Before we read from the Bible, I need to explain the background to what we’re going to hear. The Apostle Paul and his companion Silas have been preaching in a city called Philippi, but they kept getting interrupted by a very disturbed young woman. She was a fortune-teller, but she was also a slave, and so her owners made a lot of money out of her. They exploited her.
Image courtesy Picryl. Public Domain.
So Paul cast the spirit out of the young woman that enabled her to tell fortunes, and that angered her owners, who lost a lot of money, because they could no longer exploit her. In revenge, they got Paul and Silas locked up in the local prison, and that’s where we pick up the story.
Now I’ve read that story largely because we read near the end that the jailer found faith, but on the basis of his faith not only he was baptised, but so was his entire household – although it must also be admitted that Paul and Silas spoke the word to the whole household.
Image courtesy StockCake. Public Domain.
And today, we shall baptise [name] on the basis of [the child’s parent]’s faith. One day, [name] will have to decide for himself whether to follow Jesus.
So what does this faith look like? Well, it’s a lifetime commitment, but let me pick out two important elements from the story.
The first is belief:
Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (verse 31)
What does it mean to ‘believe in the Lord Jesus’? It’s not simply that we believe he exists, although the historical evidence for that is extremely strong. No: we believe certain things about Jesus, and we then trust him with our lives.
We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again from the dead to give us new life.
Some people say that they think they are good people and that will get them into eternal life with God when they die. But none of us is good enough to meet God’s perfect standards. We all fall short. Those failures need to be forgiven.
And the thing about forgiveness is this: it hurts and it is costly. I think of a time when I was still living with my parents. A friend of mine had a broken engagement. He needed somewhere to stay while getting over it, and we invited him in. He stayed for two weeks. But he never helped with anything around the house. He seemed to expect my Mum to cook for him and do his washing. When he left, he didn’t offer any money towards all that my parents had shelled out while he was with us.
Image courtesy Picryl. Public Domain.
We had a family conference about this. I’ll never forget my Dad’s words. “We’ll put this down to God’s account.” To forgive my friend involved my parents absorbing that debt. It cost them.
Similarly, Jesus dying on the Cross shows us that it cost God to forgive our sins.
So I invite you this morning to realise that is the cost God has paid for you to be forgiven. Will you believe it? And will you then trust Jesus with your life?
The second thing that faith involves is action:
At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized.
The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household. (Verses 33-34)
The jailer does engage in good deeds, but they are not what earn him salvation. Instead, his action is a matter of gratitude.
We are so grateful that God has loved us so much it has cost him the death of his Son, that we respond. And we do so by putting our faith into action.
Yes, that gratitude is certainly shown in worship, but it is also shown in the world. The jailer tends to the wounds of Paul and Silas, who had been beaten and flogged before they were thrown into prison (verses 22-24).
Food drive for homeless. Wikimedia Commons. CC 4.0
So if we are grateful for all that God has done for us in Jesus, who are the wounded people we can serve and show his love? Perhaps we can think of this a little bit like the idea today of ‘paying it forward.’ Where and how can I pay it forward, because God has shown so much love to me?
The jailer didn’t have to look too far and neither do we. You will have a neighbour who needs some practical help. You will find organisations where you live that that work and campaign on behalf of those in the most desperate need, either in this country or abroad.
Conclusion
This is the faith into which we baptise [name] this morning. One that urges him to believe that Jesus died for his sins, and to trust his life to him. One that shows gratitude for God’s love in our actions, especially in the service of those in most need.
But do you know what will make the most sense of this faith to [name]? It will be when those of us in the church and in his family live out that faith ourselves before his eyes.
Back in prehistoric times when I was training for the ministry, one of our tutors told us that we should be at our desks every morning at 9 am with our shoes on. I’m sure I wore out some carpet by wearing shoes rather than slippers in my first manse.
I used to follow that pattern at first. But in one appointment, I was rarely (if ever) at my desk at 9 am. For at this point, we had young children going first through pre-school and then on to primary school. These were at the top of our road, and Debbie and I made a point of building relationships with the other parents.
We didn’t always make it back by the sacred hour of 9 am, and sometimes there would be phone messages from church members who had an expectation of me being there for them at that time.
Christ and a Pharisee. Wikimedia Commons CC 1.0
I think of those church members when I read about the Pharisees and teachers of the law in today’s reading. They thought I was mixing with the wrong people, because to them I was their private chaplain, just as the religious leaders thought Jesus was mixing with the wrong sorts, and that this reflected badly on his character. Their attitude was rather like the saying that you know a person by the company they keep.
Yet it was Jesus’ vocation to be with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. He uses the two parables we heard (plus what follows – the Parable of the Prodigal Son) to lay out why this was so important.
And if it were important for Jesus, it is also important for us. If we are to renew our commitment to following him, then we need to understand why he did this, and then get on with doing it ourselves.
Now the parables have a lot in common. They both (all) speak about finding what is lost and rejoicing. Bringing, or bringing back those who are lost from the love of Jesus into that love and into his family is a high priority for Jesus.
It is not always a high priority for us. We like to run our Sunday services, have a few nice midweek activities, make sure there’s enough money in the kitty to keep the building in good order, and that’s quite enough.
But not for Jesus. Each of these parables has something important to tell us about why he spends so much time outside the synagogue with ordinary (and even disreputable) people for the sake of God’s kingdom. So let’s look at what we pick up from the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin.
Firstly, the lost sheep
As you know, we were proud as anything a couple of months ago when our son graduated with a Maths degree from Cambridge. And when people asked us where he got his love of Maths from, I said that it had always been my subject at school. It was later that I developed my interest in Theology.
I have always loved numbers, even if I have not concentrated on Maths for decades now. And there is something about numbers in these parables. A hundred sheep, ten coins, and two sons. In relation to the lost sheep parable, I was reading the New Testament scholar Ian Paul this week, and he cited another scholar, Mikeal Parsons, from whom he learned this:
Counting on one’s fingers (flexio digitorum) was very commonplace in the Roman world, and was in fact seen as an indispensable skill for the educated (See Quintilian Inst 1.10.35). Up to 99, you would count on the left hand, but for three-digit numbers from 100, you would count on the right hand. In an age that preferred the right to the left, Luke’s Jesus is telling us that the whole flock is out of kilter as long as the one is missing—and the whole flock is ‘put right’ when the one returns. No wonder there is so much rejoicing!
The flock is not complete and whole while the lost sheep is missing. And we, the church, are also not whole and complete while there are lost people still to be brought into the orbit of God’s love in Christ, or former sheep to be coaxed back.
Lost Lamb by Roberto and Bianca on Flickr. CC 2.0
To put it another way, the Body of Christ is missing a limb while a lost person is still lost. We cannot stay as our own private association, just enjoying one another’s company or even saying dreadful things like, ‘As long as this church sees me out I’m happy.’ That is to take the opposite attitude to Jesus. The church was not founded by Jesus to be a religious club. It was founded to be his junior partner, working for the kingdom of God. It has an outward focus.
A few years ago, I saw a job advertised for a chaplain at an Army rehabilitation centre for soldiers who had lost limbs in military service. An admirable organisation, I am sure, helping soldiers to adapt and to get on with the fitting of prosthetic limbs.
I fear, however, that the church has spent too much time simply adjusting to living without certain limbs and to be content with the absence of many people. Certainly, much of the institutional leadership has set an agenda which is little more than the management of decline.
You may have come into the church because someone invited you to try it. I can think of someone I know who now attends church because she was invited by her elderly neighbour to try it when she was heartbroken over a relationship breakdown. The elderly neighbour said, I think Jesus might be able to help you in your sorrow.
All this requires us to have friends and relationships outside the church. And it means loving those people. It means being ready for the appropriate time to say something gentle and clear about our faith to them.
I am not asking anyone to go door-knocking. But I am asking that we look for those moments when we need to take a little bit of courage and speak about our faith to people outside the church. Jesus is missing them, and the church will be more complete when they find faith.
Secondly, the lost coin
Ever since the Covid pandemic accelerated the move in our society towards cashless ways of making payments in shops, our family has been divided in our attitudes. One of us occasionally pays by a contactless method but really regards cash as king. Another usually pays by contactless on their phone but keeps a small amount of cash. Another pays by contactless on their phone, and a fourth pays by contactless on their watch. I’ll leave you to guess who’s who!
You might think that in Jesus’ time cash was king when you hear the Parable of the Lost Coin, but actually coins were less common in their use. Kenneth Bailey, a New Testament scholar who spent most of his life in the Middle East, said this:
The peasant village is, to a large extent, self-supporting, making its own cloth and growing its own food. Cash is a rare commodity. Hence the lost coin is of far greater value in a peasant home than the day’s labour it represents monetarily.[i]
Ian Paul suggests that the woman’s ten coins in the parable are either family savings or possibly the dowry her husband gave her on marriage. Dowry coins were often worn by the wife either around the neck or on the forehead.
When you understand this, you realise that the loss of this coin is a catastrophe. She hasn’t mislaid a 5 pence piece. Something profoundly valuable has gone.
The Lost Coin by On Borrowed Time on Flickr. CC 2.0
What would it be like for me? It would be like me losing my wedding ring. It is not the most expensive item I own, but I do regard it as my most valuable possession, for what it represents. Earlier this week, when our elderly and grumpy cat bit my hand and I had to have a tetanus shot and strong antibiotics, I was told at the Urgent Treatment Centre that I had to remove my wedding ring in case my hand swelled up. I was careful to put the ring somewhere safe.
Those who are lost from the church and faith in Jesus are therefore to be seen as immensely valuable to Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether they are former Christians or never-been Christians, Jesus values them hugely. Sometimes we are very dismissive of judgmental of people outside the church, and of course some of them can be hostile to us, but the Jesus who tells us to love our enemies puts a high value on them. They are precious to him.
Like us, they are made in God’s image. Like us, they are loved so much by God that Jesus died for their sins. They are treasured by God.
Before he wrote worship songs, Graham Kendrick was a Christian folk singer. One of his most popular songs from that period of his life was called, ‘How Much Do You Think You Are Worth?’
The first verse says this:
Is a rich man worth more than a poor man? A stranger worth less than a friend? Is a baby worth more than an old man? Your beginning worth more than your end?
It goes on to consider various ways in which we might or might not value human life highly. Then it comes to a climax with these words:
If you heard that your life had been valued That a price had been paid on the nail Would you ask what was traded, How much and who paid it Who was He and what was His name?
If you heard that His name was called Jesus Would you say that the price was too dear? Held to the cross not by nails but by love It was you broke His heart, not the spear! Would you say you are worth what it cost Him? You say ‘no’, but the price stays the same. If it don’t make you cry, laugh it off, pass Him by, But just remember the day when you throw it away That He paid what He thought you were worth.
Every single person outside the church is valuable to God. The neighbour who annoys you. The child who keeps kicking his football at your fence. The greedy businessman. The politician whose policies you hate. The sex worker. The drug dealer. All these, as well as the ones we find it easy to like! The Cross tells us how much God values them.
And – while they are missing from God’s family, not only are they incomplete, so is the church.
It’s time to expand our networks, increase our love, and let faith prompt our courage.
[i] Kenneth Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, 1983, p 157
We live in what some have called ‘the surveillance society.’ Everywhere you go, you are on camera. Never mind the old ‘Smile, you’re on Candid Camera’ TV catchphrase, in our society you can hardly move without being captured on CCTV.
Not only that, we have the increasing use of video doorbells. We fitted one at the manse soon after coming, because we discovered that on our estate parcels left by delivery companies were frequently stolen from doorsteps. We also had to deal with a stalker.
At the beginning of our reading, we hear this:
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. (Verse 1)
Jesus was being carefully watched by the Pharisees and other religious leaders. He was under suspicion. They wanted to clock any incriminating move.
But the shock of the story is that in fact Jesus was also watching them. Listen again to verse 7:
When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable.
When he noticed. It’s a two-way mirror. It’s a dose of their own medicine, to mix the metaphors.
What does Jesus notice? I’m going to divide up the story into three to answer that question. Spoiler alert: we’re going to see how Jesus’ values clash with those of his society, and also with ours.
Firstly, the sick man:
This week’s Lectionary doesn’t include verses 2 to 6. Perhaps it’s because last week’s Gospel reading also included Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath. There are certainly some similarities with last week’s episode where Jesus healed a crippled woman in the synagogue. Jesus provokes confrontation with the religious establishment and the way he asks them a question about what constitutes work on the Sabbath what constitutes good deeds is very similar. So perhaps the compilers of the Lectionary thought that if they included this story this week congregations would end up with two similar sermons on consecutive Sundays.
However, these are not the only two examples of Jesus healing on the Sabbath in Luke’s Gospel. There is another one in chapter 6, for example. And while there are clear similarities, this week’s story has at least one unique application, and it’s to do with how the ancient world interpreted the medical condition he had.
The NIV says he was ‘suffering from abnormal swelling of his body’ (verse 2). Other translations use the old word ‘dropsy.’ It’s an excess of fluid that indicates something else is wrong. A few years ago, I went to the doctor because my legs were swelling. The first thing the GP did was send me for a blood test to make sure I didn’t have an issue with my heart, because congestive heart failure can cause this. So can kidney disease.[i] In my case, it was nothing so disturbing, but rather a side-effect from a blood pressure tablet, and I just needed a different drug.
But the ancients saw those with dropsy as people who had insatiable thirst, and metaphorically as those who were greedy, loved money, and were rapacious[ii]. And which group of people was accused of these very sins in Luke’s Gospel? Oh yes: the Pharisees[iii], the very people who are condemning Jesus’ action of healing.
Hence, when Jesus heals the man of his abnormal swelling, he is not just continuing his war on those who interpret God’s commands in a cruel way, he is also putting them on notice about their greed. He has noticed this too about them.
Are we in danger of crossing a line from enjoying good things that God has provided to being greedy? We so often go along with our consumer society and get sucked into the idea that we need to fill our lives with more stuff. Could there be a surprising, maybe shocking message in the reading for us today that in the eyes of Jesus we are bloated, and that we need his healing? Is this something that any of us needs to pray about and act on?
Secondly, the wedding invitation:
In verses 7 to 11, Jesus imagines invitations to a wedding being sent out and people jostling for position at the banquet to be seen as having more honour and prestige. He has noticed it at the meal he is attending. Like I said, it’s not just the Pharisees doing the watching, Jesus is watching them.
This is an attitude that will be familiar to us. Were you ever in a work situation where someone was doing their best to ingratiate themselves with senior leadership to get promotion? Back in the days when I did a more conventional job, I saw that. There was an ambitious man who discovered that he shared a love of cricket with the office manager, and he used that to curry favour. It certainly got him one promotion.
We sometimes see attitudes like this in the church. Somebody wants to be a big fish in a small pond. But it goes against the teaching of Jesus.
And he tells his hearers to take the lowest place at the banquet. The host may invite them to move up to a more honoured seat, and that is better than the humiliation of having thought too highly or themselves and having had to be relegated. In a culture where issues of honour and shame were prominent, this was radical teaching from Jesus.
Even then, some people manipulate Jesus’ teaching here. Some of what masquerades as ‘servant leadership’ in the church is actually a way of exercising influence and gaining power through the back door.
But if we follow Jesus, we shall be content with the seat to which he appoints us. If he puts us in a prominent position, all well and good – although we shall have to guard ourselves against pride. If we remain in an obscure or insignificant place, that is fine, too. After all, Jesus himself in taking on human flesh took the nature of a servant[iv].
In my early years as a minister, I had a couple of incidents where people foresaw me rising to positions of prominence in the church world. Not least was the time when I ended up as a seminar speaker at Spring Harvest, and one or two people said that I would then be among the movers and shakers of the evangelical world. It never happened. I have remained an obscure minister, and over the years have learned to be content with that.
When it comes down to it, no Christian can be seeking to make a name for themselves. That is not consistent with the call to humility and servanthood that Jesus makes. The only fame we seek is the fame of Jesus. And we let Jesus appoint the places where he wants us to do that.
Thirdly, the dinner invitation:
In the final part of the reading, verses 12 to 14, Jesus asks his listeners to imagine themselves not as the recipients of an invitation but as the givers of one. Who will you invite to dinner, he asks? And in one sweeping move he undermines the entire social fabric within which his hearers are happily living. Is it just to have a go at them, and enjoy seeing them squirm? I’m sure they did, but Jesus’ real concern here is for the poor and the excluded.
It’s almost topical. This week, we’ve heard the news that the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has declined his invitation to the banquet the King will be hosting next month for Donald Trump’s state visit in protest at Trump’s apparent support for the Israeli government’s state-sanctioned violence in Gaza. Davy even said that as a Christian this was something he prayed about before confirming his decision.
But if Ed Davey’s decision is a negative one as a protest, what we have from Jesus here is a positive step on behalf of the poor. First of all, he blows away all the conventional wisdom of his day about patronage, mutual back-scratching, and reciprocal arrangements so that people can engage in social climbing. It’s not the way of the Christian, he says. I wonder whether it says anything to today’s practices. What would it say, for example, to the way people today go along to ‘networking’ events to promote themselves?
No, says Jesus, invite people who can’t offer you an invitation back. Don’t see this as a way of getting something in return. There’s nothing particularly Christian about that. The Christian approach is to be a giver, whether or not people give back to us.
I mean, doesn’t this model the Gospel and God’s giving to us? What God gives to us in his grace and mercy, forgiving our sins, wiping the slate clean, and giving us a fresh start is way beyond what we can offer back to him. ‘What shall we offer our good Lord, poor nothings for his boundless grace?’ as the hymn puts it.
I want to challenge us all to consider this question: who can I bless this week who cannot necessarily bless me back? Who, among the poor, excluded, and marginalised in our society can I give to or serve?
We refer today to the idea of ‘paying forward’: when someone has given to us and we cannot give back, we give to someone else instead. It would be within the spirit of what Jesus teaches here for us to ‘pay forward’ the grace, mercy, and love we have received from him to others as a sign of our gratitude to him.
So, why not look for an opportunity this week? And come back next Sunday to tell your friends what happened.
Conclusion
The Pharisees were watching Jesus. Unbeknown to them, Jesus was watching them. He called them to replace greed with kindness, pride with humble service, and social climbing with giving.
And surely Jesus is watching us, too. He is longing to see us display these qualities as a witness to him.
What will he see us do this week?
[i] Joel B Green, The Gospel Of Luke (NICNT), p546.
You’ve probably heard the story about the preacher who begins a children’s address by asking, ‘What’s grey, furry, has a tail, and runs up trees?’
After an embarrassed silence, one of the children says, ‘I know the answer should be Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me.’
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 3.0
The answer should be Jesus. Well, in today’s reading the answer definitely is Jesus. He is the central figure in the story. Everything revolves around his interactions with people and their responses to him.
Firstly, Jesus and the crippled woman:
There is widespread agreement that the physiological condition the woman was suffering from was ankylosing spondylitis, which is an arthritic condition affecting the vertebrae. It leads to curvature of the spine and an inability to flex the joints. The condition is well-known today – I’m sure you know or have seen people with it – and to this day is still incurable.
But what about all that ‘spirit’ and ‘Satan’ language attached to it? The NIV says the woman was ‘crippled by a spirit’ (verse 11), and other translations say, ‘a spirit of weakness.’ Then, when Jesus argues with the synagogue ruler, he says that Satan had kept her bound for the eighteen years she had had the condition (verse 16).
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 3.0
So is Jesus performing an exorcism here? Was the woman possessed? No. Luke doesn’t use that language. There is no ‘casting out’ or ‘delivering’. Jesus puts his hands on her (verse 13), which doesn’t usually happen in an exorcism.
What is this language, then? It is a recognition that the whole of creation is disordered due to sin. Not that the woman’s ill-health is a result of her personal sin, but that everything in creation is broken and needs healing and restoring. God’s mission in Jesus is to put the whole world to rights. It is why the mission of God’s kingdom that Jesus announces includes so many things: the forgiveness of sins, the healing of sickness, good news for the poor, releasing people from evil spirits, and so on.
It is therefore understandable that when the woman is healed, Jesus says to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity’ (verse 12). No wonder she straightens up and praises God (verse 13).
Here we find the mission that the church is called to continue. If you want to know what we are about, it is this. We are called to set people free from all the brokenness in creation. We bring people to faith in Jesus through the forgiveness of their sins. We bring healing and restoration in every sense: physically, emotionally, relationally, socially, and spiritually. And all in the Name of Jesus.
We are not a religious social club, set up for us to enjoy the Sunday meetings, and perhaps the midweek ones too if we’re keen. We are not on mission just to fill church jobs so that the institution can continue.
We are here to proclaim the kingdom of God, where Jesus is on the throne, and his will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We are here to proclaim that kingdom so that more people, like the crippled woman, will praise God as they experience this good news.
Or maybe you are here today as one of those who in one way or another has been crippled in the brokenness of our world. Then may it be that here in this community you find the Jesus who can straighten you and make you whole.
Secondly, Jesus and the synagogue leader:
When I went to my first appointment as a probationer minister, it wasn’t long before some people sidled up to me quietly and asked me rather hesitatingly a question that began with the words, ‘Do you drink?’ I thought the sentence would be completed with ‘Do you drink alcohol?’ but in fact it was ‘Do you drink tea?’ It turned out that not only was my predecessor teetotal, he also did not drink tea or coffee. Well, I say he was teetotal: there was one occasion when he accidentally and unknowingly ate trifle that had sherry in it and then asked for seconds.
Being teetotal was for many years an ‘identity marker’ for a high number of Methodists. If you knew one thing about Methodists, it was generally that they didn’t drink.
The dispute between Jesus and the synagogue leader is a power battle. It centres on two things. One is about identity markers to show who are truly God’s people. For in Jesus’ day, Sabbath observance was one such marker of a true Jew. The synagogue leader clearly thinks this is under threat, and so he accuses Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by healing the woman.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 2.5
But Jesus’ words and actions show that you have to go beyond wooden interpretations of the Scripture to find the true identity markers of God’s people. There is something wrong with coming up with an understanding of Scripture that prevents God’s people from doing good.
Jesus still believed in the Sabbath, but not in this crude, wooden way. If you asked him about an identity marker for God’s people, he would talk about loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbour as ourselves. The identity marker is that we love God and love people.
All of which means there is another battle going on here between Jesus and the synagogue leader. It’s about who is the authoritative interpreter of Holy Scripture. Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of someone who is happy to see animals set free from their tethering on the Sabbath, but who is not happy to see a woman set free from infirmity to take her full place among the People of God at worship again.
It’s worth asking what our identity markers are, and how we have interpreted the Bible to come to those conclusions. What are we known for, and why? Are we known as hypocrites, or as people who love?
The Christian church has a particular problem with this in our society, not least due to all the sex abuse scandals. Only this last week we’ve seen the conviction of Chris Brain, the former leader of the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield. Most men outside the church think that clergy are either child sex abusers or ripping off the flock financially.
It’s an urgent task for us as Christians to make sure we are known as those who love God and love people. How are we doing that? How are we going to do that? It’s why I often encourage church members to pray a simple prayer each day: ‘Lord, who can I bless today?’
But that prayer is also worth extending corporately to the church. What if we asked together at our committees and other meetings, ‘Who can we bless as a church?’
Let’s make sure we share the same identity markers of God’s People as those Jesus advocated: loving God and loving people.
Thirdly and finally, Jesus and the congregation:
When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. (Verse 17)
The crowd is on their feet, cheering. ‘Go, Jesus!’ It’s like he’s scored a goal and the stadium has erupted.
What does it mean for us today to take delight in the wonderful things Jesus does? It is about more than being the Jesus Fan Club. We are the supporters of Jesus, I suppose, but we are more than that.
When we take delight in the wonderful things Jesus does, we erupt in praise and worship. The best hymns and songs of worship are those that describe the amazing things God has done in Christ. It’s like the disciples on the day of Pentecost, when the assembled crowd of many nations observes, ‘We hear them declaring the mighty deeds of God in our own tongues.’
Courtesy StockCake, CC Licence 1.0 (Public Domain)
Declaring the mighty deeds of God. That is the Christian calling in a nutshell. Declaring the mighty deeds of God is both praise and mission. In worship, we tell God of our delight in his marvellous works. In mission, we declare those works to the world.
Let us dwell on the wonderful things Jesus has done and is doing. Let us rejoice in what he did two thousand years ago, from healing a crippled woman to dying on the Cross for our sins. Let us also rejoice in what he is still doing today. Who here knows that Jesus has done something special for them? Have you shared it with any of your church family here?
I am sure there will be some of you here today who know that in the last seven days since we gathered together for worship, Jesus has done something for you. It might be big, it might be small. If you haven’t already told someone since arriving this morning, then I encourage you to mention it as you chat with your friends over tea and coffee after the service.
Don’t be shy about this! We are family. We accept one another. We love to hear each other’s good news. And what could be better than to talk about the work of God in our lives and celebrate together.
Why do this? Well, for one thing it has an effect upon the atmosphere here. Imagine what it would be like for a stranger or a newcomer to walk into a community that was full of joy because of what God has done.
For another, if we know God has done something for us then that can be an encouragement to others. There will be people among us who are struggling or discouraged, and for whom it could be a tonic to hear that God has not retired but is still active.
Further, talking together about our delight in what Jesus has done is good practice for those times when we take a bit of courage to tell our friends and family outside the church about our faith.
And most important of all, should not God receive the glory due to his Name for all his amazing works?
I love the story in the Old Testament where the Temple is dedicated, and the cloud of God’s glory comes in such overwhelming power that the priests cannot even remain standing to do their duties. What would it be like if our joy and thanksgiving for the work of God were so tangible that a visitor would spontaneously say, ‘Truly God is among you?’
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Verse 1)
What is faith? Silly atheists will tell you that it’s believing in something that cannot be true. They tell you they don’t have faith at all, they rely on facts. But of course, they do have faith – they have faith in human reason. And while human reason is a good gift of God, it is corrupted by human sin. That’s why good things like science have also given us bad things such as nuclear weapons and instruments of torture.
So what is faith? It’s a combination of two things: belief and trust. It’s the belief in certain things being true about God, and that leads to the trust that we put in God. So we believe that Jesus died for our sins and God raised him from the dead and declared him to be Lord. We then trust him as Saviour and Lord with the direction of our lives.
This is something we practise in everyday life. We get to know certain things about a person, and when we know them well enough to believe they are trustworthy, we then trust them. We might believe in the qualifications an electrician has and then trust them to repair our lights. We might believe in a romantic partner’s love for us and then enter into marriage with them. Both these illustrations are examples of faith that is made up of belief and trust.
The definition of faith our reading begins with is more on the ‘trust’ end. It assumes we already know things about God. Then, in the light of that, we trust:
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Given what we know and believe to be true about God, we can be confident in our hope and sure about what we do not see.
Again, what do we know about God as revealed in Jesus? We know this is a God who even gave up his only Son for us. We know that Jesus suffered to the uttermost with us and will be alongside us in the darkest moments of life. We know that God said ‘Yes’ to all Jesus did on the Cross by raising him from the dead. We know that as God made the body of Jesus new, so he will one day make new the whole of creation.
This is the God we believe in. This is why we can have certainty about our future hope: we have seen this God in action. We know he has good plans.
And so we trust him. We trust our entire lives over to him. Even though walking with him will sometimes be difficult and painful, we know he has good purposes in mind for us and the whole world. We may not be able to see where he is leading us, but he has done enough for us to believe he is trustworthy. Therefore, we say ‘Yes’ to him.
So that’s my first point. What is faith? It is believing we know enough about God in Christ to trust ourselves to him.
What faith does
Here we’re specifically going to look at the example of Abraham in the text. We don’t know how much he knew about God, nor even how he got to know God in the first place. But we do know that he believed enough to trust God when he heard him speak to him.
8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
If you know God loves you, if you know he has your best interests at heart, and if you know that the best thing in all creation is the kingdom of God, then what do you do when God asks something of you?
Many of us say, ‘No.’ I knew someone in my home circuit who said, ‘Whenever I think God is calling me to something, I always say ‘No,’ because if it is him, he will ask me again.’
However, some of us say no, because we would rather stay comfortable, and we know that God’s call to obey him with trusting faith may lead us into situations that take us away from that comfort we crave.
Certainly, that happened in the Bible, and it definitely happened to Abraham. We just read that he obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going, and he ended up making his home like a stranger in a foreign country, even though that place would be part of the Promised Land for God’s people.
It has happened to me in following God’s call in the ministry. I wouldn’t even be in the ministry in the first place if I had limited myself only to comfortable circumstances. And when I first went to visit the circuit that would be my second appointment, I can still remember how disheartened I felt as I drove down a hill into the area. I saw how dirty and run-down the place was. Later, I would regularly walk along pavements that were covered in discarded cigarette butts and other litter.
But had I not gone, I would have missed out on serving with some amazing Christians across a variety of churches and denominations. I would not have made some lifelong friends, many of whom still live there.
And of course, it is where I was living when I met Debbie – not that she came from there. It is where we married and where we had our children.
We need to be careful about saying ‘No’ to God when he calls us to trust him and obey in faith. If we’re seeking clarification of his will, like the friend of mine I mentioned, I guess that’s fine.
But when it comes down to it, if we are people of faith and God has spoken to us about something he wants us to do, we need to say ‘Yes’, even if it’s daunting. God will be with us when we trust him and set out as Abraham did. There may indeed be some struggles ahead of us when we go, but Jesus knows what it is like to walk a dark road. He will never leave us or forsake us.
I wonder if there’s anyone here who is being prodded by the Holy Spirit. Is he prompting you to do something or go somewhere? I challenge you to say ‘Yes’ and then see God at work as you trust him in faith.
What faith sees
Believing and trusting isn’t always easy, as I’ve suggested. But there is something that keeps us going forward and drives us on. It is what faith sees. It is the vision faith gives us. Abraham had it. So did others. We can, too.
What is it?
10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
…
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.
Even if God leads us to a place where we are not comfortable, faith tells us this is not the last stop on the journey. Faith holds before us the vision that God is making all things new, that a new creation is coming, with new heavens and a new earth. And God’s people will dwell in the New Jerusalem, the new holy city, in all its glory and splendour.
This is not just about where we go after we die. This is about what God is building in his kingdom. This vision shows us the ultimate purposes of God. We believe this by faith. We set out in trust in that direction, building for it ourselves, by what we do in our lives.
Has God led you into somewhere or something that is troubling or challenging? Be assured that it is not the last stop on the journey.
When we are in that disheartening situation, it is easy for us to look back to when times were better, but what God says to us is, don’t look back, look forward. Look forward to his great future with solid hope. As verses 15 and 16 say,
15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
We often talk about our future hope in terms of what Jesus promises in John 14 when he tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them. But in these verses, the promise is much bigger than that. Not only will Jesus prepare a place for us, God is preparing a whole city for his people. Wow! We might not like the place where we are today, but one day we shall be in the City of God. That is what we look forward to by faith.
So if we are discouraged, if we wonder why on earth God has allowed us to be in some dispiriting location or circumstance, let us lift up our eyes. I know I need to do that at times, so I am preaching to myself here every bit as much as I am preaching to you.
Yes, let us lift up our eyes. Let us say, Lord, all those years ago I learned what you were like, and I believed you. And I have stepped out in trusting faith with you. It may not be great right now, but I am going to lift my vision and see something of that future hope, the City of God.
And if for you things are good right now, then I would still encourage you to lift your eyes and dwell on the future hope. For that new creation, that New Jerusalem, is the template for what we do now by faith. It shows us what we are building for. It informs our decisions and our actions now.
For all of us, let us believe. Trust. Act. And hope.
When I decided I wanted to learn photography, I asked my Dad to take me to his favourite camera shop in London. There, we met a remarkable salesman who had had one hand amputated. Think about that: how do you manipulate something like a camera without one hand? He did.
He sold me a rudimentary 35mm SLR camera. The idea was that I needed to learn the basics first before I ever considered a more complicated beast. That’s what I did.
I even had to repeat the exercise when I moved from 35mm film to digital.
The nature of Paul’s thanksgiving for the Colossians is that they have learned the basics. Now they can go deeper.
What are the basics?
we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people (verse 4)
Faith in Jesus and love for his people. Faith and love. These come from the gospel and the hope it gives us (verses 5-8).
Now it’s time to build on the basics and go deeper in their faith. Specifically, he wants them to know God’s will (verse 9) so they
may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way (verse 10).
I’d like us to look at these next steps for the Colossians today. If the basics are in place for us – that we have faith in Jesus Christ for salvation and we love God’s people – then what qualities are our next steps? Paul lists four:
Firstly, good works:
bearing fruit in every good work (verse 10)
We know that good works don’t earn us salvation. That is a free gift of God that we receive by putting our faith in Jesus and his death for us on the Cross.
Instead, good works in the Christian life are a grateful response to God, once we know salvation by faith in Jesus. As I’ve said before, remember that God only gave the Ten Commandments to Israel after he had saved them from Egypt. It’s similar for us.
How might we approach this, then? We have just completed the Bible Society’s study course on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the final session on Thursday, we were challenged as part of our mission to pray a prayer every morning: ‘Lord, who can I bless in your name today?’ I think that would be a helpful approach in knowing at least some of the good deeds God is calling us to do as our thankful response to salvation.
I have encouraged other people to consider the question: how can I make a difference for good in the world? It might be through pursuing a particular career. It might be in other ways. We might seek to live less extravagantly and give more to those who are doing things we aren’t able to do. This might involve our support for organisations working to transform things in the developing world, for example. Or we might cut back our own spending in order to give to those who are bringing positive change for those in poverty in the UK. Where can we make a difference for good in our deeds and in our giving?
Another way to approach this is found in a favourite quote of mine. It comes from the American Christian writer Frederick Buechner, when he was writing on the subject of vocation. Now you may hear me say the word ‘vocation’ and think, this doesn’t apply to me, I’ve retired from paid work. But vocation is about everything we are called to do and to be in response to God’s love.
So here are Buechner’s words:
Your vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.
In other words, is there something you are passionate about that can be set to the purpose of making a difference in the world?
Secondly, knowing God:
growing in the knowledge of God (verse 10)
Now before anybody gets worried, I’m not suggesting we all need to go off and study for a Theology degree! I enjoyed the two I took, but they’re not for everyone.
We do however all as Christians need to know more about God’s character, God’s plans, and what God loves. If we know God more in these ways, we shall want to love God more deeply. It seems strange to me that some Christians just want to stop at the bare minimum knowledge of God. Surely, given all he has done for us in Christ, we would want to know more about him and his amazing love.
And that’s why I’m always banging on about not simply coming to worship on Sunday, although that’s a good start. It’s why we need to read the Bible daily for ourselves and also meet with others to study it so that we can learn from each other. I was so pleased that everyone who filled in a feedback form at the end of our Romans course was looking in one form or another for us to keep meeting and looking at the Bible together. That’s encouraging.
It’s why we need to pray regularly, because prayer is not just us talking to God, it’s about waiting and listening to him.
Also, sometimes we get to know God better merely by doing what he says, even when we don’t understand it. Because in the doing of his will we get to know him better. Jesus said,
Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7:17)
So – how are we getting to know God better?
Thirdly, endurance:
being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (verse 11)
Often when we read words like ‘strengthened’, ‘power’, and ‘might’ in the New Testament, we think it’s going to be about the dramatic or miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit, and I’m not about to poo-poo that.
But here, Paul prays that God will strengthen the Colossians so they ‘may have great endurance and patience.’
We need those qualities in the Christian life. To follow Jesus is not a spectacular 100-metre sprint, it is the endurance of the marathon. And over the marathon course of our lives, there will be ups and downs, joys and sorrows, peaks and troughs. The early Christians got to realise that quickly, through their experiences of suffering and persecution. Many – if not the majority – of Christians around the world today are familiar with this, too.
When we are finding it tough to follow Jesus, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. Sometimes, that will be an individual experience. God will give us an inner resilience that we didn’t know we had – perhaps because we didn’t have it before – and he will help us to keep on keeping on, even if it is just tenaciously putting one foot in front of the other, or living day to day or even hour to hour.
Sometimes, God will strengthen our endurance through the help of our sister and brother Christians. I had a couple in one church who underwent five bereavements in a year. Both of them lost both of their parents, and a beloved uncle died as well.
The wife of the couple said, ‘At times like these I find it hard to pray. But I am encouraged to know that the church family is praying for me when I can’t pray.’
Is life and faith difficult for us at present? Let us ask God to strengthen us in patience and endurance, just as Paul asked God to do that for the Colossians.
Fourthly, joyful thanksgiving:
and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light (verse 12)
This is remarkable, coming straight after the prayer to have the strength to endure. If our situation is such that we need the gifts of patience and endurance, then presumably life is not easy. And if that’s the case, how are we going to give ‘joyful thanks to the Father’?
Paul says it’s all because it’s a response to what God has done for us. Paul tells the Colossians it’s all because the Father
has qualified [them] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.
It’s a case of remembering and rehearsing all the wonderful things God has already done for us, and all the amazing things he is promising to do for us. When we ponder these things in our hearts and minds, isn’t ‘joyful thanksgiving’ the natural reaction?
On Thursday morning, I paid my monthly visit to a local Christian care home. In alternate months, I either lead devotions for the residents and staff, or I bring Holy Communion. This time, it was a Holy Communion month.
So, I led a short service in the lounge, and then Deborah and I took the bread and wine to those residents who had not been able to make it to the service. We offered the elements in each room where someone was, because all the residents are Christians.
Entering one room, we found a lady who had lost most of her sight and a lot of her hearing. But in her adversity, this beautiful saint had still found a way to give thanks and praise to her God. She had an A4 notepad and a Sharpie pen. In her large handwriting (due to her sight loss) she was writing out on one sheet after another the opening verses of her favourite hymns. This was how she expressed her devotion despite her limitations. She presented me with a sheet on which she had written the first verse of ‘Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing.’
That lady’s witness was a challenge to me.
How is each one of us growing in our faith? Are our good works making a difference? Are we growing closer to God? Do we know his strength enabling us to endure in faith even in difficulty? Do our hearts leap with joyful praise?
We have every good reason:
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? The words of the Psalmist have echoed throughout history. Most Christians live as the minority in their society. We have had to cope with a transition from being the majority culture to being the minority, seen in so many ways and not least the way recent decisions in Parliament trampled on the sanctity of life.
But the problem goes back to before the Psalmist. In today’s passage, we have a young Israelite girl taken captive by raiders from Aram (verse 2). It’s not the full exile of many centuries later, but it still poses the question of how to live out your faith as a good witness when your beliefs are not the dominant ones. Even those still living in the Promised Land know the threat of the King of Aram and his army, as the King of Israel makes clear by the fear he displays when he assumes his opposite number wants to pick a quarrel with him (verse 7).
The story of Naaman’s healing shows several Gospel values we would do well to emulate in our witness. Sometimes they are displayed by God’s people, sometimes by those receiving blessing, and sometimes they are the opposite of the behaviour that is condemned in the passage.
Firstly, love
Don’t you think the attitude of the young girl in forced slavery is remarkable? Separated from her parents, much like the dreaded ICE officers are doing to immigrants in the USA at present, surely she is living in fear.
And what does she do? She loves her enemy. She shows concern for Naaman’s condition and knows how he might be healed. No resentment gets in the way. Instead, she blesses a man who doubtless was significant in causing her plight.
In the later history of God’s people, when many had been taken into exile in Babylon, and the Psalmist had voiced their feelings with those words with which I began, ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’, the prophet Jeremiah had an answer for them. In his famous letter to the exiles in chapter 29 of his prophecy, he tells them to ‘seek the welfare of the city to which they have been taken’. It’s similar. And people notice it.
To whom can we show love, despite the fact that they may be opposed to our most cherished beliefs and values? It may be a family member who has rejected the way we brought them up. It may be a political representative who stands for a party or policies that we believe are harmful to us and to others.
Think of the ways in which our society is becoming more divided and ask where we can show love to all parties. The algorithms of social media promote the viewing of content that is negative and causes anger, thus contributing to division and even violence. We have seen the consequences at the ballot box and on the streets. Imagine what we could do if we brought love into those situations.
Secondly, grace
The King of Aram thinks that Naaman’s healing can be bought. He tries to buy favour with his opposite number in Israel by sending Naaman with ten talents of silver (that’s about 340 kilograms), six thousand shekels of gold (around 69 kilos), and ten sets of clothing (verse 5). It’s so over the top that the King of Israel thinks it’s a trick to provoke conflict.
It’s a common attitude. We think we can buy the favour and blessing of God. Some of us do it by trying to be good enough (whatever that is) in our lives. Some of us try, in the words of Kate Bush, to ‘make a deal with God.’
But it doesn’t work. God rejects these approaches. He gives freely to the undeserving. We cannot make ourselves deserving of his blessing, but he still gives. And here he heals way before Naaman professes any faith in him. It is undiluted grace.
It is our calling to be grace-bearers in the world, even to those opposed to us. It’s very easy for us to call down fire and brimstone on the enemies of God, and we are altogether rather too practised in the art of cursing others, but God in Christ calls us to a different approach. The Christ who prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing’ is our Lord. It may go against the grain for us, but how else are people going to be opened to the possibilities of redemption?
You may want to write to your MP. It may be something you feel passionately about, and you may think the MP is likely to disagree with you. Write with grace. Bless them. Tell them you are praying for them. So many Christians write letters and emails to their MPs in such a hostile spirit that we have a pretty terrible reputation in Parliament. Speak grace. Build a relationship, if you can. You never know what opportunities that might create in the long run.
Thirdly, humility
I see this in two ways in the reading, and it’s all to do with the central encounter between Elisha and Naaman. For Elisha’s part, he does not have to come out to Naaman and do something spectacular that will build his brand or his platform, as we would say today. He just sends his messenger with the instructions Naaman needs (verse 10). It’s not about show. Elisha only cares about the exalting of the name of the Lord, not the exalting of his own name. If that means staying in the shadows, then fine.
For Naaman’s part, he must put aside his pride to wash himself in the waters of the Jordan, not in the apparently superior rivers of Abana and Pharpar in Damascus (verse 12).
Humility in pointing to our God and not to ourselves, and humility in that we must put aside our pride to meet with the one true God. That is central. What else could be our response when the Gospel is about grace and mercy?
It is not that we want to do the exaggerated ‘very ‘umble’ Uriah Heep-type routine, nor is it that we want to dress up low self-esteem in some ‘I am a worm’ attitude, but it is to say that we want to deflect all the glory from ourselves to where it belongs.
You may recall Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian of ‘The Hiding Place’ fame. She and her sister Betsy were imprisoned by the Nazis for hiding Jews as an expression of their faith. Betsy died in the concentration camp. After the war, Corrie exercised a remarkable ministry of compassion and reconciliation at no small cost to herself.
After she had given a talk or a sermon at an event, she would often have people come up to her and thank her for what she said. How did she handle the compliments? She said she thought of them as like a bouquet of flowers. She would smell the beautiful scent and then say, ‘These are really for you, Lord.’
Is that an attitude we can cultivate? A humility that gives glory to God?
Fourthly, thanksgiving
After he is healed, Naaman wants to offer Elisha a gift. But the prophet declines it. This is not about him. It was God who healed Naaman (verses 15-16).
But Naaman still wants to show his gratitude, and he wants to do so by transferring his allegiance to the Lord who had healed him. He does so, following the pagan belief of many cultures in Old Testament times, that the gods were limited to certain geographical areas, and so he asks to take some of the Promised Land home with him to the land where the idol Rimmon (whom he now probably realises is a false god) is worshipped (verses 17-18).
The measure of a true response to a genuine encounter with the Lord is simply this: thanksgiving. Remember when Jesus healed ten lepers, and just one returned to give thanks. That was the one who truly knew and appreciated what Jesus had done for him.
There are a couple of sides to this for us. For one, while we shall be unconditionally blessing people with grace and love in all humility, we shall be praying that some will respond with thanksgiving and encounter God in Christ. Our blessing is never conditional upon a person responding in a particular way, but it is a witness, and we put prayer behind that witness that people will respond in thanksgiving to God.
The other side for us is that we ourselves, as those who have already discovered the God of grace and love in Jesus Christ, are seen to be thankful people, too. At the graduation service for our son on Wednesday, the Dean spoke on Paul’s words in Colossians 3, ‘And be thankful.’ She quoted the famous words of Dag Hammarskjöld:
For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to come, yes!
How revolutionary would a thankful lifestyle be in an acquisitive society?
Fifthly, generosity
So the last part of the story is the dark episode that ends it, one that we often don’t read. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, is scandalised that his master lets Naaman go without him leaving a gift. He says these chilling words to himself:
“My master was too easy on Naaman, this Aramean, by not accepting from him what he brought. As surely as the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him.” (verse 20)
‘My master was too easy on Naaman.’ Here is someone who does not understand grace. ‘I will run after him and get something from him.’ It’s all about getting, not giving. As such, his character is contrary to the God he supposedly serves. He is a precursor of the TV evangelists and other scammers, determined to make money out of those who have a need.
But God is a generous giver, not a taker. God gave out of love in creation. God gave his only begotten Son for the salvation of the world. God gave the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus. Gave, gave, gave. God is generous.
I am not about to suggest that we are like Gehazi. He became diseased in body because he was diseased in spirit. But I do ask the question, what are we known for in society? Although we are called to speak out against wrongdoing, are we primarily known as those who are negative? Think again of those letters to MPs. Or are we known as those who positively give to society, who overflow with generosity to those in need and for the well-being of our towns, our cultures, and our nations?
By the grace of God, may it be that we are not a Gehazi, who grasp for ourselves, but a servant girl who knows how to love, an Elisha who humbly lives in and by the grace of God, and a Naaman, who by thanksgiving grows in grace.
Surely such a people will have an impact for Christ on their culture.
On my first full day at the first theological college I attended, one of the pastoral tutors said to us: ‘Coming to college is a bereavement experience.’
She was right. Of course, it was not on the scale of the death of a loved one. But there are other bereavements, including smaller ones. The tutor explained that we were going through the loss of families, friends, networks, homes, jobs, and other things that we had left behind to study and train. (Most of us were mature students.)
The account of Elijah’s departure to heaven is also a bereavement story. And it’s more than just losing a beloved leader of God’s people from this earth. There is a bigger bereavement going on here for Elisha, the company of the prophets, because the loss of Elijah to heaven is the end of one major phase of God’s work among his people.
In that respect, I believe this passage has a lot to tell today’s church. So much of it is dying, especially in the more traditional churches. We know the numbers are down and the age profile is increasing. A phase of God’s work is dying. But how do we respond?
We can take clues from this narrative about good and bad ways to respond when one move of God is passing, and we are waiting for the next. I am going to look at how Elisha reacts, and then how ‘the company of the prophets’ reacts.
Firstly, Elisha
I have no doubt that Elisha was consumed with grief. Every time Elijah told him to stay in one place while he went on, Elisha replied, ‘As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.’ Elisha clings onto Elijah. Can he not face the thought that he is going to be separated from him? Or maybe he’s not willing to let his master go on his final journey alone.
Equally, every time the company of the prophets asks Elisha, ‘Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?’, he gives the same reply: ‘Yes, I know, so be quiet.’ I doubt this is like the old British stiff upper lip, because that would not fit the culture. But it does sound like someone who is saying, I just don’t want to talk about it. This is too awful.
In these ways, Elisha doesn’t sound that different from a lot of grieving people. Those who have studied the various stages of grief have shown that one of the early stages is that of denial, where we just cannot accept the awful reality.
I suspect some of us are like that in the church as it declines and ages. Some of us don’t want to talk about it. Somehow, we think that if we keep on doing the same old same old then maybe magically things will turn out for the better. We seem to have fallen for what some have called Einstein’s definition of insanity, which is to keep on doing the same things will expecting a different result.
But Elisha doesn’t stop there. He knows a new season is coming. For sure, his grief cries out after Elijah departs as he asks, ‘Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ But before that, we read this in verses 9 and 10:
9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?’
‘Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,’ Elisha replied.
10 ‘You have asked a difficult thing,’ Elijah said, ‘yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours – otherwise, it will not.’
The ‘double portion’ is what the eldest son received in their father’s will. It showed he was the favoured one. Here, Elijah knows the double portion of the spirit isn’t in his gift, it is only from the favour of God. Elisha will know he has received it if he sees Elijah when he is taken – for that is what a prophet does, he sees into the will of God.
At this point, Elisha gets it right. The succession of God’s work depends not on hankering for the days of Elijah but depending on the work of the Spirit. Only the Spirit of God animates the prophetic ministry.
And … only the Spirit of God animates the Church of Jesus Christ. Amid all our talking, posturing, and fantasising in the light of ongoing decline, the ‘one thing necessary’, a dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit, seems to be the ‘one thing neglected.’ We need Pentecost fifty-two weeks of the year.
It’s no good telling stories of what the Holy Spirit did in past generations or when we were younger if we are not also relying on the Spirit now as well. It reminds me of my favourite story about the nineteenth century American evangelist D L Moody. During one visit to the UK, he spoke to a group of church leaders on the text Ephesians 5:18, ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ He pointed out (correctly) that the Greek actually says, ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’
An Anglican clergyman objected. ‘Mr Moody! Why do I have to be filled with the Spirit now? I was filled with the Spirit at conversion.’
And Moody simply replied: ‘Because I leak.’
Isn’t that our problem? We have leaked the Holy Spirit and we are dying. Is anything more urgent than petitioning God passionately to pour out his Spirit on his people again?
Let me ask you: are there any ways in which your church is in denial about the fact that the move of God which created our churches is dying? Are there ways you are trying to hide from this? We can have all the coffee mornings we like, but unless the Spirit is poured out, we are done for. Are we crying out for the Holy Spirit?
Secondly, the company of the prophets
If Elisha starts off on the wrong foot but then gets it right, the company of the prophets gets things the opposite way around. They start off well. Look at all the times they warn Elisha, ‘Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?’ Get real, Elisha, they say: you can’t play pretend, you need to face up to reality. This is good, honest living. They know you can’t live in denial. They know that fantasising and hiding are not helpful. They show a healthy instinct.
So where does it all go wrong for them? Well, that happens after Elijah has been taken to heaven and Elisha has taken up the prophetic mantle, both literally and spiritually, with Elijah’s cloak. After Elisha proves his spiritual authority by dividing the waters and walking across, we read this:
15 The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, ‘The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.’ And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. 16 ‘Look,’ they said, ‘we your servants have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.’
The very people who have warned Elisha that Elijah will be taken from him now propagate a delusional fantasy that maybe he hasn’t really gone, after all. Elisha may have the Spirit resting on him, but they still want the good old days, even though God is blatantly doing something new now.
And I fear this is where much of the mainstream, traditional church is spiritually today. God is doing something else, but we still want to propagate the old ways. Look at how Methodism clings onto its old structures. We must have our Circuits and Districts! So, we combine them into ever larger sizes. Here I am, in our circuit where three old ones were amalgamated twelve years ago, preaching at a church that is not one of mine, and travelling thirty-four miles to do so.
Or another Methodist example: every church must have a minister in pastoral charge. We can’t possibly let churches have a vacancy, like many other denominations do. Our congregations become infantilised, and our ministers get stretched over ever more small churches, because the rate of decline in church members is faster than the rate of decline in numbers of churches. We ministers are then far less able to be effective, because we are just travelling cheerleaders and find it hard to embed ourselves in a community.
Can’t anybody see what is blatantly in front of our eyes, that the system is breaking and dying? Have we so idolised the system that no-one will grasp the nettle? Yet we still go looking for Elijah when the Spirit is resting on Elisha.
But here’s the thing: although the company of the prophets go from being realistic and honest to living in a world of make-believe, ultimately there is hope. Why? Because if you continue reading in 2 Kings, the company of the prophets continues to work in partnership with Elisha. They come to the realisation that they must follow the leading of the Spirit in their day, even if that means doing something new.
And surely the same is true for us. We have lived for so long under the illusion that the structures the Holy Spirit led John Wesley to establish in the eighteenth century are still the structures we must use today, as if somehow God’s leading then were on the same level as Holy Scripture itself. But if we are both to survive and to thrive as the church, we shall need to stop our version of looking for the body of Elijah and instead ask what the Spirit is doing through the Elishas of our day. It may look very different. What we can guarantee is that if it is truly the work of the Holy Spirit then it will not be contrary to biblical teaching.
What might we do about it? Exactly what we have already seen Elisha do. We need as much of the Holy Spirit as the Lord will be pleased to pour out on us. When we are full of the Spirit we shall be led in Christlike ways. When we are full of the Spirit, we shall find that God will lead us to express the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ in new ways for our generation. Some sacred cows will need to go, but it will only be us who made them sacred in the first place, not God.
So, yes – we still need to do those administrative things that consume our time, like the accounts, Safeguarding, and GDPR, and we need to do them well as a good witness. But for all their importance on our agenda, the one thing that needs to trump them all in our priorities is seeking the fulness of the Holy Spirit.
There is a certain cluster of topics that a minister can preach on and will know they are likely to provoke guilt feelings in the congregation. One is evangelism: which of us truly is a good witness to Christ? Another is prayer: can any of us say we pray enough, or are close to God?
And another is today’s subject: giving. How easy it is for a preacher to lay the guilt on thick when it comes to money. You may have had someone use emotional manipulation to obtain greater giving from you, either in the church or in the world. You may have been sucked in by the consumerism of our culture. If I had wanted to do that here, I would have preached this sermon before our annual Gift Day, not after – as is the case.
In our reading, Paul is not talking about regular giving. He is organising a collection among the early churches to support those in Jerusalem who are suffering from a famine. What he’s promoting here is closer to the one-off gifts we make when a natural disaster hits somewhere in the world, and the Disasters Emergency Committee springs into action with TV adverts.
One or two of you will say, so why don’t you go to the Old Testament teaching about tithes and offerings, then? Isn’t that about regular giving? If we did a series of sermons on the subject, I would cover it. But at this point I will just say that tithes and offerings are more complicated than some Christians think. Translating them to our situation is not that straightforward.
But in today’s passage, even though it is about one-off gifts, Paul goes back to basic Christian principles about giving to make his appeal here. Those same basic principles should be at the foundation of all our decisions about giving. So let’s explore them.
Firstly, Generosity
6 Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
Now this is a verse that has been abused by some Christian leaders. They have made false promises to congregations on the basis of this verse that if they give a lot of money, then God will bless them with a lot of money. They have appealed to the base instinct that wants to get rich and said, if you want to be wealthy then ‘sow a seed’ – usually into that preacher’s ministry. Sure enough, the preacher then gets enough money to fly everywhere in a private jet, while those who give find no improvement in their financial position and may even be driven into poverty. I think there is a special place in Hell for such preachers.
But there is still an important principle here, and that is the call for the Christian to have a generous character. There is only one way to develop a generous character, and that is to be generous.
We have good reason for doing this: we follow a generous God. I shall have more to say about that in a few minutes, but for now let’s note that Paul ends this passage on that note:
15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
God’s indescribable gift is Jesus! How generous was God in giving up his only begotten Son to take on human flesh and die and rise again for the salvation of the world? We seek to give generously, because we love and serve a God who is the supreme generous giver.
What kind of earthly parent would ask, how little can I get away with giving to my children? We know instead that loving parents give to their children at their own expense. This is what God has done for us. This is why we are called to be generous givers.
So a question we need to ask of ourselves when assessing our giving to the church is not, ‘How little can I get away with?’ but ‘How much from my income and in my circumstances would constitute generous giving?’
Remember: this is about the growth of Christian character. Do I desire to be like our generous God?
Secondly, Cheerfulness
7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
‘God loves a cheerful giver.’ The late American Baptist preacher and sociologist Tony Campolo put this verse into practice. When driving on a toll road and coming up to the toll booth, he would wind his window down, give money to the clerk on duty, and say to them, ‘This is for me, and also for my friend in the car behind.’ Then, as he drove away, he would watch in his rear view mirror the ensuing conversation between the toll clerk and the next driver. You’ve guessed: Campolo didn’t know the driver behind him from Adam, but he took joy in his giving.
Your trivia fact for this week is that the Greek word translated in English as ‘cheerful’ is hilaros, from which we get our word ‘hilarious’. Does God love a hilarious giver? Why not? Tony Campolo had much hilarity in paying for the driver behind him. And is not God full of joy and hilarity?
So I’m very much trying to avoid making this sermon one of those gloomy ones that load more and more guilt on people. As I said at the beginning, the moment people hear the sermon is on this subject, the risk of ladling guilt on people is high.
And I hope you heard that in Paul’s language, much as he wants the Corinthians to give generously, there is no emotional manipulation here: the decision on how much to give should not be made ‘reluctantly or under compulsion’.
What if Christians are reluctant to give? When [my predecessor] John Illsley began his ministry in Sheffield, the local Anglican vicar was Robert Warren. He was in charge of a massive church with several satellite congregations across Sheffield: St Thomas, Crookes. They saw four-figure attendances on Sundays, and due to their growth had held several appeals to support more building. Warren said in a book that if people did not want to give, the answer was not to make them feel guilty. Rather, it was to give more grace. It is when we truly understand how gracious and merciful God has been to us in Christ that we shall want to give. Then it will be a freewill decision, and it will be joyful.
Thirdly, Trust
8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:
‘They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures for ever.’
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
Giving is an act of trust. I confess that for a long time I had trouble believing in a God who was a generous Father. My human father certainly showed me love, but my upbringing was one where for the most part my parents didn’t have it easy financially. I would always be the child in the class at school who received the cheapest Christmas presents. I overheard conversations between Mum and Dad about how they were going to manage their money.
But I learned an amazing lesson about the generous Father I could trust when I wanted to go to theological college and explore what God’s call on my life was. It was near the end of the days of student grants, not student loans, and the college that accepted me did not qualify for mandatory grants. My Local Education Authority took that as reason to deny me a grant.
The college told me I needed to guarantee my funding for the first year, and I appealed against the refusal to give me a grant. Forty-eight hours before the deadline the college gave me, I still hadn’t heard about my appeal. Phoning up, I was told, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Faulkner, there is a letter in the post saying we have rejected your appeal.’
It was at this late juncture that people suddenly started giving me money. My parents rediscovered a long-forgotten savings account. A student who was taking a year out between Sixth Form and college to work and save money for a car felt prompted to give that money to me. That student’s boyfriend also felt prompted to give me some funds. As did two elderly ladies at church, one of whom wrote the most moving letter in which she said, ‘It seems like God is calling you to trust him to meet your needs. He will meet ours, too.’
The next Sunday evening I was preaching at another church in our circuit. I preached on ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and said that God had met my needs for college. In fact, I only had three-quarters, but I didn’t tell them that.
After the service, a middle-aged single man invited me back to his flat for coffee. As we sat in his living room, he explained that he had planned a three-week holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie. But his auntie had since died, and he no longer felt like going. He had already exchanged his sterling currency for New Zealand dollars, but since doing so their dollar had been devalued. Holding onto the money in the hope that the dollar’s value would improve, in fact it kept declining. Now this money was just annoying him. Would I like to take this annoyance off his hands?
Before I could say anything, he had thrown some plastic Thomas Cook envelopes into my lap. I can still remember the precise amount. 2310 NZ dollars. My Dad worked for NatWest and got me a staff rate of exchange: £742.31. Our friend had originally exchanged £1000 – and we’re talking a few decades ago now!
God blesses us, not so that we can financially keep up with the Joneses, but so that we can bless others. Let us trust him.
Conclusion, Thanksgiving
11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. 14 And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Originally, I wanted to make a whole fourth point about thanksgiving, but time is not on my side and so I just want to emphasise that thanksgiving is the desired result of true Christian giving. The recipients of our generosity will thank God (verse 11). Their thanksgiving will overflow (verse 12). God will be praised, because people will see us living out our faith (verse 13) as we respond to his grace (verse 14). And as I noted earlier, this is all rooted in our thanksgiving for God’s giving to us (verse 15).
If thanksgiving is at the heart of our giving, then this is about worship. Our giving is not a subscription to a club or even fund-raising: that is why in a service, I refer to the offering, not the collection.
By the grace of God, may we learn to give as an act of worship.
I expect you’re aware of the custom whereby just before the Sunday service starts, the duty steward prays for the preacher in the vestry. Over the years, I have heard a variety of such prayers, the worst being one Good Friday where in his prayer the steward called the death of Jesus a mistake.
But another common one starts something like this: “Dear Lord, we gather here today to leave the world outside behind and concentrate on you.” Now I guess that could be interpreted more than one way. But is our worship really an escape from the world?
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord (verse 1a).
Is that just a date in Isaiah’s diary? I don’t think so. If all he wanted to tell us was the day on which he had a powerful experience of worship and commissioning, he would surely just have named the month and the day of the month. ‘On the twenty-third day of Nisan,’ or something like that.
No. Locating his divine encounter as happening ‘In the year that King Uzziah died,’ Isaiah affirms that worship takes place in the middle of what is happening in the world. The events of history do not drive our worship, for sure, but worship is located in the midst of politics, economics, and every power that competes to shape our lives.
What does this worship look like?
Firstly, glory:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
I once arrived at a church as a visiting preacher and was greeted by a member of the congregation who said, “I hope you’re going to entertain us today.” This brought out my Mister Grump side, and I replied, “Well, I hope we’re going to worship.”
We must get rid of this idea that worship is entertainment. It is a prominent heresy across all sorts of Christian traditions and worship styles. Worship is to give glory to the triune God, who is holy, holy, holy. We are here to honour his name and to give thanks for all he has done. Worship is God-centred or it is not worship at all.
Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.[i]
None of this is an escape from the world, for God is the greatest reality there is. Moreover, as the Creator of this world and its Redeemer, God is where our focus needs to be, without having an escapist mentality.
So while it’s not true to say that ‘the world sets the agenda’ – that was one of the heresies from liberals at the World Council of Churches – it is true that we come to focus our energies on God, who created the world we live in through Christ and by the Spirit, and who also redeems the world through Christ and in the power of the Spirit.
Secondly, confession:
5 ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’
If we truly encounter the living God in his glory in worship, then we shall realise quickly that we do not match up. That’s what Isaiah realises, and not only for himself. He admits not only his personal sin, but the sin of the nation. A true encounter with God will blow away once and for all the idea that we’re all good, decent people who merely make the occasional error in life. It will relieve us of the comfortable illusion that we are good enough for eternal life.
Furthermore, here our lives are calibrated not by the popular standards of the world but by God and his holiness alone.
Initially, this leaves Isaiah with a sense of hopelessness. He cannot get beyond ‘Woe is me! I am ruined!’ That’s desperate.
But God can get beyond it. A seraph brings a live coal from the altar, the place of sacrifice. It is God who provides for Isaiah and God’s people to know forgiveness and the removal of their sin.
If you remember the painful story in Genesis where God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, you may recall how Isaac asks his father who will provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Abraham replies that God will provide the lamb. And he does – mercifully not in the way he was expecting.
Ultimately, we believe that is what God supremely did with Jesus at the Cross. The Lamb of God was provided. Now our sins are removed as we confess them. They have already been atoned for at Calvary.
The regularity of our failure is why we confess and receive assurance of forgiveness in every Sunday service. It is God’s free gift. We have not earned it. God has reached out in love to the world at the Cross. Will we look at the worldly horror of the Cross and allow it to cleanse and transform us?
Thirdly, God’s word:
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’
Following confession and forgiveness, the way is clear for us to hear God’s word. That’s why the reading of Scripture and the preaching come next in a typical Sunday service, by the way.
There’s no reading of Scripture in the Temple for Isaiah. It’s questionable what, if anything, they had in written form at this point – not much, for sure. But in any case, God speaks directly on this occasion.
If we are to be worshippers in the midst of the world, we need to hear God’s marching instructions to us. ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’
Therefore, the reading and proclaiming of the word is to have an honoured and central place in our worship. It is not that with a variety of preachers we get to hear a whole host of different opinions, because the job of the preacher is not to foist their sentiments or even prejudices on the congregation; it is rather to proclaim what the Word of God says.
Therefore, there is another steward’s vestry prayer that both encourages me for its meaning but also humbles me by reminding me of the expectation on my task. It is when the steward prays that the congregation may hear your word through me. That is profoundly sobering!
This is not to say that a congregation should be uncritical of what the preacher says, although I do note the old joke which asks what the favourite Sunday lunch in a Christian household is. The answer is, ‘Roast preacher.’
But it is to say that we should be like the Berean Jews, whom Paul encountered on his missionary travels. In Acts 17:11 we read of them,
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
In some old pulpits, the preacher was confronted by a small plaque. On it were the words of the Greeks who came to meet Jesus before the crucifixion, where they told the disciples, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Our prayer and aspiration for worship needs to be that we see and hear Jesus, so that we know what he is expecting of us in the world.
Fourthly and finally, response:
And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’ (verse 8b)
Isaiah responds to God’s word. He is willing to go into the world on behalf of his God. We learn in the subsequent verses that he can’t necessarily expect people to respond positively to what he has to say, but nevertheless someone must go, and then if there is no redemption there will be no excuse. People will not be able to say they were not warned.
How does this play out in our worship? Within the service, it comes in the intercessions, which are meant to be a response to the word. (I’m not sure they always are, but that is the theory.) If you were used to services where the sermon was the climax of the service before the final hymn and blessing, but then noticed a change, where the intercessions followed the sermon, well, this is why.
And so it’s right that in our intercessions we pray not only for ourselves and the church, but for those in power, authority, or influence. If you read the Bible carefully, you will realise that the divine commands are not limited to God’s people. You will hear prophets speaking to kings and nations and all in authority.
This is a holy task. In the early church, those who had not yet been baptised and professed faith and who were undergoing catechism classes would leave the worship before the intercessions. Why? Because intercession is a priestly task, and they were not yet part of what we later called ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ But for those of us who believe, we are acting as God’s priests when we intercede in response to the word.
But the response doesn’t stop with the end of the prayers or with the blessing at the conclusion of the service. The genuineness of our response to the word is tested by what we do when we leave. At the end of the Latin Mass, Catholics were effectively told in the liturgy, ‘The Mass is over: now go out!’
Isaiah did that. It’s our calling, too. Like him, we may or may not see success in response to our bearing God’s word to the world in word and deed. But Isaiah kept faithfully doing it in response, because to do so in the world was intrinsic to true worship. May we do the same.
Big Circumstance 