Matthew
9:9-13, 18-26

Introduction
You may know the old story about the two ministers of different denominations
who were arguing about whose tradition was closest to that of Jesus and the
Bible. After trading arguments about baptism, the sacraments, ordination and
other hot topics, one played the trump card:

‘You do it in your way, and I’ll do it in his.’

It can be a joke to suggest we are the ones who truly
minister like Jesus. Early on in my ministry, a church couple had twins and
asked me to baptise them. At the service, I preached on the story of Jesus’
baptism. I made a joke about John the Baptist and Jesus the Methodist, only to
discover over lunch afterwards that several relatives were – yes, you guessed –
Baptists.

Jesus’ ministry is so different from ours. We train
ministers for three years and expect them to minister for thirty; Jesus trained
for thirty years and ministered for three. We may move from one appointment to
another, but wherever we go there is a manse or a parsonage; the Son of Man had
nowhere to lay his head.

So it’s sobering to ask questions about Jesus’ ministry. We
need to test ourselves by it. One blog I follow is called Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, because
if we study Jesus, that study should shape our discipleship.

And thus to today’s Gospel reading. What do we see of Jesus’
ministry here that should shape our discipleship?

1. Who?
The first question that struck me was a ‘Who?’ question. Who are the people to
whom Jesus ministers? We kick off with Matthew, a tax collector. There are at
least two things wrong with Matthew in the eyes of good first century Jews.
Firstly, he was an agent of the hated Roman occupying forces, collecting money
for them. Secondly, he was almost certainly a greedy person who exploited
ordinary people, including the poor. He would have done this, because Rome
simply gave tax collectors a budget to collect in the year. They had to raise
their own living over and above that, and were left to levy taxes both to meet
their employer’s target and to fund whatever standard of living they desired
for themselves. It was easy to fall into temptation.

Should Jesus be having anything to do with Matthew? Not in
the eyes of his people. Matthew is a greedy traitor. The Sun would start up a
campaign against his type. There would be a lynch mob waiting, were it not for
the Roman soldiers protecting the cash flow. Yet Jesus says, Matthew, come
here, I want you to follow me. Not only that, he has dinner at Matthew’s home, as
the guest of honour. He associates with Matthew’s friends, who have little
concern for righteousness. Surely bad company corrupts character? No. Jesus
enjoys their company, without being tainted.

Then you have the little girl who dies. Children were of low
social rank in a society that valued elders. Girls were worth far less than boys
were. The boys might get an education of sorts, but not the girls. If the
synagogue ruler had died, one could understand the concern – but his daughter? Not
likely. Yet to Jesus, she is valuable and precious.

Worse than that, he enters her bedroom where her dead body
is lying. More contamination! A good Jew wasn’t supposed to have this kind of
contact with a dead body. It made for ritual uncleanness. Yet he takes her by
the hand. This cannot be a man of God: he doesn’t obey the rules! He touches
dead bodies! Stay away, before he contaminates you!

And we have the woman with the twelve-year history of
haemorrhages. She touches the fringe of Jesus’ garment. ‘Fringe’ makes it sound
like Jesus dresses in traditional Jewish manner, with tassels on the four
corners of his outer garment, as prescribed by Numbers and Deuteronomy. He has
all the appearance of a good Jewish man.

But how good a Jewish man is he if he does not go off to the
priest for cleansing the moment he realises that a woman who is passing blood
(and therefore is ritually unclean) has touched him? He should have recoiled at
the thought of her touching him, but his reaction is the opposite. Instead of
revulsion, we hear words of tenderness and compassion: ‘Take heart, daughter;
your faith has made you well’ (verse 22).

Jesus, then, embraces all the wrong people: all the people
that good, faithful religious types would tell us to avoid or despise for our
own good. Not Jesus. He is good news in the flesh. Where might we go to hang
out with the kind of people to whom Jesus ministered? An American church leader
named David
Fitch recently made some
suggestions. If I paraphrase him into British English, here are some of his
ideas:

1. Go to the hospital. The poor – and poor in spirit – are
always there. Maybe you could shadow a chaplain.

2. Look for where houses are being sold after a bank or
building society repossession. You will find hurting people there.

3. Where do the police spend a lot of their time? They know
the trouble spots. It may even be possible to ride with them.

4. Be a regular at the local pub. There may well be lonely
people there who are searching for something in life.

5. Go to playgroups and pre-schools. There will be one mum
who is left out, a struggling lone parent, somebody having difficulties with a
troublesome child.

6. This is the one I really hate – go to McDonald’s! Whatever
your image of McDonald’s – slimy food eaten by noisy hoodies, perhaps – Fitch
suggests you hang out at one first thing in the morning. There is often a
breakfast club of men getting a bite to eat on their way to work.

7. This one could be peculiarly North American – the hockey
rink (although we do have the Chelmsford
Chieftains!). If a Christian joined a sports club and got involved in
coaching the youngsters, what example would it set if that were done without
rudeness or swearing, by treating the kids with dignity and by offering a
positive direction in life?

8. Residential homes and care centres for the elderly can be
a place to meet people who feel they are forgotten, or who have been dumped
there by their families. Of course, they haven’t all been treated like that,
but there may be low self-esteem as well as serious medical conditions.

9. Organisations that serve the homeless – and in Chelmsford
we have CHESS. What can we
offer to people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse following the
breakdown of relationships and addiction to alcohol or other drugs in order to
mask personal pain?

10. How easy or difficult is it to get to know our
neighbours? If it is difficult, Fitch suggests being subversive: why not sell
your lawnmower, so that you need to borrow one? Take time to be present in the
neighbourhood and build relationships.

So the ‘Who?’ question has become a ‘Where?’ question. To
meet the kind of people today that Jesus ministered to, we need to go to
certain places. They may not be typical Christian hangout venues, but they are
most likely the kind of locations Jesus would frequent today. Maybe he does
anyway, by his Spirit.

2. How?
Do you ever imagine yourself as a particular character in a Bible story? It is
a great spiritual discipline to practise, for gaining insight into the
Scriptures. In this passage, I can imagine to some extent how the synagogue
ruler must have felt. He has come with a desperate plea about his dead or dying
daughter (depending on which Gospel account you read – Matthew seems to summarise
Mark and take out detail). If I wanted Jesus to come quickly and save my
daughter, how would I feel when Jesus is delayed by the woman with the
haemorrhages? My anxiety and fear levels would shoot up through the roof! ‘Come
on Jesus, time is of the essence! Can’t you come back and heal her later?’

Or look at the same point another way. Look at it from
Jesus’ perspective. He has two desperate needs, but he manages to deal with
both of them. I thought men weren’t supposed to be able to multi-task! But Jesus
seems to manage it! If a woman asks me to do something and before I’ve done it
is onto making the next request and perhaps a third one too, then I can tell
you, I get stressed! ‘I’m a man,’ I say, ‘I can only do one thing at a time!’

Time is what Jesus has. Time is what Jesus gives to people.
He gives it to Matthew and his disreputable friends – a whole evening at dinner
with them. In the middle of pressure to save the synagogue ruler’s daughter, he
gives the haemorrhaging woman the gift of time.

Time is what we say we don’t have today. We have so-called
labour-saving devices, but they exist so that we may cram more things into our
daily ration of twenty-four hours.

Time is what I was taught not to have for people in pastoral
care. At college, I was told to visit five people every afternoon and give them
twenty minutes each. That’s hardly enough time to get your coat off and the
kettle on! Time is what doesn’t happen when you glad-hand everyone and
concentrate on no one. You may speak to everybody, but you may do good for
nobody.

Why time? Because in his use of time, Jesus gives dignity to
people who are treated as worthless by their society. In the gift of time,
Jesus can engage in spiritual listening. By ‘spiritual listening’ I mean what
some people have called ‘double listening’ – listening to the person and to
God, and then acting accordingly. If you’re going to engage in double listening
both to the person and to God, then that takes a considerable amount of
deliberate attention. You can’t just shake someone’s hand and be done with
them.

But the gift of time isn’t just happening right in the
middle of a human mêlée for Jesus. This gift of time to practise double listening
to the person and to his Father can happen, because he has already given time
over to listening to God and being tuned in. Right in the middle of his busy
life is the time out. In order to engage, he must also withdraw. Time for
engagement with people must be matched by time deliberately spent with God in
prayer and the Scriptures.

How we do it, where we do it and how long for may not be the
same as Jesus. There aren’t too many mountains and hills in Springfield! That
we need to do it, however, can hardly be in dispute.

Too often, we are afflicted by the curse of busy-ness in
today’s world, and the church falls for the lie, too. The busier you are, the
better you are. The more good actions you can accumulate, the better person you
must be.

Not so. Not so in Jesus’ example. When some would have urged
him to press the flesh of as many people as possible, like a politician on the
election trail, Jesus didn’t do that. In the middle of that hurly-burly, he had
time for people. And he did so, because he had already given time to his
Father, and then committed to go to the places where those least likely to meet
the approval of the religious tastemakers hung out.

These simple and challenging practises will be needed if we
are to have a ministry like that of Jesus. We shall go outside our usual church
circles, to meet the unlikeliest of people. We shall have a ministry of time
that contrasts our frantic culture, by giving quality time to God and to those
outsiders. In these ways, we make room for the grace of God to bring his love
to surprising people in surprising ways.

Matthew
9:9-13, 18-26

Introduction
You may know the old story about the two ministers of different denominations
who were arguing about whose tradition was closest to that of Jesus and the
Bible. After trading arguments about baptism, the sacraments, ordination and
other hot topics, one played the trump card:

‘You do it in your way, and I’ll do it in his.’

It can be a joke to suggest we are the ones who truly
minister like Jesus. Early on in my ministry, a church couple had twins and
asked me to baptise them. At the service, I preached on the story of Jesus’
baptism. I made a joke about John the Baptist and Jesus the Methodist, only to
discover over lunch afterwards that several relatives were – yes, you guessed –
Baptists.

Jesus’ ministry is so different from ours. We train
ministers for three years and expect them to minister for thirty; Jesus trained
for thirty years and ministered for three. We may move from one appointment to
another, but wherever we go there is a manse or a parsonage; the Son of Man had
nowhere to lay his head.

So it’s sobering to ask questions about Jesus’ ministry. We
need to test ourselves by it. One blog I follow is called Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, because
if we study Jesus, that study should shape our discipleship.

And thus to today’s Gospel reading. What do we see of Jesus’
ministry here that should shape our discipleship?

1. Who?
The first question that struck me was a ‘Who?’ question. Who are the people to
whom Jesus ministers? We kick off with Matthew, a tax collector. There are at
least two things wrong with Matthew in the eyes of good first century Jews.
Firstly, he was an agent of the hated Roman occupying forces, collecting money
for them. Secondly, he was almost certainly a greedy person who exploited
ordinary people, including the poor. He would have done this, because Rome
simply gave tax collectors a budget to collect in the year. They had to raise
their own living over and above that, and were left to levy taxes both to meet
their employer’s target and to fund whatever standard of living they desired
for themselves. It was easy to fall into temptation.

Should Jesus be having anything to do with Matthew? Not in
the eyes of his people. Matthew is a greedy traitor. The Sun would start up a
campaign against his type. There would be a lynch mob waiting, were it not for
the Roman soldiers protecting the cash flow. Yet Jesus says, Matthew, come
here, I want you to follow me. Not only that, he has dinner at Matthew’s home, as
the guest of honour. He associates with Matthew’s friends, who have little
concern for righteousness. Surely bad company corrupts character? No. Jesus
enjoys their company, without being tainted.

Then you have the little girl who dies. Children were of low
social rank in a society that valued elders. Girls were worth far less than boys
were. The boys might get an education of sorts, but not the girls. If the
synagogue ruler had died, one could understand the concern – but his daughter? Not
likely. Yet to Jesus, she is valuable and precious.

Worse than that, he enters her bedroom where her dead body
is lying. More contamination! A good Jew wasn’t supposed to have this kind of
contact with a dead body. It made for ritual uncleanness. Yet he takes her by
the hand. This cannot be a man of God: he doesn’t obey the rules! He touches
dead bodies! Stay away, before he contaminates you!

And we have the woman with the twelve-year history of
haemorrhages. She touches the fringe of Jesus’ garment. ‘Fringe’ makes it sound
like Jesus dresses in traditional Jewish manner, with tassels on the four
corners of his outer garment, as prescribed by Numbers and Deuteronomy. He has
all the appearance of a good Jewish man.

But how good a Jewish man is he if he does not go off to the
priest for cleansing the moment he realises that a woman who is passing blood
(and therefore is ritually unclean) has touched him? He should have recoiled at
the thought of her touching him, but his reaction is the opposite. Instead of
revulsion, we hear words of tenderness and compassion: ‘Take heart, daughter;
your faith has made you well’ (verse 22).

Jesus, then, embraces all the wrong people: all the people
that good, faithful religious types would tell us to avoid or despise for our
own good. Not Jesus. He is good news in the flesh. Where might we go to hang
out with the kind of people to whom Jesus ministered? An American church leader
named David
Fitch recently made some
suggestions. If I paraphrase him into British English, here are some of his
ideas:

1. Go to the hospital. The poor – and poor in spirit – are
always there. Maybe you could shadow a chaplain.

2. Look for where houses are being sold after a bank or
building society repossession. You will find hurting people there.

3. Where do the police spend a lot of their time? They know
the trouble spots. It may even be possible to ride with them.

4. Be a regular at the local pub. There may well be lonely
people there who are searching for something in life.

5. Go to playgroups and pre-schools. There will be one mum
who is left out, a struggling lone parent, somebody having difficulties with a
troublesome child.

6. This is the one I really hate – go to McDonald’s! Whatever
your image of McDonald’s – slimy food eaten by noisy hoodies, perhaps – Fitch
suggests you hang out at one first thing in the morning. There is often a
breakfast club of men getting a bite to eat on their way to work.

7. This one could be peculiarly North American – the hockey
rink (although we do have the Chelmsford
Chieftains!). If a Christian joined a sports club and got involved in
coaching the youngsters, what example would it set if that were done without
rudeness or swearing, by treating the kids with dignity and by offering a
positive direction in life?

8. Residential homes and care centres for the elderly can be
a place to meet people who feel they are forgotten, or who have been dumped
there by their families. Of course, they haven’t all been treated like that,
but there may be low self-esteem as well as serious medical conditions.

9. Organisations that serve the homeless – and in Chelmsford
we have CHESS. What can we
offer to people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse following the
breakdown of relationships and addiction to alcohol or other drugs in order to
mask personal pain?

10. How easy or difficult is it to get to know our
neighbours? If it is difficult, Fitch suggests being subversive: why not sell
your lawnmower, so that you need to borrow one? Take time to be present in the
neighbourhood and build relationships.

So the ‘Who?’ question has become a ‘Where?’ question. To
meet the kind of people today that Jesus ministered to, we need to go to
certain places. They may not be typical Christian hangout venues, but they are
most likely the kind of locations Jesus would frequent today. Maybe he does
anyway, by his Spirit.

2. How?
Do you ever imagine yourself as a particular character in a Bible story? It is
a great spiritual discipline to practise, for gaining insight into the
Scriptures. In this passage, I can imagine to some extent how the synagogue
ruler must have felt. He has come with a desperate plea about his dead or dying
daughter (depending on which Gospel account you read – Matthew seems to summarise
Mark and take out detail). If I wanted Jesus to come quickly and save my
daughter, how would I feel when Jesus is delayed by the woman with the
haemorrhages? My anxiety and fear levels would shoot up through the roof! ‘Come
on Jesus, time is of the essence! Can’t you come back and heal her later?’

Or look at the same point another way. Look at it from
Jesus’ perspective. He has two desperate needs, but he manages to deal with
both of them. I thought men weren’t supposed to be able to multi-task! But Jesus
seems to manage it! If a woman asks me to do something and before I’ve done it
is onto making the next request and perhaps a third one too, then I can tell
you, I get stressed! ‘I’m a man,’ I say, ‘I can only do one thing at a time!’

Time is what Jesus has. Time is what Jesus gives to people.
He gives it to Matthew and his disreputable friends – a whole evening at dinner
with them. In the middle of pressure to save the synagogue ruler’s daughter, he
gives the haemorrhaging woman the gift of time.

Time is what we say we don’t have today. We have so-called
labour-saving devices, but they exist so that we may cram more things into our
daily ration of twenty-four hours.

Time is what I was taught not to have for people in pastoral
care. At college, I was told to visit five people every afternoon and give them
twenty minutes each. That’s hardly enough time to get your coat off and the
kettle on! Time is what doesn’t happen when you glad-hand everyone and
concentrate on no one. You may speak to everybody, but you may do good for
nobody.

Why time? Because in his use of time, Jesus gives dignity to
people who are treated as worthless by their society. In the gift of time,
Jesus can engage in spiritual listening. By ‘spiritual listening’ I mean what
some people have called ‘double listening’ – listening to the person and to
God, and then acting accordingly. If you’re going to engage in double listening
both to the person and to God, then that takes a considerable amount of
deliberate attention. You can’t just shake someone’s hand and be done with
them.

But the gift of time isn’t just happening right in the
middle of a human mêlée for Jesus. This gift of time to practise double listening
to the person and to his Father can happen, because he has already given time
over to listening to God and being tuned in. Right in the middle of his busy
life is the time out. In order to engage, he must also withdraw. Time for
engagement with people must be matched by time deliberately spent with God in
prayer and the Scriptures.

How we do it, where we do it and how long for may not be the
same as Jesus. There aren’t too many mountains and hills in Springfield! That
we need to do it, however, can hardly be in dispute.

Too often, we are afflicted by the curse of busy-ness in
today’s world, and the church falls for the lie, too. The busier you are, the
better you are. The more good actions you can accumulate, the better person you
must be.

Not so. Not so in Jesus’ example. When some would have urged
him to press the flesh of as many people as possible, like a politician on the
election trail, Jesus didn’t do that. In the middle of that hurly-burly, he had
time for people. And he did so, because he had already given time to his
Father, and then committed to go to the places where those least likely to meet
the approval of the religious tastemakers hung out.

These simple and challenging practises will be needed if we
are to have a ministry like that of Jesus. We shall go outside our usual church
circles, to meet the unlikeliest of people. We shall have a ministry of time
that contrasts our frantic culture, by giving quality time to God and to those
outsiders. In these ways, we make room for the grace of God to bring his love
to surprising people in surprising ways.

I remain nervous about this whole phenomenon. Much of my upcoming opinions (and any revisions) may hang on the meeting I hope to have with an acquaintance whose wife has been to Lakeland. And having failed to make the ‘impartation meeting’ at Meadgate Church last Friday night, I shall bat a meeting next Monday lunch-time where my vicar friend from that church will be present. We hope to chat. Readers of my posts on Bentley will have realised I have significant reservations, not least in the areas of verified healings (see especially Bene Diction‘s comment today in my post ‘Healing, Verification and Resurrection‘) and what appears to be a violent adaptation of the laying on of hands.

Nevertheless, I am not ruling out the possibility that God may well be at work in this whole experience, just as he is at work in messy churches all over the world. If God is at work, I do not want to oppose the Holy Spirit, for Scripture, experience and church history all teach me this important lesson: the powerful presence of God is not automatically a sign of the divine imprimatur on particular human beings. In the Bible, one might cite characters such as King Saul. In church history, John Wesley thought at first that when people fell to the floor during his preaching, it was vindication of his Arminian theology over the Calvinists. He had to learn that God had a different agenda. Not that I’m against Wesley, you understand! In personal experience, I have seen remarkable things attached to flaky people (I’m saying no more).

One thing I’d like to float for discussion is the question of Bentley and what in the UK we would call working class culture. North America can protest it doesn’t have a class system, it just doesn’t have anything so ancient as ours. North American friends, you can think in terms of blue collar culture. I raise this, because I have noticed people comment on the number of poorer people who have been attending the Lakeland meetings. Given the inability – at least in this country – to reach such peoples ever since the Industrial Revolution, this fact should make us sit up and take notice. We have seen Catholics and Anglo-Catholics do better in inner city areas; we have heard of Pentecostal fruitfulness in South American favelas; but a white, western evangelical-charismatic movement among poorer people is less common.

I have this in mind, because I grew up in an urban part of north London. This year, it has been badly affected by the epidemic of teenagers being stabbed in London. Three had been stabbed to death in the first three months of 2008. I may have a couple of degrees to my name and be educated into a middle class profession, but I am more like ‘local lad made good’. People like those among whom I grew up need the Gospel.

With this in mind, let’s at least give house room to some of Bentley’s approach. The tattoos are an obvious example: he looks like a biker, and is it really right to read certain prescriptions from the Torah off the page as condemning something equivalent? I’m not sure. I don’t like tattoos, but I put that down to personal taste.

Then there’s the language. ‘Bam!’ as someone is apparently overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. It sounds like something out of Batman, but I can remember middle-class charismatics twenty or thirty years ago talking about being ‘zapped’ by the Holy Spirit. Batman versus Star Wars/Star Trek: what’s the difference? It’s not my preferred expression, but I have nothing against it. Most people aren’t going to use long theological words like I do.

The same could be said of the regular slogan he has, inviting people for prayer ministry or to visit Lakeland: ‘Come and get some’. It sounds like a football hooligan to me, but again, it could just be cultural. We are good at ‘nice’ invitations in our respectable churches; if someone gives an invitation in the language of the street, we shouldn’t dismiss it. We may well be right to raise questions about an emphasis on getting, because it needs to be accompanied by a consequent movement of giving and serving, and that element is by no means clear in the meetings.

And that point beggars the whole use of the word ‘revival’. I’m aware the word is used differently on each side of the Atlantic – we are, as Winston Churchill said, two nations separated by a common language. (Three, counting Bentley’s native Canada.) To the British Christian, a revival is about the church coming back to her purposes, and many people finding faith in Christ for the first time. It is thus intrinsically linked to repentance. Much criticism of Bentley is around the fact that he rarely seems to mention repentance. In North America, a revival can mean a series of meetings in a church, and this is how the Lakeland story began – with five nights of meetings.

Moreover, I hear Bentley distinctly referring to this as a ‘healing revival’. To my ears, that sounds like a claim that we are seeing a major re-emergence of the healing ministry here. However, even this can’t be completely divorced from other uses of the word ‘revival’, because Bentley clearly has a worldwide, if not almost apocalyptic, vision for what has begun in Florida. All in all, then, I really wish he wouldn’t use the word – especially as it is hard to gauge how big or influential this movement is, given its fast dissemination via TV and the Internet. It’s too soon to speak of a revival as anything more than a lot of meetings.

As I say, none of this is to offset or downplay my concerns. It is to put down a marker about something positive. It would be unfair to criticise Bentley for loose use of words, and if he does have a gift for reaching blue collar workers, then any problems with this ministry take on the level of a tragedy.

I remain nervous about this whole phenomenon. Much of my upcoming opinions (and any revisions) may hang on the meeting I hope to have with an acquaintance whose wife has been to Lakeland. And having failed to make the ‘impartation meeting’ at Meadgate Church last Friday night, I shall bat a meeting next Monday lunch-time where my vicar friend from that church will be present. We hope to chat. Readers of my posts on Bentley will have realised I have significant reservations, not least in the areas of verified healings (see especially Bene Diction‘s comment today in my post ‘Healing, Verification and Resurrection‘) and what appears to be a violent adaptation of the laying on of hands.

Nevertheless, I am not ruling out the possibility that God may well be at work in this whole experience, just as he is at work in messy churches all over the world. If God is at work, I do not want to oppose the Holy Spirit, for Scripture, experience and church history all teach me this important lesson: the powerful presence of God is not automatically a sign of the divine imprimatur on particular human beings. In the Bible, one might cite characters such as King Saul. In church history, John Wesley thought at first that when people fell to the floor during his preaching, it was vindication of his Arminian theology over the Calvinists. He had to learn that God had a different agenda. Not that I’m against Wesley, you understand! In personal experience, I have seen remarkable things attached to flaky people (I’m saying no more).

One thing I’d like to float for discussion is the question of Bentley and what in the UK we would call working class culture. North America can protest it doesn’t have a class system, it just doesn’t have anything so ancient as ours. North American friends, you can think in terms of blue collar culture. I raise this, because I have noticed people comment on the number of poorer people who have been attending the Lakeland meetings. Given the inability – at least in this country – to reach such peoples ever since the Industrial Revolution, this fact should make us sit up and take notice. We have seen Catholics and Anglo-Catholics do better in inner city areas; we have heard of Pentecostal fruitfulness in South American favelas; but a white, western evangelical-charismatic movement among poorer people is less common.

I have this in mind, because I grew up in an urban part of north London. This year, it has been badly affected by the epidemic of teenagers being stabbed in London. Three had been stabbed to death in the first three months of 2008. I may have a couple of degrees to my name and be educated into a middle class profession, but I am more like ‘local lad made good’. People like those among whom I grew up need the Gospel.

With this in mind, let’s at least give house room to some of Bentley’s approach. The tattoos are an obvious example: he looks like a biker, and is it really right to read certain prescriptions from the Torah off the page as condemning something equivalent? I’m not sure. I don’t like tattoos, but I put that down to personal taste.

Then there’s the language. ‘Bam!’ as someone is apparently overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. It sounds like something out of Batman, but I can remember middle-class charismatics twenty or thirty years ago talking about being ‘zapped’ by the Holy Spirit. Batman versus Star Wars/Star Trek: what’s the difference? It’s not my preferred expression, but I have nothing against it. Most people aren’t going to use long theological words like I do.

The same could be said of the regular slogan he has, inviting people for prayer ministry or to visit Lakeland: ‘Come and get some’. It sounds like a football hooligan to me, but again, it could just be cultural. We are good at ‘nice’ invitations in our respectable churches; if someone gives an invitation in the language of the street, we shouldn’t dismiss it. We may well be right to raise questions about an emphasis on getting, because it needs to be accompanied by a consequent movement of giving and serving, and that element is by no means clear in the meetings.

And that point beggars the whole use of the word ‘revival’. I’m aware the word is used differently on each side of the Atlantic – we are, as Winston Churchill said, two nations separated by a common language. (Three, counting Bentley’s native Canada.) To the British Christian, a revival is about the church coming back to her purposes, and many people finding faith in Christ for the first time. It is thus intrinsically linked to repentance. Much criticism of Bentley is around the fact that he rarely seems to mention repentance. In North America, a revival can mean a series of meetings in a church, and this is how the Lakeland story began – with five nights of meetings.

Moreover, I hear Bentley distinctly referring to this as a ‘healing revival’. To my ears, that sounds like a claim that we are seeing a major re-emergence of the healing ministry here. However, even this can’t be completely divorced from other uses of the word ‘revival’, because Bentley clearly has a worldwide, if not almost apocalyptic, vision for what has begun in Florida. All in all, then, I really wish he wouldn’t use the word – especially as it is hard to gauge how big or influential this movement is, given its fast dissemination via TV and the Internet. It’s too soon to speak of a revival as anything more than a lot of meetings.

As I say, none of this is to offset or downplay my concerns. It is to put down a marker about something positive. It would be unfair to criticise Bentley for loose use of words, and if he does have a gift for reaching blue collar workers, then any problems with this ministry take on the level of a tragedy.

I remain nervous about this whole phenomenon. Much of my upcoming opinions (and any revisions) may hang on the meeting I hope to have with an acquaintance whose wife has been to Lakeland. And having failed to make the ‘impartation meeting’ at Meadgate Church last Friday night, I shall bat a meeting next Monday lunch-time where my vicar friend from that church will be present. We hope to chat. Readers of my posts on Bentley will have realised I have significant reservations, not least in the areas of verified healings (see especially Bene Diction‘s comment today in my post ‘Healing, Verification and Resurrection‘) and what appears to be a violent adaptation of the laying on of hands.

Nevertheless, I am not ruling out the possibility that God may well be at work in this whole experience, just as he is at work in messy churches all over the world. If God is at work, I do not want to oppose the Holy Spirit, for Scripture, experience and church history all teach me this important lesson: the powerful presence of God is not automatically a sign of the divine imprimatur on particular human beings. In the Bible, one might cite characters such as King Saul. In church history, John Wesley thought at first that when people fell to the floor during his preaching, it was vindication of his Arminian theology over the Calvinists. He had to learn that God had a different agenda. Not that I’m against Wesley, you understand! In personal experience, I have seen remarkable things attached to flaky people (I’m saying no more).

One thing I’d like to float for discussion is the question of Bentley and what in the UK we would call working class culture. North America can protest it doesn’t have a class system, it just doesn’t have anything so ancient as ours. North American friends, you can think in terms of blue collar culture. I raise this, because I have noticed people comment on the number of poorer people who have been attending the Lakeland meetings. Given the inability – at least in this country – to reach such peoples ever since the Industrial Revolution, this fact should make us sit up and take notice. We have seen Catholics and Anglo-Catholics do better in inner city areas; we have heard of Pentecostal fruitfulness in South American favelas; but a white, western evangelical-charismatic movement among poorer people is less common.

I have this in mind, because I grew up in an urban part of north London. This year, it has been badly affected by the epidemic of teenagers being stabbed in London. Three had been stabbed to death in the first three months of 2008. I may have a couple of degrees to my name and be educated into a middle class profession, but I am more like ‘local lad made good’. People like those among whom I grew up need the Gospel.

With this in mind, let’s at least give house room to some of Bentley’s approach. The tattoos are an obvious example: he looks like a biker, and is it really right to read certain prescriptions from the Torah off the page as condemning something equivalent? I’m not sure. I don’t like tattoos, but I put that down to personal taste.

Then there’s the language. ‘Bam!’ as someone is apparently overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. It sounds like something out of Batman, but I can remember middle-class charismatics twenty or thirty years ago talking about being ‘zapped’ by the Holy Spirit. Batman versus Star Wars/Star Trek: what’s the difference? It’s not my preferred expression, but I have nothing against it. Most people aren’t going to use long theological words like I do.

The same could be said of the regular slogan he has, inviting people for prayer ministry or to visit Lakeland: ‘Come and get some’. It sounds like a football hooligan to me, but again, it could just be cultural. We are good at ‘nice’ invitations in our respectable churches; if someone gives an invitation in the language of the street, we shouldn’t dismiss it. We may well be right to raise questions about an emphasis on getting, because it needs to be accompanied by a consequent movement of giving and serving, and that element is by no means clear in the meetings.

And that point beggars the whole use of the word ‘revival’. I’m aware the word is used differently on each side of the Atlantic – we are, as Winston Churchill said, two nations separated by a common language. (Three, counting Bentley’s native Canada.) To the British Christian, a revival is about the church coming back to her purposes, and many people finding faith in Christ for the first time. It is thus intrinsically linked to repentance. Much criticism of Bentley is around the fact that he rarely seems to mention repentance. In North America, a revival can mean a series of meetings in a church, and this is how the Lakeland story began – with five nights of meetings.

Moreover, I hear Bentley distinctly referring to this as a ‘healing revival’. To my ears, that sounds like a claim that we are seeing a major re-emergence of the healing ministry here. However, even this can’t be completely divorced from other uses of the word ‘revival’, because Bentley clearly has a worldwide, if not almost apocalyptic, vision for what has begun in Florida. All in all, then, I really wish he wouldn’t use the word – especially as it is hard to gauge how big or influential this movement is, given its fast dissemination via TV and the Internet. It’s too soon to speak of a revival as anything more than a lot of meetings.

As I say, none of this is to offset or downplay my concerns. It is to put down a marker about something positive. It would be unfair to criticise Bentley for loose use of words, and if he does have a gift for reaching blue collar workers, then any problems with this ministry take on the level of a tragedy.

Well, I haven't as hoped made it to the 'impartation meeting' at Meadgate Church tonight. I had to finish Sunday's sermon this evening for family reasons, and didn't do so until a long time after the Meadgate meeting began.

Matthew
7:21-29

Introduction
Have you ever sneaked a look at the end of a book? A friend of mine once told
me he had a short cut to getting the best out of reading reviews: he read the
first paragraph and the last. Equally, sometimes I find myself reading an
article in a magazine, and I cover up the end of the piece, so that I don’t
suddenly see the punch line and thus lose the impact.

Today’s Lectionary Gospel reading gives us the punch line of
the Sermon on the Mount. If you wanted to know what it was all about and just
went to the end, you would read these verses. If you want to know why Matthew
put all these teachings of Jesus together into this block we call the Sermon on
the Mount, here is why.

And that punch line is about the importance of obedience. If
we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, then obedience is central and critical. The
reading moves through three phases to get the point across.

1. Obedience Is Central
I don’t know about you, but for years I’ve struggled with the words of Jesus
that open this reading. How can Jesus tell people who call him ‘Lord, Lord’ to
depart from him, because he never knew them? Wasn’t confessing Jesus as Lord
the earliest Christian creed? Wasn’t that what marked out people as followers
of Jesus, in distinction to calling the Roman emperor ‘Lord’?

And what about the prophesying and casting out of demons?
Jesus expected his followers would do these things, and they are common
occurrences in the Acts of the Apostles. So how is it that people who are doing
the very thing Jesus expects of them are sent away from his presence at the
Last Judgment?

And if these people were prophesying and casting out demons
without being in a vital relationship with Jesus, does that make spiritual
power, the power of the Holy Spirit, even, just some kind of commodity?

I think it comes down to this. It’s possible to say ‘Lord,
Lord’ and for it just to be words. It’s easy enough to sing the words of our
hymns, but not mean them. Some of the staunchest defenders I’ve ever met of
Wesley’s hymns have been those with the least interest in believing what Wesley
believed, and in sharing the experience of God that he had. It’s possible to
say the creeds and the prayers without it ever translating into radical
obedience to the One whom we call ‘Lord’.

As to the prophesying and casting out of demons, maybe the
issue Jesus has here is something like this: are we committed just to random acts of
kindness, or to radical, day-by-day obedience to the teaching of Jesus? Because
if we are, what would it look like?

I’ve mentioned in the church newsletter[1]
that there is something controversial and allegedly remarkable happening in the
town of Lakeland, Florida right now. A Canadian evangelist called Todd Bentley began conducting some meetings
on 2^nd April. They have had to keep extending the meetings and
moving to larger premises. There are thousands of claims of remarkable
healings, even of people being raised from the dead. The last thing I want to
do is be cynical about this, and I dearly hope that the accounts are largely
true, but if this really is the ‘revival’ that many are claiming it is, I shall
expect to see more than healings and resurrections.

More than healings and resurrections? Yes. I shall expect to
see people pooling their possessions to help the poor. I shall expect to see people
feeding the hungry. I shall expect to see Christians being active peacemakers
in their societies, and forgiving their enemies. All this in addition to
healings and resurrections, because these too are signs of sold out obedience
to Jesus Christ.

What does that have to do with us? We’re not seeing amazing
miracles happen. Christianity is quite ordinary and down to earth for most of
us. Yet we face a similar danger. Is there something glamorous or exciting that
seeks to take our attention in place of the obedience we should be giving Jesus
Christ? What good or worthy thing gets in the way of our obedience?

It’s instructive to note that Jesus says, ‘I never knew you;
away from me, you evildoers’ (verse 23). Those of us who don’t practice
regular, daily, frequent obedience to Christ are people who don’t know him, and
whom he doesn’t know. To know Jesus is to obey him. If we know Jesus as Lord,
we shall do what he wants. Obedience is central to being a disciple of him.

2. Obedience Is
Wisdom
Having seen that obedience is central, even essential, to following Jesus, we
now hear that obedience is wisdom. In
the story of the two house builders, one builds on rock and the other on sand. The
one who builds on sand is foolish, but the one who builds on rock is wise. What
is the wisdom of this builder? Jesus tells us at the opening of the parable:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. (Verse 24)

Obedience to Jesus – hearing his words and acting on them –
is wisdom. You may think you’re not very clever, but that isn’t the same as
wisdom. Not everybody can be clever, but we can all be wise. Biblical wisdom is
obedience to Jesus. The simplest of folk can be wise. We just have to hear the words
of Jesus and do them. It doesn’t require
degrees, qualifications, or eloquence with words. It just needs a willingness
to listen to Jesus and transmit that to our hands and feet.

But to many, following the teaching of Jesus doesn’t seem
like wisdom at all. Why forgive or care for the weak when you can trample on
people all the way to your destiny at the top of the pile? Why give generously
when you can build up riches for yourself? Why make peace when violence will
secure what you want? This isn’t wisdom, is it? Surely, it’s an exercise in
foolishness. It’s shooting yourself in the foot.

Actually, no. To obey Jesus is to saw wood along the grain
of the universe. To obey Jesus is to navigate in the direction of eternity. And
because of that, when the storms of life hit (and Jesus doesn’t exempt us from them),
we’ll remain standing.

Several of you commented on last
week’s sermon about trusting and seeking God’s kingdom rather than worrying
about money. I talked about how tough things
had been for us financially, yet God had seen us through. This week, Scottish Power put up our monthly
direct debit for gas and electricity by around thirty pounds a month. It didn’t
do much for my stress levels! But it was a time to remember that going the way
of Jesus is the right thing to do, and that he will see us through this latest
storm, too. I’ve still started to do the sensible things like looking into
whether we should change energy supplier, and where we might be able to cut
back our energy consumption, but in the face of the storm we will stand,
provided we concentrate on hearing the words of Jesus and doing them.

So keep obeying Jesus. Whatever the storms bring and
whatever the world may say, you are going in the right direction. Obedience is
eternal wisdom.

3. Obedience Is True
Success
As the song asks, ‘What
is success?’ The church has been asking that question for a long time. In the
face of numerical decline, social apathy and hostility from leading atheists,
many churches would love a sniff of success. When a church has a success story,
the minister becomes in demand. Conferences book him or her as a speaker, she
or he writes a book, and people flock to the church to see what the fuss is all
about and whether they can translate any of the ideas into their situation.

Note, however, the sign of ‘success’ here in Jesus’ ministry:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds
were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes. (Verses 28-29)

When Jesus began the sermon, he was only addressing his
disciples, but now he has the crowds. And it’s the fact that he teaches ‘as one
having authority’. The authority of Jesus’ teaching draws the crowds. Of course,
at other times they will leave him, because that same authoritative teaching
will put them off. But Jesus will never compromise. His only desire is to
please his Father, and that means delivering his teaching in word and deed.

What’s the message for us here? Drop the gimmicks, and
concentrate on obeying Jesus. Don’t worry about the latest fads and fashions; focus
on hearing Jesus and doing what he says.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t modernise, I’m not saying we
should stay with our beloved traditions. I’m saying that substance has to take
precedence over style. The substance of Christian discipleship is obedience to
Jesus. We can decide to follow all sorts of paths in expressing our faith, but
unless we have the core issue resolved, namely that we shall follow Jesus, then
all the rest of it, ancient or modern, is on a par with the emperor’s new
clothes.

Often in the face of church decline, people have responded
to new ways of doing church by saying, ‘We’re not called to be successful, but
we are called to be faithful.’ Well, that is true, but the problem comes in
defining what constitutes being faithful. We may hear it said that so-and-so is
faithful, but that may only mean that they are regular! Being faithful for the
Christian is about consistent obedience to Jesus Christ, and nothing less. It’s
also what God considers success.

So it’s incumbent upon preachers like me to share with you
what Jesus teaches, rather than spout forth personal opinions. If a preacher is
merely entertaining, do not entertain them. If a preacher makes the teaching of
Jesus come alive, listen intently and follow through with your actions
afterwards.

And it’s incumbent upon all of us to find ways of listening
to Jesus and responding to him. That’s why I favour the small group so much. John
Wesley put converts into small groups so that they could talk every week about
the joys and struggles of following Jesus, holding one another accountable. It’s
the place where we can thrash out together what a Bible passage means, and explore
how we might put it into practice. Because if we don’t do that, we’ll never ‘succeed’
in the eyes of God.

Conclusion
I began by talking about the punch line to the Sermon on the Mount. The problem
with talking like that is that it sounds like I’m talking about a joke, when
this is deeply serious.

No, obedience isn’t a joke. It can call on considerable
courage. But it is also a matter of joy. There is joy in obeying Christ. We
know that the demands seem tough, when set in opposition to our self-centred
tendencies. But when we allow Jesus to win in our lives, there is joy in the
satisfaction of having obeyed him. Not that we glorify ourselves, of course:
Jesus must receive all the praise.

So, let us be joyful in obedience. It is central to our
faith, it is true wisdom, and it is God’s plumb line of success.

Well, I haven't as hoped made it to the 'impartation meeting' at Meadgate Church tonight. I had to finish Sunday's sermon this evening for family reasons, and didn't do so until a long time after the Meadgate meeting began.

Matthew
7:21-29

Introduction
Have you ever sneaked a look at the end of a book? A friend of mine once told
me he had a short cut to getting the best out of reading reviews: he read the
first paragraph and the last. Equally, sometimes I find myself reading an
article in a magazine, and I cover up the end of the piece, so that I don’t
suddenly see the punch line and thus lose the impact.

Today’s Lectionary Gospel reading gives us the punch line of
the Sermon on the Mount. If you wanted to know what it was all about and just
went to the end, you would read these verses. If you want to know why Matthew
put all these teachings of Jesus together into this block we call the Sermon on
the Mount, here is why.

And that punch line is about the importance of obedience. If
we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, then obedience is central and critical. The
reading moves through three phases to get the point across.

1. Obedience Is Central
I don’t know about you, but for years I’ve struggled with the words of Jesus
that open this reading. How can Jesus tell people who call him ‘Lord, Lord’ to
depart from him, because he never knew them? Wasn’t confessing Jesus as Lord
the earliest Christian creed? Wasn’t that what marked out people as followers
of Jesus, in distinction to calling the Roman emperor ‘Lord’?

And what about the prophesying and casting out of demons?
Jesus expected his followers would do these things, and they are common
occurrences in the Acts of the Apostles. So how is it that people who are doing
the very thing Jesus expects of them are sent away from his presence at the
Last Judgment?

And if these people were prophesying and casting out demons
without being in a vital relationship with Jesus, does that make spiritual
power, the power of the Holy Spirit, even, just some kind of commodity?

I think it comes down to this. It’s possible to say ‘Lord,
Lord’ and for it just to be words. It’s easy enough to sing the words of our
hymns, but not mean them. Some of the staunchest defenders I’ve ever met of
Wesley’s hymns have been those with the least interest in believing what Wesley
believed, and in sharing the experience of God that he had. It’s possible to
say the creeds and the prayers without it ever translating into radical
obedience to the One whom we call ‘Lord’.

As to the prophesying and casting out of demons, maybe the
issue Jesus has here is something like this: are we committed just to random acts of
kindness, or to radical, day-by-day obedience to the teaching of Jesus? Because
if we are, what would it look like?

I’ve mentioned in the church newsletter[1]
that there is something controversial and allegedly remarkable happening in the
town of Lakeland, Florida right now. A Canadian evangelist called Todd Bentley began conducting some meetings
on 2^nd April. They have had to keep extending the meetings and
moving to larger premises. There are thousands of claims of remarkable
healings, even of people being raised from the dead. The last thing I want to
do is be cynical about this, and I dearly hope that the accounts are largely
true, but if this really is the ‘revival’ that many are claiming it is, I shall
expect to see more than healings and resurrections.

More than healings and resurrections? Yes. I shall expect to
see people pooling their possessions to help the poor. I shall expect to see people
feeding the hungry. I shall expect to see Christians being active peacemakers
in their societies, and forgiving their enemies. All this in addition to
healings and resurrections, because these too are signs of sold out obedience
to Jesus Christ.

What does that have to do with us? We’re not seeing amazing
miracles happen. Christianity is quite ordinary and down to earth for most of
us. Yet we face a similar danger. Is there something glamorous or exciting that
seeks to take our attention in place of the obedience we should be giving Jesus
Christ? What good or worthy thing gets in the way of our obedience?

It’s instructive to note that Jesus says, ‘I never knew you;
away from me, you evildoers’ (verse 23). Those of us who don’t practice
regular, daily, frequent obedience to Christ are people who don’t know him, and
whom he doesn’t know. To know Jesus is to obey him. If we know Jesus as Lord,
we shall do what he wants. Obedience is central to being a disciple of him.

2. Obedience Is
Wisdom
Having seen that obedience is central, even essential, to following Jesus, we
now hear that obedience is wisdom. In
the story of the two house builders, one builds on rock and the other on sand. The
one who builds on sand is foolish, but the one who builds on rock is wise. What
is the wisdom of this builder? Jesus tells us at the opening of the parable:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. (Verse 24)

Obedience to Jesus – hearing his words and acting on them –
is wisdom. You may think you’re not very clever, but that isn’t the same as
wisdom. Not everybody can be clever, but we can all be wise. Biblical wisdom is
obedience to Jesus. The simplest of folk can be wise. We just have to hear the words
of Jesus and do them. It doesn’t require
degrees, qualifications, or eloquence with words. It just needs a willingness
to listen to Jesus and transmit that to our hands and feet.

But to many, following the teaching of Jesus doesn’t seem
like wisdom at all. Why forgive or care for the weak when you can trample on
people all the way to your destiny at the top of the pile? Why give generously
when you can build up riches for yourself? Why make peace when violence will
secure what you want? This isn’t wisdom, is it? Surely, it’s an exercise in
foolishness. It’s shooting yourself in the foot.

Actually, no. To obey Jesus is to saw wood along the grain
of the universe. To obey Jesus is to navigate in the direction of eternity. And
because of that, when the storms of life hit (and Jesus doesn’t exempt us from them),
we’ll remain standing.

Several of you commented on last
week’s sermon about trusting and seeking God’s kingdom rather than worrying
about money. I talked about how tough things
had been for us financially, yet God had seen us through. This week, Scottish Power put up our monthly
direct debit for gas and electricity by around thirty pounds a month. It didn’t
do much for my stress levels! But it was a time to remember that going the way
of Jesus is the right thing to do, and that he will see us through this latest
storm, too. I’ve still started to do the sensible things like looking into
whether we should change energy supplier, and where we might be able to cut
back our energy consumption, but in the face of the storm we will stand,
provided we concentrate on hearing the words of Jesus and doing them.

So keep obeying Jesus. Whatever the storms bring and
whatever the world may say, you are going in the right direction. Obedience is
eternal wisdom.

3. Obedience Is True
Success
As the song asks, ‘What
is success?’ The church has been asking that question for a long time. In the
face of numerical decline, social apathy and hostility from leading atheists,
many churches would love a sniff of success. When a church has a success story,
the minister becomes in demand. Conferences book him or her as a speaker, she
or he writes a book, and people flock to the church to see what the fuss is all
about and whether they can translate any of the ideas into their situation.

Note, however, the sign of ‘success’ here in Jesus’ ministry:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds
were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes. (Verses 28-29)

When Jesus began the sermon, he was only addressing his
disciples, but now he has the crowds. And it’s the fact that he teaches ‘as one
having authority’. The authority of Jesus’ teaching draws the crowds. Of course,
at other times they will leave him, because that same authoritative teaching
will put them off. But Jesus will never compromise. His only desire is to
please his Father, and that means delivering his teaching in word and deed.

What’s the message for us here? Drop the gimmicks, and
concentrate on obeying Jesus. Don’t worry about the latest fads and fashions; focus
on hearing Jesus and doing what he says.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t modernise, I’m not saying we
should stay with our beloved traditions. I’m saying that substance has to take
precedence over style. The substance of Christian discipleship is obedience to
Jesus. We can decide to follow all sorts of paths in expressing our faith, but
unless we have the core issue resolved, namely that we shall follow Jesus, then
all the rest of it, ancient or modern, is on a par with the emperor’s new
clothes.

Often in the face of church decline, people have responded
to new ways of doing church by saying, ‘We’re not called to be successful, but
we are called to be faithful.’ Well, that is true, but the problem comes in
defining what constitutes being faithful. We may hear it said that so-and-so is
faithful, but that may only mean that they are regular! Being faithful for the
Christian is about consistent obedience to Jesus Christ, and nothing less. It’s
also what God considers success.

So it’s incumbent upon preachers like me to share with you
what Jesus teaches, rather than spout forth personal opinions. If a preacher is
merely entertaining, do not entertain them. If a preacher makes the teaching of
Jesus come alive, listen intently and follow through with your actions
afterwards.

And it’s incumbent upon all of us to find ways of listening
to Jesus and responding to him. That’s why I favour the small group so much. John
Wesley put converts into small groups so that they could talk every week about
the joys and struggles of following Jesus, holding one another accountable. It’s
the place where we can thrash out together what a Bible passage means, and explore
how we might put it into practice. Because if we don’t do that, we’ll never ‘succeed’
in the eyes of God.

Conclusion
I began by talking about the punch line to the Sermon on the Mount. The problem
with talking like that is that it sounds like I’m talking about a joke, when
this is deeply serious.

No, obedience isn’t a joke. It can call on considerable
courage. But it is also a matter of joy. There is joy in obeying Christ. We
know that the demands seem tough, when set in opposition to our self-centred
tendencies. But when we allow Jesus to win in our lives, there is joy in the
satisfaction of having obeyed him. Not that we glorify ourselves, of course:
Jesus must receive all the praise.

So, let us be joyful in obedience. It is central to our
faith, it is true wisdom, and it is God’s plumb line of success.

Well, I haven't as hoped made it to the 'impartation meeting' at Meadgate Church tonight. I had to finish Sunday's sermon this evening for family reasons, and didn't do so until a long time after the Meadgate meeting began.

Matthew
7:21-29

Introduction
Have you ever sneaked a look at the end of a book? A friend of mine once told
me he had a short cut to getting the best out of reading reviews: he read the
first paragraph and the last. Equally, sometimes I find myself reading an
article in a magazine, and I cover up the end of the piece, so that I don’t
suddenly see the punch line and thus lose the impact.

Today’s Lectionary Gospel reading gives us the punch line of
the Sermon on the Mount. If you wanted to know what it was all about and just
went to the end, you would read these verses. If you want to know why Matthew
put all these teachings of Jesus together into this block we call the Sermon on
the Mount, here is why.

And that punch line is about the importance of obedience. If
we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, then obedience is central and critical. The
reading moves through three phases to get the point across.

1. Obedience Is Central
I don’t know about you, but for years I’ve struggled with the words of Jesus
that open this reading. How can Jesus tell people who call him ‘Lord, Lord’ to
depart from him, because he never knew them? Wasn’t confessing Jesus as Lord
the earliest Christian creed? Wasn’t that what marked out people as followers
of Jesus, in distinction to calling the Roman emperor ‘Lord’?

And what about the prophesying and casting out of demons?
Jesus expected his followers would do these things, and they are common
occurrences in the Acts of the Apostles. So how is it that people who are doing
the very thing Jesus expects of them are sent away from his presence at the
Last Judgment?

And if these people were prophesying and casting out demons
without being in a vital relationship with Jesus, does that make spiritual
power, the power of the Holy Spirit, even, just some kind of commodity?

I think it comes down to this. It’s possible to say ‘Lord,
Lord’ and for it just to be words. It’s easy enough to sing the words of our
hymns, but not mean them. Some of the staunchest defenders I’ve ever met of
Wesley’s hymns have been those with the least interest in believing what Wesley
believed, and in sharing the experience of God that he had. It’s possible to
say the creeds and the prayers without it ever translating into radical
obedience to the One whom we call ‘Lord’.

As to the prophesying and casting out of demons, maybe the
issue Jesus has here is something like this: are we committed just to random acts of
kindness, or to radical, day-by-day obedience to the teaching of Jesus? Because
if we are, what would it look like?

I’ve mentioned in the church newsletter[1]
that there is something controversial and allegedly remarkable happening in the
town of Lakeland, Florida right now. A Canadian evangelist called Todd Bentley began conducting some meetings
on 2^nd April. They have had to keep extending the meetings and
moving to larger premises. There are thousands of claims of remarkable
healings, even of people being raised from the dead. The last thing I want to
do is be cynical about this, and I dearly hope that the accounts are largely
true, but if this really is the ‘revival’ that many are claiming it is, I shall
expect to see more than healings and resurrections.

More than healings and resurrections? Yes. I shall expect to
see people pooling their possessions to help the poor. I shall expect to see people
feeding the hungry. I shall expect to see Christians being active peacemakers
in their societies, and forgiving their enemies. All this in addition to
healings and resurrections, because these too are signs of sold out obedience
to Jesus Christ.

What does that have to do with us? We’re not seeing amazing
miracles happen. Christianity is quite ordinary and down to earth for most of
us. Yet we face a similar danger. Is there something glamorous or exciting that
seeks to take our attention in place of the obedience we should be giving Jesus
Christ? What good or worthy thing gets in the way of our obedience?

It’s instructive to note that Jesus says, ‘I never knew you;
away from me, you evildoers’ (verse 23). Those of us who don’t practice
regular, daily, frequent obedience to Christ are people who don’t know him, and
whom he doesn’t know. To know Jesus is to obey him. If we know Jesus as Lord,
we shall do what he wants. Obedience is central to being a disciple of him.

2. Obedience Is
Wisdom
Having seen that obedience is central, even essential, to following Jesus, we
now hear that obedience is wisdom. In
the story of the two house builders, one builds on rock and the other on sand. The
one who builds on sand is foolish, but the one who builds on rock is wise. What
is the wisdom of this builder? Jesus tells us at the opening of the parable:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. (Verse 24)

Obedience to Jesus – hearing his words and acting on them –
is wisdom. You may think you’re not very clever, but that isn’t the same as
wisdom. Not everybody can be clever, but we can all be wise. Biblical wisdom is
obedience to Jesus. The simplest of folk can be wise. We just have to hear the words
of Jesus and do them. It doesn’t require
degrees, qualifications, or eloquence with words. It just needs a willingness
to listen to Jesus and transmit that to our hands and feet.

But to many, following the teaching of Jesus doesn’t seem
like wisdom at all. Why forgive or care for the weak when you can trample on
people all the way to your destiny at the top of the pile? Why give generously
when you can build up riches for yourself? Why make peace when violence will
secure what you want? This isn’t wisdom, is it? Surely, it’s an exercise in
foolishness. It’s shooting yourself in the foot.

Actually, no. To obey Jesus is to saw wood along the grain
of the universe. To obey Jesus is to navigate in the direction of eternity. And
because of that, when the storms of life hit (and Jesus doesn’t exempt us from them),
we’ll remain standing.

Several of you commented on last
week’s sermon about trusting and seeking God’s kingdom rather than worrying
about money. I talked about how tough things
had been for us financially, yet God had seen us through. This week, Scottish Power put up our monthly
direct debit for gas and electricity by around thirty pounds a month. It didn’t
do much for my stress levels! But it was a time to remember that going the way
of Jesus is the right thing to do, and that he will see us through this latest
storm, too. I’ve still started to do the sensible things like looking into
whether we should change energy supplier, and where we might be able to cut
back our energy consumption, but in the face of the storm we will stand,
provided we concentrate on hearing the words of Jesus and doing them.

So keep obeying Jesus. Whatever the storms bring and
whatever the world may say, you are going in the right direction. Obedience is
eternal wisdom.

3. Obedience Is True
Success
As the song asks, ‘What
is success?’ The church has been asking that question for a long time. In the
face of numerical decline, social apathy and hostility from leading atheists,
many churches would love a sniff of success. When a church has a success story,
the minister becomes in demand. Conferences book him or her as a speaker, she
or he writes a book, and people flock to the church to see what the fuss is all
about and whether they can translate any of the ideas into their situation.

Note, however, the sign of ‘success’ here in Jesus’ ministry:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds
were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes. (Verses 28-29)

When Jesus began the sermon, he was only addressing his
disciples, but now he has the crowds. And it’s the fact that he teaches ‘as one
having authority’. The authority of Jesus’ teaching draws the crowds. Of course,
at other times they will leave him, because that same authoritative teaching
will put them off. But Jesus will never compromise. His only desire is to
please his Father, and that means delivering his teaching in word and deed.

What’s the message for us here? Drop the gimmicks, and
concentrate on obeying Jesus. Don’t worry about the latest fads and fashions; focus
on hearing Jesus and doing what he says.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t modernise, I’m not saying we
should stay with our beloved traditions. I’m saying that substance has to take
precedence over style. The substance of Christian discipleship is obedience to
Jesus. We can decide to follow all sorts of paths in expressing our faith, but
unless we have the core issue resolved, namely that we shall follow Jesus, then
all the rest of it, ancient or modern, is on a par with the emperor’s new
clothes.

Often in the face of church decline, people have responded
to new ways of doing church by saying, ‘We’re not called to be successful, but
we are called to be faithful.’ Well, that is true, but the problem comes in
defining what constitutes being faithful. We may hear it said that so-and-so is
faithful, but that may only mean that they are regular! Being faithful for the
Christian is about consistent obedience to Jesus Christ, and nothing less. It’s
also what God considers success.

So it’s incumbent upon preachers like me to share with you
what Jesus teaches, rather than spout forth personal opinions. If a preacher is
merely entertaining, do not entertain them. If a preacher makes the teaching of
Jesus come alive, listen intently and follow through with your actions
afterwards.

And it’s incumbent upon all of us to find ways of listening
to Jesus and responding to him. That’s why I favour the small group so much. John
Wesley put converts into small groups so that they could talk every week about
the joys and struggles of following Jesus, holding one another accountable. It’s
the place where we can thrash out together what a Bible passage means, and explore
how we might put it into practice. Because if we don’t do that, we’ll never ‘succeed’
in the eyes of God.

Conclusion
I began by talking about the punch line to the Sermon on the Mount. The problem
with talking like that is that it sounds like I’m talking about a joke, when
this is deeply serious.

No, obedience isn’t a joke. It can call on considerable
courage. But it is also a matter of joy. There is joy in obeying Christ. We
know that the demands seem tough, when set in opposition to our self-centred
tendencies. But when we allow Jesus to win in our lives, there is joy in the
satisfaction of having obeyed him. Not that we glorify ourselves, of course:
Jesus must receive all the praise.

So, let us be joyful in obedience. It is central to our
faith, it is true wisdom, and it is God’s plumb line of success.

Er, yes. Just to say that late last night I received an email from an acquaintance whose wife has recently spent three weeks at Lakeland. He has offered a chat about some of the things that have unnerved me. That may not be for some time yet, unless we do it by email. I hope to reflect on that in due course (without betraying any confidences that might be shared).

In the meantime, I am hoping to attend the ‘impartation meeting’ at Meadgate Church tomorrow night, to witness things first hand. I’ll let you know how I get on.