Sermon: A Servant Psalm

I have several friends who are authors. Some are journalists, others are playwrights, some are ghost writers for famous people who cannot write sufficiently well for their books, still others are novelists (everything from historical romance to science fiction) and some write non-fiction titles.

If I have learned one thing from my friends in the writing trade, it is a principle they all hold dear:

Show, don’t tell.

If they want to get a point across, they show it rather than telling it. They do not lecture you; they do not give you philosophical principles; instead, they describe, or they tell a story.

So it is with the Psalms. As songs, they are works of art, like books. While they contain great spiritual truth, they tend to show it rather than tell it.

That certainly happens in today’s Psalm. The Psalmist does not give us a host of reasons as to why we should consider ourselves servants of God; instead, the servant-master relationship is shown. It is described.

And perhaps that’s important when for us the notion of being somebody’s servant is not one we readily approve.

So first of all in Psalm 123, servants look up.

I lift up my eyes to you,
to you who sit enthroned in heaven.
²As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy. (Verses 1-2)

Servants metaphorically ‘look up’, because God is enthroned in heaven, not in Jerusalem, the place to which they are heading on pilgrimage. However grand the Jerusalem Temple was, Jewish thought always understood that God was not restricted to a building, nor was he specially present in a holy building in ways that he wasn’t elsewhere in creation. It’s something we who end up venerating church buildings would do well to remember.

But there is a deeper reason in the ‘looking up’. Eugene Peterson puts his finger on the problem:

Too often we think of religion as a far-off, mysteriously run bureaucracy to which we apply for assistance when we feel the need. We go t a local branch office and direct the clerk (sometimes called a pastor) to fill out our order for God. Then we go home and wait for God to be delivered to us according to the specifications that we have set down.[1]

We are so used to being consumers that we treat religion like that. Just as we are used to buying goods and services, and then complaining when they do not meet our expectations, so we treat God. Unless he does what we want, when we want and to the standard we want, we will demand our money back. The title of the Billy Connolly film ‘The Man Who Sued God’ is not so far off the truth of our behaviour. And if pastors don’t meet our expectations, we’ll get rid of them. If churches don’t provide all we want, we’ll move.

But our posture is one of looking up, not looking down. We are the servants, not the masters. And as I said, we don’t like that. We would rather give the orders than be subject to them. My Mum’s uncle told his children that the reason they should work hard at school was so that they were the people who gave the orders, rather than followed them.

Furthermore, servanthood is associated in our minds with some awful things, especially if servants are actually slaves. We might celebrate the abolition of the slave trade, but it still exists and does wicked things to people. If that’s what being a servant entails, we don’t want it.

And this is where the second description of servants comes in: servants seek mercy.

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy.

³Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt. (Verses 2b-3)

If you are a servant, then you certainly want a merciful master. And thankfully the testimony of the Scriptures is exactly that about God. Some may fear that being a servant puts us at risk from a despot of a God, but it is not the experience of God’s people down the centuries. Again, hear what Eugene Peterson has to say:

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He us a potter, working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for the kingdom.[2]

The God described in Christianity is the God Jesus alluded to in the character of the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. His younger son has asked for his share of the inheritance – effectively wishing his father to be dead. He squanders money, and is so desperate when it is all gone that he ends up with the pigs – a truly awful place for a good Jewish boy to be. Any respectable father in that culture would have had crossed arms, waiting for his son to return home and grovel, so no wonder the errant son plans his humble speech. But his father does what was considered inappropriate by looking out for his return, and undignified when he runs towards his son.

Tony Campolo: Author and speaker on political ... — Tony Campolo: Author and speaker on political and religious topics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tony Campolo tells a story in one of his books[3] where he has travelled from his home state of Pennsylvania to Hawaii and is on jet lag. As a result, he finds himself in a diner at 3 in the morning. The only other customers are a group of local prostitutes. He hears one, named Agnes, say that the next day will be her birthday, but she also says that she has never had a birthday party in her whole life.

So Campolo had a word with the diner owner. He discovered that Agnes and the other prostitutes came in every night, and asked if they could have a party for her the next night. The owner’s wife agreed to bake a cake, and it was all set up.

Agnes turned up at about 3:30 the next morning to the biggest surprise of her life. She even asked if she could take the cake home quickly so that others could see she actually had a cake before anyone else sliced it up.

At the end, Campolo found himself offering to lead a prayer. The owner of the diner said, “Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?”

Campolo replied, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.”

“No you don’t,” said the owner. “There’s no church like that. If there was I’d join it. I’d join a church like that!”

But this is the God of the Bible. He is full of mercy. He throws parties for those who have completely messed up. There is no fear in being his servant when this is the extent of his mercy.

And that takes us to a third and final description of servants in this psalm: servants are downtrodden.

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt.
⁴We have endured no end
of ridicule from the arrogant,
of contempt from the proud. (verses 3-4)

That doesn’t sound much like good news, does it? But put it like this: the servants who know their God is outrageously merciful can bring their downtrodden status to him. For a merciful God is one who is on the side of such people. And even if you don’t start off in that category, it’s possible to end up there, purely by being a disciple of Jesus Christ: at times that will earn you the ridicule and contempt of which the psalmist speaks.

Fiddler on Roof Tevya (Photo credit: jimmiehomeschoolmom)

We don’t know why the psalmist and his friends were on the receiving end of contempt. It may not so much have been simply because they were part of the people of God, but it might well have been because the people of God were not doing that well in the world. It reads as if they were suffering oppression at the time. Maybe they were being mocked, because that meant it didn’t look outwardly as if they were living under the favour of God. As Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ says to God at one point, “I know, I know. We are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?”

Those downtrodden by life may cry out to the God of mercy and he will hear them. The suffering People of God may cry out as servants to their master and he will hear them, too. If that is where we find ourselves in life, there is a God enthroned in heaven who will help, normally using human agency to do so.

What might we do about it? Well, remember that this is one of the Psalms of Ascent, sung by pilgrims on their way to the Jerusalem Temple for a great feast. They would surely have brought their troubles to God in prayer – just as they were already doing in the words of the psalm. They would have entered into worship, and thus experienced a little of God’s perspective on life. They would have made sacrifices, prefigured the great sacrifice God would make in due time for them through the offering of his Son. This God would in Jesus Christ endure contempt and ridicule himself so that the lowest strata of society could experience his merciful love.

What does this mean for us now? I think it has to turn us into the kind of ‘church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.’ There is a call for us to show God’s lavish love to those rejected and sidelined by society. If those who endure contempt today are to know about a merciful God, then we have to demonstrate it to them.

That gives us plenty of scope in the wider world. You probably don’t need me to give you too many examples from the news, and I invite you to get involved by supporting organisations that demonstrate God’s love to the broken.

But I also suggest we need to put this into practice close to home and not simply give money to bodies that will do this for us at a distance. We should put out our best biscuits, regardless of who is in the house. If the nice biscuits are only for those who know how to behave, what are we saying about the Gospel? People with troubled backgrounds need to be as welcome as anyone else here at KMC.

I wonder whether people would experience us as the kind of ‘church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning’, as Tony Campolo describes. Or would they react like the owner of the diner, saying, “There’s no church like that,” all the while secretly wishing there was?

[1] A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p58.

[2] Op. cit., p59f.

[3] The Kingdom Of God Is A Party, pp1-9.

July 20, 2013 0

Sermon: Where Does My Help Come From?

Psalm 121

When I was a child, one of the great parts of preparing for our family summer holiday was Dad’s planning of the journey. He would pore over maps, come up with a route and then ring the RAC to see what they thought. There was no chance in those days to go online and find out up to date information on road works or local hazards, so he made use of his RAC membership in this way. Armed finally with Dad’s plans and the RAC’s advice, we would set off.

On one occasion, we were heading to Willersley Castle in Derbyshire for our holiday and were driving up the M1. Dad had said something about us going via Nottingham. Mum had dozed off, but suddenly woke up and saw an exit sign for Nottingham. She screamed in panic, and Dad – who was in the middle lane – suddenly veered left across the other traffic to take the exit. Somehow nobody hit us.

And it wasn’t even the right exit for Nottingham. We needed the next one.

As we spend the summer meditating on the Psalms of Ascent, we are reflecting on ‘journey’ psalms. These are the psalms of the Jewish pilgrims as they travelled from wherever they lived to Jerusalem for the great feasts. We, too, as Christians are on a journey to Jerusalem for a great festival. However, our travels will take us to the New Jerusalem in the New Creation, for the great feast of God’s kingdom.

And like the child frustrated on a long journey, from time to time we cry out, “Are we there yet?” knowing full well we aren’t, but impatient for the glories of what awaits us.

So the Psalms of Ascent are there to be sung on our journey, too, and to sustain us in our travel to the light and beauty of God’s kingdom. None of us should speak in this life as if we have arrived: to become a Christian is not that at all. It is to have joined the pilgrims on their travels to Jerusalem.

There are dangers on the journey. It might be the panic that led to my Dad’s sudden left turn to Nottingham. Or it might be other things. One of my favourite places is Lee Abbey, a Christian retreat and conference centre in North Devon. The most direct route there involves 25% (1 in 4) hills, one of them combining the extreme gradient with a hairpin bend.

Go beyond these fair shores and you will of course find far greater challenges than those which challenge my modest driving skills. Some of my sister’s exploits when she spent three months working with a missionary hospital in Rwanda are in a different league. A combination of poor roads, over-filled vehicles and driving skills that make Italian drivers look a model of restraint might about cover some of her stories.

The Jewish pilgrims faced travelling dangers, too. Their feet could slip, and a sprained ankle when needing to walk miles with no cars and no NHS would hamper all the ambitions of pilgrimage and risk further damage to the ankle bones.

By day there would be the high temperatures if they were walking in the middle of the year. My own visit to Israel-Palestine was in July one year, and the temperatures Andy Murray and the Centre Court crowd experienced last Sunday were as nothing to what we endured, needing to drink six litres of water a day to stay hydrated.

Then there were the cold nights under clear skies. Not for those ancient pilgrims the pollution that keeps heat in, but a contrast to the day and little prospect of somewhere to sleep under cover. Wild animals would lurk; perhaps the travellers took turns to stay awake by a camp fire and guard everyone.

We face other dangers on our pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem. The attacks that would derail our journey to the Kingdom are different. There are both temptations and assaults to knock us off course.

The temptations might be summed up in the classic New Testament unholy triad of the world, the flesh and the devil. ‘World’ here does not mean creation in general, which is good, it means the prevailing culture that lives in disregard of God and his ways. So it involves all those temptations to go along with popular values, whether they are godly or not. It might mean the way we are tempted to allow ourselves to be absorbed into Surrey values of continuous acquisitiveness, the accrual of more, the necessity of taking several foreign holidays and driving a ‘Chelsea tractor’. Follow the world too keenly and we lose our passion for God and his Christ.

Similarly, the ‘flesh’ does not mean that our bodies are bad, but it does refer to a couple of things. One is our general sinful nature, our predisposition to selfishness, which can manifest in characteristics such as the whole culture of entitlement. I’m reminded of the old slogan that ‘sin is a little word with ‘I’ in the middle’.

And the flesh can also be about those ways in which good bodily desires take over and dominate. Appetites of all kinds are necessary in the ways they alert us to physical needs. But when we allow them to dominate, we end up as slaves to them, rather than servants of Christ.

The devil? Although I struggle with those Christians who see Satan behind every bad thing, I believe those who dismiss his existence are equally naïve. Jesus acknowledged the presence of an enemy of our lives, and we must beware the ways in which he tempts us by asking us to make a deal with sin.

But it is not only temptation to sin that threatens to take us off course. As well as sin, we have to cope with being sinned against – the violences done to us that we do not deserve. The enemy laughs at our pain, and further when those assaults raise questions in our minds about the goodness or even the existence of God.

Where, then, do we look for help in staying en route to the New Jerusalem? The Jewish pilgrims looked around. Perhaps when you hear those famous opening words of this psalm,

I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
where does my help come from? (Verse 1)

you think that the mountains were where they found help. Aren’t the mountains a sign of the grandeur and power of God?

Well, in some parts of Scripture they are, but not here. On a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the mountains and their foothills were anything but. They were bandit country. Think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

And hear also what Eugene Peterson has to say about them in this psalm:

During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practised on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil. There were nostrums, protections, spells and enchantments against all the perils of the road. Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go to the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influence of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Are you haunted by the demons that can use any pebble under your foot to trip you? Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief. From whence shall my help come? From Baal? From the sun priest? From the moon priestess?[1]

Is it possible that today we too go to the wrong spiritual sources for protection from the dangers of our journey to Jerusalem? I think so. The Christian who spends more time in the horoscope column than the Scriptures. Those more concerned to follow the latest guru who has been interviewed by Richard and Judy, or promoted by Oprah Winfrey. The believer who takes more guidance from friends at the health club or the school gate rather than the accumulated ancient wisdom of the Church. The church member who seeks security more in received financial wisdom than in Christ. All too often we look to our mountains instead of to the Lord.

Because that is where our help truly comes from:

My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth. (Verse 2)

Not from the hills, but from the Lord. He has the power to keep us on the road. It is to him that we should turn.

How, then, does our Lord keep us on track or even put us back on the road?

Taking first the question of how our own sin (‘world, flesh and devil’-caused) takes us off-road, we remember before anything else how astonishing the forgiveness of God is. Our Father is not grudging in forgiving us; he is the Father who throws lavish parties with feasting for returning prodigals. What could be more wonderful for getting us back in the right direction, aligning our lives with the life of the world to come?

And accompanying that is the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. God’s commitment to us is that he will always set us back on the road through forgiveness, and he will give us the strength to stay on the road.

But what about the way we get knocked off by what is done to us? How often are we discouraged by the rude interruption of suffering, and the seismic jolts of untoward life events? Some of us question God’s existence, and so the journey becomes pointless. Some of us don’t do that, but we wonder about God’s goodness, and whether we want to move closer to him.

In response to that, I want to share with you something that struck me recently when I was reading an old John Ortberg book. He talks about the way God pays attention to us. He describes the number of times in the Gospels that something happens for good because Jesus ‘saw’ someone. He refers to the so-called Aaronic blessing with which we shall conclude Holy Communion this morning – the same words we use to bless babies who are baptised:

The LORD bless you and keep you,
The LORD make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you,
The LORD look on you with kindness and give you peace.

If God’s face is shining on us and he is looking on us with kindness, then surely he is paying attention to us.

“But,” we say, “God is silent in my suffering. I can’t hear him saying anything to me.”

Might that mean, then, that what God is actually doing as he pays attention to us is simply listening? The best listeners are those who are not thinking of how they will reply while the other person speaks. Could it be that God knows we still need to pour out more of our pain to him before he says a word? Perhaps, unlike the husband who hides behind his newspaper when his wife begins to speak, God is quietly giving us his attention, ready to speak when necessary. Maybe this is his ‘watching over you’ that the Psalmist describes (verse 5).

I venture to suggest, then, that while God does not stop harm coming our way, he ‘will keep [us] from all harm’ (verse 7) and ‘watch over [our] coming and going’ (verse 8) by keeping our spiritual lives with him. The God of Psalm 121 is the God of assurance. Wesley said we not only need to be saved and can be saved – even saved to the uttermost – we can also know we are saved.

And this God – the God of assurance – is the God of Psalm 121, the God who sets us back on our eternal journey.

[1] A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p36f.

July 12, 2013 0

Sermon: Simple Mission

Isaac Watts (Photo credit: treehouse1977)

Luke 10:1-20

I am sure you will recall the hymn,

Come, let us join our cheerful songs
With angels round the throne;
Ten thousand thousand are their tongues,
But all their joys are one.
(Isaac Watts)

One Methodist minister of a previous generation used to twist those last two lines to describe certain preachers:

Ten thousand thousand are their texts,
But all their sermons one.

You will know the sort of preacher who always seems to harp on about the same subject, whatever the Bible passage. You know these preachers are obsessed with one thing. You wonder whether they will ever broaden out and cover what the Apostle Paul called ‘the whole counsel of God’.

There is, however, one theme that keeps recurring in my preaching in recent years. But it can’t be avoided in today’s Lectionary Gospel, because it is front and centre: mission.

And if I do speak often about mission, it’s for this reason: a key element of my vision for the churches I serve is that we give mission priority in our lives. And when something is central to your vision, you can’t mention it enough. I can’t afford to allow us to forget that mission has to dominate our vision. Some people say that the church is here to worship, but we are also here for mission. Indeed, the two are connected. As one preacher put it: ‘Mission exists because worship doesn’t.’

And when you have a vision, you have to keep restating it. It’s surprising how you can certain things from the front of a church, and then discover people haven’t heard what you said. So vision has to be repeated, even if it sounds like you have a one-track mind. And I intend continuing to emphasise mission here.

So we come to this passage – one of my favourites on the subject, and actually the first passage I ever preached on as a Local Preacher On Note. Mission is a theme that makes many Christians nervous for a variety of reasons, but I like this reading, because it reminds us that Jesus uses ordinary disciples in his mission. He has sent out the Twelve in the previous chapter, but this time we read that he appoints ‘seventy others’ and sends them out (verse 1). We don’t know their names. They are the regular disciples without a high profile who are put to work by Jesus.

Not only does it remind us that he uses ordinary followers, there are themes here that address some of our fears.

Firstly, Jesus here shows us that mission has a simple approach. Think of how we have often conceived of mission. If it is evangelism, it has been along the lines that we need a lot of churches to pull together, raise a lot of money and stage evangelistic meetings in large venues such as theatres of football stadia with a big name preacher. They take a lot of organisation, and many things can only be done by experts.

Now I have nothing against the big event. I have been involved in a few, and there are occasions in the Gospels when Jesus speaks to a ‘multitude’. But we do not have that approach here. Instead, Jesus sends out the seventy – the ‘ordinary disciples’, as I have said – and they go without purse, bag or sandals (verse 4). There isn’t a big budget here. There is no importation of a big name celebrity preacher. The only big name person in this story is the One who sends these people out on their mission!

Why is this? Because at heart, all you need for mission is ordinary Christians telling other ordinary people what they have discovered in Jesus and how he has changed them. You don’t need fund-raising or an advertising campaign for that. You just need people who love Jesus.

So it doesn’t matter here that we are a small church. It doesn’t even matter that a lot of us are elderly, and that many of us have health problems. Because none of that need get in the way of us simply telling the story of our faith in Jesus at the right time to our friends, families and neighbours. Do not worry that we lack the energetic young people that some other churches in Addlestone. Do not be disheartened when you see some of the larger churches spending bigger sums of money on various projects. None of these things is a barrier to us getting on with the mission of God. All that mission takes is a bunch of people who love Jesus and who are therefore prepared to tell their story. It doesn’t require big bucks, it doesn’t mean Bible-bashing, it simply requires those who are prepared to tell a love story. And we have such people here – don’t we?

Secondly, Jesus shows us that mission has a simple principle. Again, we don’t always think mission is simple like this, do we? We think that for mission to happen and to be successful, it all depends on us. We must learn techniques, we must deploy them properly, if we are asked questions by non-Christians we must have the right answers up our sleeves … that’s a huge burden to bear, isn’t it? So much effort to expend. So many things we must ensure go right. What a responsibility!

But again, Jesus shows us that mission is rather different from that picture. Yes, there is the general need to be obedient to the call, but mission never did depend on us getting all the mechanics right. Ultimately, it doesn’t depend on us, it depends on God.

And we see that in the reading. I draw your attention to a part of the passage that seems a touch mysterious to some, but which is one of my favourite parts. Hear verses 5 and 6 again:

Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

‘If anyone is there who shares in peace’ is an inclusive language way of saying something like this in older language: ‘If a man of peace leaves there.’ Jesus tells his followers to look for men and women of peace. He seems to be telling them to look out for people who show they are receptive to the message, and not to waste their time on those who are scornful.

But here’s the issue for us: how come there are already people who are receptive to the message of Jesus before a disciple of Jesus ever gets to them? What do we make of that? We know it happens. In the book of Acts, the Roman centurion Cornelius is somehow ready for the message that Simon Peter brings, even before he arrives. Missionaries tell stories of going to villages that have never previously been visited by Christians, and encountering people who have had dreams in which Jesus appears to them. What does this all mean?

Basically, it means that God goes ahead of us. That’s why – although we need to be obedience to the call – the success of mission doesn’t depend on us. God shows up in people’s lives before we do, and he prepares them to hear the Good News.

So when we have the courage and love to talk about our faith in Jesus to people, we are looking for signs that God has got there before us. Does something stir in these people? Are there signs of interest? Or are we just being humoured? Worse, are we simply being mocked? It’s worth persisting if God is opening up interest, but if not, then remember what Jesus said about throwing pearls before swine. The fact is, we cannot do the heavy lifting of mission on our own. If God is not lifting the weights for us and enabling our witness to be received, then move on. But if it is being received, stay with it, because God the Holy Spirit is at work and we need to co-operate.

The third and final thought I want to share on this occasion from this passage is that Jesus tells us that mission has a simple message. In the passage, Jesus puts it like this:

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ (Verses 8-10)

Now perhaps you are thinking, hang on Dave, you said this was a simple message. There’s nothing simple about curing the sick! Give me a chance to expand on this. The message is in the words at the end of that quote: ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ That is the basis for all we do – the message of God’s kingdom. It is a message that God has made Jesus king of creation, despite what the world has done to him. So despite sinful people nailing him to a Cross, God raised him from the dead and vindicated him as his ‘right hand man’, and now people owe him allegiance.

When he reigns, blessings come – and that may include things such as healings. That’s why the Church Council was happy to let a group of Christians from other churches set up outside here each month for an initiative called ‘Healing on the Streets’. You may have seen them recently, and they will start in earnest come September.

We may not all have a healing ministry, but we all have ways of demonstrating the rule of Christ over our life and of others. It may be in being a voice for those suffering injustice. It may be that you can do something practical for those who are poor and in need, as the Food Bank here does. Or perhaps you can get alongside someone who is despised by society, and be an example of Christ’s love to them.

Whatever way it is, the simple message of Christian mission is that God has made Jesus king, and now all are called to bow the knee to him. This is not something we simply speak out, we have to demonstrate it as well. That is why you get the reference in the passage to ‘curing the sick’. It is incumbent upon us not only to call people to follow Jesus as Lord, but to put that into practice in our own lives and give demonstration of the things King Jesus cares about in our world by practical action on our part.

Of course, you may say that the reign of Jesus is a simple message to describe in word and deed, but a challenging one to put into practice, and you would be right. However, we have the help of the Holy Spirit to do this. What is more, the Spirit equips ordinary disciples of Jesus to engage in this mission, and that same Spirit goes ahead to prepare the way in people’s lives.

All in all, Christian mission is much simpler than we have allowed ourselves to believe. So what’s stopping us?

July 6, 2013 0

Sermon: The Worshipping Community

Colossians 3:12-17

“What does your church offer that’s missing at the YMCA? … When you read your church’s bulletin and determine the invitation you offer, you will know whether your church is a community center or the globalizing, wounded arm of the Savior.”

So asked the late American pastor Calvin Miller in his ‘Letters to a Young Pastor’. Not that I claim to be young, you understand.

But it seems to be a good question. What is different about the church? Or, what could or should be different about the church?

And it seems good to ask it today, when we have so many visitors here for Emma’s baptism. I know some of you are churchgoers, but I expect a good number of you aren’t. You join us in the middle of a series where we are thinking about what our vision for a worshipping community is, and if you have any constructive feedback for us, please let us know.

It’s easy, of course, to find fault with the church, and often the fault-finding is deserved. While I sometimes recount that the famous celebrity who grew up along the same road as I did was Bruce Forsyth – and I play with ideas of changing the liturgy to begin with, ‘Nice to see you’ – another local lad was the late broadcaster Adrian Love. He attended the same grammar school as my Dad. Love was a churchgoer in his younger days, but gave it up because he couldn’t abide the persistent atmosphere of gossip in the church.

Against that background, it’s easy to have a romantic view of the early church, but the Apostle Paul would not have had to dictate the words of his that we read a few moments ago had everything been perfect then. So for the next few minutes we’ll consider those words on the basis that there is a gap the church needs to straddle, between how things are now and the vision of how things could be. This isn’t going to be an exercise in slating the church, but it is meant to be a time when we might become restless with things as they are, and develop a longing for how they might be.

Here, then, are three characteristics of a Christian worshipping community:

Firstly, love. I don’t think there is any other way to sum up the first three verses of the reading. Let’s hear them again:

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.¹³Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Verses 12-14)

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with each other, forgiving one another – all united by love. These are the qualities of love, of wanting to do whatever it will take for others to flourish. All of them could be taken as qualities of Jesus’ life – he was compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient and forgiving. Paul is calling Christians to love after the pattern of Jesus. It’s not real worship unless we love one another. Our relationships need to be whole, healing and authentic. If I say I’m worshipping God while I’ve got it in for my brother or sister Christian, then I am not truly worshipping at all.

But it’s a bit scary to speak about loving after the pattern of Jesus, isn’t it? Who could possibly do that? We know we fall short. The everyday reality is that we are fallible, failing, sinful people. We don’t make the grade. I was once at a conference where a seminar speaker asked us to take Paul’s famous words about love from 1 Corinthians 13 – ‘love is patient, love is kind, love keeps no record of wrongs’, and so on – and remove the word ‘love’, substituting our own names. Then we had to read it aloud. Most of us tripped into embarrassed laughter at the thought that we were patient and kind, keeping no record of wrongs. The speaker then asked us to remove the word ‘love’ and put in the name ‘Jesus’. Reading the words then made complete sense: ‘Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind,’ and the rest.

We are left, then, with this gap between the kind of people we sadly know ourselves to be and the sort of people we would aspire to be. And if we had to love like Jesus from a standing start straight to self-giving and self-sacrifice, we wouldn’t have a chance.

But it’s not like that. Paul starts with these words:

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved … (Verse 12a)

He can call us to love, because of who we are in God’s sight. We are chosen, holy (set apart) and – perhaps most important of all, dearly loved. The love we are called to demonstrate is not something that is a cold obligation. Rather, Paul says, love because you are loved. When you know you are loved, does that not change the way you live? The knowledge that someone loves you gives you security, and you risk doing things you wouldn’t otherwise have chanced. When you know you are loved, you don’t walk with stooping shoulders but with your head held high.

It’s all that and more in a relationship with Jesus Christ. We don’t love in order to be loved by God: we love because we are already loved. Loved with an everlasting love, the Bible says. Loved to the point of death, death on a Cross. And when we know we are loved like that, we find through God’s Holy Spirit the beginnings of bridging that gap between our weaknesses now and the vision of loving like Jesus.

Secondly, peace. Now – the love we have just described puts us on the road to peace, especially when we bear with each other and forgive one another. We start demonstrating a measure of reconciliation that is deeply appealing to broken and suffering people.

But Paul speaks of peace in another way in verse 15:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.

When Paul says, ‘Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, the Greek word translated ‘rule’ is one that means an umpire or a referee. Christ’s peace is to blow the whistle in the church. When there are disagreements or even disputes – and we’d be naïve to think we won’t have them – then it is the peace of Christ that stops play or calls a foul. When there is something good – dare I say when we have scored a goal? – it is Christ’s peace that marks the fact and the style of our celebrations.

But if we really stretch the metaphor even further beyond what Paul had in mind, it might be worth asking, what kind of referee or umpire are we dealing with? Unfortunately, we often treat Christ and his peace like a football referee. We think we can argue him out of the decision he has made. We think we can show dissent and get away with it. And I know, of course, that Colin Stone would be deeply disappointed if I didn’t make an allusion to Chelsea players in this respect! How tragic it is that in the church we too often dissent from what the peace of Christ decrees. We don’t get our way, so we throw our toys out of the pram. Some aspect of church life doesn’t suit our tastes, so we break our relationships to go elsewhere. We don’t like what one individual does, so we bad mouth them behind their backs.

But what if we were dealing not with a football referee but a rugby referee, where dissent is punished by moving the kick ten metres nearer your goal? And therefore what if we allowed every aspect of Christ’s peace to rule our lives as a community? Not just peace in the sense of quietness, but the desire to overcome conflict, the desire to see harmony flourish, a commitment to justice in our relationships, strong resolve to work for healing in every area of life? I dare you to believe that spiritually we can hear Christ blowing the whistle on some of our behaviour, and that if only we were to treat him as the rugby referee whose will must be obeyed rather than the football referee who is constantly challenged, then we would take further steps towards being the worshipping community we long to be. We would be one in heart and mind as we come before God.

Thirdly and finally, thankfulness. When Paul finally gets onto the subject of worship in explicit words in the last couple of verses, note how words that suggest thankfulness (or gratitude) keep recurring:

And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. ¹⁷And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Verses 15b-17, italics mine.)

thankfulness is the soul that joy thrives in ! (Photo credit: Joshua Daniel O.)

Where do we fall short when it comes to thankfulness? This is serious, because thanksgiving is central to our worshipping life. But – when we are ungrateful for all the good things God has given us, something is wrong. When we take our material and spiritual blessings for granted, things are going awry. When we become so detached from our brothers and sisters in Christ that our first instinct is to look for what we can grumble about, then we have departed from God’s vision for us as a worshipping community. Sadly, some people in our churches are known for their expertise in moaning.

What would begin to change us? How would we grow in thankfulness as a Christian community? It isn’t enough to be told to be thankful: there has to be a reason. Paul’s answer is that it’s to do with ‘the message of Christ’. As we dwell on all aspects of Christ’s life and ministry, it leads us to thankfulness. We are grateful for his coming. We give thanks for his life and teaching. We express gratitude for his suffering on our behalf. We offer thanksgiving because he conquered the grave. It is a case of turning our eyes on Jesus. Reflecting on Jesus rather than on our own petty dissatisfactions will begin to transform us.

But how can we do that? Not on our own, according to Paul. It’s something where we need one another. He envisages the wonders of Jesus being embedded in every style of worship the church offers – psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. And he anticipates not our style of worship where it’s all led from the front and one person chooses almost everything, but a group of people who together say to one another, ‘I think this hymn (or psalm, or spiritual song) will encourage you.’

And from there, it starts to fan out to the whole of our lives. Whatever you do, says Paul, do it in thankfulness, is how he ends. Our life as the worshipping community doesn’t end when I pronounce the blessing at the end of the service. That is but the beginning. When we are thankful for all that Christ has done, a light shines on all parts of life.

In fact, there was a church where the exit had a sign over the arch. As the congregation left the building, there were the words, ‘Servants’ Entrance’. Because we go as a worshipping community from this place with love, peace and thankfulness into the world.

June 29, 2013 0

Sermon: A Missional Confrontation With Evil

Luke 8:26-39

Israel, Sea of Galilee (Lake of Tiberias) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was tempted to start this week’s sermon the way I began my sermon last Sunday. I figured you wouldn’t notice, as I was at Knaphill and this is Walton. The only people who would notice were those who read this on my blog.

I was going to talk about a woman called Nancy Duarte, who is a world authority on how speakers might craft the best visual presentations. She talks about the need to find something in your message that will resonate with your hearers, so that there is empathy between speaker and audience (or congregation).

But for a lot of contemporary Christians, there are difficulties finding that resonance or empathy with today’s Gospel reading. Some get worried by the references to demons. Others are troubled by what happens to the pigs. A few will know there are issues around the reference to ‘the country of the Gerasenes’ (verses 26, 37) and whether it extended to the border of the Sea of Galilee.

Nevertheless, I want to ask you to stay with me as we explore this story. Whatever problems some of you might have with the account, I believe Jesus has much to teach us here about the way we share in his mission in the world today.

In fact, let’s take up that theme at the outset: this passage is first and foremost about mission.

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. (Verse 26)

Then? What has just happened? Jesus and his disciples have just crossed the Sea of Galilee to the ‘other’ side, the Gentile side. They have survived a terrible storm, which threatened their lives, but which didn’t bother Jesus, who commanded it to stop. This is a deliberate journey. It is an utterly intentional act that he leads the disciples away from the safety and familiarity of the Jewish side of Galilee to the Gentile side. Jesus is leading his disciples out of their comfort zone.

And that is something we need him to do with us if we are to be on mission with him. How often do we want to stay in our familiar surroundings? How often do we describe outreach as ‘getting more people to join us’? We would rather it were all done on our territory, on our premises. But Jesus will not let us get away with that. If we just want to get people to join us, we are doing little more than recruiting people to our religious club. We have lost the vision of calling people to make their allegiance to the kingdom of God.

Yes, that will put us in uncomfortable circumstances. I was dwelling on that a few weeks ago when I went to the barber’s. As I waited my turn with one of the two guys in there, a student was having his hair cut by one of them. I heard him speaking disparagingly about a posh but attractive woman he had met at a social gathering. Without a trace of shame, the young man said, “It wasn’t as though I wanted a relationship with her, I only wanted to go to bed with her.” You can add your own stories, and some of you encounter these vastly different values every day. Yes, we can feel nervous when we come across them, because we are aware that our convictions will be laughed at, but it’s no good retreating from the challenge.

Make no mistake, there are forces that will want to prevent us from making our journey to the Gentile shore. The storm that rose threatened to derail Jesus and his disciples would probably have been seen by first century Jews as a demonic manifestation. The sea was a symbol of fear and for a storm to rise up there was more than a meteorological phenomenon. This was opposition to Jesus’ journey.

We face opposition, too. Yes, there are secular groups that want to obliterate all reference to God from the public discourse, not least the National Secular Society, an organisation that refuses to divulge how many members it has, but probably has no more than seven thousand.

But we have opposition within ourselves. We prefer our comforts. We want to avoid the difficult road. But you know what? We’ve tried that, and look around! It’s not working.

Friends, if there were one priority I could set for every church today, it would be to give mission the priority Jesus did, and to stop us running all our lives and our spare time around church activities. Things need to be cut. Certain high priorities at present need to be put far lower down our lists. We need to be in ‘Gentile territory’ with the love of God.

The second thing to notice – and you’ll say I’m just stating the blindingly obvious here – is that Jesus’ mission is about confrontation with evil. But before you ask why on earth the circuit is paying me a stipend to say such things, please notice that the confrontation with evil is more complex than it first appears.

Let’s begin with the problematic issue of the demons. It’s easy to assume, because we feel so superior as modern educated people, that the ‘primitive’ authors of the biblical books were mistakenly attributing what we would call mental illness to demonic activity. However, why do we make that assumption? Is it because we have already decided we are embarrassed by what is often called the ‘supernatural’? Or maybe we do so, because we know of Christians who have been irresponsible in their easy labelling of anything disturbing as being ‘of the devil’, sometimes causing pastoral damage by doing so. This has certainly happened.

But ultimately do we not as Christians have to deal with the fact that Jesus recognised the existence of the demonic? Were we then to say that Jesus only did so because he was a child of his time, then have we not come close to denying that he is Lord? It is one thing to say that Jesus limited himself in his incarnation, but it is quite another to say that he was wrong.

So I conclude that there is a spiritual dimension to evil that needs to be faced – and faced not with fear but with faith. I think it fair to say that the demonic is real but rare. In twenty years of ministry, I can only point with certainty to one case – although there may have been others. Indeed, the late John Wimber, whose famed healing ministry included a deliverance element, said he could count on the fingers of his hands the number of times he had encountered a demon.

However, I said that the confrontation with evil was more complex than first appears. The effect of Jesus’ ministry is not only the expulsion of the demons from the afflicted man. That is one of at least four effects Jesus has in this story. A second is that he has an effect upon the local economy when he allows the demons to enter the herd of pigs. Whatever we make of that action, the local farmers will not have been pleased. Even if we say that to a Jew the pigs were unclean (which isn’t an easy justification, because Jesus declared all foods clean), we are still left with an economic effect of Jesus’ battle with evil.

It isn’t the only time something like this happens in the New Testament. In Acts 16, Paul casts a demon out of a slave girl, and the girl’s owner is enraged that he has lost his income stream. In Ephesus, the craftsmen who make idols for people to worship become angry with Paul and his entourage who promote the worship of a different deity, one who prohibits images. Gospel preaching and deliverance ministry not only have a positive effect on those who are blessed, but a negative effect on those whose economic self-interest is dependent upon sin and exploitation.

As well as the exorcism and the social effect, there is a third effect of the confrontation with evil, and it is a positive one: the man’s relationship with society is healed. No longer does he have to be ostracised as a graveyard-inhabiting madman in chains, the only people he sees being those engaged to guard him (verse 29). Now, instead of being naked he is clothed, and instead of being afflicted he is in his right mind (verse 35). The Gospel heals his relationship with society. It heals social brokenness. Relationships are restored. Ostracism and exclusion are dissolved.

The fourth Gospel effect in Jesus’ confrontation with evil is that the healed man becomes a disciple. No longer is he subject to other powers, he is now free to follow Jesus. And so much so that he wants to leave his home and go on the road with Jesus (verse 38), although Jesus has a different task for him, a missional one among his own people of proclaiming what God has done (verse 39).

This all reminds us, then, that the mission to which we are called will be a fully rounded one. Some Christians talk as if you can pick a preference: the Gospel is about conversion, or it is about supernatural healings, or it is about reconciliation, or it is about social justice. However, there is no ‘or’ about it. The Gospel affects all areas of life, and we need to share it with that in mind. Jesus cannot be limited to a small compartment of our lives: he comes to reign in every area of life. This is the Gospel of the kingdom of God: that God seeks to act as king in every sphere. This is what we proclaim, and this is what we are to live.

Naturally, there are no guarantees here. People are not computers that can be programmed to provide a guaranteed response. Hence, when the townspeople become fearful and ask Jesus to leave them (verses 35, 37). And perhaps the frightening thing for such people is that Jesus honours their terrible request to go away.

But, but, but! If Jesus had not taken the missional initiative and confronted evil, that man would never have found healing and faith. It is because Jesus went away from the familiarity of Jewish Galilee to Gentile Galilee that the man was blessed and became a disciple.

I ask you to draw a contrast between where we are in many churches now and where we might be. Mostly, we wait for people to come to us. We follow Einstein’s definition of insanity: we keep doing the same thing, but we expect a different result. We ought to have got the message by now: doing the same old same old over and over as we do a credible impersonation of a heritage industry rather than a living organism will not get us any other result than the current one of decline and aging.

I hold out to you instead a vision of a church that is prepared to cross the stormy waters from safety to vulnerability. A church that is not interested in self-preservation but in overflowing with the Good News of God’s kingdom in every area of life, expressed in word and deed. A church that in doing so is willing to risk the negative responses of those who will tell her to go away for the sake of those who will drink the message of the kingdom as life-giving water, as the afflicted man in this story did.

Friends, if you compare where we are now with where we could be, which future do you want? The present scenario is sometimes expressed in terms that I find uncomfortable: I hear some of our older members in some churches saying, “As long as this church sees me out, that’s all I care about.” In other words, as long as the congregation doesn’t die before they do, that’s enough. I find that depressing and distressing.

We have a better alternative. Yes, it’s a bit scary, but it’s the way of life. It’s the way of Jesus.

We have two choices before us. I pray we choose the way of life.

June 22, 2013 1

Sermon: Worship and the Gifts of the Spirit

Continuing our sermon series on worship:

1 Corinthians 14:26-33

Nancy Duarte is something of a hero to me. She married her husband Mark at eighteen, and they planned to go Bible college and then find a church to pastor. Instead, Mark bought a computer, and set up a business which Nancy now heads. They design visual presentations for major international clients such as Apple. Their most famous work was to design the visuals for Al Gore’s film about the environmental crisis, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Nancy is a pastor, though – to her staff.

One of the key themes Nancy Duarte teaches about designing engaging presentations is that they must resonate with the hearers. There must be an empathy, a deep inward ‘Yes!’ to what the speaker is saying.

My problem with today’s passage was that initially I thought it might be difficult to get it to resonate with a good number of you. Some of you will struggle might be troubled by the references to speaking in tongues and prophecy. But it isn’t just that: Paul has a completely different conception of what a typical gathering for worship looks like from traditional twenty-first century Christian worshippers. We are used to most or all things being led from the front, but he assumes that everyone has a contribution. Not for him is the content all down to a trained expert.

So how are we going to appreciate what Paul says here about the common use of spiritual gifts in Christian worship? Well, one thing I need to do immediately is to take you out of the pews. In fact, not just out of the pews, but out of the church building. Because Paul was not writing to a congregation that had its own special religious space like us. The notion of church buildings is so ingrained into us, but it distorts what Paul is saying.

To put it more specifically, I once heard Professor Jimmy Dunn say that when we read that the early church met in homes, we can probably assume that they met in the homes of the wealthier members. Archaeological evidence of large homes in the Roman Empire suggests that we are talking about a space that could accommodate thirty, or at most forty people. It is neither like typical Sunday services as we know them, nor is it like the house groups of our experience.

But it does provide a context that makes sense of so much of what Paul teaches about worship in 1 Corinthians. For example, if you bridle at his command that women should keep silent, remember first of all that they are being allowed to learn in the early church (unlike other religions), but that they are probably saying, “What does that mean?” every now and again to their husbands in a confined space where that will be disruptive. Hence they are to keep their questions until they get home for the sake of good order. It also makes sense of the chaotic scenes at the Lord’s Supper in Corinth, if you read chapter 11.

And I suggest to you as well that a gathering for worship in a large home makes sense of Paul’s teaching here. See if some of what Paul says resonates more with you if I can ask you to imagine thirty or forty people crammed together in a large reception room. They are not all sitting on chairs; many are cross-legged on the floor, and others are reclining. For me, it means recalling a holiday I had with friends many years ago where we hired a villa on the Algarve. Imagine something similar – but definitely delete the pews and the church building from your thoughts this morning.

So – if you can picture this different style of gathering – let us ask three questions of the text to help us understand the place of spiritual gifts in Christian worship. Those three questions are ‘Who?’, ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’

Firstly, we ask ‘Who?’ The answer to this is, ‘Everyone’.

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. (Verse 26, italics mine)

It’s just the way of things in the early church. Paul doesn’t need to command ‘each of [them]’ to bring a contribution to worship: they do, anyway. This statement is indicative of the existing situation, and Paul doesn’t have any problems with it. After all, when he began his teaching about spiritual gifts in chapter 12, he soon used his image of the Body of Christ, where every member plays a part.

You may have heard some preachers say that church is often like going to a football match, where twenty-two thousand people in need of exercise watch twenty-two people in need of a rest. Over the centuries, we have deified forms of worship led by the experts – whether it is the more Catholic insistence on the need for a priest who can lead us into the presence of God, or the more Protestant emphasis on a sermon like this that makes teaching the Word of God more like a lecture. That, of course, comes complete with rows of seating. And as we sit in rows (whether in pews or on chairs), we reduce our sense of community and the congregation becomes passive, listening to the minister.

Now once you get beyond the numbers that were in a typical early church meeting, then the group dynamics change, and they certainly do if you go for a more formalised structure. But that is to beg the question of what to do when you grow – maybe instead of getting bigger a church should divide into two.

Of this I am sure: we have disabled many members of Christ’s Body from being able to contribute in worship. It is not to say that everybody has to lead from the front – Paul doesn’t assume that here – but it is to say that we have squashed people’s gifts. Sometimes we ministers don’t want the contributions of others. Sometimes congregations want to stay passive. Christians judge a church or a preacher by whether they were ‘fed’, but shepherds don’t merely feed the sheep, they also teach the sheep where to feed for themselves.

Hence, I want to announce something this morning that I have been thinking about ever since I came. Just as I have made a modest increase in worship participation at the communion services by involving our Youth Church, so I now want to increase adult participation, and I shall do that in the non-sacramental services. I am introducing a feature that runs in a number of churches, called ‘This Time Tomorrow’. The aim is to make the link between 10 am on Sunday and 10 am on Monday. I would like people who are willing to share (perhaps by being interviewed) what they do in the week away from church, how they approach it as a Christian, and what challenges they face for which they would like prayer. You can be in paid work, you can be retired or unemployed, you can be doing something voluntary in the community. If you would like to do this, please speak with me after the service, but I am on the lookout and will have a sign-up sheet available, too! The key is to connect our worship more clearly with every member, and through every member to the world in mission.

Our second question is ‘What?’ That is, what is every member bringing to worship?

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. (Verse 26, italics mine)

Here is why we can’t allow the rule of experts to disable the ministry of all God’s people. It’s because God has equipped not only the leaders but all of his followers. There is a wide range of gifts here. At one end are gifts that traditional Christians would easily recognise, such as ‘a hymn, or a word of instruction.’ At the other end are the gifts that unnerve some Christians, because they seem so far away from everyday life and conventional behaviour – ‘a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.’ Yet all good gifts are from God and are to be welcomed in a spirit of trust.

We shouldn’t trivialise this. The thought that someone can bring ‘a hymn’ should not be reduced to some kind of community hymn-singing, or just an opportunity to sing someone’s favourite hymn. It is all about the contribution that can be made to the overall act of worship. I would not be picking a hymn for myself, but for the sake of the gathered body of disciples. ‘A word of instruction’ is not the chance for someone to inflict their hobbyhorse on the congregation, but the prospect of someone who has been close to God in prayer and the Scriptures bringing a word that has the aroma of heaven. Likewise, the more spectacular gifts of ‘a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation’ are not occasions for Christians to show off some supposed spiritual prowess, but an opening to use something precious from God to bless his people.

But here’s where our disparity from the way the early church gathered makes it difficult for us to take this on board. Once you get beyond a certain size, only particular types of people are willing to speak up and ask for their contributions to be included. Sitting in rows doesn’t help, either. It has to be done in more intimate, flexible gatherings we have such as the house groups.

In public worship in our culture it would have to happen in a more controlled way, because we require that someone takes responsibility for ensuring that the content of worship is consistent with the Christian faith as the Methodist Church has received it. That person is the preacher appointed to take the service. But there is no reason why members cannot approach the preacher (in good time, of course!) and say they have something which they think could be of benefit to the congregation. Heaven knows, there are few Local Preachers and ministers who are highly skilled in every aspect of worship. That means the church as a whole is missing out if others do not come forward with their gifts and offerings. I want to encourage you to break through the barriers that our current practices create, so that we can all be enriched by what God has given you. If that means you having a word with me to tell me you have something that could be a gift for our worship together, then I want to urge you to speak with me.

Our third and final question is ‘Why?’ Come back again to verse 26:

What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. (Verse 26, italics mine)

So that the church may be built up. That’s why Paul goes on to give some instructions about how many people should speak, how what is said should be weighed, how some speakers should give way to others, and how generally those who offer their gifts should exercise self-control and demonstrate peace and good order. The gifts of the Spirit in worship are not about manufacturing religious superstars or launching careers in the Church: they are to be used with one motive in mind only, the building up of Christ’s church.

Or let’s see it this way. Never mind those who harbour the vain ambition to be big fish in the small pond of the church, we would probably all agree that the building up of the church is a noble goal for worship. But presently we leave that task of building up largely to one person – the preacher. Paul clearly believed that it took the actions of the whole Body to build itself up. There’s nothing particularly contentious among Christians about a goal to build up the church. But the idea that such a goal requires more than the diligence of the preacher is resisted in places. In one church it was said, “Why buy a dog and then wag your own tail?” Even in churches where there is a lot of participation in various areas of its life, there can still be a disturbing division. The minister is expected to do the ‘spiritual’ work, while the congregation does the ‘practical’ stuff.

Of course, some will ask, “How can I contribute to the edification of the church? I haven’t got anything worthwhile to offer.” To that I would reply in two ways. Firstly, either you already have some latent spiritual gifts you can offer that you haven’t noticed, or you could ask God to give you spiritual gifts that you can use for the benefit of the church. And the second thing I would say is to quote the Apostle Peter:

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

In other words, nurture your spiritual life and you will find that something grows in you that you can share. I talked last week about some of the opportunities we offer in KMC and which we have offered to help you grow in the life of the Spirit. The nub of the matter is that if you share in the view that worship should build us all up, then that implicates you in playing a part that contributes towards that goal.

Where does all this leave us? It gives us a radical view of Christian worship that departs from our traditions in some significant ways. But really it’s our traditions that have departed from the apostolic testimony. When the Holy Spirit is at work, that will happen in an apostolic way, not a traditional way, and if we are not careful we shall find that the new wine of the Spirit is poured into the brittle old wineskins of our traditionalism.

Ironically, that’s why I’ve ended up speaking for a little longer than usual this morning. It has been an attempt to lay out a more thoroughly New Testament vision for worship, one that depends on us all using our spiritual gifts for the maturing of the church.

Friends, we might have to choose between our cherished traditions and the growth of the church.

June 15, 2013 1

Sermon: A Lifestyle Of Worship

From a new sermon series on worship:

Romans 12:1-2

A modern Western worship team leading a contem... — A modern Western worship team leading a contemporary worship session. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was once taken to task after a sermon I preached on worship when I was a Local Preacher. Having confined myself to the question of worship when we are gathered together on a Sunday, someone wanted to know why I hadn’t talked about the worship of our daily lives.

Well, you can’t include everything in one sermon – although some preachers try! But my friend had a point. If you consider Christian worship, you have to see that it is about more than Sunday morning. We are called to a lifestyle of worship, and is what Paul does here. Romans 12 is about Christian lifestyle, but it is packed with words from the realm of the temple – ‘offer’, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘worship’ all occur in verse 1.

And so if we are to have a series of sermons on worship, we must think about our lifestyle of worship. We speak about some people who are ‘Sunday Christians’ – they come to a church service on Sunday, but have no connection with the church in the rest of the week and Sunday morning has no effect on the way they live from day to day. The early church would not have recognised such people as authentically Christians at all. The summons is to follow Jesus, and you don’t get any annual leave away from that calling.

But behind all this is the first of two questions that Romans 12:1-2 addresses: why should we worship? Paul puts it quite simply: ‘in view of God’s mercy’ (verse 1). More fully, he says,

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. (Verse 1)

We offer a lifestyle of worship to God ‘in view of God’s mercy’. The ‘Sunday Christian’ may not understand this. On occasion, I have asked congregations for ideas to include in the opening prayers of praise and adoration. “What reasons do we have for bringing our praise and worship to God this week?” I have asked. Often, my experience has been that the answers which come back have a lot to do with the goodness and beauty of creation, and for the sort of blessings that all sorts of people, religious or not, enjoy – good health, a new job, the birth of a new family member, and so on.

Now there is nothing wrong with any of those reasons. But what is missing? What we have is a collection of reasons to be thankful that are based on the goodness of God in creation, but what is absent is any recognition of the love of God in salvation. ‘God’s mercy’ is missing. Jesus and his Cross are absent.

Remember – this is Romans chapter 12. Paul has spent eleven chapters arguing why the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus change everything. When he says, ‘in view of God’s mercy’, he has in mind all the incarnate Son of God has done for us in giving his life and in being raised from the dead. If we are only Sunday worshippers, we have not grasped what God has done for us in Christ. Either we have not realised that Christ died for our sins and rose for our justification, or we are glad to receive his forgiveness but just enjoy the blessing without showing any gratitude.

In fact, Paul’s language is even stronger. He doesn’t simply say ‘in view of God’s mercy’, he literally says, ‘in view of God’s mercies’. It isn’t as though God was merciful to us in Christ at the Cross and that’s that, we’ve had our mercy (amazing as that is). No! God is consistently and continually merciful to us. How many of us have had second chance after second chance from him? How many of us can look at our lives and see him faithfully directing our steps? We remember the Old Testament words that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. But where do those words come from? Of all books, they come from Lamentations, where the author is grieving the judgement of God on sinful Judah in allowing Babylon to take God’s people into exile and cause devastation and destruction everywhere. Yet even the God of judgement can be merciful every morning. If he is merciful like that in the midst of judgement, how much more merciful is he in other ways?

So if we want reason to worship by the way we live each day, we have it in the mercies of our God. Surely a God who is merciful to us in the ways the Scriptures tell us is one to whom we should be deeply and consistently grateful. Surely we show that gratitude in the way we follow his Son.

Let me make this a little more specific, then: do you know that Christ died and rose for you? As you sense gratitude welling up to him for all that he has done and all that he continues to do for you, is there any particular way at present that he is calling you to give glory to him by imitating his life?

And let that lead us into the second of the two questions: how should we worship? Paul gives us two answers to ‘how’: firstly, with our bodies, and secondly, with our minds.

Firstly, then, our bodies:

[O]ffer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. (Verse 1b)

Now we might get nervous about what ‘sacrifice’ involves, rather in the way people assume that whatever they fear most is what God is most likely to ask them to do. If you don’t like the thought of going to remote regions of Africa, then God will definitely call you to be a missionary there. No wonder someone once said, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”

Essentially, though, a sacrifice is an offering of something or someone over to God for him to do with as he pleases. When we say the Covenant Prayer at the beginning of each Methodist year in September, there is a fine balance stated over and over in different ways between those callings that might be congenial to our aptitudes and interests, and those which might not be. God is neither a sadist nor an indulgent grandfather. He is merciful to us, we give ourselves over to him and he deploys us for his kingdom purposes.

More specifically, Paul describes the sacrifice of our bodies with three adjectives. You may think that only the word ‘living’ is attached to sacrifices, but a more precise translation would be ‘sacrifices, living, holy and pleasing to God’.

So note that God wants living sacrifices, not dead ones. Just as you might put money into an offering plate, I invite you to imagine yourself putting your whole body on a huge plate that is carried to the front and dedicated to him. We ‘offer’ not simply our money, but ourselves. We ‘present’ our bodies. You may recall that when our previous hymn book, Hymns and Psalms, came out, some people made a fuss about the wording in the final verse of ‘When I Survey The Wondrous Cross.’ Instead of singing,

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small

the words were,

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.

Some Christians didn’t like the use of the word ‘present’, but I don’t think it was a bad one. We bring gifts unconditionally to those whom we love, and Paul urges us to do something similar with our bodies. Let us offer what we can do with our physical bodies to God.

Moreover, it needs to be a holy sacrifice. To be holy is to be set apart for God’s special purposes. There is nothing mundane or routine in the offering of our bodies. God has a special purpose for us, and it can only be accomplished if we dedicate our bodies to him. What can I do with my strengths and my talents? How can they be used for kingdom purposes?

Finally, these sacrifices are pleasing to God. Do not get the image that God is po-faced and stern in the face of our offering. As we put our bodies at his disposal, he is pleased! This is what he longed for. We can give great pleasure to God by offering a present of our bodies to him.

Secondly, we worship with our minds:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Verse 2)

To say that we worship with our minds may make some people nervous, like watching the news report in the week about a thirteen-year-old girl from Surbiton called Neha Ramu, who has an IQ of 162. If we have to use our minds in worship, some of us will feel we are not qualified.

But this is not about being intellectual. It goes more like this: a lifestyle of worship involves finding out God’s will and doing it, in order to bring more pleasure to God. But the problem we have is with tuning in to God’s will. Sin affects our minds as much as any other part of our being. For example, that is why science can be used for ill as well as for good: think of weapons of mass destruction or environmental damage. It is also about the way we try to deceive ourselves and deliberately twist our thinking to find something acceptable that actually isn’t. Every part of our humanity is affected by sin, including our thinking. It is therefore part of redemption that our minds are renewed in godly ways of thinking. That is not something exclusive to eggheads, but something we all need. We remember that Jesus said we were to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

So how do we allow God to renew our minds and thus transform us, so that we can do his will as an act of worship? Well, although ‘Be transformed’ is passive – it is something that happens to us – ‘the renewing of your minds’ is not. We need to be intentional about renewing our minds. That is why we promote daily Bible reading notes here, such as Our Daily Bread. That is why we have house groups. That is why we ran the Sacred Rhythms course to help people learn the practice of spiritual disciplines. That is why we promoted the Week of Accompanied Prayer.

But – we have to avail ourselves of these opportunities. It’s no good complaining that we can’t discern the will of God when we’re not taking our chances to let the Scriptures shape our thinking in godly ways. After all – which kind of believer would not be serious about knowing the will of God and walking in it? Would it not be the Sunday Christian again? There are plenty of other institutions in our world that want to shape our minds according to their values. Retailers and governments want us to think like consumers, not like disciples. It takes deliberate action on our part to put ourselves in a place where God can renew and transform our minds, so that our thinking and our believing is closer to his.

Friends, let us remember again that we are worshippers in response to ‘God’s mercies’. Think again about all the ways in which God has been merciful to you. Will you now consider these questions? How am I going to offer my body in devotion to Jesus Christ? And what steps will I take to allow God to make my mind Jesus-shaped rather than world-shaped?

June 8, 2013 4

Sermon: Two Encouragements To Pray

English: Roman Centurion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Luke 7:1-10

I wonder what your personal prayers for other people’s needs are like. Perhaps part of your regular prayers are like a shopping list – you have a collection of people you regularly pray for, and you methodically go through the list, ticking them off as you’ve mentioned them.

But what are your prayers like when an urgent need comes up? When you are only praying for one person, do you find yourself starting to rehearse before God all the reasons why he should answer your request – perhaps to heal this person? Maybe sometimes we are so daunted by the seriousness of the appeal we are making to the Lord that we are trying to buttress our own faith by deploying reason after reason why we think God should say ‘yes’ to us.

In those situations, a common component of our prayers is to say, “Lord, the person I am praying for is a good person. Here is a list of all the worthy things she has done. Here, too, is a list of reasons why it would be important to heal her.” We hope that – like some barrister pleading for a client before a jury – we can persuade God to find in favour of the friend we are representing in prayer.

And you know what? It’s wasted breath. Our story tells us that.

The Jewish elders come to Jesus about their surprising friend, the Roman centurion, whose slave is ill. Luke tells us that the slave was ‘valued highly’ (verse 2), which may indicate one of these types of prayer – ‘Lord, look what dire straits this centurion will be in if his slave dies.’ More specifically, they tell Jesus how worthy the man is:

He is worthy of having you do this for him, ⁵for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us. (Verses 4b-5)

Now while Jesus doesn’t castigate them for this – indeed, the next thing we read is that he ‘went with them’ (verse 6) – it is apparent from the story that this is not why Jesus healed the gravely ill slave.

Remember – it is the centurion’s faith that Jesus commends. And what we hear from him is the very opposite account of himself. He does not have the temerity to approach Jesus and appeal to him on the grounds that he deserves a divine favour. Rather, we get the complete opposite. The whole tenor the centurion’s approach is not how worthy he is but how unworthy he is:

Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; ⁷therefore I did not presume to come to you. (Verses 6b-7a)

This, I believe, is the first of two elements in the centurion’s faith that Jesus praises so highly. We would say it is about grace. The centurion does not appeal to Jesus on the basis of being ‘good enough’. He knows that any divine response is never going to come on that basis. It will only come because God is gracious and merciful.

And that indeed is what happens. Jesus does not announce the healing on the basis of the man having funded a synagogue. In fact, Jesus even seems to honour the centurion’s request not to come under his roof, because he simply says that the healing has happened. The healing is discovered when the friends whom the man has sent (verse 6) return to the house (verse 10).

I want to say that there is both good news and bad news in this approach. The bad news is for those who want to earn their own favour with God. That is, the sort of people who want to put out a record of good works and claim they are worthy of the Almighty’s company and favour. This will not do. Not one of us. At the heart of the Christian Gospel is the stark message that ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). All. No exceptions. We need to put aside any religion that is based on thinking we can make ourselves good enough for God, or that we can put ourselves within his boundary markers. It isn’t possible. We delude ourselves dangerously when we do that. But we still have people in church congregations who believe this lie.

Answered prayer is not simply a reward for the good people. Do not mistake me: I still believe it is important to live a good life, and to make it a top priority to ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ as Paul said, and then do it. But that lifestyle is not a passport to heaven, it is the sign of our gratitude to God that in Christ he has been full of grace and mercy to us. A good lifestyle is the response of love to God. Having received his grace, we respond to Jesus’ call, when he says, ‘Follow me.’

So what is the good news here? Jesus invites those of us who know we are not good enough or worthy of his love still to approach him in prayer. What is it about yourself that makes you feel unworthy before Jesus? Is it all those times you have let him down? He still invites you to pray. Is it that recently you have done something you are particularly ashamed of? He still invites you to pray. Is it that you don’t feel like you fit in socially – either in society, or even, perhaps in the church? Guess what – in his grace he still invites you to pray. Perhaps you have a stigma – maybe it is the stinging words of someone who has always put you down and made you feel like dirt over the years. Jesus doesn’t speak to you like that. In fact – he invites you to pray. He says, ‘Speak to me. I am listening. I am full of grace and mercy. My Father wants you to approach him as his beloved child.’ Believe the good news.

The second of the two elements in the centurion’s faith is his understanding of authority. It’s about the delegated authority to speak an authoritative word of command. Listen to his words that his friends relay to Jesus:

But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. ⁸For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it. (Verses 7b-8)

It’s not just, ‘Jesus, I know what it’s like to give orders in the army; you can give orders in the kingdom of God.’ It is that, but it’s more. It’s more like this: ‘I can give my orders, because I am under authority. My authority comes from my superiors and ultimately from the Emperor. That is why my orders must be carried through. You, Jesus, are in a similar situation. Your orders have to be carried out, because you have placed yourself under the Father’s authority. Your orders have the backing of heaven. You can speak an authoritative word to heal my slave, because the Father has delegated his power to you.’

Now I know that putting it like that is rather to expand things beyond what the centurion probably understood at the time, but I think in the bigger New Testament picture of things, it’s justified. Jesus, the Word who was and is the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and submitted himself as a servant, even to death. On earth, Jesus – despite being fully divine – acted as ‘a man in the power of the Spirit’ (Jack Deere). Under the Father’s authority, he could command healing, he could command the wind and the waves, he could turn water into wine and make five loaves and two fish feed a multitude.

Maybe it is something like this. When I worked in Social Security, I would issue several letters a day to benefit claimants or to self-employed people about their National Insurance. I signed every single one ‘pp’ the manager. My signing authority was that of my manager. That gave me the right to say what I said in those letters. The centurion had the ‘signing authority’ of the Emperor. Jesus had – and has – the signing authority of the Father.

What difference does this make to our praying? While I don’t want to minimise the difficulties we face when our prayers are not answered in the way we hope – whether we get a ‘no’, a different answer, or even the silence of heaven – what I want to encourage us to remember is this: it’s about the rank of the Person to whom we are coming. The risen and ascended Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. He is even praying for us, and the Holy Spirit prays through us. The Father is not being badgered: Jesus and the Spirit share his authority.

So I want us to be encouraged in prayer. The court of heaven is an environment in which we are welcomed and heard. We have been encouraged into the Father’s presence by his grace and mercy in Christ. Now that we are there, we can humbly revel in the authority he desires to exercise for the sake of his kingdom, so that things conform on earth to the way they are done in heaven. If you are considering bringing a request in prayer to God and wondering whether it is worthy being brought, simply ask yourself this: if this were answered, would it be a good fit with God’s reign coming more fully on earth as it is in heaven? That doesn’t always have to mean it’s super-spiritual. It doesn’t always have to mean that it’s an earth-shattering request. But it does mean this: would it reflect God’s love for people? Would it demonstrate God’s love in Christ for the last and the least? Would it be a sign of mercy, or healing, or peace, or justice? It may still benefit us, by the way, as the healing of the slave did the centurion.

As I prepared this sermon, a couplet from an old hymn came to mind:

Large petitions with thee bring
Thou art coming to a king.

The hymn starts with these words:

Come, my soul, thy suit prepare,
Jesus loves to answer prayer.

English: John Newton (1725-1807) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does anyone know who wrote it? John Newton, author of ‘Amazing Grace.’ You don’t need me to remind you that Newton was a former slave trader who was converted to Christ, became an Anglican clergyman and supported William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the slave trade from which he had previously profited. Newton epitomises both of the strands of prayer that the centurion understood. He certainly knew that he was most unworthy to grace God’s presence in any way at all, least of all to ask for things in prayer. But he understood and experienced grace. He knew that in Christ and his cross God had forgiven him for some of the very worst things one human being could do to another. He would not have earned an audience with heaven on the grounds of his goodness.

But then, in backing the young Wilberforce and his parliamentary campaign of abolition, he understood something of Jesus’ delegated authority from the Father. To pray and work for abolition was huge. It took decades (and even Wilberforce’s victory did not result in the complete destruction of the slave trade). However, the elderly Newton knew that it was worth bringing ‘large petitions’ as he said in his hymn, because in prayer you are ‘coming to a king.’

Friends, this is what we do. Even if our lives are not as scandalous and colourful as John Newton’s – and unless anyone is hiding some remarkable details from us, I think I can safely say that’s the case here – we know we can and we may come to God’s presence because of his grace. Our humility does not exclude us, but leads us to the reason why we may come: God in Christ is gracious and merciful.

Then, when we come, we come to Christ who has authority from the Father. And therefore we can come with big requests. Big kingdom prayers.

Let us now allow anything to stop us. No lies of the enemy, no self-doubt, no voices of scorn or disbelief from people we know. Jesus calls us to the Father’s presence. And he tells us to ‘pray big.’

So let us pray. Not just now, in this service. But always.

June 1, 2013 4

Sermon For The Sunday After Ascension

Luke 24:44-53

Ascension Deficit Disorder from inheritthemirth.com

Several of my friends were sharing this cartoon on Facebook in the last few days[1]. I think it encapsulates how we might regard the Ascension in the Methodist Church – or not regard it, as the case may be. We have an ‘Ascension Deficit Disorder.’

There are all sorts of reasons for this. I think we find the Ascension to be one of the more embarrassing miracles. Not only is it strange, it seems to offend against what we know of modern cosmology, and we find it hard to see the point of it. The healing miracles may also seem to go against science as we know it, but at least they seem to have a point – and a loving, compassionate one at that.

But the Ascension? What on earth is the use of it? Maybe we see it as some kind of divine blast-off, and we can’t get our heads around it. To us, heaven isn’t ‘up there’ in a literal sense, and so we chide those ancient people for their simplistic beliefs. For us, the Ascension is not like a 1960s episode of Thunderbirds, and Jesus’ final meetings with the disciples aren’t like Thunderbird 2 on the launchpad, ready to fly to rescue some people in terrible distress somewhere. In the past, when I have preached on the Ascension, I have explained it as what I call a ‘miracle of accommodation’, namely that Jesus had to be taken up into heaven in the sight of the disciples as the only way they would understand he was returning to heaven, even though heaven wasn’t literally up in the sky.

But Tom Wright has pointed out that the ancient Jews didn’t see the distinction between earth and heaven that way. In a sermon he preached six years ago, he said:

The early Christians, like their Jewish contemporaries, saw heaven and earth as the overlapping and interlocking spheres of God’s good creation, with the point being that heaven is the control room from which earth is run. To say that Jesus is now in heaven is to say three things. First, that he is present with his people everywhere, no longer confined to one space-time location within earth, but certainly not absent. Second, that he is now the managing director of this strange show called ‘earth’, though like many incoming chief executives he has quite a lot to do to sort it out and turn it around. Third, that he will one day bring heaven and earth together as one, becoming therefore personally present to us once more within God’s new creation.

One way and another, then, after the Resurrection, where God vindicated his Son and began his new creation, now in the Ascension we have the confirmation that Jesus is the rightful Lord of the universe. He is the Messiah, the King. And therefore when he gathers his disciples for final instructions, he does so as the one about to take his seat on the throne of creation. We should read his words as a king’s orders to his subjects. Certainly what Jesus says here can be read as decrees and requirements.

Firstly, he calls his disciples witnesses. He interprets the Old Testament Scriptures to them all here in the manner he did to Cleopas and his companion on the Emmaus Road, by showing how they pointed to his suffering, death and resurrection. But these are not just events in recent history: they have a meaning, importance and implications for all who hear. Thus Jesus goes on to say:

and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. (Verses 47-48)

The point is this: you have seen all this, disciples. You saw me betrayed and killed. You have met me since I rose from the dead. You know what these events mean about me. I am the true King. The world has been shown to be wrong about me. There is a question now of people showing true allegiance to me, since the Father has vindicated me and is about to enthrone me. You have seen this. You are witnesses. You have a responsibility to share what you have witnessed with others.

What kind of witnesses are we to the King? This last week, Debbie has received a letter, summoning her to jury service next month at the coroner’s court. It is clear that the jury would be sitting not on a trial but on an inquest. She is therefore likely to hear two kinds of witnesses. One is the expert witness, such as a doctor who describes the cause of death from a medical point of view. Another is the ordinary witness, who may have seen something crucial that happened.

Christian witness includes both kinds of witnesses. Not all of us are expert witnesses, and we do not all have to be. However, we are all ordinary witnesses, because we are witnesses to what he has done for us through those saving events of his death and resurrection.

You could use a different metaphor from ‘witness’, especially if you want to connect this specifically to Jesus’ enthronement as King. You could use the image Paul deploys in 2 Corinthians 5 of ‘ambassadors for Christ.’ We have a privilege and responsibility to speak on behalf of the King.

And it is significant that Jesus mentions ‘repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ as part of the message. To be a witness to the king or an ambassador for him is to be entrusted with a message that calls all creation to align themselves with Jesus. That means turning away from the kingdom to which they are currently committed – the kingdom of darkness – and turning to Christ instead. Witnesses to his death and resurrection can do no less. There is a legitimate conversation to be had about how we do this, but that it is part of the task cannot be in doubt.

Secondly, Jesus the King calls his disciples to waiting. He has just given them a tremendous briefing. They must be on a knife edge. Perhaps they cannot wait to get going, out of excitement. But although he promises to equip them for the task, he tells them to wait:

I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. (Verse 49)

Jesus is going to put his reign into action through the disciples at Pentecost. His personal presence will be replaced by his personal power in the Holy Spirit. They will start living as the kingdom community, doing kingdom things, just like Jesus himself had done in his ministry before his death. They must be champing at the bit.

But they have to wait for that transfer from the presence of Jesus to the power of Jesus, that change of personnel from Jesus to his Spirit. Therefore the king’s order to them is, ‘wait.’

Is that so unreasonable? Our Queen has ‘ladies in waiting’ – women who wait for whenever she issues a command. The timing of the command, as well as its content, is up to Her Majesty.

Now you may say that there is an important difference between the first disciples and us. While they might have had to have waited for the Holy Spirit, we do not, because the Spirit has now been given, and receipt of the Spirit is a sign of Christian conversion. If you say that, you would be right in that particular case. The Spirit has indeed been given, and we do not have to wait like that.

However, there are many instances where Jesus in his kingly authority calls us to wait. We are not to act without his command. We are not to presume upon him and go charging off. He calls us to wait until he gives the order.

And to wait effectively means learning to be attentive. Just as the ladies in waiting have to be attentive to the Queen, so we need to learn the spiritual disciplines of attentiveness as we wait for instructions from heaven, earth’s control room. That means listening. I am far too good in prayer in rattling through the things I want to talk about and then stopping as if that were the end of prayer. But it isn’t. Not if I am to wait upon my Lord. Silence, solitude and retreat are all disciplines we need to practise if we are to be those who wait upon the King of kings.

Thirdly and finally, disciples of earth’s true king are committed to worshipping. Worship is the natural reaction to knowing that God has enthroned Jesus. Thus the reading ends:

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. ⁵²Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. ⁵³And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God. (Verses 50-53)

Kingship and worship go together. The Greek word most commonly translated ‘worship’ in the New Testament is proskuneo, which literally means, ‘to move towards and kiss.’ But what kind of kiss? It is the kiss of homage. The image is the ancient one of kissing a monarch as a sign of allegiance. It is still practised in a symbolic way today when new Prime Ministers and new Anglican bishops are appointed.

Worship, then, is emphatically not in the first instance about ‘singing what I like’. I am not saying that worship should not be enjoyable, but I am saying that the focus of worship is not about whether it scratches my back, it is not about whether I am ‘fed’ (because Christians should learn to feed themselves, anyway), it is not about whether it was ‘my favourite preacher’, and so on. All those criteria and more are me-centred. Worship is meant to be God-centred. We are paying homage to God. It is about a sense of awe, wonder and devotion to him, not about spiritual entertainment. We are disciples, not dilettantes.

On Bank Holiday Monday, we decided to visit Windsor. After sitting outside in the sun eating our packed lunch, we joined the queue for the castle. Having got in after an hour’s wait, we went around and eventually decided to visit the State Apartments. While following the prescribed route around them, Becky and I suddenly heard Debbie let out a gasp, and she called us urgently to where she and Mark were. They had just seen a car arrive, and the Queen get out of it with one of the corgis. They then saw the Queen walk the corgi to her official door into her living quarters. Unfortunately, Becky and I didn’t get over to them in time, and we missed out. Becky was upset. However much I tried to say to her that the Queen is just a normal human being like the rest of us, she knew she had missed out on something special. Her mum and brother had a sense of awe that they had seen the Sovereign.

And that is what we need to long for in worship: an awe at having encountered the Sovereign of all creation. Awe that does not concentrate on the amazing experience that we had, but awe that expresses our wonder at this Second Person of the Trinity, who now reigns until every enemy will have been put under his feet. To this King who now reigns we owe our loyalty.

It is something we have a chance to affirm formally at the climax of our service this morning. For we come to the sacrament of Holy Communion. Whatever else communion is, when we respond and take the bread and wine, that action is symbolic of our oath of allegiance to him who has ascended to reign over all. In the Roman Empire, the ‘sacramentum’ was the oath of allegiance taken by a soldier to the emperor. This morning, let us take our sacramentum, too.

[1] It appears to come from the website Inherit The Mirth. However, I cannot find it on that website at present. If the owner of the site needs me either to pay for the use of this image or remove it, I would be grateful for him to contact me.

May 11, 2013 0

Church Anniversary Sermon: The Holy City

If I’m honest, I wish I could have spent more time preparing this. I think I could have distilled my thoughts better. However, this is the best I could do in the time available. I hope it helps you and others.

Revelation 21:10-22:5

So, it’s Church Anniversary today – a time when it’s natural to look back with thankfulness to God for his faithfulness in the past. As the hymn says,

We’ll praise him for all that is past
And trust him for all that’s to come.

But sometimes looking back degenerates from gratitude to complaint. In one of my previous churches, one woman had a regular refrain in her conversation. It was about the time when the Sunday School had a hundred children, and it was run by a particular man who must have been a strong personality. It felt like it was my fault when the only children present at Junior Church were my own two children.

So there is a healthy looking back and an unhealthy looking back. What we often forget to do on occasions like this is look forward. It may be that in times of declining and aging church congregations we find it easier to opt for the warm duvet of nostalgia, because we think that if we look forward we might not see a church.

But the hymn doesn’t just say, ‘We’ll praise him for all that is past’, it also says, ‘And trust him for all that’s to come.’ How can we look forward with hope for the church? I believe we can do that by feasting our eyes on God’s vision for the future of the church, and letting that future destination affect the way we are church today.

Our reading from Revelation does just that. In the picture language of that book, its vision of the Holy City gives us images of God’s perfected new society in his new creation. This is where we are going! So let us use this future vision to check where we are now and look at the direction we are taking.

Just to give you extra value I am going to pick out six elements of the Holy City, the new Jerusalem. This doesn’t mean a double-length sermon, but I hope it does mean we get a rounded picture of the community of which we are a part, and of which we shall be a part.

Firstly, let us look at the gates.

It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites (21:12).

Angels and the twelve tribes. Let’s take the angels first. When do we first hear of angels at the gates? Is it not when the first humans are expelled from Eden, and an angelic guard is set at the gate of the garden to prevent further access? But what about here? The great story of God and humankind that begins in a garden ends in this city, and angels are at the gates again. However, this time it cannot be to keep all comers out. They might be there to keep certain people out, but they are definitely not on guard duty to keep all and sundry out of the new Jerusalem. For the power of sin which led to that initial expulsion of the first humans from Eden has now been reversed. The curse has been neutralised. Now there is only blessing for those who will walk with the Son of God. Where sin broke relationships between humans and God, between humans and each other, between humans and creation and even within humans themselves, all that is now healed and restored. Eden is back, but with such a large community it can no longer be a mere garden. Now it is a city.

And note that word ‘community’. It is no accident that ‘the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites’ are on the twelve gates. For what God has done in his project of salvation is to take fractured relationships and build a new, healed community by his grace. Salvation has never been just something that individuals receive. It has always been about reconciliation, not only with God but also with each other. We express this by working on our relationships, to make sure we are at one with each other. We speak the truth in love. We build each other up. We forgive one another. We share The Peace as a sign of this.

Secondly, we have the foundations.

And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (21:14)

The twelve apostles then locate this redeemed community specifically around Jesus. They are ‘the twelve apostles of the Lamb’ – the Lamb of God, Jesus. It is not just any group: it is a body of people united as disciples of Jesus. He it is who brought God’s work with Israel to a climax. The twelve apostles witness to this, since a requirement of apostleship at the beginning of the church was to be a witness to the Resurrection.

So here is what our community life is centred on: the birth, life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. The church is the gathering that sits forgiven and forgiving at the Cross. We rejoice in new hope at the empty tomb. By the power of the Holy Spirit we seek to imitate Jesus together.

Now if that’s true, what does it do to our priorities? Much as we need to discuss property and finance, the heart of our conversation and action together should surely be centred on Jesus himself. We find it easier to talk about the weather or our aches and pains. Some of us don’t read our Bibles from one Sunday to another, and along with other signs of lukewarm behaviour it’s no wonder our churches are not magnetic to those interested in spiritual questions.

There can be all sorts of reasons why this is so. But perhaps it therefore becomes us to have a conversation about why we struggle to make Jesus explicitly central to our church life – let alone the rest of life. There is no foundation other than the New Testament Gospel of Jesus Christ for the church. From her beginning through eternity it is the basis of her existence. We need to be renewed in that Gospel.

Thirdly, we look at the walls. We have a vivid description of the holy city’s walls being made out of previous stones and metals (21:18-21). No expense has been spared in making the new Jerusalem a place of dazzling beauty.

God is intent on making his new community beautiful. He expects the church to become stunningly attractive, if at the same time also perhaps terrifyingly so. At the cost of the Cross, he has not only seen to it that people are forgiven through his Son’s offering, but also the transforming power is there to make people new. The Easter events lead not only to forgiveness, but also to holiness. There is a perfection in the measurements of the holy city, too, and I think this is all imagery that points us to the holiness of the church.

It is worth remembering how people responded to the early church. There was something wonderfully attractive about those first disciples, but there was also something quite unnerving about the white heat of holiness they displayed. Do you think today’s world sees anything like that in us? The Christian life is not simply one of gaining a ticket to heaven through the forgiveness of sins and then waiting until we die for our arrival at heaven’s station. It is about being the new community, as a sign of God’s future to the world, and therefore calling others to hear the challenge to follow Jesus. As such, our lifestyle is as important as our message.

Fourthly, there is a temple – or is there?

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. (21:22)

The temple is the place of worship. Specifically to Jewish religion, it was the location for the major festivals and the authorised place for sacrifices. The devout became attached to the temple. They admired its architecture, as did Jesus’ own disciples.

But we can become too attached to a building, even one that has been set aside for holy purposes. Jesus knew that. His new community does not finally gather in a bricks and mortar location, it gathers around ‘the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb’. In the holy city we foreswear our idolatry of buildings and concentrate our worship precisely where it belongs: on the God who made and redeemed us. In the new Jerusalem there will be no rivals for our affections: there will only be the Lord our God and his Son. The Holy Spirit will direct our eyes to them.

So what else goes from our worship, along with our buildings? All the other idols of our age and any age. Money, status, possessions, fame, celebrity and power: we cannot chase any of these in the new creation, because only God will be the object of our devotion. It therefore seems sensible to start getting our focus right now. What do we set our hearts on more than God? Is it time to reorder our priorities as we prepare for eternity?

Fifthly, a city needs light. And just as there is no temple but the Lord God and the Lamb, so the Almighty is the light and the Lamb is the lamp (21:23). There will be no darkness (21:25), not even moral darkness (21:27). Rather, the nations will walk by God’s light (21:24) and the glory of the nations will be brought into the city (21:24, 26).

What does this mean? For one thing, it means that we shall live by God’s light – Jesus is, after all, the light of the world. Nothing else will compete to steer our lives. Fear will not speak to us, nor will hatred or greed. Only the pure light of God in Christ will guide our steps. And so again, that is something where we can get used to that at least in part now. How committed are we to wanting God to show us our path in life? We do not stand still if we want that. Just as it is easier to steer a moving vehicle than a stationary one, so we get moving by following Jesus in whatever ways we know how, while at the same time asking him to shed his light upon our ways.

The light of God in Christ also means something else. If the glory of the nations are brought into a city that basks in that light, then this says something positive about all that is good and worthy in human culture. The new Jerusalem is a place to celebrate the fact that we are made in God’s image and likeness, and so we can produce things of great beauty, value and wonder. I think it is no accident that over the centuries, the Christian church has sponsored and promoted the best of the arts, for example. And while much of that has historically been used in the explicit service of worship, I am sure this does not mean that heaven will be littered with the worst in kitsch religious trinkets. What it does mean is that the best of human achievement will be laid at the feet of Christ in adoration. Do we bring our best to him now? Do we deploy our gifts and talents to praise his name?

Sixthly and finally, there is a river in the city. I don’t know about you, but I like that. When we were living in Chelmsford, Debbie and I sometimes liked to go to a sandwich bar in town, buy lunch and sit outside on tables by the River Chelmer. Even if the river seemed dirty, somehow it was still refreshing. We did something similar in Guildford a couple of months ago.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, to discover in the new Jerusalem a river whose functions are life and healing. It flows from – guess where? – ‘the throne of God and the Lamb’ (those two again), through the centre of the city (22:1-2). The ‘tree of life’ (echoes of Eden again) grows on both banks ‘and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations’ (22:2). All accursed things will be gone (22:3).

There were rivers in Eden and there is a river in Ezekiel 47 that runs from the temple out to the land, and healing springs up on both banks. This is similar. Christians have sometimes imagined Ezekiel’s river to be a picture of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God brings healing to the world. But surely the people of God are sent out from the temple with the Spirit of God. We are sent by God with a healing message to the world, the healing that only Jesus Christ can bring. If we have been at the throne or the temple, the natural thing to do afterwards is to go into the world with the good news of healing in Jesus Christ. It is good news for individuals, and it is good news for whole societies. One day, that mission will be complete. But until that time, we anticipate that glorious fulfilment of all God’s purposes by going out from our worship gatherings proclaiming with our words and demonstrating with our deeds and our lives that God in Christ has the cure for a broken and wounded world.

Perhaps the best act of devotion we could offer in gratitude for God’s faithfulness to his church here would be a renewed commitment to showing his healing love outside our fellowship in the wider world.

May 4, 2013 0

Category: Sermons