On 11th March, I recounted the story of a woman’s dreadful behaviour at a funeral. She ignored notices to move her car when picking up her son from the playgroup that uses the church hall, and got blocked in by the hearse. She then tried to have a row with me when I was about to lead the coffin into church. (Click the link for more detail.)

Yesterday, we gathered to bury the ashes of the much-loved mother and grandmother. I learned a twist to the story. Our church car park is at the front of the church. You turn into it immediately off the main road. When the woman finally roared off from the church, she failed to remember that the lowered pavement for the car park is off centre. As a result, she went over a large kerb, and damaged the underside of her car.

When we learned, we laughed. Should we have done? Plenty of church people had adopted a Christian attitude to the woman: ‘I hope she doesn’t get treated like that when she is mourning a loved one.’ But could this be an example of Romans 1 justice, where God gives up those who reject him to the consequences of their actions – in this case, the woman’s unrighteous anger? Were we right to laugh? Or should we have been saddened for her? It hardly compares with the longing of persecuted Christians for judgment on their tormentors in Revelation, but was justice done, or were we taking a perverse pleasure in an ungodly love of vengeance?

Thoughts, anyone?

Technorati Tags: justice, vengeance, funeral

Luke 24:13-35

Introduction
At ninety-one, Ron was distraught when he had to stop driving. The rest of us
at church thought he had been a marvel, continuing behind the wheel to such an
age. But he was suffering from age-related macular degeneration, the most
common cause of sight loss in our country, a currently incurable condition.

The Emmaus Road is a story about blindness and sight, but it
is about curable blindness. When Jesus joins the two disciples on the road, we
read that ‘their eyes were kept from recognising him’ (verse 16). Their
physical inability to recognise Jesus is connected with a spiritual blindness.
Easter is about blindness and sight: all are blind to the Risen Christ, but who
is willing to be healed, and who will choose to remain blind to him? Hence,
this morning, I want us to think about the causes of spiritual blindness, and
the ways in which the Risen Christ heals us and enables us to see him.

1. Causes of
Blindness
Spiritual blindness is a common malady. John Newton captured it in the hymn
‘Amazing Grace’ when he wrote, ‘I once was blind, but now I see’. Finding God’s
grace in Christ is like our eyes opening.

However, blindness of spirit is not limited to those outside
the community of faith. It occurs inside. That’s what happens in our story, and
in other places in the Gospels. The disciples just don’t seem to understand
what Jesus is driving at. Many preachers will know about this phenomenon. We
preach our hearts out, trying to communicate something of the Gospel, but
somebody comments afterwards how they liked a story or a joke, but never
engages with what we were trying to say through that story. They are like the
people who enjoyed Jesus’ parables, but never found the kingdom of God that was
their subject.

So to our story. Luke doesn’t say how ‘[the disciples’] eyes
were kept from recognising [Jesus]’. A popular suggestion in church history has
been to say that God kept them from seeing that the stranger was his Son.
However, there is a similarly worded event in Luke 18:34, where the disciples
don’t take in Jesus’ prophecy of his then-forthcoming betrayal, suffering and
death. The idea that God wouldn’t want them to understand that seems strange.
There are probably other reasons for their blindness.

If it wasn’t God, then might this be a satanic blinding?
That’s a tricky thing to say. Many Christians find it difficult to believe in
the existence of Satan and the Satanic. That isn’t surprising given the extreme
and irresponsible ways in which some other Christians speak about the devil.

But denying the devil’s existence runs into the buffers,
too. For Jesus clearly believed in his existence. Then we have to face our
Christian confession of Jesus as Lord. It’s inadequate to say that Jesus was a
child of his time, as if he were constrained only to believe the same as his
contemporaries. He’s not much of a Saviour and Lord on that account. Whatever the
behaviour of the Christian lunatic fringe on this issue, we are bound to accept
Jesus’ view of the demonic. As C S Lewis
famously wrote in The
Screwtape Letters,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race
can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other
is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They
themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a
magician with the same delight.

It is perfectly likely that if we have an enemy of our
souls, he will want to blind us to the truth of God in Christ. He will distract
us, or get us to focus on the trivial instead of the profound – anything to
prevent us from engaging with all that the truth of Christ crucified and risen
means for us and for creation.

However, none of this is to take away personal
responsibility for spiritual blindness. ‘The devil made me do it’ just won’t do
as an excuse. If we were only talking about demonically caused spiritual
blindness, Jesus would not have rebuked the two disciples with the words, ‘Oh,
how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
have declared!’ (Verse 25). Like Cleopas and his companion on the road, we are
foolish and slow of heart.

On the one hand, it is not that obvious if you just read the
Old Testament that the Messiah would suffer, die and be raised, and so you
might feel some sympathy for the disciples. On the other hand, Jesus had explained
this several times to them. Part of our spiritual blindness is similar: Jesus
has told us certain things repeatedly, yet either we don’t believe them or we
don’t put them into practice. If that were the case, then it would hardly be
surprising if we made little progress in our spiritual growth and witness.

So when we read that Jesus interprets the Scriptures
concerning himself, beginning with Moses and the prophets (verse 27), he is
surely telling them little new. Rather, he is recapping what he had previously
taught them. It’s like the story of the preacher who kept preaching the same
sermon every week. ‘When are you going to preach a different sermon?’
complained his congregation. ‘When you start obeying this one,’ the minister
retorted.

Spiritual blindness, then, has at least two causes. One is
that of our spiritual enemy, who will do all he can to distract us from the
promises of the Gospel and the power of God. We need to be alert to his
tactics, so that we focus on Christ. The other cause is our own slowness to
believe and act upon what we have learned of the Gospel over the years.
Christian truth is not simply something to accumulate in our brains: it is
something we live out each day. If we don’t, then the muscles in our spiritual
eyes become lazy.

2. Cures for
Blindness
Two causes – and two cures. Jesus’ first treatment for spiritual blindness is
his exposition of the Scriptures. Not just the Scriptures themselves, but also Jesus’ exposition of them. The
Scriptures are God’s Word written, but without Jesus speaking their meaning to
the two companions on the Emmaus Road, they never would have grasped the
meaning, and their hearts would never have burned within them at the thrill of
prophecy fulfilled (verse 32).

It is similar for us. The Scriptures faithfully relay the
message of God’s kingdom, but despite containing their world-changing message,
it’s possible to read them and find no life or inspiration. We too need Jesus
to interpret the Scriptures to us. We need the help of the Holy Spirit for them
to come alive and for us to see Jesus at the centre of their message. It makes
sense to seek the Holy Spirit’s help. Since the Spirit supervised the human
authors of the Bible, and since the Spirit’s work is also to point to Jesus, it
all fits with the Scriptures coming alive for us, and pointing to Christ.

How, then, might we seek the Holy Spirit’s help, so that as
we read the Scriptures, the scales fall from our eyes and we meet Jesus through
their pages?

I believe it is about seeking the Holy Spirit within us and
among us. We seek the Holy Spirit’s work within our own lives, as we pray. In humble
dependence, we ask for the Spirit’s illuminating work as we read, reflect and
meditate upon the written Word. We seek the Holy Spirit among us, as we expect
the Spirit to be in the midst of God’s family. To that end, we ask the Spirit not
only to illuminate us privately, but also as we discuss the Scriptures in
fellowship, and as we seek wisdom from wider circles than our own church family
when reading books or listening to sermons or podcasts.

So this is the first cure for spiritual blindness. We seek
the empowering of the Holy Spirit as we read the Scriptures, that Jesus may be
revealed to us.

The second cure comes at the meal. If Cleopas and his
companion looked back and realised that their hearts were burning as Jesus
opened the Scriptures to them, the other eye-opening moment is at the meal
table. They invite Jesus in, rather like the ways in which Abraham and Lot
unwittingly offered hospitality to angelic visitors (Genesis 18:3; 19:2). It’s
also rather similar to the feeding of the five thousand, where the pivotal
point was that ‘the day was drawing to a close’ (Luke 9:12). This was, after
all, the customary time for the main meal of the day[1],
and the two disciples belonged to a culture that valued hospitality.

Jesus, then, is invited in as an honoured guest. But that
isn’t how he behaves. As he takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it and shares
it, he is the host of the meal. His actions echo both the feeding of the five
thousand and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the penny drops. It’s
Jesus! He is alive, as the women had
said! He has made himself known to them in breaking bread.

So where do the scales fall from the eyes this time? At Holy
Communion? I would hope so. The sacrament is certainly a place where Jesus
makes himself known: it’s more than a memorial service. However, Jesus will not
be limited to ‘churchy’ environments, and at Emmaus, he doesn’t celebrate an
early version of the sacrament. What he does is what any Jewish host would have
done at any meal in those days. Thus, he reveals himself to the two disciples
at a regular meal. It is here, in the stuff of ordinary life, that he makes
himself known.

This is why our Salvation Army friends don’t celebrate the
sacrament. While I believe they’re wrong to do that, they remind us of an
important point, that Jesus is there to be encountered at any meal, and – I would
suggest – in any part of life. The universe is his parish.

In our house, if Rebekah wakes up before me, she likes to
creep in and tickle my feet to wake me up. I hate having my feet tickled! She attempts
to surprise me with her presence. On the road and at Emmaus, we see Jesus
surprising two of his friends with his presence. Be prepared for Jesus to
surprise you! Nowhere is off limits to Jesus. Like an itinerant doctor, he
travels everywhere, curing people of spiritual blindness to him.

However, just because he turns up unexpected and surprises
us, it does not follow that we should leave it to him. If we know that
everywhere in creation is his domain (because his death redeems all creation),
then we have a challenge to look out for him. It’s not exactly a ‘Where’s
Wally?’ cartoon, but if we are in the dark, we can be encouraged with the
expectation that wherever we go, Jesus is not far away to lighten our darkness.
Unlike Wally, he isn’t hiding from us. Rather, he’s actively seeking us out. As
he looks for us, we can look for him.

Conclusion
The Resurrection, then, is God’s cure for spiritual blindness. We may have
become blind through our own negligence, or by not being wise to the
diversionary tactics of the enemy. But the light of the Risen Christ is
brighter than the darkness. His Spirit makes the Scriptures come alive for us,
and Christ himself is looking to meet us here, there and everywhere. He makes
all of life a sacred journey where we may meet him travel with him and eat with
him. Let us invite the Risen Lord to open our eyes to his presence, so that we
may walk with him in his ways.

Technorati Tags: blindness, Emmaus, resurrection, Easter, JohnNewton, AmazingGrace, Satan, devil, CSLewis, Screwtape, HolySpirit, Cleopas, SalvationArmy, sacrament, WheresWally, JohnNolland

Luke 24:13-35

Introduction
At ninety-one, Ron was distraught when he had to stop driving. The rest of us
at church thought he had been a marvel, continuing behind the wheel to such an
age. But he was suffering from age-related macular degeneration, the most
common cause of sight loss in our country, a currently incurable condition.

The Emmaus Road is a story about blindness and sight, but it
is about curable blindness. When Jesus joins the two disciples on the road, we
read that ‘their eyes were kept from recognising him’ (verse 16). Their
physical inability to recognise Jesus is connected with a spiritual blindness.
Easter is about blindness and sight: all are blind to the Risen Christ, but who
is willing to be healed, and who will choose to remain blind to him? Hence,
this morning, I want us to think about the causes of spiritual blindness, and
the ways in which the Risen Christ heals us and enables us to see him.

1. Causes of
Blindness
Spiritual blindness is a common malady. John Newton captured it in the hymn
‘Amazing Grace’ when he wrote, ‘I once was blind, but now I see’. Finding God’s
grace in Christ is like our eyes opening.

However, blindness of spirit is not limited to those outside
the community of faith. It occurs inside. That’s what happens in our story, and
in other places in the Gospels. The disciples just don’t seem to understand
what Jesus is driving at. Many preachers will know about this phenomenon. We
preach our hearts out, trying to communicate something of the Gospel, but
somebody comments afterwards how they liked a story or a joke, but never
engages with what we were trying to say through that story. They are like the
people who enjoyed Jesus’ parables, but never found the kingdom of God that was
their subject.

So to our story. Luke doesn’t say how ‘[the disciples’] eyes
were kept from recognising [Jesus]’. A popular suggestion in church history has
been to say that God kept them from seeing that the stranger was his Son.
However, there is a similarly worded event in Luke 18:34, where the disciples
don’t take in Jesus’ prophecy of his then-forthcoming betrayal, suffering and
death. The idea that God wouldn’t want them to understand that seems strange.
There are probably other reasons for their blindness.

If it wasn’t God, then might this be a satanic blinding?
That’s a tricky thing to say. Many Christians find it difficult to believe in
the existence of Satan and the Satanic. That isn’t surprising given the extreme
and irresponsible ways in which some other Christians speak about the devil.

But denying the devil’s existence runs into the buffers,
too. For Jesus clearly believed in his existence. Then we have to face our
Christian confession of Jesus as Lord. It’s inadequate to say that Jesus was a
child of his time, as if he were constrained only to believe the same as his
contemporaries. He’s not much of a Saviour and Lord on that account. Whatever the
behaviour of the Christian lunatic fringe on this issue, we are bound to accept
Jesus’ view of the demonic. As C S Lewis
famously wrote in The
Screwtape Letters,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race
can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other
is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They
themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a
magician with the same delight.

It is perfectly likely that if we have an enemy of our
souls, he will want to blind us to the truth of God in Christ. He will distract
us, or get us to focus on the trivial instead of the profound – anything to
prevent us from engaging with all that the truth of Christ crucified and risen
means for us and for creation.

However, none of this is to take away personal
responsibility for spiritual blindness. ‘The devil made me do it’ just won’t do
as an excuse. If we were only talking about demonically caused spiritual
blindness, Jesus would not have rebuked the two disciples with the words, ‘Oh,
how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
have declared!’ (Verse 25). Like Cleopas and his companion on the road, we are
foolish and slow of heart.

On the one hand, it is not that obvious if you just read the
Old Testament that the Messiah would suffer, die and be raised, and so you
might feel some sympathy for the disciples. On the other hand, Jesus had explained
this several times to them. Part of our spiritual blindness is similar: Jesus
has told us certain things repeatedly, yet either we don’t believe them or we
don’t put them into practice. If that were the case, then it would hardly be
surprising if we made little progress in our spiritual growth and witness.

So when we read that Jesus interprets the Scriptures
concerning himself, beginning with Moses and the prophets (verse 27), he is
surely telling them little new. Rather, he is recapping what he had previously
taught them. It’s like the story of the preacher who kept preaching the same
sermon every week. ‘When are you going to preach a different sermon?’
complained his congregation. ‘When you start obeying this one,’ the minister
retorted.

Spiritual blindness, then, has at least two causes. One is
that of our spiritual enemy, who will do all he can to distract us from the
promises of the Gospel and the power of God. We need to be alert to his
tactics, so that we focus on Christ. The other cause is our own slowness to
believe and act upon what we have learned of the Gospel over the years.
Christian truth is not simply something to accumulate in our brains: it is
something we live out each day. If we don’t, then the muscles in our spiritual
eyes become lazy.

2. Cures for
Blindness
Two causes – and two cures. Jesus’ first treatment for spiritual blindness is
his exposition of the Scriptures. Not just the Scriptures themselves, but also Jesus’ exposition of them. The
Scriptures are God’s Word written, but without Jesus speaking their meaning to
the two companions on the Emmaus Road, they never would have grasped the
meaning, and their hearts would never have burned within them at the thrill of
prophecy fulfilled (verse 32).

It is similar for us. The Scriptures faithfully relay the
message of God’s kingdom, but despite containing their world-changing message,
it’s possible to read them and find no life or inspiration. We too need Jesus
to interpret the Scriptures to us. We need the help of the Holy Spirit for them
to come alive and for us to see Jesus at the centre of their message. It makes
sense to seek the Holy Spirit’s help. Since the Spirit supervised the human
authors of the Bible, and since the Spirit’s work is also to point to Jesus, it
all fits with the Scriptures coming alive for us, and pointing to Christ.

How, then, might we seek the Holy Spirit’s help, so that as
we read the Scriptures, the scales fall from our eyes and we meet Jesus through
their pages?

I believe it is about seeking the Holy Spirit within us and
among us. We seek the Holy Spirit’s work within our own lives, as we pray. In humble
dependence, we ask for the Spirit’s illuminating work as we read, reflect and
meditate upon the written Word. We seek the Holy Spirit among us, as we expect
the Spirit to be in the midst of God’s family. To that end, we ask the Spirit not
only to illuminate us privately, but also as we discuss the Scriptures in
fellowship, and as we seek wisdom from wider circles than our own church family
when reading books or listening to sermons or podcasts.

So this is the first cure for spiritual blindness. We seek
the empowering of the Holy Spirit as we read the Scriptures, that Jesus may be
revealed to us.

The second cure comes at the meal. If Cleopas and his
companion looked back and realised that their hearts were burning as Jesus
opened the Scriptures to them, the other eye-opening moment is at the meal
table. They invite Jesus in, rather like the ways in which Abraham and Lot
unwittingly offered hospitality to angelic visitors (Genesis 18:3; 19:2). It’s
also rather similar to the feeding of the five thousand, where the pivotal
point was that ‘the day was drawing to a close’ (Luke 9:12). This was, after
all, the customary time for the main meal of the day[1],
and the two disciples belonged to a culture that valued hospitality.

Jesus, then, is invited in as an honoured guest. But that
isn’t how he behaves. As he takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it and shares
it, he is the host of the meal. His actions echo both the feeding of the five
thousand and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the penny drops. It’s
Jesus! He is alive, as the women had
said! He has made himself known to them in breaking bread.

So where do the scales fall from the eyes this time? At Holy
Communion? I would hope so. The sacrament is certainly a place where Jesus
makes himself known: it’s more than a memorial service. However, Jesus will not
be limited to ‘churchy’ environments, and at Emmaus, he doesn’t celebrate an
early version of the sacrament. What he does is what any Jewish host would have
done at any meal in those days. Thus, he reveals himself to the two disciples
at a regular meal. It is here, in the stuff of ordinary life, that he makes
himself known.

This is why our Salvation Army friends don’t celebrate the
sacrament. While I believe they’re wrong to do that, they remind us of an
important point, that Jesus is there to be encountered at any meal, and – I would
suggest – in any part of life. The universe is his parish.

In our house, if Rebekah wakes up before me, she likes to
creep in and tickle my feet to wake me up. I hate having my feet tickled! She attempts
to surprise me with her presence. On the road and at Emmaus, we see Jesus
surprising two of his friends with his presence. Be prepared for Jesus to
surprise you! Nowhere is off limits to Jesus. Like an itinerant doctor, he
travels everywhere, curing people of spiritual blindness to him.

However, just because he turns up unexpected and surprises
us, it does not follow that we should leave it to him. If we know that
everywhere in creation is his domain (because his death redeems all creation),
then we have a challenge to look out for him. It’s not exactly a ‘Where’s
Wally?’ cartoon, but if we are in the dark, we can be encouraged with the
expectation that wherever we go, Jesus is not far away to lighten our darkness.
Unlike Wally, he isn’t hiding from us. Rather, he’s actively seeking us out. As
he looks for us, we can look for him.

Conclusion
The Resurrection, then, is God’s cure for spiritual blindness. We may have
become blind through our own negligence, or by not being wise to the
diversionary tactics of the enemy. But the light of the Risen Christ is
brighter than the darkness. His Spirit makes the Scriptures come alive for us,
and Christ himself is looking to meet us here, there and everywhere. He makes
all of life a sacred journey where we may meet him travel with him and eat with
him. Let us invite the Risen Lord to open our eyes to his presence, so that we
may walk with him in his ways.

Technorati Tags: blindness, Emmaus, resurrection, Easter, JohnNewton, AmazingGrace, Satan, devil, CSLewis, Screwtape, HolySpirit, Cleopas, SalvationArmy, sacrament, WheresWally, JohnNolland

Luke 24:13-35

Introduction
At ninety-one, Ron was distraught when he had to stop driving. The rest of us
at church thought he had been a marvel, continuing behind the wheel to such an
age. But he was suffering from age-related macular degeneration, the most
common cause of sight loss in our country, a currently incurable condition.

The Emmaus Road is a story about blindness and sight, but it
is about curable blindness. When Jesus joins the two disciples on the road, we
read that ‘their eyes were kept from recognising him’ (verse 16). Their
physical inability to recognise Jesus is connected with a spiritual blindness.
Easter is about blindness and sight: all are blind to the Risen Christ, but who
is willing to be healed, and who will choose to remain blind to him? Hence,
this morning, I want us to think about the causes of spiritual blindness, and
the ways in which the Risen Christ heals us and enables us to see him.

1. Causes of
Blindness
Spiritual blindness is a common malady. John Newton captured it in the hymn
‘Amazing Grace’ when he wrote, ‘I once was blind, but now I see’. Finding God’s
grace in Christ is like our eyes opening.

However, blindness of spirit is not limited to those outside
the community of faith. It occurs inside. That’s what happens in our story, and
in other places in the Gospels. The disciples just don’t seem to understand
what Jesus is driving at. Many preachers will know about this phenomenon. We
preach our hearts out, trying to communicate something of the Gospel, but
somebody comments afterwards how they liked a story or a joke, but never
engages with what we were trying to say through that story. They are like the
people who enjoyed Jesus’ parables, but never found the kingdom of God that was
their subject.

So to our story. Luke doesn’t say how ‘[the disciples’] eyes
were kept from recognising [Jesus]’. A popular suggestion in church history has
been to say that God kept them from seeing that the stranger was his Son.
However, there is a similarly worded event in Luke 18:34, where the disciples
don’t take in Jesus’ prophecy of his then-forthcoming betrayal, suffering and
death. The idea that God wouldn’t want them to understand that seems strange.
There are probably other reasons for their blindness.

If it wasn’t God, then might this be a satanic blinding?
That’s a tricky thing to say. Many Christians find it difficult to believe in
the existence of Satan and the Satanic. That isn’t surprising given the extreme
and irresponsible ways in which some other Christians speak about the devil.

But denying the devil’s existence runs into the buffers,
too. For Jesus clearly believed in his existence. Then we have to face our
Christian confession of Jesus as Lord. It’s inadequate to say that Jesus was a
child of his time, as if he were constrained only to believe the same as his
contemporaries. He’s not much of a Saviour and Lord on that account. Whatever the
behaviour of the Christian lunatic fringe on this issue, we are bound to accept
Jesus’ view of the demonic. As C S Lewis
famously wrote in The
Screwtape Letters,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race
can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other
is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They
themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a
magician with the same delight.

It is perfectly likely that if we have an enemy of our
souls, he will want to blind us to the truth of God in Christ. He will distract
us, or get us to focus on the trivial instead of the profound – anything to
prevent us from engaging with all that the truth of Christ crucified and risen
means for us and for creation.

However, none of this is to take away personal
responsibility for spiritual blindness. ‘The devil made me do it’ just won’t do
as an excuse. If we were only talking about demonically caused spiritual
blindness, Jesus would not have rebuked the two disciples with the words, ‘Oh,
how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
have declared!’ (Verse 25). Like Cleopas and his companion on the road, we are
foolish and slow of heart.

On the one hand, it is not that obvious if you just read the
Old Testament that the Messiah would suffer, die and be raised, and so you
might feel some sympathy for the disciples. On the other hand, Jesus had explained
this several times to them. Part of our spiritual blindness is similar: Jesus
has told us certain things repeatedly, yet either we don’t believe them or we
don’t put them into practice. If that were the case, then it would hardly be
surprising if we made little progress in our spiritual growth and witness.

So when we read that Jesus interprets the Scriptures
concerning himself, beginning with Moses and the prophets (verse 27), he is
surely telling them little new. Rather, he is recapping what he had previously
taught them. It’s like the story of the preacher who kept preaching the same
sermon every week. ‘When are you going to preach a different sermon?’
complained his congregation. ‘When you start obeying this one,’ the minister
retorted.

Spiritual blindness, then, has at least two causes. One is
that of our spiritual enemy, who will do all he can to distract us from the
promises of the Gospel and the power of God. We need to be alert to his
tactics, so that we focus on Christ. The other cause is our own slowness to
believe and act upon what we have learned of the Gospel over the years.
Christian truth is not simply something to accumulate in our brains: it is
something we live out each day. If we don’t, then the muscles in our spiritual
eyes become lazy.

2. Cures for
Blindness
Two causes – and two cures. Jesus’ first treatment for spiritual blindness is
his exposition of the Scriptures. Not just the Scriptures themselves, but also Jesus’ exposition of them. The
Scriptures are God’s Word written, but without Jesus speaking their meaning to
the two companions on the Emmaus Road, they never would have grasped the
meaning, and their hearts would never have burned within them at the thrill of
prophecy fulfilled (verse 32).

It is similar for us. The Scriptures faithfully relay the
message of God’s kingdom, but despite containing their world-changing message,
it’s possible to read them and find no life or inspiration. We too need Jesus
to interpret the Scriptures to us. We need the help of the Holy Spirit for them
to come alive and for us to see Jesus at the centre of their message. It makes
sense to seek the Holy Spirit’s help. Since the Spirit supervised the human
authors of the Bible, and since the Spirit’s work is also to point to Jesus, it
all fits with the Scriptures coming alive for us, and pointing to Christ.

How, then, might we seek the Holy Spirit’s help, so that as
we read the Scriptures, the scales fall from our eyes and we meet Jesus through
their pages?

I believe it is about seeking the Holy Spirit within us and
among us. We seek the Holy Spirit’s work within our own lives, as we pray. In humble
dependence, we ask for the Spirit’s illuminating work as we read, reflect and
meditate upon the written Word. We seek the Holy Spirit among us, as we expect
the Spirit to be in the midst of God’s family. To that end, we ask the Spirit not
only to illuminate us privately, but also as we discuss the Scriptures in
fellowship, and as we seek wisdom from wider circles than our own church family
when reading books or listening to sermons or podcasts.

So this is the first cure for spiritual blindness. We seek
the empowering of the Holy Spirit as we read the Scriptures, that Jesus may be
revealed to us.

The second cure comes at the meal. If Cleopas and his
companion looked back and realised that their hearts were burning as Jesus
opened the Scriptures to them, the other eye-opening moment is at the meal
table. They invite Jesus in, rather like the ways in which Abraham and Lot
unwittingly offered hospitality to angelic visitors (Genesis 18:3; 19:2). It’s
also rather similar to the feeding of the five thousand, where the pivotal
point was that ‘the day was drawing to a close’ (Luke 9:12). This was, after
all, the customary time for the main meal of the day[1],
and the two disciples belonged to a culture that valued hospitality.

Jesus, then, is invited in as an honoured guest. But that
isn’t how he behaves. As he takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it and shares
it, he is the host of the meal. His actions echo both the feeding of the five
thousand and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the penny drops. It’s
Jesus! He is alive, as the women had
said! He has made himself known to them in breaking bread.

So where do the scales fall from the eyes this time? At Holy
Communion? I would hope so. The sacrament is certainly a place where Jesus
makes himself known: it’s more than a memorial service. However, Jesus will not
be limited to ‘churchy’ environments, and at Emmaus, he doesn’t celebrate an
early version of the sacrament. What he does is what any Jewish host would have
done at any meal in those days. Thus, he reveals himself to the two disciples
at a regular meal. It is here, in the stuff of ordinary life, that he makes
himself known.

This is why our Salvation Army friends don’t celebrate the
sacrament. While I believe they’re wrong to do that, they remind us of an
important point, that Jesus is there to be encountered at any meal, and – I would
suggest – in any part of life. The universe is his parish.

In our house, if Rebekah wakes up before me, she likes to
creep in and tickle my feet to wake me up. I hate having my feet tickled! She attempts
to surprise me with her presence. On the road and at Emmaus, we see Jesus
surprising two of his friends with his presence. Be prepared for Jesus to
surprise you! Nowhere is off limits to Jesus. Like an itinerant doctor, he
travels everywhere, curing people of spiritual blindness to him.

However, just because he turns up unexpected and surprises
us, it does not follow that we should leave it to him. If we know that
everywhere in creation is his domain (because his death redeems all creation),
then we have a challenge to look out for him. It’s not exactly a ‘Where’s
Wally?’ cartoon, but if we are in the dark, we can be encouraged with the
expectation that wherever we go, Jesus is not far away to lighten our darkness.
Unlike Wally, he isn’t hiding from us. Rather, he’s actively seeking us out. As
he looks for us, we can look for him.

Conclusion
The Resurrection, then, is God’s cure for spiritual blindness. We may have
become blind through our own negligence, or by not being wise to the
diversionary tactics of the enemy. But the light of the Risen Christ is
brighter than the darkness. His Spirit makes the Scriptures come alive for us,
and Christ himself is looking to meet us here, there and everywhere. He makes
all of life a sacred journey where we may meet him travel with him and eat with
him. Let us invite the Risen Lord to open our eyes to his presence, so that we
may walk with him in his ways.

Technorati Tags: blindness, Emmaus, resurrection, Easter, JohnNewton, AmazingGrace, Satan, devil, CSLewis, Screwtape, HolySpirit, Cleopas, SalvationArmy, sacrament, WheresWally, JohnNolland

… here: New Wineskins

And here are a couple of juicy quotes:

an attractional church can work in a Christendom context, but in a missionary context it actually undermines our efforts to reach people meaningfully with the Gospel of Jesus.

You no doubt know that wonderful quote from Antoine de Saint Extupery: “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work—rather, teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.”

Technorati Tags: FredPeatross, AlanHirsch, AntoineDeSaintExtupery, attractional, missional, NewWineskins

Well, here is my attempt for this Sunday. This same Lectionary Gospel reading occurred on the Sunday after Easter last year, and I preached on it then. Don’t expect this to be terribly original, then: there are some considerable similarities with that sermon, Resurrection Mission. One favourite story appeared in that sermon; another has appeared in other sermons. But I’m still tired after Easter, and tomorrow is our daughter’s belated birthday party (postponed largely because of Easter), and this is the best I can do.

John 20:19-31

Introduction
The other day, I attended the first meeting of a committee my Chair of District
had asked me to join. Having found my way to the venue, and then to the room
where the meeting was being held, I found a seat around the table. The minister
who was chairing said he would get everybody to introduce themselves once
everyone was present.

Silence ensued. Eventually, the same minister broke the silence.
‘We look just like the family gathered at the solicitor’s to hear the reading
of the will,’ he said.

I wonder what the gathering of the disciples on the evening
of the first Easter Day looked like. Behind locked doors out of fear, they
await not the benefits of Jesus’ death, but the consequences. They expect the
authorities to round them up. They fear the worst.

Yet in a sense, they do hear the reading of the will. They do
receive their bequest. Strangest of all, the deceased himself reads the will to
them – that is, the deceased who has been raised from the dead. Jesus turns up
to give away his own inheritance.

So what is inheritance? Fundamentally, it is to carry on his
work. To that end, Jesus bequeaths these things to his disciples.

1. Peace
As I said, the disciples are fearful. They have locked the doors to protect themselves.
Suddenly, Jesus is in their midst. I think if that had happened to me, I would
have been even more afraid! I’m in fear for my life, and now this!

To people feeling like that, Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’
A moment later, when he commissions them to continue his work, he repeats these
words: ‘Peace be with you.’ Fearful disciples will not be in a state to carry
on God’s mission in the world. Therefore, the first bequest is peace.

Surely, this is relevant to us. When we consider the fact
that Jesus has called us too to be his witnesses, one common reaction is fear. We
have discussed this in our Alpha Course. We have talked about being in
professions where admitting to Christian faith is a career disadvantage. We have
mentioned friends and relatives who do not share our faith, and we wonder what
they think of us. We have wondered whether there are ways of sharing our faith
whereby people will still respect us. All of these threads, I suggest, reflect
an underlying fear about mission in general and evangelism in particular.

But Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’ He promises his peace
to fearful disciples who want to be faithful. He doesn’t always promise a
positive response to our witness, but he does promise peace in the storm.

In fact, isn’t that just what our non-Christian friends
expect? In recent months, I have been treated for raised blood pressure by one
of the nurses at our GP practice. She freely admits she doesn’t believe in God.
She can’t understand why not only my blood pressure has been up, but my pulse
also. One time she said, “I don’t understand why someone like you who believes
in an afterlife can get worried about things.” At the last appointment she
said, “Surely someone like you believes that God has got a purpose for things
when something goes wrong?” Although I gave her an answer that talked about how
I was like certain biblical characters who got mad with God before finding an
equilibrium, I have to admit she had a point. I don’t simply need the
beta-blockers that are reducing my pulse; I need the peace of God. It is the
risen Christ’s bequest to me. Others expect to see it in my life.

2. Joy
Jesus shows the disciples his hands and side, and then the disciples
rejoiced when they saw him – now they knew it really was him (verse 20).

I preached on this passage a year ago at Hatfield Peverel,
and told a story then, which I’d like to repeat now. When I was at Trinity College,
Bristol, one of the visiting preachers was the Bishop of the Arctic. He came on
a recruitment drive. I didn’t succumb. But he did tell a story about the first
Christian missionaries to the Inuit people. They decided to translate the New
Testament into the local language, but came to a halt when they reached this
passage. There was no word for ‘joy’.

However, one day, one of the missionaries accompanied the
Eskimo hunters. When they returned, they fed the huskies. As the dogs tucked
into their food, the missionary thought, there is a picture of joy. So he asked
the hunters what the word was for the dogs’ evident pleasure. As a result, the
first Inuit translation of the New Testament read at this point, ‘Then the
disciples wagged their tails when they saw the Lord’!

No word for joy. But we have words for joy: Christ is risen –
he is risen indeed! In the face of death, we have hope. When despair comes, we
have hope. In the midst of our sorrow … we have joy. Jesus is alive.

There is a story of a little girl who asked, “Mummy, do all
fairy tales end with, ‘and they all lived happily ever after’?” “No,” replied
Mum, “some end with, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared’.”

The joy of the risen Christ is not fairy story joy. It is
joy that sustains us through thick and thin. The happy and the clappy are
intermittent features of the Christian life: whether they are present or
absent, the joy of knowing that Christ is risen and that everything is
different is what keeps our heads above water when our strength would not
prevent us from sinking. This becomes a powerful witness in a world that has no
reason for hope, and seeks joy in a bottle, a syringe or a shopping mall.

3. Model
After the peace and the joy that fortify us for the work of Christ comes the model to do it: ‘As the Father has sent
me, so I send you’ (verse 21).

The problem is we have a faulty model for mission. We work
on a ‘Come to us’ model. We expect people to come to us as we are (or with a
little tweaking). We also say, ‘Why won’t they come to us?’ and don’t make the
connection that our model is faulty. It may have done service in a society
where there was a more common understanding of the Christian message, but it is
a broken model, because it is not the Jesus model. His model is that the Father
sent him – and thus we are sent, too.

In other words, by the Incarnation Jesus was sent into the
world to live and minister in the world. Mostly he conducted his mission not in
the synagogue but in the street. The risen Christ models our mission on his. It
requires faithful testimony in the world, not raids from the Christian castle,
followed by retreats across the drawbridge, which is then pulled up tight. Our model
is not about seeking a decision for Christ and then expecting people to conform
to our way of doing things in the church. The Jesus model requires that we call
people to follow him in the world, that we draw people into a new community,
and that we then form church within their culture. It will probably look very
different from what we are used to – but that is the Jesus model. He bequeaths
the model us. We are fools to discard his gift in favour of a discredited
model.

4. Power
Next, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’
(verse 22). It’s a bit of a mystery to some how this account relates to the
waiting for the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost in Luke’s Gospel and the Acts
of the Apostles. I don’t propose to spend time on that today, just to highlight
that whatever explanation we opt for, Jesus bequeaths his own Spirit as the
essential gift for sharing in his mission. Without his power, Christian mission
will not happen. With the Spirit’s power, the Church will break out with
unstoppable love from Pentecost onwards. Jesus himself didn’t begin his public
ministry until after the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove at his
baptism: so too must all Christian disciples be dependent upon the Spirit.

That’s why the Easter season leads to Pentecost. The two are
linked. Every disciple needs to make that journey. Some are fearful, but God
never gives bad gifts, only good ones.

Others are sceptical: if they received the Holy Spirit when
they found Christ, why keep banging on about receiving the Spirit? The
evangelist D L Moody made my favourite reply to this. At a meeting, he pointed
out that Ephesians 5 verse 18, commonly translated, ‘Be filled with the Spirit’,
might better be rendered, ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’ Afterwards,
a vicar complained to him. Why say this? Had we all not received the Holy Spirit
in all fullness when we became disciples of Christ? Why insist that we continue
to be filled with the Spirit? “Because,” replied Moody, “I leak.”

Whatever our history of faith and spiritual experience, most
likely we all leak. We need to hear the summons of the Spirit regularly.

5. Authority
Finally, another puzzling verse from Jesus: ‘If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
(Verse 23)

Different Christian traditions have interpreted this
differently. I do not believe this is something that Christ hands down only to
those ordained priest who may pronounce the forgiveness of sins. I believe this
is about the missionary call to proclaim and demonstrate forgiveness. We have
received the bequest of forgiveness from the risen Christ himself, who has
forgiven those who failed him at his time of greatest need. Now what failing disciples
have received, they – and we – share with others. We share by telling people
just how forgiving God is in Christ. We share by living it out, as people
witness us forgiving those who hurt us. In a society increasingly of the
persuasion that says, ‘If it moves, sue it,’ the Christian lifestyle of
forgiveness is a powerful witness.

More troublesome, perhaps, is Jesus’ comment that ‘if you
retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ It is not that we may vindictively
refuse to forgive and that we may thus deny someone the blessings of God. I find
these words from Richard Burridge helpful:

The … word, ‘retain’ … appears only here in John – but throughout
Jesus has warned that the coming of light into darkness produces shadows, the ‘critical
moment’ when some prefer to remain in their sin and blindness. To be sent into
the world as Jesus was sent inevitably brings the possibility of acceptance or
rejection.[1]

Ours is the responsibility to share the bequest of
forgiveness. Ours is not the responsibility to determine the outcome.

Conclusion
I haven’t had time to touch on the story of ‘doubting Thomas’ (or ‘depressed
Thomas’, as Richard Burridge calls him). In that story are more missionary
keys: the patience Jesus has while Thomas makes his journey of faith, and the inclusiveness
that keeps Thomas in the group of disciples until his moment of revelation.

But in the meantime, I hope you will have found with me that
in this story (which is a favourite of mine) there are plenty of implications
for the mission of God. Jesus embraced that mission, and with him now risen and
ascended, it is our privilege in partnership with the Holy Spirit to follow the
model of being his witnesses in the world. And in dependence upon the Spirit,
we have the peace and joy of believing in the risen Lord that trumps the fears
of our world. We also have his authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins.

May we – the Easter People who are also the Pentecost People
– join in with what God is already doing in the world, to the praise of his
holy name.

Technorati Tags: Resurrection, mission, peace, alphacourse, joy, TrinityCollegeBristol, BishopOfTheArctic, incarnation, Inuit, Eskimo, HolySpirit, DLMoody, forgiveness, RichardBurridge

Well, here is my attempt for this Sunday. This same Lectionary Gospel reading occurred on the Sunday after Easter last year, and I preached on it then. Don’t expect this to be terribly original, then: there are some considerable similarities with that sermon, Resurrection Mission. One favourite story appeared in that sermon; another has appeared in other sermons. But I’m still tired after Easter, and tomorrow is our daughter’s belated birthday party (postponed largely because of Easter), and this is the best I can do.

John 20:19-31

Introduction
The other day, I attended the first meeting of a committee my Chair of District
had asked me to join. Having found my way to the venue, and then to the room
where the meeting was being held, I found a seat around the table. The minister
who was chairing said he would get everybody to introduce themselves once
everyone was present.

Silence ensued. Eventually, the same minister broke the silence.
‘We look just like the family gathered at the solicitor’s to hear the reading
of the will,’ he said.

I wonder what the gathering of the disciples on the evening
of the first Easter Day looked like. Behind locked doors out of fear, they
await not the benefits of Jesus’ death, but the consequences. They expect the
authorities to round them up. They fear the worst.

Yet in a sense, they do hear the reading of the will. They do
receive their bequest. Strangest of all, the deceased himself reads the will to
them – that is, the deceased who has been raised from the dead. Jesus turns up
to give away his own inheritance.

So what is inheritance? Fundamentally, it is to carry on his
work. To that end, Jesus bequeaths these things to his disciples.

1. Peace
As I said, the disciples are fearful. They have locked the doors to protect themselves.
Suddenly, Jesus is in their midst. I think if that had happened to me, I would
have been even more afraid! I’m in fear for my life, and now this!

To people feeling like that, Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’
A moment later, when he commissions them to continue his work, he repeats these
words: ‘Peace be with you.’ Fearful disciples will not be in a state to carry
on God’s mission in the world. Therefore, the first bequest is peace.

Surely, this is relevant to us. When we consider the fact
that Jesus has called us too to be his witnesses, one common reaction is fear. We
have discussed this in our Alpha Course. We have talked about being in
professions where admitting to Christian faith is a career disadvantage. We have
mentioned friends and relatives who do not share our faith, and we wonder what
they think of us. We have wondered whether there are ways of sharing our faith
whereby people will still respect us. All of these threads, I suggest, reflect
an underlying fear about mission in general and evangelism in particular.

But Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’ He promises his peace
to fearful disciples who want to be faithful. He doesn’t always promise a
positive response to our witness, but he does promise peace in the storm.

In fact, isn’t that just what our non-Christian friends
expect? In recent months, I have been treated for raised blood pressure by one
of the nurses at our GP practice. She freely admits she doesn’t believe in God.
She can’t understand why not only my blood pressure has been up, but my pulse
also. One time she said, “I don’t understand why someone like you who believes
in an afterlife can get worried about things.” At the last appointment she
said, “Surely someone like you believes that God has got a purpose for things
when something goes wrong?” Although I gave her an answer that talked about how
I was like certain biblical characters who got mad with God before finding an
equilibrium, I have to admit she had a point. I don’t simply need the
beta-blockers that are reducing my pulse; I need the peace of God. It is the
risen Christ’s bequest to me. Others expect to see it in my life.

2. Joy
Jesus shows the disciples his hands and side, and then the disciples
rejoiced when they saw him – now they knew it really was him (verse 20).

I preached on this passage a year ago at Hatfield Peverel,
and told a story then, which I’d like to repeat now. When I was at Trinity College,
Bristol, one of the visiting preachers was the Bishop of the Arctic. He came on
a recruitment drive. I didn’t succumb. But he did tell a story about the first
Christian missionaries to the Inuit people. They decided to translate the New
Testament into the local language, but came to a halt when they reached this
passage. There was no word for ‘joy’.

However, one day, one of the missionaries accompanied the
Eskimo hunters. When they returned, they fed the huskies. As the dogs tucked
into their food, the missionary thought, there is a picture of joy. So he asked
the hunters what the word was for the dogs’ evident pleasure. As a result, the
first Inuit translation of the New Testament read at this point, ‘Then the
disciples wagged their tails when they saw the Lord’!

No word for joy. But we have words for joy: Christ is risen –
he is risen indeed! In the face of death, we have hope. When despair comes, we
have hope. In the midst of our sorrow … we have joy. Jesus is alive.

There is a story of a little girl who asked, “Mummy, do all
fairy tales end with, ‘and they all lived happily ever after’?” “No,” replied
Mum, “some end with, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared’.”

The joy of the risen Christ is not fairy story joy. It is
joy that sustains us through thick and thin. The happy and the clappy are
intermittent features of the Christian life: whether they are present or
absent, the joy of knowing that Christ is risen and that everything is
different is what keeps our heads above water when our strength would not
prevent us from sinking. This becomes a powerful witness in a world that has no
reason for hope, and seeks joy in a bottle, a syringe or a shopping mall.

3. Model
After the peace and the joy that fortify us for the work of Christ comes the model to do it: ‘As the Father has sent
me, so I send you’ (verse 21).

The problem is we have a faulty model for mission. We work
on a ‘Come to us’ model. We expect people to come to us as we are (or with a
little tweaking). We also say, ‘Why won’t they come to us?’ and don’t make the
connection that our model is faulty. It may have done service in a society
where there was a more common understanding of the Christian message, but it is
a broken model, because it is not the Jesus model. His model is that the Father
sent him – and thus we are sent, too.

In other words, by the Incarnation Jesus was sent into the
world to live and minister in the world. Mostly he conducted his mission not in
the synagogue but in the street. The risen Christ models our mission on his. It
requires faithful testimony in the world, not raids from the Christian castle,
followed by retreats across the drawbridge, which is then pulled up tight. Our model
is not about seeking a decision for Christ and then expecting people to conform
to our way of doing things in the church. The Jesus model requires that we call
people to follow him in the world, that we draw people into a new community,
and that we then form church within their culture. It will probably look very
different from what we are used to – but that is the Jesus model. He bequeaths
the model us. We are fools to discard his gift in favour of a discredited
model.

4. Power
Next, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’
(verse 22). It’s a bit of a mystery to some how this account relates to the
waiting for the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost in Luke’s Gospel and the Acts
of the Apostles. I don’t propose to spend time on that today, just to highlight
that whatever explanation we opt for, Jesus bequeaths his own Spirit as the
essential gift for sharing in his mission. Without his power, Christian mission
will not happen. With the Spirit’s power, the Church will break out with
unstoppable love from Pentecost onwards. Jesus himself didn’t begin his public
ministry until after the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove at his
baptism: so too must all Christian disciples be dependent upon the Spirit.

That’s why the Easter season leads to Pentecost. The two are
linked. Every disciple needs to make that journey. Some are fearful, but God
never gives bad gifts, only good ones.

Others are sceptical: if they received the Holy Spirit when
they found Christ, why keep banging on about receiving the Spirit? The
evangelist D L Moody made my favourite reply to this. At a meeting, he pointed
out that Ephesians 5 verse 18, commonly translated, ‘Be filled with the Spirit’,
might better be rendered, ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’ Afterwards,
a vicar complained to him. Why say this? Had we all not received the Holy Spirit
in all fullness when we became disciples of Christ? Why insist that we continue
to be filled with the Spirit? “Because,” replied Moody, “I leak.”

Whatever our history of faith and spiritual experience, most
likely we all leak. We need to hear the summons of the Spirit regularly.

5. Authority
Finally, another puzzling verse from Jesus: ‘If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
(Verse 23)

Different Christian traditions have interpreted this
differently. I do not believe this is something that Christ hands down only to
those ordained priest who may pronounce the forgiveness of sins. I believe this
is about the missionary call to proclaim and demonstrate forgiveness. We have
received the bequest of forgiveness from the risen Christ himself, who has
forgiven those who failed him at his time of greatest need. Now what failing disciples
have received, they – and we – share with others. We share by telling people
just how forgiving God is in Christ. We share by living it out, as people
witness us forgiving those who hurt us. In a society increasingly of the
persuasion that says, ‘If it moves, sue it,’ the Christian lifestyle of
forgiveness is a powerful witness.

More troublesome, perhaps, is Jesus’ comment that ‘if you
retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ It is not that we may vindictively
refuse to forgive and that we may thus deny someone the blessings of God. I find
these words from Richard Burridge helpful:

The … word, ‘retain’ … appears only here in John – but throughout
Jesus has warned that the coming of light into darkness produces shadows, the ‘critical
moment’ when some prefer to remain in their sin and blindness. To be sent into
the world as Jesus was sent inevitably brings the possibility of acceptance or
rejection.[1]

Ours is the responsibility to share the bequest of
forgiveness. Ours is not the responsibility to determine the outcome.

Conclusion
I haven’t had time to touch on the story of ‘doubting Thomas’ (or ‘depressed
Thomas’, as Richard Burridge calls him). In that story are more missionary
keys: the patience Jesus has while Thomas makes his journey of faith, and the inclusiveness
that keeps Thomas in the group of disciples until his moment of revelation.

But in the meantime, I hope you will have found with me that
in this story (which is a favourite of mine) there are plenty of implications
for the mission of God. Jesus embraced that mission, and with him now risen and
ascended, it is our privilege in partnership with the Holy Spirit to follow the
model of being his witnesses in the world. And in dependence upon the Spirit,
we have the peace and joy of believing in the risen Lord that trumps the fears
of our world. We also have his authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins.

May we – the Easter People who are also the Pentecost People
– join in with what God is already doing in the world, to the praise of his
holy name.

Technorati Tags: Resurrection, mission, peace, alphacourse, joy, TrinityCollegeBristol, BishopOfTheArctic, incarnation, Inuit, Eskimo, HolySpirit, DLMoody, forgiveness, RichardBurridge

Well, here is my attempt for this Sunday. This same Lectionary Gospel reading occurred on the Sunday after Easter last year, and I preached on it then. Don’t expect this to be terribly original, then: there are some considerable similarities with that sermon, Resurrection Mission. One favourite story appeared in that sermon; another has appeared in other sermons. But I’m still tired after Easter, and tomorrow is our daughter’s belated birthday party (postponed largely because of Easter), and this is the best I can do.

John 20:19-31

Introduction
The other day, I attended the first meeting of a committee my Chair of District
had asked me to join. Having found my way to the venue, and then to the room
where the meeting was being held, I found a seat around the table. The minister
who was chairing said he would get everybody to introduce themselves once
everyone was present.

Silence ensued. Eventually, the same minister broke the silence.
‘We look just like the family gathered at the solicitor’s to hear the reading
of the will,’ he said.

I wonder what the gathering of the disciples on the evening
of the first Easter Day looked like. Behind locked doors out of fear, they
await not the benefits of Jesus’ death, but the consequences. They expect the
authorities to round them up. They fear the worst.

Yet in a sense, they do hear the reading of the will. They do
receive their bequest. Strangest of all, the deceased himself reads the will to
them – that is, the deceased who has been raised from the dead. Jesus turns up
to give away his own inheritance.

So what is inheritance? Fundamentally, it is to carry on his
work. To that end, Jesus bequeaths these things to his disciples.

1. Peace
As I said, the disciples are fearful. They have locked the doors to protect themselves.
Suddenly, Jesus is in their midst. I think if that had happened to me, I would
have been even more afraid! I’m in fear for my life, and now this!

To people feeling like that, Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’
A moment later, when he commissions them to continue his work, he repeats these
words: ‘Peace be with you.’ Fearful disciples will not be in a state to carry
on God’s mission in the world. Therefore, the first bequest is peace.

Surely, this is relevant to us. When we consider the fact
that Jesus has called us too to be his witnesses, one common reaction is fear. We
have discussed this in our Alpha Course. We have talked about being in
professions where admitting to Christian faith is a career disadvantage. We have
mentioned friends and relatives who do not share our faith, and we wonder what
they think of us. We have wondered whether there are ways of sharing our faith
whereby people will still respect us. All of these threads, I suggest, reflect
an underlying fear about mission in general and evangelism in particular.

But Jesus says, ‘Peace be with you.’ He promises his peace
to fearful disciples who want to be faithful. He doesn’t always promise a
positive response to our witness, but he does promise peace in the storm.

In fact, isn’t that just what our non-Christian friends
expect? In recent months, I have been treated for raised blood pressure by one
of the nurses at our GP practice. She freely admits she doesn’t believe in God.
She can’t understand why not only my blood pressure has been up, but my pulse
also. One time she said, “I don’t understand why someone like you who believes
in an afterlife can get worried about things.” At the last appointment she
said, “Surely someone like you believes that God has got a purpose for things
when something goes wrong?” Although I gave her an answer that talked about how
I was like certain biblical characters who got mad with God before finding an
equilibrium, I have to admit she had a point. I don’t simply need the
beta-blockers that are reducing my pulse; I need the peace of God. It is the
risen Christ’s bequest to me. Others expect to see it in my life.

2. Joy
Jesus shows the disciples his hands and side, and then the disciples
rejoiced when they saw him – now they knew it really was him (verse 20).

I preached on this passage a year ago at Hatfield Peverel,
and told a story then, which I’d like to repeat now. When I was at Trinity College,
Bristol, one of the visiting preachers was the Bishop of the Arctic. He came on
a recruitment drive. I didn’t succumb. But he did tell a story about the first
Christian missionaries to the Inuit people. They decided to translate the New
Testament into the local language, but came to a halt when they reached this
passage. There was no word for ‘joy’.

However, one day, one of the missionaries accompanied the
Eskimo hunters. When they returned, they fed the huskies. As the dogs tucked
into their food, the missionary thought, there is a picture of joy. So he asked
the hunters what the word was for the dogs’ evident pleasure. As a result, the
first Inuit translation of the New Testament read at this point, ‘Then the
disciples wagged their tails when they saw the Lord’!

No word for joy. But we have words for joy: Christ is risen –
he is risen indeed! In the face of death, we have hope. When despair comes, we
have hope. In the midst of our sorrow … we have joy. Jesus is alive.

There is a story of a little girl who asked, “Mummy, do all
fairy tales end with, ‘and they all lived happily ever after’?” “No,” replied
Mum, “some end with, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared’.”

The joy of the risen Christ is not fairy story joy. It is
joy that sustains us through thick and thin. The happy and the clappy are
intermittent features of the Christian life: whether they are present or
absent, the joy of knowing that Christ is risen and that everything is
different is what keeps our heads above water when our strength would not
prevent us from sinking. This becomes a powerful witness in a world that has no
reason for hope, and seeks joy in a bottle, a syringe or a shopping mall.

3. Model
After the peace and the joy that fortify us for the work of Christ comes the model to do it: ‘As the Father has sent
me, so I send you’ (verse 21).

The problem is we have a faulty model for mission. We work
on a ‘Come to us’ model. We expect people to come to us as we are (or with a
little tweaking). We also say, ‘Why won’t they come to us?’ and don’t make the
connection that our model is faulty. It may have done service in a society
where there was a more common understanding of the Christian message, but it is
a broken model, because it is not the Jesus model. His model is that the Father
sent him – and thus we are sent, too.

In other words, by the Incarnation Jesus was sent into the
world to live and minister in the world. Mostly he conducted his mission not in
the synagogue but in the street. The risen Christ models our mission on his. It
requires faithful testimony in the world, not raids from the Christian castle,
followed by retreats across the drawbridge, which is then pulled up tight. Our model
is not about seeking a decision for Christ and then expecting people to conform
to our way of doing things in the church. The Jesus model requires that we call
people to follow him in the world, that we draw people into a new community,
and that we then form church within their culture. It will probably look very
different from what we are used to – but that is the Jesus model. He bequeaths
the model us. We are fools to discard his gift in favour of a discredited
model.

4. Power
Next, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’
(verse 22). It’s a bit of a mystery to some how this account relates to the
waiting for the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost in Luke’s Gospel and the Acts
of the Apostles. I don’t propose to spend time on that today, just to highlight
that whatever explanation we opt for, Jesus bequeaths his own Spirit as the
essential gift for sharing in his mission. Without his power, Christian mission
will not happen. With the Spirit’s power, the Church will break out with
unstoppable love from Pentecost onwards. Jesus himself didn’t begin his public
ministry until after the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove at his
baptism: so too must all Christian disciples be dependent upon the Spirit.

That’s why the Easter season leads to Pentecost. The two are
linked. Every disciple needs to make that journey. Some are fearful, but God
never gives bad gifts, only good ones.

Others are sceptical: if they received the Holy Spirit when
they found Christ, why keep banging on about receiving the Spirit? The
evangelist D L Moody made my favourite reply to this. At a meeting, he pointed
out that Ephesians 5 verse 18, commonly translated, ‘Be filled with the Spirit’,
might better be rendered, ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’ Afterwards,
a vicar complained to him. Why say this? Had we all not received the Holy Spirit
in all fullness when we became disciples of Christ? Why insist that we continue
to be filled with the Spirit? “Because,” replied Moody, “I leak.”

Whatever our history of faith and spiritual experience, most
likely we all leak. We need to hear the summons of the Spirit regularly.

5. Authority
Finally, another puzzling verse from Jesus: ‘If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
(Verse 23)

Different Christian traditions have interpreted this
differently. I do not believe this is something that Christ hands down only to
those ordained priest who may pronounce the forgiveness of sins. I believe this
is about the missionary call to proclaim and demonstrate forgiveness. We have
received the bequest of forgiveness from the risen Christ himself, who has
forgiven those who failed him at his time of greatest need. Now what failing disciples
have received, they – and we – share with others. We share by telling people
just how forgiving God is in Christ. We share by living it out, as people
witness us forgiving those who hurt us. In a society increasingly of the
persuasion that says, ‘If it moves, sue it,’ the Christian lifestyle of
forgiveness is a powerful witness.

More troublesome, perhaps, is Jesus’ comment that ‘if you
retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ It is not that we may vindictively
refuse to forgive and that we may thus deny someone the blessings of God. I find
these words from Richard Burridge helpful:

The … word, ‘retain’ … appears only here in John – but throughout
Jesus has warned that the coming of light into darkness produces shadows, the ‘critical
moment’ when some prefer to remain in their sin and blindness. To be sent into
the world as Jesus was sent inevitably brings the possibility of acceptance or
rejection.[1]

Ours is the responsibility to share the bequest of
forgiveness. Ours is not the responsibility to determine the outcome.

Conclusion
I haven’t had time to touch on the story of ‘doubting Thomas’ (or ‘depressed
Thomas’, as Richard Burridge calls him). In that story are more missionary
keys: the patience Jesus has while Thomas makes his journey of faith, and the inclusiveness
that keeps Thomas in the group of disciples until his moment of revelation.

But in the meantime, I hope you will have found with me that
in this story (which is a favourite of mine) there are plenty of implications
for the mission of God. Jesus embraced that mission, and with him now risen and
ascended, it is our privilege in partnership with the Holy Spirit to follow the
model of being his witnesses in the world. And in dependence upon the Spirit,
we have the peace and joy of believing in the risen Lord that trumps the fears
of our world. We also have his authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins.

May we – the Easter People who are also the Pentecost People
– join in with what God is already doing in the world, to the praise of his
holy name.

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