Luke 7:11-17

Introduction
When I moved to my last appointment, it was a double move. Initially I had to
move into a manse that the circuit was in the process of selling. I lived there
for eleven weeks, living and working out of boxes. I did this until the manse I
was supposed to live in was ready. Somewhere in one of those two house moves, I
lost a prized four-CD box set of Fleetwood Mac, the music on which stretched
back to their earliest days.

I wonder if you’ve ever had anything stolen. Was it a prized
possession?

What if I suggested to you that Jesus had been stolen? You’d
want to track down the thief, wouldn’t you? But what if I said it was the church that had stolen Jesus? Does that
shock you? Yet that was the claim of a great nineteenth century spiritual
writer, Henry Drummond:

In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from
the people; they have made the Son of Man the priest of an order; they have
taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.[1]

I suggest to you that today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus
brings back from the dead the son of the widow at Nain, is one such case where
we imprison Jesus in the church, rather than setting him among the people. He performs
this miracle not in the synagogue, but in the town. This is not Jesus
buttressing the faith of the faithful but Jesus on mission in the world. Therefore,
as we look at the qualities displayed by Jesus in this story, I’d like us to
see them in missional terms.

1. Compassion
It all starts when Jesus witnesses a grieving widow, who has lost her son:

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, ‘Do not weep.’ (verse 13)

Compassion for the widow is where it begins for Jesus. She has
lost her only son. We too might have compassion for her. As a minister, I have
had to take funerals where parents have lost a child. Even if that child has
grown to adulthood, it is common to say, ‘No parent should have to bury their
own son or daughter.’

However, Jesus’ compassion here is not simply grief at a
life cut short. It is grief for the widow.
She has no husband to provide for her, and now she has no son to do the same. His
compassion is not only about the bereavement, but also about the economically
devastating effects on the widow through losing her son. She will be destitute,
and the healing miracle Jesus performs here is to save a widow from desperate
poverty in a culture that had no welfare state. That is why when the dead man
gets up and begins to speak, Jesus restores him to his mother (verse 15). Therefore
this healing is not only a physical miracle, it is an economic one, too. It reminds
us not to channel our compassion narrowly.

Not only is it broader than physical healing, it is broader
in terms of who we pray for. The compassion that leads us to pray is one we
exercise not only in the church but also among our friends and family members
who do not share our faith. The late John Wimber, who – whether you agree with
him on every point or not – did so much to encourage Christians to pray for
healing, emphasised that such spiritual gifts were as much for use in the world
as they were in the church.

I am not suggesting that we don’t care for our friends who
are in desperate straits, be it due to bereavement, major illness, family
troubles, job losses or other crises. But what I do wonder is this: if a
Christian friend hits trouble, we have no difficulty in saying to them, ‘I’ll
pray for you.’ We know they will usually appreciate such an offer. However, we
tend to hesitate with non-Christian friends and loved ones. We’re more likely
to be nervous about how an offer to pray might be received. Will they reject
us? Will they laugh at us? On the other hand, if they welcome our offer to pray,
what happens if we do pray and then the desired blessing doesn’t materialise?

If that is how you feel, let me venture that we are like
young eagles, and the Holy Spirit is like the mother eagle, pushing us out of
the safety of the nest. We find ourselves in mid-air – but it is the only way
to learn how to fly. We find ourselves on the brink of the nest when we know it
would be good to offer prayer for someone. As we wobble, the Holy Spirit says, ‘Fly!’
For we were never promised the security of the nest and the possibility of
remaining spiritual eaglets all our lives; God called us to spiritual maturity
and that requires daring, risk-taking faith.

So, why not keep alert this new week for friends in real
need? Will you let your natural compassion move you to pray for them? And will
you be daring enough to offer prayer or tell them you are praying? You may feel
like you are falling off the precipice, but you may actually be beginning a new
chapter in an exciting and fruitful life of faith in Christ.

2. Authority
There is a tangible note of divine authority about Jesus in this story. Luke
calls him ‘the Lord’ (verse 13), and then, when he takes action, we hear him
speaking with authority: ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ (verse 14). Perhaps
we think we wouldn’t have the nerve to speak like that, especially as we aren’t
divine like Jesus. It seems a long way from what we feel capable of saying.

In fact, we see Jesus’ authority in more than his words. Even
before he speaks with authority, he acts with authority. He comes forward and
touches the bier (verse 14). That is shocking for a Jew who was not supposed to
touch dead bodies, for fear of becoming ritually unclean. However, that doesn’t
worry Jesus. He has authority over death. Ritual uncleanness is inferior to who
he is. So he is not intimidated by death or by religious regulations. He is ‘the
Lord’, and he knows these ritual laws are meant to be servants, not masters. So
he takes authority over them for the sake of the situation when he touches the
bier.

And remember, he surely didn’t need to touch the bier to
perform the miracle, but he did. He makes his authority clear before he speaks
with that authority.

So where might this connect with us? Surely, none of us can
speak and act as Jesus did here? None of us owns the title ‘the Lord’: we do
not have his divine status. That may be true, but that is no reason for us to
hide away from the challenge to prayer and action when faced with something
terrible in the world. For one thing, remember this verse from 1 John:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater
than the one who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4)

We are not impotent: God is with us! The Lord is here, and
his Spirit is with us. When others are suffering, we do not come against them
alone, but with the power of God’s Spirit. Do you not feel braver to act when
you know you are not alone? If someone is standing alongside you, it makes all
the difference. Moses asked that his brother Aaron could come with him to
Pharaoh – and even do the speaking for him! We have the Holy Spirit with us. He
is the one called in various translations the comforter, counsellor, advocate
or helper. It’s a word that means ‘one called alongside.’ The Holy Spirit is
the ‘one called alongside’ us when we need to speak and act with authority.

Alternatively, put it this way: there is a strange and difficult
statement of Jesus in John 14:14, where he says, ‘You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.’ It’s the ‘in
my name’ bit that interests me at this point. When we act in someone’s name, we
act with their authority. Years ago when I worked in the Civil Service I daily
signed letters with my signature, ‘pp’ (per pro) my manager. I signed in my
manager’s name. That is, I signed with my manager’s authority. To ask the
Father in Jesus’ name is to ask with his authority. It is to say, ‘Heavenly
Father, your Son has given me the authority to ask for this.’

Now my feeling about this kind of authoritative praying is
that it is one to be used only when we have concluded we are certain of God’s
will for a person, group or situation. However, if we are certain, then it is a
daring prayer that we may pray with the full permission and blessing of Jesus. Imagine
how much good we could bring to the world by carefully seeking God’s will and
then praying this way. However, I think we should use it with some caution, and
not throw it around willy-nilly, like a TV evangelist spraying around false
promises. And nor is ‘in your name’ a liturgical formula to provide a neat
ending to prayer: it is something dynamic and powerful, and therefore to be
used with considerable care.

But we always have the authority of the Holy Spirit within
us and alongside us. As Graham Kendrick once commented, ‘When the odds get too
great I just remember that Jesus plus me equals an invincible minority.’ God
calls his invincible minority into action out of love for the world.

3. Favour
Note the reaction of the crowd:

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A
great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his
people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country. (verses 16-17)

I think I’d have a good dose of fear if I’d just witnessed
someone being raised from the dead! But in the wake of it, there is a deep
sense of wonder – it’s that kind of fear. Luke records the testimony of the
onlookers: ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ To Luke Jesus was much more
than a prophet, but in his generous attitude he notes that here at least is the
start of a positive response to him. It’s an attitude well worth bearing in
mind when we are in conversation with those who are missing from the love of
God: we bless the positive response, even if it is not all we hope it to be. We
see it as something to build on, rather than something to tear down.

Then there is the other response: ‘God has looked favourably
on his people!’ That’s a big one for mission. Isn’t it often the case that the
impression Christians give the world is that God looks unfavourably on them? But the mission of Jesus is the sure sign
that God looks favourably on people. Not in some ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’ badge
kind of way, but more that God is so full of love for his broken world that he
didn’t even spare his own Son.

This is not to minimise the seriousness of sin, which often
leads to the ‘God looks unfavourably’ approach; rather, it is to say that
despite all the sin that shatters the connection between God and humans, that
God is still so full of love he reaches out in love. Supremely he does that in
the coming of Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection. However, Jesus
witnessed to it before the Cross, and he did so by bestowing favour on the
broken, just as he did for the widow at Nain. It’s no good having a message of
God’s favour for people unless that favour is going to put on legs and walk.

And that’s what Jesus does in the miracle here. He doesn’t
preach a sermon about how God is gracious to the undeserving and merciful to
sinners, he gets on and dishes out the favour of God. The explanations can come
later. The other night, Jane, Joanna and I heard a lecture by Andy Griffiths,
the vicar of St Michael’s Galleywood,
in which he spoke about the importance of ‘values’ for mission. One that his
church has adopted is that of ‘showing before telling’: they show the love of
God first, and then they tell it. I think Jesus does something similar here. He
shows the favour of God: any telling comes later. That isn’t to excuse us from
talking about our faith, but it is to say that it must be credible first. Where
this week can I show the favour of God to those who might not think they have
it?

Conclusion
I guess that word ‘values’ is what runs like a thread through this sermon. It
is Jesus putting into practice the divine values of compassion, authority and
favour that we see in this story. Our call to mission requires something
similar: a broad compassion that encompasses all people and a wide range of
needs; a wise exercise of divine authority, especially because as Christians we
never act alone; and a commitment to demonstrate God’s outrageous favour to broken,
needy and sinful people – a favour we pray we shall then have an opportunity to
talk about. Where can we start getting on with the job?

Technorati Tags: HenryDrummond, missional, Jesus, Nain, compassion, authority, favour, JohnWimber, GrahamKendrick, Luke, AndyGriffiths, StMichaelsGalleywood

Luke 7:11-17

Introduction
When I moved to my last appointment, it was a double move. Initially I had to
move into a manse that the circuit was in the process of selling. I lived there
for eleven weeks, living and working out of boxes. I did this until the manse I
was supposed to live in was ready. Somewhere in one of those two house moves, I
lost a prized four-CD box set of Fleetwood Mac, the music on which stretched
back to their earliest days.

I wonder if you’ve ever had anything stolen. Was it a prized
possession?

What if I suggested to you that Jesus had been stolen? You’d
want to track down the thief, wouldn’t you? But what if I said it was the church that had stolen Jesus? Does that
shock you? Yet that was the claim of a great nineteenth century spiritual
writer, Henry Drummond:

In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from
the people; they have made the Son of Man the priest of an order; they have
taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.[1]

I suggest to you that today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus
brings back from the dead the son of the widow at Nain, is one such case where
we imprison Jesus in the church, rather than setting him among the people. He performs
this miracle not in the synagogue, but in the town. This is not Jesus
buttressing the faith of the faithful but Jesus on mission in the world. Therefore,
as we look at the qualities displayed by Jesus in this story, I’d like us to
see them in missional terms.

1. Compassion
It all starts when Jesus witnesses a grieving widow, who has lost her son:

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, ‘Do not weep.’ (verse 13)

Compassion for the widow is where it begins for Jesus. She has
lost her only son. We too might have compassion for her. As a minister, I have
had to take funerals where parents have lost a child. Even if that child has
grown to adulthood, it is common to say, ‘No parent should have to bury their
own son or daughter.’

However, Jesus’ compassion here is not simply grief at a
life cut short. It is grief for the widow.
She has no husband to provide for her, and now she has no son to do the same. His
compassion is not only about the bereavement, but also about the economically
devastating effects on the widow through losing her son. She will be destitute,
and the healing miracle Jesus performs here is to save a widow from desperate
poverty in a culture that had no welfare state. That is why when the dead man
gets up and begins to speak, Jesus restores him to his mother (verse 15). Therefore
this healing is not only a physical miracle, it is an economic one, too. It reminds
us not to channel our compassion narrowly.

Not only is it broader than physical healing, it is broader
in terms of who we pray for. The compassion that leads us to pray is one we
exercise not only in the church but also among our friends and family members
who do not share our faith. The late John Wimber, who – whether you agree with
him on every point or not – did so much to encourage Christians to pray for
healing, emphasised that such spiritual gifts were as much for use in the world
as they were in the church.

I am not suggesting that we don’t care for our friends who
are in desperate straits, be it due to bereavement, major illness, family
troubles, job losses or other crises. But what I do wonder is this: if a
Christian friend hits trouble, we have no difficulty in saying to them, ‘I’ll
pray for you.’ We know they will usually appreciate such an offer. However, we
tend to hesitate with non-Christian friends and loved ones. We’re more likely
to be nervous about how an offer to pray might be received. Will they reject
us? Will they laugh at us? On the other hand, if they welcome our offer to pray,
what happens if we do pray and then the desired blessing doesn’t materialise?

If that is how you feel, let me venture that we are like
young eagles, and the Holy Spirit is like the mother eagle, pushing us out of
the safety of the nest. We find ourselves in mid-air – but it is the only way
to learn how to fly. We find ourselves on the brink of the nest when we know it
would be good to offer prayer for someone. As we wobble, the Holy Spirit says, ‘Fly!’
For we were never promised the security of the nest and the possibility of
remaining spiritual eaglets all our lives; God called us to spiritual maturity
and that requires daring, risk-taking faith.

So, why not keep alert this new week for friends in real
need? Will you let your natural compassion move you to pray for them? And will
you be daring enough to offer prayer or tell them you are praying? You may feel
like you are falling off the precipice, but you may actually be beginning a new
chapter in an exciting and fruitful life of faith in Christ.

2. Authority
There is a tangible note of divine authority about Jesus in this story. Luke
calls him ‘the Lord’ (verse 13), and then, when he takes action, we hear him
speaking with authority: ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ (verse 14). Perhaps
we think we wouldn’t have the nerve to speak like that, especially as we aren’t
divine like Jesus. It seems a long way from what we feel capable of saying.

In fact, we see Jesus’ authority in more than his words. Even
before he speaks with authority, he acts with authority. He comes forward and
touches the bier (verse 14). That is shocking for a Jew who was not supposed to
touch dead bodies, for fear of becoming ritually unclean. However, that doesn’t
worry Jesus. He has authority over death. Ritual uncleanness is inferior to who
he is. So he is not intimidated by death or by religious regulations. He is ‘the
Lord’, and he knows these ritual laws are meant to be servants, not masters. So
he takes authority over them for the sake of the situation when he touches the
bier.

And remember, he surely didn’t need to touch the bier to
perform the miracle, but he did. He makes his authority clear before he speaks
with that authority.

So where might this connect with us? Surely, none of us can
speak and act as Jesus did here? None of us owns the title ‘the Lord’: we do
not have his divine status. That may be true, but that is no reason for us to
hide away from the challenge to prayer and action when faced with something
terrible in the world. For one thing, remember this verse from 1 John:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater
than the one who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4)

We are not impotent: God is with us! The Lord is here, and
his Spirit is with us. When others are suffering, we do not come against them
alone, but with the power of God’s Spirit. Do you not feel braver to act when
you know you are not alone? If someone is standing alongside you, it makes all
the difference. Moses asked that his brother Aaron could come with him to
Pharaoh – and even do the speaking for him! We have the Holy Spirit with us. He
is the one called in various translations the comforter, counsellor, advocate
or helper. It’s a word that means ‘one called alongside.’ The Holy Spirit is
the ‘one called alongside’ us when we need to speak and act with authority.

Alternatively, put it this way: there is a strange and difficult
statement of Jesus in John 14:14, where he says, ‘You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.’ It’s the ‘in
my name’ bit that interests me at this point. When we act in someone’s name, we
act with their authority. Years ago when I worked in the Civil Service I daily
signed letters with my signature, ‘pp’ (per pro) my manager. I signed in my
manager’s name. That is, I signed with my manager’s authority. To ask the
Father in Jesus’ name is to ask with his authority. It is to say, ‘Heavenly
Father, your Son has given me the authority to ask for this.’

Now my feeling about this kind of authoritative praying is
that it is one to be used only when we have concluded we are certain of God’s
will for a person, group or situation. However, if we are certain, then it is a
daring prayer that we may pray with the full permission and blessing of Jesus. Imagine
how much good we could bring to the world by carefully seeking God’s will and
then praying this way. However, I think we should use it with some caution, and
not throw it around willy-nilly, like a TV evangelist spraying around false
promises. And nor is ‘in your name’ a liturgical formula to provide a neat
ending to prayer: it is something dynamic and powerful, and therefore to be
used with considerable care.

But we always have the authority of the Holy Spirit within
us and alongside us. As Graham Kendrick once commented, ‘When the odds get too
great I just remember that Jesus plus me equals an invincible minority.’ God
calls his invincible minority into action out of love for the world.

3. Favour
Note the reaction of the crowd:

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A
great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his
people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country. (verses 16-17)

I think I’d have a good dose of fear if I’d just witnessed
someone being raised from the dead! But in the wake of it, there is a deep
sense of wonder – it’s that kind of fear. Luke records the testimony of the
onlookers: ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ To Luke Jesus was much more
than a prophet, but in his generous attitude he notes that here at least is the
start of a positive response to him. It’s an attitude well worth bearing in
mind when we are in conversation with those who are missing from the love of
God: we bless the positive response, even if it is not all we hope it to be. We
see it as something to build on, rather than something to tear down.

Then there is the other response: ‘God has looked favourably
on his people!’ That’s a big one for mission. Isn’t it often the case that the
impression Christians give the world is that God looks unfavourably on them? But the mission of Jesus is the sure sign
that God looks favourably on people. Not in some ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’ badge
kind of way, but more that God is so full of love for his broken world that he
didn’t even spare his own Son.

This is not to minimise the seriousness of sin, which often
leads to the ‘God looks unfavourably’ approach; rather, it is to say that
despite all the sin that shatters the connection between God and humans, that
God is still so full of love he reaches out in love. Supremely he does that in
the coming of Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection. However, Jesus
witnessed to it before the Cross, and he did so by bestowing favour on the
broken, just as he did for the widow at Nain. It’s no good having a message of
God’s favour for people unless that favour is going to put on legs and walk.

And that’s what Jesus does in the miracle here. He doesn’t
preach a sermon about how God is gracious to the undeserving and merciful to
sinners, he gets on and dishes out the favour of God. The explanations can come
later. The other night, Jane, Joanna and I heard a lecture by Andy Griffiths,
the vicar of St Michael’s Galleywood,
in which he spoke about the importance of ‘values’ for mission. One that his
church has adopted is that of ‘showing before telling’: they show the love of
God first, and then they tell it. I think Jesus does something similar here. He
shows the favour of God: any telling comes later. That isn’t to excuse us from
talking about our faith, but it is to say that it must be credible first. Where
this week can I show the favour of God to those who might not think they have
it?

Conclusion
I guess that word ‘values’ is what runs like a thread through this sermon. It
is Jesus putting into practice the divine values of compassion, authority and
favour that we see in this story. Our call to mission requires something
similar: a broad compassion that encompasses all people and a wide range of
needs; a wise exercise of divine authority, especially because as Christians we
never act alone; and a commitment to demonstrate God’s outrageous favour to broken,
needy and sinful people – a favour we pray we shall then have an opportunity to
talk about. Where can we start getting on with the job?

Technorati Tags: HenryDrummond, missional, Jesus, Nain, compassion, authority, favour, JohnWimber, GrahamKendrick, Luke, AndyGriffiths, StMichaelsGalleywood

Luke 7:11-17

Introduction
When I moved to my last appointment, it was a double move. Initially I had to
move into a manse that the circuit was in the process of selling. I lived there
for eleven weeks, living and working out of boxes. I did this until the manse I
was supposed to live in was ready. Somewhere in one of those two house moves, I
lost a prized four-CD box set of Fleetwood Mac, the music on which stretched
back to their earliest days.

I wonder if you’ve ever had anything stolen. Was it a prized
possession?

What if I suggested to you that Jesus had been stolen? You’d
want to track down the thief, wouldn’t you? But what if I said it was the church that had stolen Jesus? Does that
shock you? Yet that was the claim of a great nineteenth century spiritual
writer, Henry Drummond:

In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from
the people; they have made the Son of Man the priest of an order; they have
taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.[1]

I suggest to you that today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus
brings back from the dead the son of the widow at Nain, is one such case where
we imprison Jesus in the church, rather than setting him among the people. He performs
this miracle not in the synagogue, but in the town. This is not Jesus
buttressing the faith of the faithful but Jesus on mission in the world. Therefore,
as we look at the qualities displayed by Jesus in this story, I’d like us to
see them in missional terms.

1. Compassion
It all starts when Jesus witnesses a grieving widow, who has lost her son:

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, ‘Do not weep.’ (verse 13)

Compassion for the widow is where it begins for Jesus. She has
lost her only son. We too might have compassion for her. As a minister, I have
had to take funerals where parents have lost a child. Even if that child has
grown to adulthood, it is common to say, ‘No parent should have to bury their
own son or daughter.’

However, Jesus’ compassion here is not simply grief at a
life cut short. It is grief for the widow.
She has no husband to provide for her, and now she has no son to do the same. His
compassion is not only about the bereavement, but also about the economically
devastating effects on the widow through losing her son. She will be destitute,
and the healing miracle Jesus performs here is to save a widow from desperate
poverty in a culture that had no welfare state. That is why when the dead man
gets up and begins to speak, Jesus restores him to his mother (verse 15). Therefore
this healing is not only a physical miracle, it is an economic one, too. It reminds
us not to channel our compassion narrowly.

Not only is it broader than physical healing, it is broader
in terms of who we pray for. The compassion that leads us to pray is one we
exercise not only in the church but also among our friends and family members
who do not share our faith. The late John Wimber, who – whether you agree with
him on every point or not – did so much to encourage Christians to pray for
healing, emphasised that such spiritual gifts were as much for use in the world
as they were in the church.

I am not suggesting that we don’t care for our friends who
are in desperate straits, be it due to bereavement, major illness, family
troubles, job losses or other crises. But what I do wonder is this: if a
Christian friend hits trouble, we have no difficulty in saying to them, ‘I’ll
pray for you.’ We know they will usually appreciate such an offer. However, we
tend to hesitate with non-Christian friends and loved ones. We’re more likely
to be nervous about how an offer to pray might be received. Will they reject
us? Will they laugh at us? On the other hand, if they welcome our offer to pray,
what happens if we do pray and then the desired blessing doesn’t materialise?

If that is how you feel, let me venture that we are like
young eagles, and the Holy Spirit is like the mother eagle, pushing us out of
the safety of the nest. We find ourselves in mid-air – but it is the only way
to learn how to fly. We find ourselves on the brink of the nest when we know it
would be good to offer prayer for someone. As we wobble, the Holy Spirit says, ‘Fly!’
For we were never promised the security of the nest and the possibility of
remaining spiritual eaglets all our lives; God called us to spiritual maturity
and that requires daring, risk-taking faith.

So, why not keep alert this new week for friends in real
need? Will you let your natural compassion move you to pray for them? And will
you be daring enough to offer prayer or tell them you are praying? You may feel
like you are falling off the precipice, but you may actually be beginning a new
chapter in an exciting and fruitful life of faith in Christ.

2. Authority
There is a tangible note of divine authority about Jesus in this story. Luke
calls him ‘the Lord’ (verse 13), and then, when he takes action, we hear him
speaking with authority: ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ (verse 14). Perhaps
we think we wouldn’t have the nerve to speak like that, especially as we aren’t
divine like Jesus. It seems a long way from what we feel capable of saying.

In fact, we see Jesus’ authority in more than his words. Even
before he speaks with authority, he acts with authority. He comes forward and
touches the bier (verse 14). That is shocking for a Jew who was not supposed to
touch dead bodies, for fear of becoming ritually unclean. However, that doesn’t
worry Jesus. He has authority over death. Ritual uncleanness is inferior to who
he is. So he is not intimidated by death or by religious regulations. He is ‘the
Lord’, and he knows these ritual laws are meant to be servants, not masters. So
he takes authority over them for the sake of the situation when he touches the
bier.

And remember, he surely didn’t need to touch the bier to
perform the miracle, but he did. He makes his authority clear before he speaks
with that authority.

So where might this connect with us? Surely, none of us can
speak and act as Jesus did here? None of us owns the title ‘the Lord’: we do
not have his divine status. That may be true, but that is no reason for us to
hide away from the challenge to prayer and action when faced with something
terrible in the world. For one thing, remember this verse from 1 John:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater
than the one who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4)

We are not impotent: God is with us! The Lord is here, and
his Spirit is with us. When others are suffering, we do not come against them
alone, but with the power of God’s Spirit. Do you not feel braver to act when
you know you are not alone? If someone is standing alongside you, it makes all
the difference. Moses asked that his brother Aaron could come with him to
Pharaoh – and even do the speaking for him! We have the Holy Spirit with us. He
is the one called in various translations the comforter, counsellor, advocate
or helper. It’s a word that means ‘one called alongside.’ The Holy Spirit is
the ‘one called alongside’ us when we need to speak and act with authority.

Alternatively, put it this way: there is a strange and difficult
statement of Jesus in John 14:14, where he says, ‘You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.’ It’s the ‘in
my name’ bit that interests me at this point. When we act in someone’s name, we
act with their authority. Years ago when I worked in the Civil Service I daily
signed letters with my signature, ‘pp’ (per pro) my manager. I signed in my
manager’s name. That is, I signed with my manager’s authority. To ask the
Father in Jesus’ name is to ask with his authority. It is to say, ‘Heavenly
Father, your Son has given me the authority to ask for this.’

Now my feeling about this kind of authoritative praying is
that it is one to be used only when we have concluded we are certain of God’s
will for a person, group or situation. However, if we are certain, then it is a
daring prayer that we may pray with the full permission and blessing of Jesus. Imagine
how much good we could bring to the world by carefully seeking God’s will and
then praying this way. However, I think we should use it with some caution, and
not throw it around willy-nilly, like a TV evangelist spraying around false
promises. And nor is ‘in your name’ a liturgical formula to provide a neat
ending to prayer: it is something dynamic and powerful, and therefore to be
used with considerable care.

But we always have the authority of the Holy Spirit within
us and alongside us. As Graham Kendrick once commented, ‘When the odds get too
great I just remember that Jesus plus me equals an invincible minority.’ God
calls his invincible minority into action out of love for the world.

3. Favour
Note the reaction of the crowd:

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A
great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his
people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country. (verses 16-17)

I think I’d have a good dose of fear if I’d just witnessed
someone being raised from the dead! But in the wake of it, there is a deep
sense of wonder – it’s that kind of fear. Luke records the testimony of the
onlookers: ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ To Luke Jesus was much more
than a prophet, but in his generous attitude he notes that here at least is the
start of a positive response to him. It’s an attitude well worth bearing in
mind when we are in conversation with those who are missing from the love of
God: we bless the positive response, even if it is not all we hope it to be. We
see it as something to build on, rather than something to tear down.

Then there is the other response: ‘God has looked favourably
on his people!’ That’s a big one for mission. Isn’t it often the case that the
impression Christians give the world is that God looks unfavourably on them? But the mission of Jesus is the sure sign
that God looks favourably on people. Not in some ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’ badge
kind of way, but more that God is so full of love for his broken world that he
didn’t even spare his own Son.

This is not to minimise the seriousness of sin, which often
leads to the ‘God looks unfavourably’ approach; rather, it is to say that
despite all the sin that shatters the connection between God and humans, that
God is still so full of love he reaches out in love. Supremely he does that in
the coming of Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection. However, Jesus
witnessed to it before the Cross, and he did so by bestowing favour on the
broken, just as he did for the widow at Nain. It’s no good having a message of
God’s favour for people unless that favour is going to put on legs and walk.

And that’s what Jesus does in the miracle here. He doesn’t
preach a sermon about how God is gracious to the undeserving and merciful to
sinners, he gets on and dishes out the favour of God. The explanations can come
later. The other night, Jane, Joanna and I heard a lecture by Andy Griffiths,
the vicar of St Michael’s Galleywood,
in which he spoke about the importance of ‘values’ for mission. One that his
church has adopted is that of ‘showing before telling’: they show the love of
God first, and then they tell it. I think Jesus does something similar here. He
shows the favour of God: any telling comes later. That isn’t to excuse us from
talking about our faith, but it is to say that it must be credible first. Where
this week can I show the favour of God to those who might not think they have
it?

Conclusion
I guess that word ‘values’ is what runs like a thread through this sermon. It
is Jesus putting into practice the divine values of compassion, authority and
favour that we see in this story. Our call to mission requires something
similar: a broad compassion that encompasses all people and a wide range of
needs; a wise exercise of divine authority, especially because as Christians we
never act alone; and a commitment to demonstrate God’s outrageous favour to broken,
needy and sinful people – a favour we pray we shall then have an opportunity to
talk about. Where can we start getting on with the job?

Technorati Tags: HenryDrummond, missional, Jesus, Nain, compassion, authority, favour, JohnWimber, GrahamKendrick, Luke, AndyGriffiths, StMichaelsGalleywood

On 28th May the existentialist theologian John Macquarrie died. I thought I’d tell the one story I know about him. As a first year undergraduate at college our Principal, George Carey, had us read chunks of Macquarrie’s Principles Of Christian Theology. We duly bought copies at a local Christian bookshop. Unfortunately George was for ever using an earlier edition than us, making page references, sections and even some content different. Simon, a mature student, had a daughter at Oxford who knew Macquarrie. We clubbed together to buy an up-to-date copy of the Principles, and Simon’s daughter arranged for Macquarrie to autograph it with a personal dedication to George. We presented it to him at lunch-time notices one day. Poor George thought it was a student stunt! He took some persuading that it was genuine.

His apology in the wake of the embarrassment was a mark of his humility, as was his willingness to learn from Macquarrie, whose existentialism was far from his evangelicalism. In a seminar I once started ripping into Macquarrie’s thought (I can’t remember what it was in particular, but something to do with the existentialism). George just looked at me and said, “And I’m sure he’d wish you Happy Christmas, too.”

Technorati Tags: JohnMacQuarrie, GeorgeCarey, existentialism, theology

Well, I’ve been back a week but life has been so frantic that posting anything has been impossible. But for starters here is my sermon for Trinity Sunday tomorrow.

Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Introduction
‘The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the New Testament. It’s a pagan idea.’

So said two Jehovah’s Witnesses who stood on my doorstep.

‘Pagans also wear trousers,’ I replied, ‘Do you want me to
take mine off?’

They declined my suggestion.

The Trinity is such a difficult doctrine. I think it’s fair
to say that Trinity Sunday is one of the two most dreaded Sundays in the year
for preachers (the other being Remembrance Sunday). And I suspect congregations
dread it, too. Yet at the same time, church members will say to ministers, ‘I
don’t understand the Trinity.’

Maybe we should expect the Trinity to be difficult to
comprehend. When Albert Einstein came up with his theories of relativity a
hundred years ago, someone commented that if the previously accepted theories
of Isaac Newton had been true, then God hadn’t stretched himself much in
deciding how the universe would work. We shouldn’t be surprised if it were much
more complicated. Moreover, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if understanding
God is complex – even if the Gospel is simple.

So today, I’m going to use for my outline the themes of a
book entitled ‘Experiencing
The Trinity’ by Darrell
W Johnson. I used it to preach a series of five sermons on the
Trinity. I’m not going to give you five sermons today! However, I am going to
offer four of the five basic points Johnson makes in his book – the contents of
which were originally a sermon series on the Trinity. (The fifth is an extended
exposition of Ephesians 3:14-21.) And if you wish to read more on the subject, I
know of no better introductory book.

1. Finding The
Trinity
‘The Trinity isn’t in the New Testament,’ claimed the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well,
the full doctrine isn’t – but the data that the Church Fathers used to
formulate the doctrine is. The New Testament is full of passages that reflect a
belief in the Jewish notion of one God, but that the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are all divine. Our Bible readings from Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15 are just two of
many. Indeed, you could go as far as to say that in the New Testament God has a
new name, and that name is ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. For that is what
Jesus says in the Great Commission in Matthew 28: he says disciples are to be
baptised ‘in the name [singular!] of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This is God’s name: Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

Yet where did all this data come from? The answer, surely,
is that the New Testament documents faithfully and authoritatively recount the
early Church’s experience of God. The Trinity is a case of those first
Christians saying, this is our experience of God – it’s more than we’d been led
to believe – but how do we make sense of it? The Trinity is the only way to
make sense of the data.

Now if that is true, then the doctrine of the Trinity has a practical
use. It isn’t in the first case something that needs a ‘brain the size of a planet’,
like Marvin
the Paranoid Android in ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s
Guide To The Galaxy’. In the first instance, it is something against which
we check up our own Christian experience.

Some of us emphasise one member or another of the Trinity. Thomas
Jefferson said we should just get back to ‘the simple Jesus’ (cf. Johnson,
p13f), and others might stress the Holy Spirit, and still others say that our
most important duty is to revere the Father. However, if we are Trinity people,
then this is an encouragement and a challenge to see how broad and rich our
experience of God is. Do we honour the Father and know his tender, fatherly
love? Are we disciples of Jesus, living by the benefits and example of his
Cross? Do we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, serving God with his gifts
and letting him make us more Christ-like? Have we found the Trinity in our
Christian experience, or is there something missing to be filled in?

2. Understanding The
Trinity
Perhaps ‘understanding’ is too strong a word. ‘Too right,’ you may think, ‘the
Trinity is a mystery to me.’

But in a sense, that’s what we’re about: mystery. The Church
Fathers never thought they had God completely wrapped up when they formulated
the doctrine of the Trinity: they were preserving the mystery of a God whom we
mere creatures can never fully comprehend, and they were setting the boundaries for what is truly Trinitarian, and what isn’t.

I remember fire-fighters coming to my primary school to
teach us about the dangers of fire. They had three blocks of wood that made a
triangle: on one it said ‘air’, on the second it said ‘heat’ and on the third
it said ‘fuel’. In the middle, it said ‘fire’. If you took one of three sides
away, the triangle collapsed and there was no longer a fire.

Similarly, the Church Fathers held three truths together as
the basic boundaries of the Trinity: ‘one God’, ‘three Persons’ (although ‘persons’
isn’t the most helpful word in today’s language, but we’ve yet to think of a
better one) and ‘equality’. If someone left out one of these three blocks, you
didn’t have the Trinity. Some heretics got around the problem of the three
persons by saying that the one God revealed himself as Father in Old Testament
times, as Jesus in New Testament times, and later as the Spirit. However, the
Trinity is not God appearing in three successive different ‘modes’. Nor were
Jesus and the Spirit lacking in equality to the Father, ‘subordinate’ to him, as
someone called Arius claimed (and Arius is a hero to Jehovah’s Witnesses). But
nor do we believe in ‘tri-theism’ – three gods. There is a oneness, a unity at
the heart of God.

Put the boundaries another way: the Father is not the Son
and the Son is not the Father; the Father is not the Spirit and the Spirit is
not the Father; Jesus is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not Jesus; but the Father, Son and Spirit are all
God. Father, Son and Spirit are not distinctions of God’s being, but distinctions in God’s being. They do not ‘co-exist’ alongside each other, but ‘subsist’
in an eternal inter-relationship. There is something unique to each of the
three Persons. The Father is the source of all the distinctions. The Son is ‘eternally
begotten’ of (but not ‘created’ by) the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from
the Father through the Son. These are the mysteries we affirm in the Creed.

But what does all this brain-bending stuff mean for us
practically? Darrell Johnson makes three helpful suggestions: firstly, it means
relationships are at the heart of ‘life,
the universe and everything.’ When they are right, other things are right; when
they go sour, all of life is sour. Therefore, they need to be priorities.
Secondly, there is the balance I referred
to in the first point: we need all three members of the Trinity, otherwise our
spiritual triangle collapses, like the one used by the fire-fighters. Thirdly,
there is the matter of fullness: if
we are baptised into the Trinity, then God wants to immerse us in the life of
the Trinity. A sprinkling will not do! We long for all the life of God!

3. Joining The
Trinity
What’s the most basic statement about God in the whole of the Bible? Surely it
is, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). How can love be God’s very nature, even before
creation, unless God can love ‘internally’? God may be one, but God cannot be
solo.

And the miracle of the Gospel is that God’s love reaches out
to us so that he may experience the love that is at the heart of his being. We become
what one thirteenth century Christian called ‘co-lovers with the Trinity’ (John
Duns Scotus, cited in Johnson, p62). What does this mean in practice?

We do not love God on our own: we love God with God! We witness
the amazing love that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for each
other. Our love for the Trinity is feeble, but God enables us to love God
better. That is one reason why our reading from Romans 5 spoke of the Holy Spirit
pouring God’s love into our hearts.

Further, if we see ourselves this way, then the only way we
can view others is to see them as held by the love of God, too. Therefore, with
God, we become lovers of others. It is hard to love other people sometimes –
you can add your own illustrations, I am sure! But the inner love of the Trinity
is made available to us – once more because that love is poured into our
hearts, we can with God love others in a way that we could not on our own.

Finally, we remember that ‘God so loved the world.’ The love
of the Trinity is for the world. If we are held within that same love, then, as
one person put it, ‘the closer you get to the heart of God, the closer you get
to what is on God’s heart’ (Robert Boyd Munger, quoted in Johnson, p68). And
the world is on God’s heart. An experience of Trinitarian love will give us a
heart for a lost and broken world, too.

4. Entering The
Trinity
God the Holy Trinity joins us in love to his inner life of love. We are
connected to the love that is at the heart of the universe, for ‘in him we live
and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). What will we encounter as we enter
the inner life of God? Darrell Johnson suggests these qualities:

Intimacy – no longer
need we think of remaining distant from a remote God: the Spirit enables us to
cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ There is tender love in the Trinity, and God shares it
with us.

Joy – The members
of the Trinity take great mutual delight in each other, and Jesus prayed in his
High Priestly Prayer, ‘may they have my joy made full in themselves’ (John
17:13). Yet the ruin of sin brings sorrow to the Trinity, and so salvation is
the restoration of godly joy to the world.

Servanthood –
Despite his equality with the Father, Jesus served him. And the Spirit’s work
is to glorify the Son. If we reflect the life of Trinitarian love, we shall
want to serve others, not ourselves, and glorify God, not ourselves.

Purity – Whatever the
twisted form of our world, purity is at the heart of the universe. That is why
salvation must lead to holiness. But such is God’s purity that when we, like
Simon Peter, encounter it and say, ‘Depart from me, I am a sinful man’, the
Trinity embraces us, heals and restores us.

Power – The God
who upholds the universe must be of immeasurable power. It is power not used
selfishly, but given away. So we have just marked Pentecost, and the gift of
the Holy Spirit and power. God’s power enables us to change; God’s power
enables us to glimpse the wonders of his love. God’s power is a model for our
use of power, too.

Creativity – From creation
itself, to the Virgin Birth, to using the wickedness of Christ’s crucifixion
for the salvation of the world, to the Resurrection and beyond, the Trinity has
always been creative and always will be. Spiritual gifts – often wrongly called
‘gifts of the Spirit’ when they are gifts of the Father, Son and Spirit – are given
so that we may use God’s creative and recreating power for the common good.
They are an expression of Trinitarian life.

Peace – Whatever evil
there is in the world, the Trinity is never threatened, and never panics. That peace
is a gift of salvation in restoring things to how God intended them to be.

Conclusion
My Jehovah’s Witnesses got it wrong. Not simply because they were not half as
biblical as they claimed to be, and not simply because they have to use a
deeply distorted translation of the Bible to buttress their teaching. The tragedy
is that in settling for a more easily explained understanding of God, they
reduce not only the complexity of God but also the beauty, mystery and truth of
God.

We shall never completely come to terms with the Trinity,
not even in the life to come. However, by keeping a hold all the time on the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God in three equal Persons, we shall
enter more deeply into the life of the God who sustains the universe, and whose
most profound characteristic is love.

Technorati Tags: Trinity, JehovahsWitnesses, Father, Son, HolySpirit, AlbertEinstein, IsaacNewton, DarrellJohnson, MarvinTheParanoidAndroid, JohnDunsScotus

Well, I’ve been back a week but life has been so frantic that posting anything has been impossible. But for starters here is my sermon for Trinity Sunday tomorrow.

Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Introduction
‘The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the New Testament. It’s a pagan idea.’

So said two Jehovah’s Witnesses who stood on my doorstep.

‘Pagans also wear trousers,’ I replied, ‘Do you want me to
take mine off?’

They declined my suggestion.

The Trinity is such a difficult doctrine. I think it’s fair
to say that Trinity Sunday is one of the two most dreaded Sundays in the year
for preachers (the other being Remembrance Sunday). And I suspect congregations
dread it, too. Yet at the same time, church members will say to ministers, ‘I
don’t understand the Trinity.’

Maybe we should expect the Trinity to be difficult to
comprehend. When Albert Einstein came up with his theories of relativity a
hundred years ago, someone commented that if the previously accepted theories
of Isaac Newton had been true, then God hadn’t stretched himself much in
deciding how the universe would work. We shouldn’t be surprised if it were much
more complicated. Moreover, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if understanding
God is complex – even if the Gospel is simple.

So today, I’m going to use for my outline the themes of a
book entitled ‘Experiencing
The Trinity’ by Darrell
W Johnson. I used it to preach a series of five sermons on the
Trinity. I’m not going to give you five sermons today! However, I am going to
offer four of the five basic points Johnson makes in his book – the contents of
which were originally a sermon series on the Trinity. (The fifth is an extended
exposition of Ephesians 3:14-21.) And if you wish to read more on the subject, I
know of no better introductory book.

1. Finding The
Trinity
‘The Trinity isn’t in the New Testament,’ claimed the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well,
the full doctrine isn’t – but the data that the Church Fathers used to
formulate the doctrine is. The New Testament is full of passages that reflect a
belief in the Jewish notion of one God, but that the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are all divine. Our Bible readings from Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15 are just two of
many. Indeed, you could go as far as to say that in the New Testament God has a
new name, and that name is ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. For that is what
Jesus says in the Great Commission in Matthew 28: he says disciples are to be
baptised ‘in the name [singular!] of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This is God’s name: Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

Yet where did all this data come from? The answer, surely,
is that the New Testament documents faithfully and authoritatively recount the
early Church’s experience of God. The Trinity is a case of those first
Christians saying, this is our experience of God – it’s more than we’d been led
to believe – but how do we make sense of it? The Trinity is the only way to
make sense of the data.

Now if that is true, then the doctrine of the Trinity has a practical
use. It isn’t in the first case something that needs a ‘brain the size of a planet’,
like Marvin
the Paranoid Android in ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s
Guide To The Galaxy’. In the first instance, it is something against which
we check up our own Christian experience.

Some of us emphasise one member or another of the Trinity. Thomas
Jefferson said we should just get back to ‘the simple Jesus’ (cf. Johnson,
p13f), and others might stress the Holy Spirit, and still others say that our
most important duty is to revere the Father. However, if we are Trinity people,
then this is an encouragement and a challenge to see how broad and rich our
experience of God is. Do we honour the Father and know his tender, fatherly
love? Are we disciples of Jesus, living by the benefits and example of his
Cross? Do we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, serving God with his gifts
and letting him make us more Christ-like? Have we found the Trinity in our
Christian experience, or is there something missing to be filled in?

2. Understanding The
Trinity
Perhaps ‘understanding’ is too strong a word. ‘Too right,’ you may think, ‘the
Trinity is a mystery to me.’

But in a sense, that’s what we’re about: mystery. The Church
Fathers never thought they had God completely wrapped up when they formulated
the doctrine of the Trinity: they were preserving the mystery of a God whom we
mere creatures can never fully comprehend, and they were setting the boundaries for what is truly Trinitarian, and what isn’t.

I remember fire-fighters coming to my primary school to
teach us about the dangers of fire. They had three blocks of wood that made a
triangle: on one it said ‘air’, on the second it said ‘heat’ and on the third
it said ‘fuel’. In the middle, it said ‘fire’. If you took one of three sides
away, the triangle collapsed and there was no longer a fire.

Similarly, the Church Fathers held three truths together as
the basic boundaries of the Trinity: ‘one God’, ‘three Persons’ (although ‘persons’
isn’t the most helpful word in today’s language, but we’ve yet to think of a
better one) and ‘equality’. If someone left out one of these three blocks, you
didn’t have the Trinity. Some heretics got around the problem of the three
persons by saying that the one God revealed himself as Father in Old Testament
times, as Jesus in New Testament times, and later as the Spirit. However, the
Trinity is not God appearing in three successive different ‘modes’. Nor were
Jesus and the Spirit lacking in equality to the Father, ‘subordinate’ to him, as
someone called Arius claimed (and Arius is a hero to Jehovah’s Witnesses). But
nor do we believe in ‘tri-theism’ – three gods. There is a oneness, a unity at
the heart of God.

Put the boundaries another way: the Father is not the Son
and the Son is not the Father; the Father is not the Spirit and the Spirit is
not the Father; Jesus is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not Jesus; but the Father, Son and Spirit are all
God. Father, Son and Spirit are not distinctions of God’s being, but distinctions in God’s being. They do not ‘co-exist’ alongside each other, but ‘subsist’
in an eternal inter-relationship. There is something unique to each of the
three Persons. The Father is the source of all the distinctions. The Son is ‘eternally
begotten’ of (but not ‘created’ by) the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from
the Father through the Son. These are the mysteries we affirm in the Creed.

But what does all this brain-bending stuff mean for us
practically? Darrell Johnson makes three helpful suggestions: firstly, it means
relationships are at the heart of ‘life,
the universe and everything.’ When they are right, other things are right; when
they go sour, all of life is sour. Therefore, they need to be priorities.
Secondly, there is the balance I referred
to in the first point: we need all three members of the Trinity, otherwise our
spiritual triangle collapses, like the one used by the fire-fighters. Thirdly,
there is the matter of fullness: if
we are baptised into the Trinity, then God wants to immerse us in the life of
the Trinity. A sprinkling will not do! We long for all the life of God!

3. Joining The
Trinity
What’s the most basic statement about God in the whole of the Bible? Surely it
is, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). How can love be God’s very nature, even before
creation, unless God can love ‘internally’? God may be one, but God cannot be
solo.

And the miracle of the Gospel is that God’s love reaches out
to us so that he may experience the love that is at the heart of his being. We become
what one thirteenth century Christian called ‘co-lovers with the Trinity’ (John
Duns Scotus, cited in Johnson, p62). What does this mean in practice?

We do not love God on our own: we love God with God! We witness
the amazing love that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for each
other. Our love for the Trinity is feeble, but God enables us to love God
better. That is one reason why our reading from Romans 5 spoke of the Holy Spirit
pouring God’s love into our hearts.

Further, if we see ourselves this way, then the only way we
can view others is to see them as held by the love of God, too. Therefore, with
God, we become lovers of others. It is hard to love other people sometimes –
you can add your own illustrations, I am sure! But the inner love of the Trinity
is made available to us – once more because that love is poured into our
hearts, we can with God love others in a way that we could not on our own.

Finally, we remember that ‘God so loved the world.’ The love
of the Trinity is for the world. If we are held within that same love, then, as
one person put it, ‘the closer you get to the heart of God, the closer you get
to what is on God’s heart’ (Robert Boyd Munger, quoted in Johnson, p68). And
the world is on God’s heart. An experience of Trinitarian love will give us a
heart for a lost and broken world, too.

4. Entering The
Trinity
God the Holy Trinity joins us in love to his inner life of love. We are
connected to the love that is at the heart of the universe, for ‘in him we live
and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). What will we encounter as we enter
the inner life of God? Darrell Johnson suggests these qualities:

Intimacy – no longer
need we think of remaining distant from a remote God: the Spirit enables us to
cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ There is tender love in the Trinity, and God shares it
with us.

Joy – The members
of the Trinity take great mutual delight in each other, and Jesus prayed in his
High Priestly Prayer, ‘may they have my joy made full in themselves’ (John
17:13). Yet the ruin of sin brings sorrow to the Trinity, and so salvation is
the restoration of godly joy to the world.

Servanthood –
Despite his equality with the Father, Jesus served him. And the Spirit’s work
is to glorify the Son. If we reflect the life of Trinitarian love, we shall
want to serve others, not ourselves, and glorify God, not ourselves.

Purity – Whatever the
twisted form of our world, purity is at the heart of the universe. That is why
salvation must lead to holiness. But such is God’s purity that when we, like
Simon Peter, encounter it and say, ‘Depart from me, I am a sinful man’, the
Trinity embraces us, heals and restores us.

Power – The God
who upholds the universe must be of immeasurable power. It is power not used
selfishly, but given away. So we have just marked Pentecost, and the gift of
the Holy Spirit and power. God’s power enables us to change; God’s power
enables us to glimpse the wonders of his love. God’s power is a model for our
use of power, too.

Creativity – From creation
itself, to the Virgin Birth, to using the wickedness of Christ’s crucifixion
for the salvation of the world, to the Resurrection and beyond, the Trinity has
always been creative and always will be. Spiritual gifts – often wrongly called
‘gifts of the Spirit’ when they are gifts of the Father, Son and Spirit – are given
so that we may use God’s creative and recreating power for the common good.
They are an expression of Trinitarian life.

Peace – Whatever evil
there is in the world, the Trinity is never threatened, and never panics. That peace
is a gift of salvation in restoring things to how God intended them to be.

Conclusion
My Jehovah’s Witnesses got it wrong. Not simply because they were not half as
biblical as they claimed to be, and not simply because they have to use a
deeply distorted translation of the Bible to buttress their teaching. The tragedy
is that in settling for a more easily explained understanding of God, they
reduce not only the complexity of God but also the beauty, mystery and truth of
God.

We shall never completely come to terms with the Trinity,
not even in the life to come. However, by keeping a hold all the time on the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God in three equal Persons, we shall
enter more deeply into the life of the God who sustains the universe, and whose
most profound characteristic is love.

Technorati Tags: Trinity, JehovahsWitnesses, Father, Son, HolySpirit, AlbertEinstein, IsaacNewton, DarrellJohnson, MarvinTheParanoidAndroid, JohnDunsScotus

Well, I’ve been back a week but life has been so frantic that posting anything has been impossible. But for starters here is my sermon for Trinity Sunday tomorrow.

Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Introduction
‘The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t in the New Testament. It’s a pagan idea.’

So said two Jehovah’s Witnesses who stood on my doorstep.

‘Pagans also wear trousers,’ I replied, ‘Do you want me to
take mine off?’

They declined my suggestion.

The Trinity is such a difficult doctrine. I think it’s fair
to say that Trinity Sunday is one of the two most dreaded Sundays in the year
for preachers (the other being Remembrance Sunday). And I suspect congregations
dread it, too. Yet at the same time, church members will say to ministers, ‘I
don’t understand the Trinity.’

Maybe we should expect the Trinity to be difficult to
comprehend. When Albert Einstein came up with his theories of relativity a
hundred years ago, someone commented that if the previously accepted theories
of Isaac Newton had been true, then God hadn’t stretched himself much in
deciding how the universe would work. We shouldn’t be surprised if it were much
more complicated. Moreover, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if understanding
God is complex – even if the Gospel is simple.

So today, I’m going to use for my outline the themes of a
book entitled ‘Experiencing
The Trinity’ by Darrell
W Johnson. I used it to preach a series of five sermons on the
Trinity. I’m not going to give you five sermons today! However, I am going to
offer four of the five basic points Johnson makes in his book – the contents of
which were originally a sermon series on the Trinity. (The fifth is an extended
exposition of Ephesians 3:14-21.) And if you wish to read more on the subject, I
know of no better introductory book.

1. Finding The
Trinity
‘The Trinity isn’t in the New Testament,’ claimed the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well,
the full doctrine isn’t – but the data that the Church Fathers used to
formulate the doctrine is. The New Testament is full of passages that reflect a
belief in the Jewish notion of one God, but that the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are all divine. Our Bible readings from Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15 are just two of
many. Indeed, you could go as far as to say that in the New Testament God has a
new name, and that name is ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. For that is what
Jesus says in the Great Commission in Matthew 28: he says disciples are to be
baptised ‘in the name [singular!] of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This is God’s name: Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

Yet where did all this data come from? The answer, surely,
is that the New Testament documents faithfully and authoritatively recount the
early Church’s experience of God. The Trinity is a case of those first
Christians saying, this is our experience of God – it’s more than we’d been led
to believe – but how do we make sense of it? The Trinity is the only way to
make sense of the data.

Now if that is true, then the doctrine of the Trinity has a practical
use. It isn’t in the first case something that needs a ‘brain the size of a planet’,
like Marvin
the Paranoid Android in ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s
Guide To The Galaxy’. In the first instance, it is something against which
we check up our own Christian experience.

Some of us emphasise one member or another of the Trinity. Thomas
Jefferson said we should just get back to ‘the simple Jesus’ (cf. Johnson,
p13f), and others might stress the Holy Spirit, and still others say that our
most important duty is to revere the Father. However, if we are Trinity people,
then this is an encouragement and a challenge to see how broad and rich our
experience of God is. Do we honour the Father and know his tender, fatherly
love? Are we disciples of Jesus, living by the benefits and example of his
Cross? Do we live in the power of the Holy Spirit, serving God with his gifts
and letting him make us more Christ-like? Have we found the Trinity in our
Christian experience, or is there something missing to be filled in?

2. Understanding The
Trinity
Perhaps ‘understanding’ is too strong a word. ‘Too right,’ you may think, ‘the
Trinity is a mystery to me.’

But in a sense, that’s what we’re about: mystery. The Church
Fathers never thought they had God completely wrapped up when they formulated
the doctrine of the Trinity: they were preserving the mystery of a God whom we
mere creatures can never fully comprehend, and they were setting the boundaries for what is truly Trinitarian, and what isn’t.

I remember fire-fighters coming to my primary school to
teach us about the dangers of fire. They had three blocks of wood that made a
triangle: on one it said ‘air’, on the second it said ‘heat’ and on the third
it said ‘fuel’. In the middle, it said ‘fire’. If you took one of three sides
away, the triangle collapsed and there was no longer a fire.

Similarly, the Church Fathers held three truths together as
the basic boundaries of the Trinity: ‘one God’, ‘three Persons’ (although ‘persons’
isn’t the most helpful word in today’s language, but we’ve yet to think of a
better one) and ‘equality’. If someone left out one of these three blocks, you
didn’t have the Trinity. Some heretics got around the problem of the three
persons by saying that the one God revealed himself as Father in Old Testament
times, as Jesus in New Testament times, and later as the Spirit. However, the
Trinity is not God appearing in three successive different ‘modes’. Nor were
Jesus and the Spirit lacking in equality to the Father, ‘subordinate’ to him, as
someone called Arius claimed (and Arius is a hero to Jehovah’s Witnesses). But
nor do we believe in ‘tri-theism’ – three gods. There is a oneness, a unity at
the heart of God.

Put the boundaries another way: the Father is not the Son
and the Son is not the Father; the Father is not the Spirit and the Spirit is
not the Father; Jesus is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not Jesus; but the Father, Son and Spirit are all
God. Father, Son and Spirit are not distinctions of God’s being, but distinctions in God’s being. They do not ‘co-exist’ alongside each other, but ‘subsist’
in an eternal inter-relationship. There is something unique to each of the
three Persons. The Father is the source of all the distinctions. The Son is ‘eternally
begotten’ of (but not ‘created’ by) the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from
the Father through the Son. These are the mysteries we affirm in the Creed.

But what does all this brain-bending stuff mean for us
practically? Darrell Johnson makes three helpful suggestions: firstly, it means
relationships are at the heart of ‘life,
the universe and everything.’ When they are right, other things are right; when
they go sour, all of life is sour. Therefore, they need to be priorities.
Secondly, there is the balance I referred
to in the first point: we need all three members of the Trinity, otherwise our
spiritual triangle collapses, like the one used by the fire-fighters. Thirdly,
there is the matter of fullness: if
we are baptised into the Trinity, then God wants to immerse us in the life of
the Trinity. A sprinkling will not do! We long for all the life of God!

3. Joining The
Trinity
What’s the most basic statement about God in the whole of the Bible? Surely it
is, ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). How can love be God’s very nature, even before
creation, unless God can love ‘internally’? God may be one, but God cannot be
solo.

And the miracle of the Gospel is that God’s love reaches out
to us so that he may experience the love that is at the heart of his being. We become
what one thirteenth century Christian called ‘co-lovers with the Trinity’ (John
Duns Scotus, cited in Johnson, p62). What does this mean in practice?

We do not love God on our own: we love God with God! We witness
the amazing love that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for each
other. Our love for the Trinity is feeble, but God enables us to love God
better. That is one reason why our reading from Romans 5 spoke of the Holy Spirit
pouring God’s love into our hearts.

Further, if we see ourselves this way, then the only way we
can view others is to see them as held by the love of God, too. Therefore, with
God, we become lovers of others. It is hard to love other people sometimes –
you can add your own illustrations, I am sure! But the inner love of the Trinity
is made available to us – once more because that love is poured into our
hearts, we can with God love others in a way that we could not on our own.

Finally, we remember that ‘God so loved the world.’ The love
of the Trinity is for the world. If we are held within that same love, then, as
one person put it, ‘the closer you get to the heart of God, the closer you get
to what is on God’s heart’ (Robert Boyd Munger, quoted in Johnson, p68). And
the world is on God’s heart. An experience of Trinitarian love will give us a
heart for a lost and broken world, too.

4. Entering The
Trinity
God the Holy Trinity joins us in love to his inner life of love. We are
connected to the love that is at the heart of the universe, for ‘in him we live
and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). What will we encounter as we enter
the inner life of God? Darrell Johnson suggests these qualities:

Intimacy – no longer
need we think of remaining distant from a remote God: the Spirit enables us to
cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ There is tender love in the Trinity, and God shares it
with us.

Joy – The members
of the Trinity take great mutual delight in each other, and Jesus prayed in his
High Priestly Prayer, ‘may they have my joy made full in themselves’ (John
17:13). Yet the ruin of sin brings sorrow to the Trinity, and so salvation is
the restoration of godly joy to the world.

Servanthood –
Despite his equality with the Father, Jesus served him. And the Spirit’s work
is to glorify the Son. If we reflect the life of Trinitarian love, we shall
want to serve others, not ourselves, and glorify God, not ourselves.

Purity – Whatever the
twisted form of our world, purity is at the heart of the universe. That is why
salvation must lead to holiness. But such is God’s purity that when we, like
Simon Peter, encounter it and say, ‘Depart from me, I am a sinful man’, the
Trinity embraces us, heals and restores us.

Power – The God
who upholds the universe must be of immeasurable power. It is power not used
selfishly, but given away. So we have just marked Pentecost, and the gift of
the Holy Spirit and power. God’s power enables us to change; God’s power
enables us to glimpse the wonders of his love. God’s power is a model for our
use of power, too.

Creativity – From creation
itself, to the Virgin Birth, to using the wickedness of Christ’s crucifixion
for the salvation of the world, to the Resurrection and beyond, the Trinity has
always been creative and always will be. Spiritual gifts – often wrongly called
‘gifts of the Spirit’ when they are gifts of the Father, Son and Spirit – are given
so that we may use God’s creative and recreating power for the common good.
They are an expression of Trinitarian life.

Peace – Whatever evil
there is in the world, the Trinity is never threatened, and never panics. That peace
is a gift of salvation in restoring things to how God intended them to be.

Conclusion
My Jehovah’s Witnesses got it wrong. Not simply because they were not half as
biblical as they claimed to be, and not simply because they have to use a
deeply distorted translation of the Bible to buttress their teaching. The tragedy
is that in settling for a more easily explained understanding of God, they
reduce not only the complexity of God but also the beauty, mystery and truth of
God.

We shall never completely come to terms with the Trinity,
not even in the life to come. However, by keeping a hold all the time on the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God in three equal Persons, we shall
enter more deeply into the life of the God who sustains the universe, and whose
most profound characteristic is love.

Technorati Tags: Trinity, JehovahsWitnesses, Father, Son, HolySpirit, AlbertEinstein, IsaacNewton, DarrellJohnson, MarvinTheParanoidAndroid, JohnDunsScotus