the truth and I would not have been proclaiming to you a biblical worldview.

The New Testament shows us that the early church suffered for the sake of following Jesus. And in Luke’s version of the beatitudes, which we have just read, we see that Jesus expects his disciples to be hated, excluded, reviled and defamed because of him.

So what exactly is the deal here? If we follow God will we be happy or will we have troubles?

I’m afraid that rather than give you an answer I’m going to come back at you with a question. Why is it that you are following God? Why is it that you wish to be a disciple of Jesus?

Because if your reason for following God is “to be happy” then you are following God for the wrong reason. In very simple terms, the reason for following God is because God is God and God is to be obeyed. The reason that we follow God is because God’s way is the right way. Sometimes, following God will make people happy, but that’s certainly not to be guaranteed.

Often times, following God is so contrary to the way that the world works, that being a disciple of Christ might actually involve hardships. Certainly Christians in places like China and in Burma or other countries where the church in persecuted know the negative consequences of being a Christian.

Closer to home, many Christian people struggle with an environment at work where they feel that they are being asked to behave in ways that are contrary to their Christian faith. Sometimes they have to choose between behaving in a Godly way or keeping their jobs.

But in the Beatitudes, Jesus assures people who choose God’s path, that although they may feel persecuted, that they are actually blessed. Anyone who sets their life on the path of following God and who suffers in consequence of their discipleship is blessed by God. Contrary to the common view that to be happy, rich, and have a full belly is evidence of God’s blessing, Jesus’ tells us that if worldly happiness is our main objective, then our reward is now and not in the Kingdom.

So what is following God all about then?

One of the commentators on the Jeremiah reading puts it this way: “The dice are loaded in favour of righteousness; injustice is on borrowed time.”

As Christians, we follow God’s way not only because it is right and because God is to be obeyed, but because we believe that we have a real and a concrete hope for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. We believe that, because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus “The dice are loaded in favour of righteousness; injustice is on borrowed time.”

Everything that God does has one objective: the Kingdom of God, the New Creation, the Resurrection Life. This is the place where justice and righteousness will be established and where the Messiah sits at God’s right hand. The prophets longed for the establishment of God’s Kingdom of justice and righteousness and as Christians, we believe that Jesus is the fulfilment of their prophetic longings.

Following God is about Truth. It is about doing what is right. It is about trusting that God is working his purpose out and that, because of Jesus, there is a real and concrete hope for the future of humankind.

In the Kingdom of God, the poor and the hungry are poor and hungry no longer. In the Kingdom of God, all those who have suffered at the hands of evil are validated and blessed by God.

The establishment of Kingdom of God requires divine intervention, but it is not just a “spiritual heaven”. The divine intervention has been done: God sent Jesus, who died because of our sins. Jesus rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death and the power of evil. Jesus’ Holy Spirit has come into the world and empowers Christians to spread the power of life, truth and righteousness into the world.

As Christians, we know that we are God’s tools here on earth. We do not follow God because following him will make us feel good. We follow him because, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we have the firm hope that “the dice are loaded in favour of righteousness; injustice is on borrowed time.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I pray that we will be like trees planted by the water. May we send our roots out into the living waters of the Holy Spirit. When the heat comes, may we continue to grow strong in the knowledge that God has promised that his Kingdom of justice and righteousness will prevail. Amen

Sunday 4 February 2007 - Forgiven Sinners, God Believes in You

This is a two part sermon. I used to do a lot of two-part sermons but some reason I stopped. Each scripture reading is followed by a talk and the two talks are also separated by a hymn. In addition to being a two-part sermon, this is something of a narrative sermon in the first person. Something different for a change.

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The first part is based on 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

I’m Paul. Paul of Tarsus.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of writing a letter to the Christian Church in Corinth. “And now I want to remind you, my brothers and sisters, of the Good News which I preached to you, which you received, and on which your faith stands firm.”

The Gospel message is the key to our faith as Christians and it is central to what we are all about. But I think that sometimes we can take this message for granted or it becomes so commonplace that we hear the words but they don’t have the same impact that they did when we first heard the Gospel. That’s why it’s important for followers of Christ to keep reminding each other of the Gospel message.

I know that my brothers and sisters in Corinth are perfectly familiar with the Gospel message, but I hope that by reminding them of it that they can hear it in a fresh way:

“Christ died for our sins as written in the Scriptures, he was buried, was raised to life three days later as written in the Scriptures; he appeared to Peter, and then to all twelve apostles. Then he appeared to more than 500 of this followers at once. Then he appeared to James, and afterwards to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared also to me.”

What’s that? You say that this sounds more like a recitation of events than a statement of belief? Well, we in the first century church believe that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and that he rose from the dead. That he appeared to so many people after his death is just proof of the resurrection. I think you have a creed now that says much the same thing, don’t you?

What’s that you say? Ah yes, the resurrection! That’s a tough one for a lot of people! Don’t think that it was any easier to believe in my day than it is in yours. We weren’t all a bunch of superstitious primitives you know. I’ll bet the Greek philosophers could give your 21st century scholars a run for their money! Some of them didn’t even believe in an after-life.

Hmm, but you do bring up a good point. I think I will have to write a bit more about resurrection next. I’ll probably point out that belief in the resurrection is essential to the Christian faith but that no-one knows exactly what the resurrection life will look like or what sorts of bodies we will have after the resurrection. I need to give it a bit of a think but I do insist that ‘resurrection’ is an important part of our faith; If Christ was not raised, then our faith is in vain. Oh! That sounds good; must make a note of that for later.

But in the meantime, my point is that because of Jesus’ death on the cross and God’s forgiveness of our sins, humanity has a real and concrete hope for the future. And disciples of Jesus like you and me have been initiated into a church that believes in real and concrete hope for humanity.

Being a follower of Jesus isn’t just about having some sort of religious experience today. This is what some of the Corinthians seem to think and where they have taken their eye off the goal. They’ve not really been behaving like people who are hoping for a realised Kingdom of God in the future. They’ve been focussing on the minor things like spiritual experiences and whether or not being a disciple of Apollos or Peter brings one better spiritual gifts.

There have been rivalries and factions among them, each faction claiming that members of their group are better disciples of Christ than the others. Of course, I had hoped that the church would have been beyond factions by the 21st century, but it can be so hard for us human beings to grasp the meaning of the Gospel.

Anyway all this focus on who is the best sort of Christian or what sort of spiritual experiences a Christian has to have completely misses the Good News of the Gospel of Christ. The point is that we are all forgiven sinners. We are all sinners. And through Jesus’ death and resurrection we are all forgiven by God! The life, death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrate God’s transforming power and this power can transform human society as well as individual lives.

Do you want proof of God’s transforming power? Look at me. I get the feeling that some of you in the 21st century have conveniently forgotten the fact that before Jesus appeared to me on the road to Damascus, I had made it my life’s work to murder Christians. When I say that I am the least of all apostles and unfit to be called an apostle, I’m not just mouthing pious words. As far as I’m concerned, I’m telling the truth. I murdered people. I murdered Christians.

When Jesus appeared to me, the first shock I had was the painful understanding that far from being a righteous man, I was actually a sinner. The chief of all sinners. That was a horrible experience, let me tell you. I had dedicated my life to trying to serve the Lord of Heaven and then, in a blink of an eye, I understood that I was persecuting him instead. But thanks be to God, immediately after that, Jesus revealed to me that his mission here on earth was all about reconciling God and humanity and that God offered me forgiveness.

It was then that I understand that I am a forgiven sinner – that we are all forgiven sinners. That might sound like a contradiction in terms – being a forgiven sinner – but it’s actually a wonderful freedom!

Human beings don’t have to try to play the impossible game of trying to earn God’s forgiveness. Christ has made forgiveness possible on our behalf. And we don’t have to try to hide our sinfulness from God either; he sees us as we are and, in Christ, he offers us the grace of his forgiveness.

What’s that, you say? That sounds more like what you call the Gospel message? Well, that’s a relief! I’m glad to see that things haven’t changed that much in the 21st century.

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The second part is based on Luke 5:1-11

Shalom, brothers and sisters! My name is Simon but people also call me Peter, or Cephas in Hebrew. That all started when I left everything I had to follow Jesus of Nazareth, my Rabbi and my Lord.

I first came across Jesus in the synagogue when he read from Isaiah and seemed to be claiming to be the Messiah. Everyone spoke well of him until he suggested that the Messiah had also come for the Gentiles and the outcasts, and maybe especially for the Gentiles and the outcasts. Well, I can tell you that that caused quite an uproar among the congregation! People began to chase him out of the synagogue and they tried to stone him. But I was intrigued by this person Jesus who had a strange air of authority about him.

After he left the synagogue, Jesus came to my house where my mother-in-law was lying very ill with a fever. We were worried that she might die but Jesus healed her immediately and she was well enough to get up out of her bed and prepare a meal for us there and then!

Well, I tell you, that certainly increased my curiosity about Jesus even more. Of course, it is not unheard-of for holy men to be healers here in the first century, but I was beginning to entertain the possibility that Jesus might be more than just a holy man. Jesus and I were beginning to develop a relationship and because of that relationship that my regard for him began to grow.

It was the incident with the unexpected catch of fish that changed everything for me. I’d always believed in God but after that experience I realised that God believed in me!

Let me see if I can try to explain this a bit better.

I’m an experienced fisherman. Me and my mates had been trawling all night and we really didn’t catch very much. Do you know what it’s like when you try to do something and fail? You’ve got the experience. You’ve got the knowledge. You try your best but all your efforts come to nothing. If that goes on and on you start to doubt yourself and what you know.

Maybe I’ve lost my ability to catch fish. Maybe I no longer have the right knowledge. Maybe I need different equipment. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. You’re grinning. I think you’ve been there, right? You know what I’m talking about.

So then Jesus comes along. You have to remember that we’re already getting to know each other and that I’m already thinking that there is a lot more to Jesus than just being a rabbi or a holy man. Jesus has got this whole crowd of people following him, hanging on his every word, but he comes to me and to my boat and he asks to go out into the lake.

Now, this already felt like a bit of encouragement. Because when I was cleaning my nets, I was feeling like something of a failure. And then this man who could be the Messiah comes up to me and asks me to do what I do. He trusts me not to sink the boat even though I’m feeling like a failure.

It’s a good job I already knew something about him and about his character, because when he asked me to cast my nets into deep water in the morning, I got my back up a bit. In about a half a second the thought crossed my mind, ‘I’m the fisherman! You’re a Rabbi!’ But then I thought, ‘Why not? The worst thing that can happen is that I end up in the same situation I was in a few minutes ago. And anyway, I already think that there is something special about Jesus. Why not just listen to what he says?’

And so I listened to him and I did something that went against all of my fishing experience. And Jesus was right! My nets were filled with fish. So many that the boat almost couldn’t carry them all back to shore.

And then my eyes were opened. I saw that Jesus was the Messiah and my Lord. I can’t really explain why. The first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man.’ Funny, isn’t it? All those other people had been chasing Jesus around trying to get close to him and now I’m saying ‘Go away from me.’ You just can’t come face to face with pure holiness and not understand that you’re a sinful person. And that’s painful.

But Jesus didn’t go away. More than that, he told me that he wanted me to follow him and be his disciple! Me, a sinner! A simple fisherman with only a basic knowledge of the Torah! No ordinary Rabbi would even consider having me as his disciple, but here is the Messiah, the Son of God, showing me that he believed in me and in the work that I could do with him. Just like we caught all those fish that morning, Jesus showed me that together with him that Jesus would use me to “catch” many people to be his disciples.

Well, you all in the 21st century know the rest of my story. I wasn’t a perfect disciple by any means, but God still used me to build his Church. In my cheekier moments, I like to think that my mistakes and personality quirks can encourage other Christians to realise that God uses all sorts of imperfect people to do his work on earth.

The thing that I learned about God during my life is that God doesn’t work alone. Being Creator of the Universe, he could work alone, but he wants to work with us. Imperfect as we are. Isn’t that amazing? Being a follower of Jesus wasn’t always an easy thing to do - you know I became a martyr in the end - but it was worth it. Well, for me, anyway.

God took me, flawed as I am, and used my life to his glory. God believed in me and I know he believes in you too.

Sunday 21 January 2007 - Christian Unity Sunday

This sermon was delivered to a local Anglican congregation during a "pulpit swap" on Christian Unity Sunday. It is based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

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Introduction

The Christian denominations that are part of the World Council of Churches began an eight-day period of prayer for Christian Unity this past Thursday, the eighteenth of January.

It is as part of the observance of this week that I am here with you, as a Methodist minister, invited to preach and also participating with you in your service of worship. You may or may not be aware that the Anglican and Methodist denominations signed a Covenant on 1 November 2003, agreeing to work toward the “full visible unity of Christ’s Church”.

But as far as I am personally concerned, it is not this Covenant between our two denominations that makes us one. Rather, as Paul wrote in his First letter to the Corinthians, I believe that you and I are brothers and sisters in Christ by virtue of our baptism, and by virtue of the fact that we confess Jesus Christ to be our saviour and Lord.

Now, different people have different ideas about what it means for Christians to be “in full visible unity”. I expect that any position I took on this matter I would likely find someone here who would disagree with me. I expect that I’d probably have the same experience in my own congregation.

So I want to make it clear that I’m not saying that there is “one right way” for Christians to express their unity. If anything, I think that it is a Christian virtue to be able to listen respectfully to the point of view of another Christian on this matter and to agree to disagree if necessary.

But this morning, I’d like to look at the first two verses from our Epistle reading and see if we can draw any useful ideas from it with respect to Christian unity.

How A Community Functions

1 Corinthians, Chapter 12, verses twelve and thirteen read as follows: ‘Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of one Spirit’ (1 Cor 12: 12, 13 NRSV)

The Apostle Paul was an expert at taking current ideas and adapting them in order to communicate a Christian message to his audience. The Corinthian readers of this letter would have been familiar with this image of the body and the workings of its different members because it originated in the world of Greek politics.

The Greeks and Romans used this image of the body in a particular way and this is how their story went.

The community is like the human body (Greek political leaders would say). Some people are more important than others just as some body parts are more important to the functioning of the body than others. The King is the head of the community - the most important part of the body – and then other classes proceed down the line from more important people to the less important people.

However - they would exhort their citizens - even though some people are more important to the life of the community than others, it is necessary for our community to function as one, just as all parts of the body cooperate and function together.

But Paul takes this story and changes the details. Rather than using the image of the body to make the point that some people in the community are more important than others, Paul uses the image to make the opposite point: that all members of the Christian community have equal status in the eyes of God, no matter what their function.

He even emphasises this by saying that the body’s “shameful bits” do not have a lesser status, but have vital functions that have been ordained by God. Paul uses this common metaphor about the secular community to make the point that the Church universal is an alternative community with an alternative way of living.

So, we have here the familiar principle that is usually drawn from these verses: Each person in a church community has been given different abilities and gifts to exercise on behalf of the church community. In God’s eyes, what is important is not whether a person is a bishop, a churchwarden or a volunteer worker, what matters is that each person is using his or her own gifts in obedience to the call of God and for the benefit of the Kingdom of God.

Different Denominations, Different Gifts

But I think that perhaps we might be able to extend this idea beyond the walls of any particular congregation and think about the Church universal and the church as a whole.

I expect that this may be one of those areas of disagreement, but I’d like to put it to you that perhaps different “sorts” of Christian congregations may have different functions to fulfil in the Universal Church of Christ.

Some congregations may best be able to minister to young people and young families, other congregations may be best placed to minister to older people. Some congregations are best suited to people who are moved by beauty and ceremony and symbols. Other congregations can communicate the love of God best to people who respond to words and ideas.

It’s my suspicion that just as every individual has his or her own gifts, so do different denominations and different congregations have different gifts to contribute to the Church of Christ on earth. God has created human beings with an amazing variety of different personality characteristics and talents. It doesn’t seem surprising to me that one kind of Christian community will not necessarily help all Christians to grow in faith and discipleship.

One in Christ

In just a few minutes, we are going to affirm our faith together in the Triune God. We are going to say that we believe in the Father as Creator, the Son as Saviour and the Spirit as the one who makes Christ known.

For me, it is this belief in the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - that makes us one. For me, it is the fact that we profess belief in Jesus Christ as our saviour and Lord that makes us one.

As someone who grew up in the bad old days when Christians of different denominations were suspicious of each other and would not take communion together, I rejoice that as a Methodist, I am able to receive communion here with you today. For me, our communion together is an important indication that we understand that we are one in Christ.

The progress that has been made over the last decades with respect to different denominations being in communion with each other is significant and we should be encouraged by it and not under-estimate it. We should be even more encouraged by the Anglican Methodist Covenant which challenges us to go even further and seek for “full visible unity” – whatever that may mean.

In the meantime, I think that we can demonstrate some “visible unity” in the community of B*******, not in any institutional sense, but by all the Christian churches seeking to increase their contact with each other.

Between the different denominations and the different Anglican parishes, we have many hundreds of people with all sorts of different abilities and talents who can work together.

I believe that in working together and pooling our talents and resources, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts – which is the great message of this image that Paul uses. I realise that I am a new face here in B******* but my impression is that there is an awful lot of good will amongst Christians here – both clergy and lay people.

So my prayer for all of us this morning is that as Christian congregations, we can find ways to celebrate the talents that we possess and at the same time look increasingly for ways to come together in order to discern the will of God for us as representatives of the Universal Church of Christ here in B*******.

I pray this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

7 January 2007 - The Covenant Prayer

The following sermon is based on John Wesley's "Covenant Prayer". The text of the prayer is given below.

I am no longer my own but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,
wherever you may place me,
in all that I do
and in all that I may endure;
when there is work for me
and when there is none;
when I am troubled
and when I am at peace.
Your will be done
when I am valued
and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfilment
and when it is lacking;
when I have all things,
and when I have nothing.
I willingly offer
all I have and am
to serve you,
as and where you choose.

Glorious and blessèd God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
May it be so for ever.
Let this covenant now made on earth
be fulfilled in heaven. Amen.

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Introduction

When I was studying in theology college, one of my tutors told us about his experience attending bible college in the United States in the 1970s. The tutor – let’s call him John – had actually decided to study theology as a young man for his first degree. In his second year at university he had the opportunity to go to the United States for a term and study in a US bible college.

John arrived at the US bible college as a life-long British Methodist. He was 19 years old and had never before left the UK. This was his first experience with a foreign country and it was also his first experience with Christianity, American style.

John told us that one of the first things his fellow students asked him was “Have you made a commitment to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?” John said that he was quite surprised by the question, that he thought for a few seconds and then said “Well, the last time I made a commitment to Jesus as my Lord and Saviour was this morning, why do you ask?”

Today we observe “Covenant Sunday” together and I want to explore the idea of what it means for a human being to make a commitment to God in conjunction with the observance of this special Sunday.

The Covenant Prayer is quite a powerful prayer. One might even call it extreme. It is certainly uncompromising. I suspect that it would more than meet the demands of the student who wondered whether my tutor had committed his life to God.

If you wish to do so, turn to page 288 in the Worship Book and look at this prayer with me. I want first to look at the last six lines of the prayer, on page 289.

These lines tell us clearly that we are praying to the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Although the Covenant Prayer does not begin with an address to the Father, Son or Spirit, it does end with the Holy Trinity because it has been assumed from the beginning hat it is the Triune God to whom we are praying.

Now, let’s go back to the very beginning of the prayer – to the boldfaced type – and look at the very first line of the prayer.

This is strong stuff and the prayer jumps right in with a most astonishing commitment: addressing our prayer to the Holy Trinity, we pray, “I am no longer my own but yours.”

I am no longer my own but yours

“I am no longer my own but yours” What, exactly, does this phrase mean?

First of all, I think that it is simply making a statement of truth. Properly speaking from God’s perspective, we are not “our own” in any sense of the word.
When we make our offerings of money here in church we often say to God in prayer that we are giving back to him what he has given to us in the first place. And that is also what we are doing in the first line of the Covenant prayer. God has given each individual here his or her life and in this prayer we are offering that life back to God. But the thing is that we don’t have to.

Although it is true from a “God’s eye perspective”, that our lives are a gift from God and we are held in being by God, God does not say that he will cease to hold us in being if we do not acknowledge that our lives are gifted to us by Him – which is just another way of saying that God is Lord in our life.

Our very lives are a free gift from God and God generously holds us in being for as long as we are to live whether or not we acknowledge God, whether or not we ignore God, whether or not we curse God. God gives us the gift of free will because he wants us to freely turn our lives over to him.

As we know, the Great Commandment is love God and love your neighbour. (I hope you know this by now, because I think I must say it almost every week). As we also know, love is about self-giving.

The only way that a person can love God is to give to back God his or her life, his or her very self. Because the essence of Christian love is the action of self-giving, our love for God can’t be coerced from us, nor can it be pre-programmed into us. God freely gives us our lives and he hopes for our free giving in return.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the film “Bruce Almighty”, a film where the character Bruce is given all of God’s abilities and responsibilities for a short time. Bruce’s one frustration is that he can’t make the woman he loves love him back, even with God’s powers. At one point, Bruce asks God “How do you get someone to love you?” and God chuckles and responds “Welcome to my world!”

God freely gives us our lives, our families and everything that we have. God also gives us the gift of freedom – to choose to acknowledge him and love him in return or to choose to turn our back on him. God hopes that we will respond by giving him our love, by acknowledging him as Lord, as the one who holds us in being.

And in this prayer we begin by doing that very thing. We pray “I am no longer my own, but yours”. Lord, I give up any notion I have of being in charge of my own life and my own soul. I know that without you, I am nothing, and I freely acknowledge this fact to you, to myself and to my Christian brothers and sisters. I give back to you, I intend to give back to you, I hope to give back to you, the very life that you have given me.

Your Will be Done

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “your will be done”. In the Covenant Prayer, we also pray “your will be done”.

If you look again on page 288, most of the rest of the prayer after the first line is an elaboration on the sorts of situations where we pray for God’s will to be done in our lives. The list does not make for comfortable reading.

This list is also powerful, extreme and uncompromising. If you look closely I think we can divide this list into two broad categories: when things are going well and when things are not going well. It’s very much like the marriage vow to stick by one’s spouse for better or for worse. What’s effective about this prayer – and also somewhat shocking – are the specific instances listed.

Many of us who consider ourselves committed Christians will want to work for the Kingdom of God. But in this prayer, we are asking for God’s will to be done when there is no Kingdom work for us to do as well as when there is Kingdom work for us to do. This can be very difficult. Sometimes God may say to us “No, this kingdom work is for your brother or sister in Christ to do, it’s not for you.” Or God may say “This work is for the Holy Spirit, not for you.” And we may feel troubled and useless because we think we see an urgent need and we want something to happen. Now!

But this prayer also asks us to pray: “Your will be done when I am valued and when I am disregarded.” The work of the Kingdom ultimately belongs to God and God knows what he is doing. But this can be really hard to trust – I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. I’m sure we’ve all been there. God calls us to work for his Kingdom, but we always have to keep in mind that it is God who will ultimately usher in the Kingdom, not us and our work.

This can be a delicate and difficult balance to strike. It is a hard thing to be disregarded and it is especially difficult to be disregarded if we think that it is only in “Doing Something” that we can be tools of God.

Conclusion

My tutor’s youthful college friends wanted to know if he acknowledged the Triune God to be his Lord. The Covenant Prayer that we will pray together in just a few minutes acknowledges the Lordship of the Trinity in a fairly dramatic way.

The prayer acknowledges implicitly that all that we have – our family, friends, homes and our very lives – are gifts from God. The prayer acknowledges that none of these things could exist apart from the love and grace of God.

We begin the prayer by offering back to God the greatest gift that he has given us – our selves.

We remember that as our Lord, it is the Triune God who has offered us the possibility of this Covenant. It is he who initiates this Covenant, not us.

The Covenant of God’s faithfulness was offered from the beginning and is testified to in both the Old and the New Testaments. The Covenant was made possible and was brought to fruition by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who died and rose so that we might be reconciled with the Father.

Before we could do anything, God offered us his forgiveness, his love and his grace in order to draw us to him in love. This prayer is an opportunity to respond to God’s offer for forgiveness, love and grace and I hope that each of us will feel able to pray this prayer.

If you have never before responded to God’s offer of forgiveness and love, this service is a good opportunity to do so. If you responded to God’s offer of forgiveness and love many years ago, this service is an opportunity to make that commitment again in the context of Holy Communion.

At the Communion table, we understand in very concrete terms that God has prepared his banquet table for us in advance, before we could do anything. In the company of our brothers and sisters, we will now confess our sins, renew our commitment to God and we will taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen

24 December 2006 - Outlandish Renewal

Here is the sermon for Advent 4. The sermon is based on both of the following texts: Micah 5:2-5a and Luke 1:39-55

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Introduction

I want to put it to you this morning that the two Scripture readings that we heard earlier are some of the most exciting passages in the bible.

To quote from one of the commentaries on the Micah reading: “The God of Israel is a God of shimmering surprises, of outlandish innovation and renewal. At precisely that moment when God’s people have determined the shape of the future…God intervenes and…we are forced to begin again.”*

What more could you ask for on Christmas Eve than “outlandish innovation” and “shimmering surprises” from the Lord of the Universe?

Today we are waiting with expectation for Christmas, about 13 hours away. We are waiting for God’s greatest gift to humankind: the Gift of his Son, God incarnate, the one who will save us from our sins and reconcile us with God.

But in addition to the big Gift of his Son, God has another gift to give us in this morning’s readings. In fact that gift is a “little gift”. Or rather, it’s the gift of being little. It’s a gift for the lowly: little people, little places. A gift that has to do with the lifting up of the lowly and the bringing down of the powerful from their thrones.

It is the gift of hope.

Today’s readings proclaim the transformation that God intends to bring to creation through the arrival of his Son. Today’s readings are about hope, but not about small glimmers of hope. Today’s readings are about big hope – about understanding the final transformation of all creation. And we learn that it is the little people, the insignificant of society whom God uses to make that transformation happen.

This is the story about the outlandish innovation and renewal of all things. A shimmering, glorious hope.

Bethlehem

Let’s begin with Bethlehem. A small town, an insignificant town. Now the Christian Church has always applied the text from Micah to Jesus and we most certainly want to do that today, but it is also important to know what Micah thought he was prophesying.

For Micah, perhaps the most important thing about Bethlehem is that it is not Jerusalem. It is not the Capital City.

If you can imagine living in a situation of “London versus the rest of the country” magnified about a hundred times, this is what was going on during the reign of King Hezekiah, the king of Judah during the time that Micah prophesized. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had fallen less than ten years earlier and it no longer existed. Judah was under threat from Assyria to the East.

King Hezekiah had a two-fold policy for the country. His first policy was the reform of worship - and that was fine as far as it went. But his second policy was a policy of militarily strengthening Jerusalem and some outlying fortress cities in the event of attack by Assyria.

Literally all of the country’s resources – money, materials and labour - went to Jerusalem and these fortress cities whilst it was intended that the people in country towns like Bethlehem would be left to fend for themselves in the event of the country being attacked.

Even worse, the people of the countryside were conscripted to work on the fortification of Jerusalem. The resources they had in order to feed themselves and their own families were small. So despite King Hezekiah’s concern with making sure that the people engaged in the correct form of worship, many of the people lived in abject poverty and in fear of their very lives, injustices that occupy a great deal of the book of Micah.

You can see what sort of a system this is. It’s a system that says: The King matters. The Capital City matters. The army matters. The average person doesn’t matter and if he and his family happen to starve to death because his resources and labour have been used to fortify the Capital City, then so be it.
This was an ancient form of “I’m alright, Jack” starting from the King on down.

But here is the glorious bit of redemption. Here is the incidence of “shimmering surprises and outlandish innovation and renewal”… God says that the Messiah is going to come from one of these poor country villages! From Bethlehem.

The Messiah is going to come from a lowly place. A place where the people are oppressed and where the king is happy to use them as cannon fodder and abandon them to their deaths. God cares about this little village which humankind mocks.

God’s outlandish innovation is that the Messiah, the saviour of the universe, is going to born amongst the lowest of the low. God’s shimmering surprise is that that the people the world despises are people of infinite worth to God.

Imagine! The world tells you that you are dirt, that you are scum and God’s prophet comes along and says, “Out of you, I will bring a ruler for Israel and people all over the earth will acknowledge his greatness.”

The earthly religious system thought they had it all figured out. The Messiah was going to be born in Jerusalem of a prominent family. He was going to be a great military leader who would ensure a great victory of independence for his people.

But God had other plans. “At precisely that moment when God’s people have determined the shape of the future…God intervenes…and we are forced to being again.”* The Messiah is born in a lowly town of lowly parents. He is not a great military leader but the Prince of Peace.

Elizabeth & Mary

And what about Elizabeth and Mary? The mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus.

Elizabeth is a shamed woman because she is barren and has never borne children. Mary is very likely a shamed woman for becoming pregnant before her marriage.

Elizabeth is too old to be a mother. Mary is too young to be a mother. The son that elderly Elizabeth will have, John the Baptist, will usher out the former age. The son that too-young Mary will have will usher in the age to come. As with Jacob and Easu, the older of the two will become the servant of the younger. John the Baptist first acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus when he leaps in his mother’s womb. It is his reaction to the unborn Jesus that causes Elizabeth to proclaim her praises to God.

More outlandish innovation on God’s part. He uses two shamed women to be the mothers of the Messiah and the latter-day Elijah, the herald of the Messiah. You’d think God would have been more sensible. If you or I had been told to pick two mothers for these two great men, would we have picked a childless woman beyond her child-bearing years and an unmarried teenager? Common-sense would have suggested that we choose two upstanding women in their twenties with good track-records of raising Godly, healthy, well-adjusted children.

But, once again, rather than using the safe option, rather than using the tried-and-true, God opts instead for shimmering surprises and outlandish renewal. After all, it makes sense that the circumstances of the Redeemer’s birth will also be circumstances of renewal and redemption, doesn’t it?

Both Elizabeth and Mary understand God’s redemptive purposes and Mary then begins to praise and bless God.

Mary’s words are amongst some of the most beautiful and exciting words in the New Testament – the Magnificat. These words indicate a profound understanding of God’s purposes in the salvation of the World.

In her hymn of blessing to God, Luke’s Mary opens up the Old Testament prophecies for us in a way similar to the way the risen Jesus opened up the texts for the Emmaus travellers.
One commentator suggested that we read the Magnificat as a summary of the Old Testament prophecies. The height of the Magnificat comes in verses 51 to 53: “He has stretched out his mighty arm and scattered the proud with all their plans. He has brought down mighty kings from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away with empty hands.” (Luke 1:51-53, GNB)

This is the very same vision proclaimed to us by Micah. It’s the same vision proclaimed to us by Jeremiah, Isaiah, by Malachi and Zephaniah and many other Prophets. God had a plan. I think this is really exciting!

God knew what he was doing and what his plan for salvation would be. The problem isn’t that God wasn’t clear. The problem is that we fail to understand because God does things in ways we don’t expect. We don’t expect him to use the powerless, the little people, those who are unable, to bring about his Kingdom. But that’s exactly what he does.

This is God’s outlandish plan for innovation and renewal: A world that is ruled by the lowly; A Kingdom where everyone is of infinite worth to God, especially those who the world despises.

This isn’t just a little ray of hope. This is hope with a capital H! Redemption is brought into the world by those who are small, feeble and unable. It is when we are small, feeble and unable that we are sometimes tempted to give up hope. But these are precisely the moments that God has chosen as the moments he uses to redeem the world.

The Redemption of Israel and of the world will come through the Messiah hanging on the cross. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

Conclusion

“The God of Israel is a God of shimmering surprises, of outlandish innovation and renewal. At precisely that moment when God’s people have determined the shape of the future…God intervenes and…we are forced to begin again.”*

A little, insignificant, town. Two shamed women. A little baby who would become, not a warrior king, but a crucified Messiah.

Just when we are tempted to give up all hope, the power of the love of God bursts into the universe with a shimmering hope that is so glorious, as human beings we are not really able to understand its height and breadth and depth. The coming of this inexpressible Hope into the world in the form of a little baby will require the songs and praises of all the heavenly hosts to do him justice.

Let us wait in Hope for the coming of that baby. Our brother, our Saviour and our Lord. Amen

_____
* Cousar, C. et. al. 1994. Texts for Preaching: a lectionary commentary based on the NRSV – Year C. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press. p. 30.

17 December 2006 - Prayer and the Nearness of God

This is the sermon for Advent 3. The scripture readings are: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Philippians 4:4-7 and Luke 3:7-18

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Introduction

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:4-9)

It was the phrase ‘The Lord is near’ that drew me to this particular scripture reading this morning.

‘Well, of course, the Lord is near’ you might think ‘After all, it is Advent, when the Church celebrates the nearness of the Christ-child on Christmas morning.’ There are all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at the arrival of the Christ-child, all sorts of reasons for rejoicing at Christmas.

What really strikes me about these sentences from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, though, is the context in which they were written. Paul himself was in a Roman prison when he wrote these words, and he was facing execution. And the church to whom Paul wrote was a church that was encountering persecution.

You might very well expect this letter read something like: ‘Times are difficult, we are all suffering hardship, pain and persecution, but the Lord never told us that things were going to be easy.’ However, instead of taking a sombre tone, Paul uses the word ‘rejoice’ 14 times in this very short letter. Knowing this information, we can either admire Paul or we can think him foolish. The one thing that we can’t do, however, is to disregard these words as being written by someone who did not have experience of life or who didn’t know pain and suffering.

What was it that gave Paul this extraordinary perspective? How did Paul acquire his ability to rejoice in the face of prison and death? I think there are two key phrases in this morning’s Epistle reading. The first is ‘The Lord is near’ (verse 5) and the second is ‘In everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God’ (verse 6).

In fact, I’d like to argue that the statement ‘the Lord is near’ is a prayerful statement

Prayer as Relationship

I want to put forward the idea this morning that ‘Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.’

I almost hate to use the phrase ‘a relationship with God’ because it’s become so over-used in Christian culture. But I think the idea of ‘relationship, not audience’ is helpful, and I’d like to spend some time unpacking that idea this morning.

Now, I have to confess that I’ve never had an audience with any dignitary I’ve never had an audience with the Queen or an audience with the Pope. I imagine that, before the actual audience, something formalised has to happen, such as receiving a letter from the Queen's staff or perhaps approaching the right people to join in with an organised audience with the Pope.

But whatever happens in an audience, you don’t form a relationship with that person whom you have gone to see. You don’t become the person’s friend and you definitely don’t become part of their life.

I suspect that most of us – myself included – have had experiences of treating our prayer-lives a lot like having an audience with God. We kind of ‘check in’ with God at the formal times. Maybe that’s Sunday morning church service, house group or our personal devotional times. (And there isn't anything wrong with that, per se) Then we sit and [gesture] ‘say’ our prayers to God. Most of us probably thank him for things and ask him for things. Maybe we also spend some time praising God. And then, like having an audience with the Queen, we finish our prayers with God, leave God and get back to our ‘real lives.’ Does any of this sound familiar?

But what about a form of prayer that focuses on the nearness of God? It seems to me that, in order to have a relationship with someone, that person has to be near. The person has to be present with us in our ordinary lives and he or she has to share our everyday concerns. The Queen doesn’t get a look-in here. Neither does the Pope. When was the last time you and the Queen commiserated together about British Gas’ price rises? I don’t think so.

I suspect that the apostle Paul knew something about the nearness of God in prayer. If Jewish prayer in the first century was anything like Jewish prayer today, everything that Paul did would have been an occasion for blessing God in prayer. Small, mundane things like opening one’s eyes in the morning, washing one’s hands, putting on one’s sandals, all required a prayer of blessing. And the prayers themselves would have focussed on God’s presence in those daily tasks.

As an example, here is the modern Jewish prayer that takes place when a person washes his or her hands before eating: ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to wash our hands.’

I think that, even though these prayers are formalised, they certainly do bring God into a person’s everyday life. Whatever else one can say about such prayers, they are not the prayers of a person having a formal audience with God. They are the prayers of an every-day relationship.

I’m not recommending that we all adapt the prayer practices of Orthodox Jews. I am, however, suggesting that we might not go too far wrong in considering whether the everydayness of such prayers might give us some inspiration with respect to being aware of the nearness of God.

Prayer as Listening

There is another aspect to ‘prayer as relationship’. This aspect is ‘listening’. If we are going to have a relationship with God, doing all the talking ourselves is not necessarily the best way of going about it.

As Christians, we say that we believe that: 1) God the Creator is everywhere holding us in being; 2) that we meet Jesus – the Son – in the people around us and that 3) through the Holy Spirit, God is in our own spirits. If we truly believe that God is to be found everywhere around us, then it is helpful to practice the mindfulness of God’s presence. It is incredibly helpful to listen to God. To be quiet and ‘just be’ with God.

Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God.

The Peace and Joy of Prayer

Paul suggests that there are great benefits to having a prayer-relationship with God. 'And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' (Philippians 4:7)

Again, I think that the analogy of ‘relationship’ is incredibly helpful here because we’re not talking about ‘prayer as magic’.

In my years as a Christian, I have heard a number of people complain that they didn’t feel that they could go to church anymore because their lives weren’t particularly happy or peaceful. These people sometimes felt that to be a “real” – or a “successful” - Christian, they had to be happy all the time. They felt that their troubles would be seen by the Church as some sort of a spiritual failure. Or maybe it was just that they themselves felt that they were spiritual failures.

I don’t think that an unrealistic happiness is the sort of peace that Paul is talking about – nor the sort of joy that he’s talking about either. And I don’t think it’s the sort of the joy that Zephaniah had. His was the joy of a Jerusalem retaken after destruction by an occupying force. This is a bittersweet joy, not a Pollyanna joy that refuses to confront suffering.

Consider what it is to have a relationship with someone who you trust. Perhaps it is a spouse, or maybe a long-term friend. Someone with whom you do not need to put on masks. Someone who you can trust to accept you as you are – neither over-dramatising your pain nor brushing it away because they are afraid of it. It is in such a relationship that we can experience peace and joy even in the middle of hardship. It is in such a relationship that we can let ourselves go in the good times, knowing that our friend will be happy for us.

But relationships take time. They take commitment. They are about giving and receiving, about speaking and listening. Prayer is a relationship with God, not an audience with God. The Lord is near and constant mindfulness of the presence of God is the way that we can increase our experience of his nearness to us. Such a relationship can be a source of strength, of joy and of peace, even in difficult times.

Conclusion

In this third week of Advent, we draw ever nearer to the coming of Christ into our world.

Here and now, we also prepare our hearts to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion as we draw near to the Lord at his table. We are mindful of the God who is near to us. We are mindful of the God whose Spirit is in us, the God who holds us in being and the God who meets with us in our brothers and sisters in Christ.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

We pause now in silence to be mindful of his presence.

(Note to readers. I always leave a minute or two silence after every sermon.)

10 December 2006 - The Good News of Repentance

This is the sermon for Sunday 10th December 2006. The scripture readings are: Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6

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Introduction

Today we celebrate the Second Sunday of Advent and the main character in today’s scripture readings is not Jesus but rather John the Baptist. In today’s Gospel reading, we read about the ministry of John the Baptist. The Old Testament Reading, from Malachi, was - of course - not originally written about John the Baptist but has been traditionally linked by the Christian church with the life and work of John.

The season of Advent begins on the first Sunday of December and it is a time of preparation and penitence. Like Lent, Advent is a time when we consider who we are before God and when we prepare our hearts.

Although Advent is generally a more ‘positive’ season of preparation than Lent, it is nevertheless a time to take stock of the state of our soul and our being before God as we prepare for his coming. Because it is not only Jesus’ first coming for which we are preparing, but also his second coming.

In Advent, we are not just waiting for Christmas Day so that we can mark the memorial of Jesus’ birth. We are also waiting - and hopefully working - for the “second coming” of Jesus, when Christ will reign at the right hand of God in God’s Kingdom. We are waiting for the baby Jesus and for our triumphant and risen Lord.

Today’s readings focus our attention rather dramatically on the penitential aspect of Advent. Both the readings are somewhat difficult and challenging; neither message is comfy and cosy.

In the Gospel reading, John the Baptist demands that we repent and be forgiven of our sins. He calls us to get to work preparing the path to the Kingdom of God so that the roads are straight and smooth. In the Old Testament reading, we understand that although John’s message has been long-awaited (because it heralds the coming of the Messiah), that his message will refine and purify us and that the day of this purification will be difficult to endure.

It all makes you long for the gentle baby Jesus, meek and mild, doesn’t it?

Repentance

The first thing that I’d like to do this morning is to consider the idea of “repentance”.

I think that sometimes the word “repentance” can conjure up images of our mothers or fathers standing over us angrily with their hands on their hips shouting: “You say sorry now, young lady! (or young man)” And if this morning’s readings do anything, they might very well reinforce this picture of God as an angry parent.

But the concept of “repentance” is actually a call to turn around. “Repentance” is primarily something that we do in physical space. Of course, you can’t change your direction unless you first decide to do it, but making the decision isn’t all there is to it. A change of attitude is necessary but not sufficient. We actually have to start moving in another direction. We actually have to start doing things differently.

If you think about repentance in physical terms, it’s as if we are walking a path and have our backs turned on God. If our intention is to arrive at the Kingdom of God, we are going in the wrong direction and have to turn around.

What John the Baptist is doing is saying “Hey! You’re going the wrong way! Change your direction and walk that way!”

Repentance isn’t so much about God being angry with us an threatening us, it’s more about actually changing what we are doing. Scripture is filled with many prophetic books, all of which are calling human beings and human society to repentance. If God’s primary interest was to punish us then, first of all he would not have sent a Saviour into the world, but secondly, he would not have sent prophets into the world to call us to repentance.

God’s main interest is not to punish us, but to get us to turn around and walk in the other direction. Repentance may not be easy. Repentance might be difficult, but it shouldn’t make us afraid of God.

Walking toward the Kingdom

What does “walking in the other direction” mean, though? Well, I think we are being called to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, so we are called to “walk in the direction” of the Kingdom.
Because of Jesus’ first coming, and because of his life, death and resurrection, the fabric of reality has been changed such that sin no long has control over human beings. This is why we celebrate Christmas and the coming of the second person of the Trinity in human form.

Because of Jesus’ first coming at Christmas, the second coming becomes possible and we are promised that the Kingdom of God will be established. And as followers of Christ, we are called to recognise and understand what the Eternal Kingdom will look like, so that we can live as if the Kingdom were already here.

So, in practical terms, what does the Kingdom of God look like? What are its traits? How can we recognise it when we see it?

Well, if I recall correctly, one of the first sermons I preached to you was on “Racial Justice Sunday” when we talked about the fact that that God does not judge individuals the way that our worldly society does. God does not think that one person is better than another by virtue of race, gender, ability, social status, education, or what-have-you. Each person has been individually created by God, God knows each of us through and through and he sees each of us as unbelievably precious.

The Kingdom of God, is a place where every individual is infinitely loved and respected by God. And citizens of the Kingdom of God treat each other in the way that God treats them. In the Kingdom, we will have no need to try to prove that we are better than others. In the Kingdom, we will have no need to try to put other people down.

Secondly, because the Kingdom is a place where individuals are not judged by the standards of the world, I believe that the Kingdom is also a place that is inclusive. We need to be slightly careful in this concept, because there are people who hear the word “inclusive” and think that such an idea means we have to abandon all attempts to tell right from wrong.

When I say “inclusive”, I don’t mean keeping quiet in the face of wrong-doing. When I say “inclusive”, I mean that God wants to offer his Kingdom – his salvation – to everyone. Picking up on the image of repentance being a commitment to walk in the direction of the Kingdom, what I’m saying is that through the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, God has issued a general invitation to all people of all time to walk in his direction.

It is the work of Christ that has made it possible for us to make the decision to walk in the direction of the Kingdom. Having issued the invitation to all people of all time, there are no fences around the Kingdom.

God does not stop some people at the gate and turn them back. God issues a general invitation and all who respond to that invitation, all who repent and walk in the direction of the Kingdom will be welcomed.

Thirdly, the Prophets tell us repeatedly that the Kingdom is a place where justice and righteousness are the order of the day. But it’s important to understand how the Prophets define justice and righteousness. Although righteousness certainly starts with each one of us, it’s not a concept that is confined to the realm of personal morality.

In the prophetic tradition, “righteousness” is a social and communal issue. Righteousness is about establishing a society where the poor and the oppressed have rights, where they are not exploited by the rich and powerful. The prophets constantly rail against Israel and Judah for establishing societies where the rich get richer and where the poor get poorer. The prophets tell such societies that God hates their worship and their religious festivals when there religious obligations are conducted in the context of a society where the poor cannot eat.

So the Kingdom of God is also a place where justice and righteousness are the order of the day.

Repentance is Good News

Far from being bad news, I want to argue that God’s call to repentance is actually good news.

Repentance is possible in the first place because of God’s love and forgiveness as expressed in the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So the fact that we are able to repent – the fact that we are able to walk in God’s direction – is the result of God’s love for us.

But in saying that repentance is good news, am I burying my head in the sand and ignoring the hard images in today’s readings? Am I ignoring the images of the refiner’s fire, the images of purification, the images of straightening that which is crooked and of smoothing that which is rough? I don’t think so. Good news does not always have to be the news that life will be easy.

Any individual who has asked God for the grace to give up a besetting sin will tell you that such a journey is not an easy one.

And, if we look at the unrighteousness in our society, we can also see that the solutions are not easy ones and that they will require difficult measures. Being good stewards of the earth and of the climate requires people in the developed world to reduce the energy we consume. Making sure that people in developing countries can earn a living wage requires the West to rethink the way it orders its economy, meaning that we cannot continue to grow our economy and suck in global wealth the way that we have done in the past.

But all of these actions, however painful and refining they may be, are Good News because they are reflections of Kingdom of God.

Conclusion

In Advent, we remember the coming of the baby Jesus into our world 2000 years ago. But Advent is not just a season of looking backwards to the first coming of Christ.

It is also a season of looking forward to the second coming of Christ and to the coming of the Kingdom of God. It is a season that calls us to prepare our hearts for that Kingdom and to live as if the Kingdom were already upon us. Advent invites us to hope in a world where hoping sometimes seems impossible to do.

In this second Sunday of Advent, the prophetic voice of John the Baptist calls us all to repentance. John’s exhortation reminds us that God has made repentance possible. His exhortation reminds us that God invites all of us to change our direction, to straighten and smooth our path and walk toward the Kingdom. We are reminded that change is possible, that hope is possible, that righteousness and justice are possible.

As we go from this place, my prayer for each of us this morning is that we continue to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ by lives of on-going repentance. I pray that each of us can clearly hear the voice of God calling us with his message of love, forgiveness and reconciliation. I pray that we each be given the grace of God to bring his forgiveness, love, justice and righteousness more fully into the world around us. Amen

3 December 2006 - Waiting and Hoping

This is the sermon for Advent 1. The texts are: Jeremiah 33: 14-16 and Luke 21:25-36

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The Plight of Jerusalem

“In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 33:16, NRSV)

Imagine what it would be like to live in a small community that is literally caught between three superpowers.

The text we read this morning from the book of Jeremiah was written in just such a situation. This reading refers to a time in the life of the city of Jerusalem before the city had fallen, but it was also a time when the city’s inhabitants were well aware of their dangerous situation. The people of Jerusalem were caught between three superpowers: Egypt to the South, Babylon to the East and Assyria to the North.

Had the people of Jerusalem and Judah lived in another geographic location, it’s probable that none of these superpowers would have taken the slightest bit of notice of them. But geography was precisely their problem, because their city lay in a strategic location, in the corridor that each Empire needed to use on its way to attack the other. This obviously made Jerusalem desirable from the point of view of military strategy: control the corridor of access to your enemy and your armies will stand a higher chance of success in battle.

But many people in Jerusalem were probably not as concerned about this state of affairs as they ought to have been. The Temple of the One True God was located in Jerusalem. God was physically present in the Temple, therefore they believed that Jerusalem could not fall. Time and again, God had protected Jerusalem from foreign invasion.

Except the prophet Jeremiah had a different message for the King of Judah and for the people of Jerusalem. Because of the unrighteousness and unfaithfulness of Jerusalem and her King, the city was going to fall into the hands of her enemies. You can imagine that this message did not make Jeremiah very popular, either with the king or with the people.

Why did Jeremiah see the King of Judah (Johoiakim) as unrighteous?

If you look back to Jeremiah 22:13-17, Jeremiah accuses the King of dishonest gain, the shedding of innocent blood, and of practicing oppression and violence. (v. 17) Jeremiah tells the king that the essence of true kingship is not “building spacious houses with large upper rooms” (v 14) but defending the poor and the needy (v 16) as his father had done. So Jeremiah prophesies the unthinkable: the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of God.

The Book of Restoration

But in the midst of all this doom and gloom, there are four chapters in Jeremiah which are given the name “The Book of Restoration”. These are chapters 30 to 33; and today’s Old Testament reading is taken from Chapter 33.

Even in the face of the prophecy of the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah, these chapters foresee God’s eventual restoration of his land and of his people. This hope is reflected in today’s brief reading from Jeremiah.

Jeremiah tells his listeners that that God is faithful, and he will fulfil his promise. From the dead branch of the defeated Kingdom, God will cause a green shoot to spring forth from the house of David. Out of a desperate situation, springs hope; out of death springs new life.

This shoot will be a righteous shoot, a righteous King of a righteous people. A King will establish a Kingdom concerned with the defence of the poor and vulnerable. The name of “The Lord is our Righteousness” will be applied not only to the King of this Kingdom, but also to the people of the Kingdom.

Because of God’s faithfulness, God’s judgement of evil and his desire to establish justice and righteousness, a new King and a new Kingdom will be established where God’s promises will be fulfilled.

The Kingdom Comes

I wonder whether – when you heard this morning’s readings – you thought that these were strange texts for the first Sunday in Advent.

Just two weeks ago, the assigned readings for Sunday were all about the end of time and the Kingdom of God and here we are again, with these same sorts of readings. Instead of all this doom and gloom in Advent, shouldn’t we be reading about the coming of the baby Jesus?

The thing is that, like the Kingdom of God, Advent is one of those “now and not yet events”.

The “now” bit is the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, Christmas and the baby Jesus. The first coming. The “not yet bit” is “the Second Coming” – the Eternal establishment of the reality of the Kingdom of God. The celebration of Christmas is not just a memorial of the first coming of the Messiah. It is also a preparation for the second coming of the Messiah.

Earlier in the service with the children, we noted that, in Advent, we are looking forward to the coming of the baby Jesus. We said that Advent is about looking forward to Christmas.

But, as adult Christians we know that Advent is also about looking forward to the eternal and permanent reign of Christ in the Kingdom of God. That is why, like Lent, Advent is also a time of penitence and self-examination.

It’s not just the baby Jesus that we’re waiting for. Like Jeremiah, we are also waiting for the rule of the Righteousness of God, because that’s what the “Second Coming” is about. The Second Coming is about the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus tells us numerous times that we don’t know when that will happen. I personally also think that we don’t know what it will look like. It’s a personal interpretation, but I suspect that, in the same way that the disciples first did not recognise the risen Jesus and then were able to recognise him, that the Second Coming and the Kingdom will be something that is both familiar yet, at the same time, beyond the bounds of our current life experience.
But it is certainly something to hope for.

Hope

We ended our all-age talk earlier by mentioning some of the things we would like to ask the Son for God for – for the world and for ourselves. We mentioned things like acceptance, peace, justice, reconciliation.

As we acknowledged in voicing these wishes, being a human in this fallen world can sometimes be difficult. Faced with things like serious illness, chronic pain, unemployment, mindless vandalism, it can sometimes seem impossible to hope. In a world where people try to scrape a living together because they can’t get a fair wage for their crops or where they can’t afford medical treatment, it can sometimes seem impossible to hope. In a world where yet another natural disaster kills thousands of people and leaves many more thousand homeless, it can sometimes seem impossible to hope.

Advent can be a tough season because it does ask us to look forward and to wait in hope. It can be a season of great and genuine difficulty and loneliness for many people and yet we are asked to hope, a call that may sometimes seems like God is mocking us.

I suspect that Jeremiah understood this puzzle of trying to communicate hope in a hopeless situation. As we do, he looked at the world around him and saw the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. As we do, he saw a system stacked in favour of those in power where the weak had no-one to defend them.

But yet, he proclaimed his message of righteousness rising out of the death of unrighteousness. He proclaimed his vision of the covenant Kingdom of God. ‘The reign of God is coming!’ he proclaimed, ‘Justice and righteousness will conquer sin.’ It’s easy to see why people often thought that the prophets were mad.

Waiting for What is to Come

In Advent, we look forward to the celebration of Christmas – the birth of the baby Jesus and the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity – God with us. We remember that Jesus came into the world to be our Saviour and our Leader. We remember that Jesus came into the world in a mission that would change the very fabric of reality so that, no matter how bad things may seem, we know that God has the last word.

We remember that, as Christians, we can believe these things by faith, even if we don’t feel them, for that is the Truth that we proclaim. But we also look forward to the coming of the Reign of Righteousness, and to the coming of the Kingdom of God.

In thankfulness for the love, forgiveness and healing that we have received from Christ, we remember that we are called to spread his love and good news throughout the world. We are instruments of Christ’s kingdom and we are called to spread his hope in what we do as well as in what we say. We are called to live as if the fullness of the Kingdom were already upon us.

As we come to the table of the Lord in a few minutes’ time, I pray that we may each receive any healing that we need to grow in hope. I pray that we may receive the nourishment we need to live as if the fullness of the Kingdom were already here. I pray that we may meet with Christ as he comes to us as both helpless baby and as risen Lord.

May our Advent waiting be blessed with the presence of the Prince of Peace. Amen

26 November - Christ King of Heaven and Earth

Sermon for the festival of Christ the King. Readings are: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 and John 18. 33 – 37

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Introduction

It seems to me that this morning’s Gospel reading could be potentially interpreted as a scene in a Greek tragedy. Here we have acted out in front of us the story of the greatest of all men whose apparent downfall is brought about by conflict with society.

In our reading, Jesus and Pilate are discussing matters of kingship, power and truth. At the surface level of this scene, Pilate is apparently the person with the power because he possesses the power of the Roman emperor

But it’s not just Pilate and Jesus in this particular Act of our Greek drama. Lurking offstage, in a scene that has just happened onstage although we did not read about it today, are the religious authorities Annas and Caiaphas. They too have just pronounced Jesus guilty before sending him off to Pilate.

And so we have an intriguing triangle: Jesus in the first corner, the religious authorities in another and the secular authority in a third.

As Christians, we are already anticipating the punch-line to this well-known story: For those familiar with John’s Gospel, it is of course Jesus who is the true King, and Jesus who is the Truth. John’s Jesus tells us quite clearly: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

In the actual economy of God’s universe, the perceived power of Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas cannot compare to the authority of Jesus. Jesus is the true King.

As we celebrate the Festival of Christ the King this morning, I’d like to think a bit about whether these three sides of the triangle have anything to say to the world in its present situation and to us as the Church.

Annas & Caiaphas

I’m going to take the risky beginning and start with Annas & Caiaphas – representatives of the prevailing religious establishment - an establishment that Jesus spent his ministry opposing.

Now, there have been times in the history of the Christian church when the stories of Jesus’ opposition to the religious leaders have been used as a justification for engaging in the exact same behaviour that Jesus’ opposed during his lifetime. This is the behaviour that turns religion into a system of in-groups and out-groups.

Rather than seeing the religious authorities in the bible as examples of our universal human tendency to divide into groups of “them and us”, the Church herself has engaged in this sort of “them and us” behaviour.

The worst example of this has been the long history of Christian persecution of the Jewish people, sometimes using these very stories of Jesus’ trial as a justification for doing so.

But there are many bad examples of the Church creating these sorts of “them and us” situations – with particular Christians casting themselves in the role of righteous hero and those whom they oppose in the role of “deserving victim”.

*In the 16th century, so-called good Christians drowned the Anabaptist heretics.

*Catholics and Protestants have waged war on each other for centuries.

*In my own childhood, Protestants of different denominations were suspicious of each other, viewing Protestants of a different denomination as heretics.

*And today we have suspicion in the Church along party lines with different flavours of Christians suspicious that other flavours are not as pure, as faithful, as modern or as enlightened as “our group” is.

* And, finally, over the last several years, especially since “9/11”, sections of the wider Christian Church seem to be flirting dangerously with scape-goatting the Muslim community as God’s enemies.

Speaking Out

As disciples of Christ, we are called to speak out when we see Christian brothers and sisters expressing prejudice against other religious communities. We are called to speak out in the name of justice when we see any group expressing prejudice against another We speak out not just because Christian prejudice is bad for our witness, but because such behaviour is contrary to everything that Jesus taught.

At the heart of the Kingdom of God is the Great Commandment, a commandment that is also at the heart of Judaism: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself.

Christian love is not defined by a feeling of warm affection (although we may have that in many instances); Christian love is based on doing the right thing; it is based on doing what Jesus commanded us to do. Jesus commanded us to leave the ultimate judgement of individuals to him and he commanded us to respect each other.

This doesn’t mean we can’t say that we believe that certain actions are wrong; it doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree with another’s opinions. But it most certainly does mean that we are not permitted to name other people or groups of people as “enemies of God” and use this as an excuse to shun them or do harm to them.

Pilate

But of course, the Church isn’t the only group who get things wrong from God’s perspective.

The next character in our play is Pilate. Pilate, the Roman functionary who recognised the truth of Jesus’ innocence under Roman law but who sentenced Jesus to death nonetheless because it was politically convenient.

There is a testimony that Jesus could have given to Pilate in order to walk free. Jesus could have stated clearly that he was a spiritual leader and that his only interest was in spiritual matters. He could have uttered the words that many secular leaders seem to want to hear: “I am a religious leader; I do not get involved in politics.”

But Jesus did not do that. He did not explain himself in such a way as to assure Pilate that he was not a threat. He made what could be seen as a grandiose claim: that he is the embodiment of truth and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice.

It seems that Jesus may very well be a “spiritual” King, but he is also a here-and-now King. As the old hymn lyrics state, he is Master of Everything: King of both heaven and earth.

The Kingdom of God is not just about pie in the sky by and by. It is also about the here and now. It is about truth. It is about loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is about justice: food for the hungry and freedom for the oppressed.

Those who utter the cliché: “Christians should not meddle in the affairs of the world” are taking the worldly view of Christianity. They are taking Pilate’s view, not Jesus’ view.

At her best, when the Church is listening clearly to the voice of her King, we can bring the standards of truth, justice and fairness to bear on matters of this world. Indeed, as disciples of Christ we are called to do so. This is part of the Church’s mission and vocation on earth.

Christ the King

Next Sunday, as you may remember, we begin a new church season, the season of Advent.

But today is the festival of Christ the King. And today, we end a long cycle of meditation on the theme of Christian discipleship that began on the 11th of June with Trinity Sunday – the Sunday when the church and the minister put on the colour green.

And it is fitting that we end the season dedicated to discipleship with the affirmation that for us as Christians, our first loyalties lie with Jesus Christ as our sovereign and Lord.

For Christians, Jesus is not simply a prophet who knew and taught the truth, Jesus embodies the truth. Jesus is truth. And, as Jesus’ disciples, we are followers of truth.

We are not to be misled by the universal human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups.

Where we hear calls to name as God’s enemies people of a different religion, a different race, a different flavour of Christianity, we are to name such behaviour as wrong and to resist these movements in word and deed.

Christians are called to stand up to anti-Semitism and we are called to stand up to the current cultural mood of scape-goatting Muslim people.

We are not be misled by claims that Christianity has nothing to do with the here and now and that being a Christian is only about our private spirituality. Having accepted God’s love and forgiveness into our own hearts, we are called to bring that love to others. This is not just a call to witness to the Gospel doctrines. It is also a call to demonstrate God’s unconditional grace and mercy in very practical ways.

The Kingdom is to come, but the Kingdom is also here. Christ will be our King in Eternity, but Christ is also our King in the here and now.

As we come to Christ’s table in a few minutes to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, I pray that we may all be fed with food for our journey. May we come to his table invited by our crucified, risen and ascended King and rise from his table to take his invitation of forgiveness and reconciliation to all the world. Amen

19 November 2006 - Wars and Rumours of War

The texts for this sermon are: Hebrews 10:11-25 and Mark 13:1-8

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Introduction

Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down. (Mark 13:2, NRSV)

Make no mistake about it, this is an apocalyptic reading. The 13th chapter of Mark is considered by some to be the earliest apocalyptic text in the New Testament.

Mainstream Christians tend to be a bit embarrassed by apocalyptic texts in the bible. I think that perhaps the apocalyptic texts smack too much of Christian fundamentalism or maybe snake-handlers in America. But we ignore such texts at our peril, not the least because if we fail to engage with them by bringing to these texts our understanding of who God is and what God is like, then it will be the cultists who define them.

“Repent! The day is coming when God will come again in thunder, lightening and wrath and the world as we know it will be destroyed! The Temple will fall! There will be false prophets and wars and rumours of wars and it is by these events that humankind will know the end of the world is near!”

So say the doom-sayers.

This theology may have sold a lot of books, but I personally don’t think it’s very good theology and it is most certainly not Methodist theology.

The Persecution of Christians

If we put away this dooms-day idea, and look closely at the text, when Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple, the disciples ask him the question, “So will the Temple’s destruction signal the end of time?”

Jesus’ answer is something along the lines of “Don’t be deceived by these false prophets of doom. There will always be wars and rumours of wars, so do not think that these things signal the end of time.” Jesus goes on to tell his disciples that all of his followers can be expected to be persecuted as a consequence of following him, but that Christians are only to be concerned with following Christ. They are not to worry about trying to justify themselves to the earthly power on its own terms; they are simply to rely on the power of the Spirit to give a faithful Christian witness.

Now, many biblical commentators believe that this message may very well have been pointedly directed at Mark’s own readers, who lived at a time when Christians were just beginning to be persecuted by the Roman empire. So you can see that there would have been a very real and concrete message here for those readers. In such an historical setting, it is a message of encouragement to persecuted Christians.

But what is there in this text for us who are lucky enough to live in a land where we are relatively free to express our faith?

I think that there is a great deal, but first we need to turn on its head any notion of the idea that “wars and rumours of wars” are tools that are used by God and instituted by God to bring about the end of time.

War is not God’s tool

We need to understand that “Wars and rumours of wars” – and I use this term metaphorically as well as literally - are not God-made. They are human-made.

The reason that they will always be with us - at least until God’s Kingdom comes - is because they are the fruits of our own sinful natures.

The word “apocalypse” means “uncovering”, and we need to ask ourselves what it is that is being uncovered in events of destruction and violence. I honestly don’t think that it is God’s nature or God’s will that is being uncovered; not if we believe that the fruits of God spirit are things like joy, peace, patience and kindness. And, if the fruits of an UNgodly life are things like hatred, discord and factions, then it seems reasonable that what is being uncovered is our own sinful nature.

The standard human solution for maintaining peace and social cohesion is “war or rumours of war”. In effect, human beings attempt to solve the problem of sin through an approach that is sinful itself – by reciprocal violence or the threat of reciprocal violence.

When we act our of our sinful nature, we get caught up in the human notion that justice cannot be served until the person who hurt us hurts as least as much as we do.

If we do not look beyond our sinful human solutions, we will forever be stuck in a vicious cycle of retaliation. And we may go on and on throughout our lives convinced that our retaliation is a manifestation of justice rather than a manifestation of sin.

It is only by looking outside of our worldly and sinful perspective that we are able to escape the vicious circle of revenge. What is the escape-hatch out of this vicious circle? The escape-hatch is forgiveness. Specifically, the sort of forgiveness that was brought into creation by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus and the Sacrificial Cycle

Today’s Epistle reading makes interesting reading in this context. In the Epistle reading, we have a picture of the futile task of the Temple priest, forever making sacrifice to God for sin. The priest repeats his sacrifice day after day because the people of Israel – and the priest himself – do not stop sinning.

However, we are told that Jesus is the final and perfect sacrifice. The never-ending sacrifice of the Temple priest is no longer needed because Jesus has done what is necessary to end the cycle of sacrifice. And the necessary thing that Jesus has done is to bring forgiveness into the world.

In the apocalyptic terms I’ve been using for the Mark reading, we can say that Jesus has interrupted our sacrificial cycle of revenge and retaliation and he has broken into our vicious cycle of sin with a new possibility, a new alternative: the alternative of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the totally new alternative to our sinful, worldly ideas about how to be at peace with each other and with God. Forgiveness breaks into our vicious circle because it is God’s idea, not our idea. Forgiveness is not of this world. Forgiveness belongs to the Kingdom of God.

A Foretaste of the Kingdom

The amazing Good News of the Gospel is not “repent and be forgiven”. The Amazing Good News of the Gospel is “You are forgiven, therefore you are free to repent.”

God’s forgiveness breaks into the world before anything we can do. We do not deserve forgiveness, but we are given it by God’s grace. Actions have consequences and our violent actions ought to have violent consequences, but God in his mercy gives us forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act of God and it belongs to the Kingdom of God.

The Amazing Good News of the Gospel is “You are forgiven, therefore you are free to repent.”

In a few minutes, we will come to the Lord’s Table, in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet that Jesus has prepared for us in his Kingdom. Jesus invites all individuals to his table; he extends his hospitality and his forgiveness to everyone. In celebrating communion with him, every single one of us is invited to encounter Christ’s forgiveness for ourselves as individuals.

But Holy Communion is also a communal act. We come not just to find strength and forgiveness from Christ as individuals, but also as a local community of believers and as a worldwide Church. What we receive at the Lord’s Table we are also called to bring out to the rest of the world. The forgiveness that we receive at the table of the Lord is something that we are called to take out to the rest of the world.

It is no good coming to church in order to receive forgiveness from God for ourselves and then to go back out into the world and play by the worldly, human rules of revenge and retaliation.

Forgiven by God and strengthened for the journey by the food from his table, we are invited to spread that forgiveness throughout the world. Indeed it should be our joy and our delight to do so.

The Kingdom is now and we encounter a taste of it here, at the table of the Lord.

The Kingdom is not yet because the world does not yet operate by the Godly rules of self-giving love and forgiveness.

By his life, death and resurrection Christ has changed the nature of our reality and he has redeemed the fabric of the cosmos, replacing the rule of sin with the rule of God. Where forgiveness was once not even possible, in Christ, forgiveness has the potential to transform all of human society: past, present and future.

The Kingdom of God is here. The Kingdom of God is coming. May God’s Kingdom come and his will be done. Maranatha: Come, Lord Jesus! Amen