Category: worship

Fourth Sunday In Lent: Worship In the Wilderness – A sacrificial Journey

I’m back from my week off. This Sunday, the fourth in Lent, is also observed as Mothering Sunday, but the theme in our series is ‘A Sacrificial Journey’ and uses Isaiah’s passage about the Suffering Servant.

If you’d like some worship material on the third Sunday in Lent from this series, I know other churches are using this material and a quick search of YouTube or Google should find you something.

In the meantime, here is this week’s video and then the text of the talk.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

We come this week to one of the most extraordinary passages in the Old Testament. I can understand why many Christians view this as a direct prophecy of Jesus’ death for the sins of the world. It is the last of the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ in Isaiah. It is clear that Jesus used these as models for his ministry. And while many Jews could easily have seen the earlier Servant Songs as ones fulfilled by a prophet, this one blows the doors off that with its talk of a human being (as opposed to an animal sacrifice) taking the sins of the world. Whatever it meant at the time – and it must have meant something to its first hearers – it’s hard not to see its ultimate fulfilment in the life and death of Jesus.

And in fact that’s my first observation here: the Suffering Servant goes against the surrounding culture. Here is not the victorious warrior Messiah that Israel came to believe in. Nor is this the mighty military commander in which Babylon placed so much trust. (This prophecy belongs to the time when Israel was toward the end of her exile in Babylon.)

And nor does it sit comfortably with our culture in some ways. Due to our Christian heritage we may have come to recognise and even applaud those who give at great cost, even the cost of their own lives for the sake of others. In the last year we might think of NHS staff who put themselves at great risk for COVID-19 sufferers, caught the disease themselves, and died. However, even that is slightly different from Christian understandings of vicarious suffering, and we’ll come onto that in a little while.

No, the way in which this challenges our culture is early on in the passage, with the descriptions of Jesus’ appearance:

his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness (52:14b, c)

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (53:2c, d)

The Suffering Servant (ultimately Jesus himself) would not fit into today’s glamorous celebrity culture. The media operators would tell him he had a face for radio, not TV.

There are sections of the Christian church where it seems important for their leaders to be photogenic. All this shows is a surrender to our shallow culture. It’s no coincidence how in those churches the attractive pastors sometimes seem to think they can take advantage of this, and a scandal ensues.

But before we get smug, we should realise how we cave in to this vacuous approach as well. I have certainly known circuits where people openly went more to church when there was a good-looking preacher. And I don’t say that out of sour grapes because the preacher in question wasn’t me! It genuinely concerns me. How prepared are we to get beyond style and appearance to substance?

My second observation, though, is this: the Suffering Servant comes alongside the culture.

Really? Yes, because despite what I’ve just said Jesus still has compassion for a sinful and suffering world.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. (53:3a, b)

‘A man of suffering, and familiar with pain.’ In older translations we may know the words ‘A man of suffering’ as ‘A man of sorrows’, as in the great hymn, ‘Man of Sorrows.’

Jesus, the man who enjoyed dinner parties and weddings became the man of suffering and sorrows. He always knew it would be so. He identified with human sin and suffering right through to an ignominious and tortuous death on the Cross.

Before I met and married Debbie, some of you know I had a broken engagement. When that happened, two friends of mine turned up on my doorstep one lunchtime and said they were taking me out to lunch. It turned out that one of them had also had a broken engagement before she met her husband. That identification and experience meant more to me than those who simply, like Job’s comforters, came up with their clever theological explanations of the hurt I was feeling.

When we suffer, Jesus, the very Son of God, knows. That’s a basis for comfort. When the world suffers, Jesus knows. That’s a basis for commending him to others.

And with him, it is more than ‘I understand what you’re going through,’ because Jesus the Suffering Servant has come through the worst of suffering to resurrection.

In our world there has been a lot of talk about the need for hope over the last year. We have placed our hope in science, and of course we are being blessed by the fruits of scientific labour in the vaccination programme. We rightly laud the scientific teams, the companies, and the universities that have produced the vaccines.

But ultimately our hope isn’t in anything human like science. It’s in the Suffering Servant risen from the dead. Science is a gift of God, but it isn’t itself divine. It will do a lot of wonderful things for us, but it can’t always save us.

On the other hand, if as we believe Jesus went through that unimaginable suffering and was raised from death, then faith in him gives us an indestructible hope. What a message we have for a troubled world!

My third and final observation is that the Suffering Servant transforms the culture.

4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Israel knew where her transgressions and iniquities had landed her: in exile in Babylon. And she had no peace with God. Away from Jerusalem and the Temple which gave their lives meaning and significance, they were in a place of despair.

There is a sense in which all people are in exile from God’s presence due to our transgressions and iniquities. Some like to pretend it’s not true. Others just don’t realise. But Jesus the Suffering Servant invites us to hear the voice of his Father calling the prodigals home, because Jesus in his death has dealt with that which has sent us away from the Father’s presence.

It is what Martin Luther called ‘the divine exchange’. In terms of this passage, Jesus takes our pain, suffering, punishment, and affliction, and we receive his peace and healing. Why would anyone turn down an exchange like that?

More than once I have heard a psychiatrist say that if only their patients or clients could know they were forgiven, then many beds would be released on psychiatric wards. What Jesus offers through his suffering is totally and utterly transforming.

Imagine if that were extended across our society and we were no longer a culture where we talked about other people’s ‘unforgivable’ actions. Imagine our politics and our media having healthy disagreements without having to demonise the other side. Imagine a world where those who make honest failures are not turned into social pariahs or media villains. Imagine a nation where a broken and hurting royal family didn’t have to deal with their differences and pain through television interviews and press releases. Imagine more marriages staying together, because the forgiveness of one spouse prompts change in the other.

All this and more is why I say that Jesus the Suffering Servant can transform a culture. It begins with the forgiveness he brings us through his suffering, and as we receive that we offer it to others not just as a message but in our own actions.

This is the journey of Jesus that we mark during Lent. It’s a suffering journey. But it’s one which brings substance, hope, and transformation to the world.

How are we going to travel on that journey with him?

0

Second Sunday in Lent: Worship in the Wilderness – A Simple Journey

This week we consider how the spiritual disciplines Jesus used in the wilderness are ones we can use to put him first in our lives.

Luke 4:1-13

One of the regular moans I always used to hear in churches was older people complaining that younger people lacked discipline. It used to be accompanied by comments regretting the abolition of National Service. Well, the latter is fading into distant memory now – even I am too young to have been ‘called up’.

But what strikes me is that a place where we really could do with more discipline is in the Church. I would say that discipline is a required characteristic of a Christian disciple. I say that because Jesus in his life exhibited serious discipline. And we are called to imitate him.

Nowhere is the discipline of Jesus more apparent than in the story of the wilderness temptations. On a day when in our series we’re thinking about the simplicity of the wilderness journey, I want to show you how spiritual discipline is at the heart of that simplicity.

Those who teach about spiritual disciplines such as Richard Foster and the late Dallas Willard talk about ‘disciplines of engagement’ and ‘disciplines of abstinence’. The disciplines we see in Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness are very much disciplines of abstinence, where he puts aside something for a season to concentrate on God.

Here, then, are three disciplines of abstinence that helped Jesus focus on his Father and which also help us to focus on our God.

The first, then, is simplicity itself.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (verse 1)

Jesus leaves behind civilisation with all its trappings to go to a stark place where he will concentrate on his Father. In church history, we’ve seen the Desert Fathers, monks, and nuns, and especially hermits, do something similar.

Sometimes the cares of this world and its trappings get in the way. People make demands on us. Possessions distract us. Money worries or tempts us. It can be good to put these things to a side for a limited period to focus on prayer. And by doing so we are making a radical statement: ‘Lord, you are more important to us than money, work, and possessions. You are Number One in my life.’

How do we do it today? It can be helpful as part of our simplicity to travel to somewhere else so that we don’t have those material distractions in front of us. There aren’t too many deserts around here, but we have plenty of heathland.

For those of us who have a smartphone, then it is probably a good idea to turn off all the notifications and perhaps put it on Airplane Mode.

Clear your diary for a few hours, or a whole day if you can. Get as far away from material clutter as you can. Take a Bible. Listen to God and read the Scriptures. Pour out your heart to God about all things large and small. Have a notebook so that you can write down your impressions of what God says to you in your conversation.

Amazingly, you will still have distractions! Your mind will run off on all sorts of tangents. At that point, it is worth remembering the Apostle Paul’s example when he said ‘We take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Do that either by writing down the thought in your notebook so that you can return to it at a better time or turn the thought into prayer.

The second discipline of abstinence for a simple journey is solitude.

It’s apparent from the story that Jesus went alone into the wilderness. Leaving the Jordan also meant leaving people behind.

Solitude is different from loneliness. Solitude is where we lay aside the distractions of people (even loved ones) with their requests, requirements, needs, and demands, to put God first and foremost in our life. Solitude is thus a clear choice, whereas loneliness is more something that happens to us, and is usually experienced as something unwanted and not chosen.

We have experienced a lot of aloneness this last year due to the pandemic. Some of us have experienced that as deeply unwanted loneliness. Others of us, especially those of us who get energised by being alone, have managed to make it into an experience of solitude, even solitude with God.

The last thing I want to do in talking about this is to diminish the sense of loneliness that many people have experienced in the last year. But I do want to challenge those of us who love our social lives and maybe even like to be the centre of attention. For the discipline of solitude is one that says we are willing temporarily to put aside the people who energise us and the people we love to concentrate on our Father in heaven. Solitude is a time when I confess that I am not the centre of the universe and I am not to be everyone’s centre of attention. Rather, our God is to be the centre of our attention. The act of prayer in solitude is thus an act of worship, acknowledging that God the Father is on the throne, not me.

Yes, as I said, you may need to have your smartphone with you when you go off for your time with God in case there are family emergencies, but the discipline of solitude is there to emphasise by physical act that our God comes first before every single other person, even those we love the dearest.

A married couple I know only committed themselves to Christ and to Christian faith in their adult life, several years after they had married. The point came when, a few years after becoming Christians, one day the wife confessed to the husband: ‘There is someone I love more than you.’

After the shocked silence she added, ‘It’s Jesus.’ Her husband was thrilled.

I am not suggesting we neglect our loved ones. But relationships have been so elevated in our society to the point where people expect their spouse or partner to provide for their needs in a way they can’t, namely in a way that only God can. We need to redress that imbalance, that idolatry. Solitude with God is one way of doing that.

The third discipline of abstinence practised by Jesus in the wilderness is, of course, fasting.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

This is the one we expect to hear about in Lent. It’s the discipline on which all our ‘giving up something for Lent’ is based. And although these days that has also been turned around into a positive idea of taking up something good for Lent, I suggest that taking up something rather misses the point of giving up something.

For one thing, maybe we want to take up something because we can’t face giving up something. If we recognise that tendency, we should be concerned.

But for another, taking up something overlooks the whole idea of disciplines of absence, which is to say that God is more important to us than our possessions, than people, and – in the case of fasting – food.

That’s why fasting is connected so much to prayer in the Bible. When we fast and pray we are saying to God, you matter more to us than even the food that keeps us alive. And what’s more, it is more important to us to hear you speak and see you do something about this issue we are bringing to you in prayer.

Now I am aware that there will always be people for whom it is medically questionable to fast. I am not going to ask anyone to do something that their doctor would say was inadvisable or dangerous.

But fasting does say something important to a society like ours that is so obsessed with consumption. Because of that, I do support the idea of extending the notion of fasting from food to other things. What has gained too much of our affection in place of God and needs to be put back where it belongs? Do we need to fast from Netflix or Spotify? What is that thing of which we say, ‘I can’t get enough of this,’ and which therefore needs putting back in its place below the throne of God by fasting from it?

To conclude, the purpose of spiritual disciplines is to cultivate in thought and action the core Christian confession that Jesus is Lord. The disciplines of abstinence we have thought about today are ways of doing that.

This is not about being a killjoy. And it is not about expecting everyone to become a hermit. It is about pursuing disciplines that put created things and people in their right place under the reign of Christ, and cultivating those disciplines so that they become ingrained as virtuous habits in our lives.

May God grant us the grace to live a disciplined life of love and faith in his Son.

0

First Sunday In Lent: Worship In The Wilderness – A Spirit-Led Journey

Having begun the ‘Worship in the Wilderness’ series on Ash Wednesday, we move now to the First Sunday in Lent and a theme where we look at the good God can bring out of our wilderness experiences.

Deuteronomy 8:1-5, 15-18

Mark 1:9-13

When we speak of having a ‘wilderness experience’, we don’t tend to mean something good. A wilderness experience is a time when life is hard and discouraging, when we feel far from good and unable to gain spiritual nourishment. Nothing grows. We hunger and thirst but are not satisfied.

It’s not good.

Would you consider it strange, then, to hear this week’s title: ‘A Spirit-Led Journey’?

‘At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness’ (Mark 1:12) says Mark of Jesus. It’s just after his baptism, and at that wonderful experience the Holy Spirit has descended on him. ‘like a dove’ (Mark 1:10). According to Mark, being sent into the wilderness is every bit as much an experience of the Holy Spirit as that of the dove and the voice from heaven.

In fact, as I’m fond of pointing out when preaching on the temptations of Jesus, to say the Spirit ‘sent’ Jesus out into the wilderness or ‘led’ him there does not reflect the full force of the Greek. Perhaps it’s our British fondness for understatement, but a more literal translation would be, ‘At once the Spirit threw him out into the wilderness.’

The Greek word is ekballo. The ‘ballo’ part is where we get our word ‘ball’. So think of a sports competitor hurling a ball a long distance, and you have some idea of what Mark is saying here. Imagine a fielder in cricket running round to stop a ball going for four, and then hurling it back to the wicket-keeper.

So the Holy Spirit has very forcefully taken Jesus into the wilderness to face temptation. And as Jesus resists that temptation, he wins key battles that that refine and strengthen the calling he has had affirmed at his baptism.

And that may be the first reason why some of our wilderness experiences are Spirit-led journeys: they are training exercises.

You may have seen television documentaries that follow prospective recruits to elite military outfits like the SAS, where the candidates are put through a series of tough, uncompromising, and even distressing experiences. Those who overcome are further on the journey to selection.

And for us, when the Holy Spirit leads us into a bleak place for a training exercise, we are being refined for when we face future battles. If we win victories over difficulty in a wilderness experience, we may be more ready for the trials of life later so that we can overcome them by faith in Christ for his glory.

You will not become an elite soldier by watching Netflix episodes from the comfort of your sofa. Nor will you grow in spiritual strength as a Christian if all you have is an easy life. So sometimes the Holy Spirit removes our comforts and prepares us for what is to come.

That’s one way to see the disciplines of Lent, such as giving up certain things. Our lack of those creature comforts for a season can be a way that the Holy Spirit trains us in the way of Christ.

A second reason why a wilderness experience can be a Spirit-led one can be found in our reading from Deuteronomy 8. It’s about learning humble dependence on God.

2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.

Who or what do you really want, God asks us. Do you want me, or do you want an easy life? Learn to depend on me, he says, and to listen to my word, because that is where you will find life.

It’s not about us. It’s about God. Things may seem fine and dandy when we have plenty of good things to eat (‘bread alone’) but we need to learn the lesson that our priorities are not the same as those of the rest of the world.

Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, when he told his disciples not to worry about food, drink, and clothes:

32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

For me it was the experience of living without a guaranteed income for my first three years as a student when I didn’t qualify for Government grants. I learned as time after time people gave money that enabled me to study and to live.

Again, a Lenten discipline of giving up something may help us cultivate this humble trust in God. It may also be that the experience of being deprived of many good and valuable things through the coronavirus pandemic has done something similar.

God wants our trust, and sometimes he takes us to the wilderness to find it.

A third reason why a wilderness experience can be a Spirit-led journey can be found in the prophecy of Hosea. In the book, and I’m particularly concentrating on chapter 2 here, Israel is compared to an adulterous wife who is always running after other lovers than her husband. In particular, one of her ‘lovers’ is the false god Baal.

But God wants Israel to know that he is the source of all good things, such as grain, wine, and oil. So what will he do?

At first it is severe. Israel will lose her crops of grain, wine, wool, and linen, making her metaphorically exposed before the world. Her festivals will stop, and her vines and fig trees will be ruined.

It all sounds like devastating punishment.

But the thing is, it doesn’t stop there, with Israel in a new but figurative wilderness. For what is the next thing God says?

14 ‘Therefore I am now going to allure her;
    I will lead her into the wilderness
    and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
    and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
    as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

This is the third way in which a wilderness experience can be a Spirit-led journey: God brings us back to himself when we have gone far from him.

In other words, when God takes away things from us in the wake of our walking away from him, it’s not the final punishment. Instead, he is removing items from the scene so that all we have is him. He wants us to see him and him only, so that our love for him may be rekindled.

It is a severe form of mercy, but mercy it is. God removes our idols and in doing so shows they have no power. ‘Who will you worship?’ he asks us. And better that he asks us that now than later when it will be too late.

So in conclusion, I haven’t specifically chosen to give up anything for Lent this year. But maybe sometimes the Holy Spirit makes the choice for us. He leads us into the wilderness and removes props from our lives as he trains us to be stronger spiritually for future battles. He takes away our creature comforts so that we may depend on Christ. And he gets rid of our idols so that we may devote ourselves wholeheartedly to our God and Father.

How is the Spirit leading you in the wilderness right now?

0

Transfigured Jesus, Transfigured Lives (Mark 9:2-9): Worship for the Last Sunday Before Lent (Transfiguration SundaY)

This is the last of our Epiphany/Ordinary Time themes before Lent kicks off on Wednesday. I shall then be following the series ‘Worship in the Wilderness‘ from Engage Worship throughout Lent. If you want to follow that devotionally, you can buy a book to go along with it.

Mark 9:2-9

Our set reading from Mark’s Gospel takes quite a leap this week from last week. For the last few weeks we’ve been in the beginning of the first half of Mark, looking at the early ministry of Jesus.

But this week we jump to the beginning of the second half of Mark’s Gospel. Just before this reading, the first half has come to a climax with Simon Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ. However, his understanding of that proves to be deficient, when he reacts adversely to Jesus’ first prophecy of his forthcoming suffering and death.

Peter has the right words, the right creed if you like, but not the right understanding. He appears not to be alone, because Jesus teaches the whole crowd about his suffering and also the suffering that his followers will face.

Then he prophesies that some of those present will not taste death until they have seen the kingdom of God come with power (verse 1).

I go into this detail, because Mark clearly links today’s story with that episode in his opening words: ‘After six days’ (verse 2). If Peter and any other disciples cannot understand the link between who Jesus is and how his mission will be carried out through words and arguments, then the experience of a dramatic divine encounter may do the trick.

As a scholar named James Edwards writes,

In Peter’s confession Mark teaches how disciples should think about Jesus (8:33), and in the subsequent transfiguration narrative he allows them to behold his true nature.[i]

If theological argument won’t work, then perhaps experience will.

Firstly, the Transfiguration is a story of divine revelation. Mountains were often places in the Bible where God said or did something special, and all the more if – like this one – it was described as a ‘high mountain’ (verse 2). Specifically, this account is reminiscent of Moses going up Mount Sinai to meet with God and receive the Law. Even the six-day gap between this story and the previous one may echo the six days Moses spent at Mount Sinai with God.

All this, then, should prepare Peter, James, and John for a word of revelation from God. Frightened as we know later on they are (verse 6) – and no surprise at that – the clues are there for them as devout Jews to recognise that they should prepare for a revelation from heaven itself.

Sometimes I wonder how prepared we are to hear from God. Is it because we bumble along from the day to day without tuning ourselves in that we rarely hear from him? Is it that so often God has to interrupt our daily routines in an attempt to catch our ears? Might it be that we could tune ourselves in, ready for when he wants to reveal something to us?

This is why I bang on from time to time about our use of the spiritual disciplines, such as personal Bible reading and prayer. These practices get us used to the voice of God. That voice will not always speak something big and dramatic as in today’s story, but as a baby learns soon to recognise its parents’ voices, so we need to do the same with God. The more we practise the spiritual disciplines, and the more we look and listen for the signs of his presence in our routine duties.

Secondly, the Transfiguration is an account of divine glory.

2b There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.

Think back to Christmas for a moment. Maybe not this last Christmas specifically, but the Christmas season generally.

Specifically, think back to singing ‘Hark! The herald-angels sing’ and that line, ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.’ God coming in human flesh meant that we were shielded from the dazzling brilliance of God’s glory. It is almost too much to bear, rather like the way we warn children not to gaze directly at the Sun.

But here at the Mount of Transfiguration, all the layers that protect sinful humanity from encountering the divine glory are stripped away.

Despite the faltering description, v. 3 succeeds in conveying that the transfiguration is so complete that Jesus’ clothing as well as his person is transformed. …

The diaphanous garments and brilliant face of Jesus signify total transformation and suffusion with the divine presence.[ii]

Jesus reflects the presence of God every bit as much as Moses did on Mount Sinai, if not more so. God hasn’t spoken his revelation yet, but he is showing up.

So again, Peter, James, and John are being called to attention. What they find themselves in counts. It’s important.

Not every Christian has dramatic experiences of God, but most of us would talk about times in our lives when God has seemed especially close. Sometimes those seasons of closeness and almost tangible presence are there to comfort or reassure us through a hard time, but on many other occasions, like the Transfiguration, God is not simply wanting to give us a spiritual thrill, he is wanting to transform us more into people who reflect his glory.

I simply want to ask whether we are open to that.

Thirdly, the Transfiguration is a narrative of divine supremacy, and specifically of Jesus’ supremacy.

4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

Why Elijah and Moses? There have been various theories, but the important thing is this: the way this is worded originally gives an indication that they are not equals with Jesus: ‘they hold an audience with Jesus as a superior.’[iii] They appear and they disappear. There is no command to listen to them. They are ‘representatives of the prophetic tradition that, according to the belief of the early church, would anticipate Jesus.’[iv]

Jesus is superior to both of them. Their lives and ministries pointed ultimately to the fulfilment of God’s plans in Jesus. And Jesus is not merely a prophet, as religions like Islam would have you believe.

Jesus is more than our Friend and our Brother. He is more than the celestial lover that some hymns and worship songs portray. He is more even than Saviour. He is Lord.

Peter, James, and John here are learning that Jesus isn’t just a wonderful rabbi. He’s even more than Israel’s promised deliverer. They owe him their allegiance.

And so do we.

Fourthly, the Transfiguration speaks to us of divine presence.

5 Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

Poor Peter. He and his friends are scared out of their wits. What comes out of his mouth is something that would be worthy of a typical pious Jew. He wants to build shelters, or tabernacles, and the Jews looked forward to a time when God would build a new tabernacle or dwelling for his presence on earth to replace the old one that Israel had had in the wilderness.[v]

But what he doesn’t yet grasp is that the new tabernacle is here already. Jesus is the new tabernacle. He is the presence of God on earth.

So Jesus is more than one who is ranked higher in God’s ranks than Elijah and Moses. He is the presence of God on earth. That is enough to blow the fuses in the mind of a devout Jew. It is why many learned Jews rejected Jesus.

But when you meet Jesus, you meet God. Later Christians would look at all the biblical data and formulate the doctrine of the Trinity, but here is one major sign of how Jesus expanded and exploded traditional Jewish beliefs about one God, the chosen people, and the messianic hope.[vi]

Jesus, being God who came in human flesh to earth, is the climax of God’s plans. And as such, we see everything through the light of him. We interpret our hopes and dreams in the light of Jesus. We interpret the Scriptures in the light of Jesus. We frame our very lives in the light of Jesus.

When we realise that God has been present on earth through Jesus and that he is still present through his Spirit, how does that change the way we live?

Because it should.

Fifthly and finally, the Transfiguration speaks to us of divine vindication.

7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’

8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

You may recall that a voice from heaven spoke to Jesus in similar terms at his baptism: ‘You are my beloved Son, I am well pleased with you.’ Here, the words are similar, but they are not addressed to Jesus. Instead, God the Father speaks to Peter, James, and John: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’

They were to listen to all that Jesus had told them. Doubtless – and most importantly – that referred to his prophecies of his coming suffering and resurrection, which had offended Peter so much.

No: the voice from heaven tells the disciples that what Jesus has said is right and true. You must take it on board, even if you don’t understand it.

When we make Jesus out to sound so much like us, with similar views to us, similar ethical standpoints, similar political views, and so on, then we no longer have Jesus, we have an idol. Jesus will always say and so things that go against the things we cherish. But because of his divine nature, we are the ones who need to change.

And here, that’s just what the Father expects of Peter, James, and John. Put aside your objections to the Cross. Put aside your assumptions that you know better.

And that’s a very fitting place for us to end this week’s reflection, especially as we prepare to enter Lent on Wednesday. The Transfiguration calls us to a life where we increasingly conform our will and our ways the will and the ways of Jesus, who has the right to do this, as God who came to Earth. And whose journey to Earth led to the Cross.

We start that journey again now, and as we go into Lent.

[i] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p261.

[ii] Edwards, p263, p264.

[iii] Edwards, p265.

[iv] Edwards, p265.

[v] Edwards, p266.

[vi] ‘Monotheism, election, and eschatology’ in NT Wright’s words.

0

A Day In The Life: The Kingdom Ministry Of Jesus (Mark 1:29-39)

This week, we look at what a typical day in the life of Jesus’ early ministry looked like, and how it pointed to the kingdom of God which he heralded. What does that mean for us?

Here’s the video, and the script of the talk follows as usual.

Mark 1:29-39

Although the Beatles had their wildly successful career while I was a child, I can’t say I listened to their music until I was a teenager and their songs came on the radio as oldies. At the time, I could warm to their melodic songs like Yesterday and Penny Lane, but I found some of their more experimental songs strange and even disturbing.

One example of the disturbing category for me was ‘A Day In The Life’. Not only was it filled with druggy lyrics and accompanying psychedelic arrangements, it ended with a strange section where the instruments of the orchestra kept accelerating in tempo until there was one final, aggressive piano chord, which eventually died away.

Some critics say that song was their crowning achievement. It just left me feeling troubled.

‘A day in the life.’ In our reading today, Mark edits together some typical accounts of Jesus’ early ministry to provide us with a sense of what a day in the life of Jesus during those first weeks and months of his mission in Galilee were like.

But it’s not just any old ‘day in the life of Jesus’. It’s very focussed. All the themes reflected here give pointers towards the coming kingdom of God which Jesus was heralding in his ministry. He said the kingdom had come near, and so in this typical day’s ministry we see glimpses of what is coming.

Firstly, healing:

29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

Let’s leave aside any jokes about the greatest miracle here being that Simon Peter wanted his mother-in-law healed, let’s see this for what it is: a sign of the coming kingdom. As Jesus heals people, he shows that the coming kingdom is one where sickness will not ravage people, but that our resurrected bodily lives will be characterised by well-being in every sense.

How do we read this as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and in a week when the number of deaths in the UK has gone past 110,000?

We remember that God’s kingdom is both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’. So we see signs of the kingdom when people are healed, but not all are healed. Death, the last enemy, has not been completely vanquished yet. But it will be when Christ appears again.

In the meantime, we pray for the sick to be healed, and we support them when they do not receive that healing in this life. We keep praying, we keep doing those things which make for health, but we leave the outcomes to God as his kingdom pierces this broken world.

Secondly, banishing evil:

32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all who were ill and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Casting out demons is only something that very few Christians will probably undertake, and we should not underestimate it by mistakenly attributing all such incidents to mental illness or epilepsy.

But we are all involved in the battle against evil. We set ourselves against evil in society as we stand for justice. We seek to be a positive witness for goodness and truth in our daily relationships.

And of course we battle the evil that we find deep within ourselves, those things that we wouldn’t want other people to know about.

And yet sometimes the greatest help in our own inner battles is precisely when we do find a trustworthy friend with whom to share our struggles, and who can hold us to account.

We face all types of evil from social injustice to nasty neighbours to our own shame with the help of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit is with us, among us, and within us to help us in the ministry of Christ. ‘More Holy Spirit!’ is a good prayer when we face evil.

Thirdly, intimacy with God:

35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’

Many preachers rightly say that Jesus’ priority of prayer is vital in his being equipped to show the signs of the coming kingdom, and they would of course be right. How does anyone – even Jesus – do the will of God without fuelling it in prayer?

But it is also a sign of the coming kingdom to pray, because when the kingdom of God comes in all its fulness there will be a closeness to God, who will no longer be distanced from us by sin or anything else. It’s worth therefore investing now in the practice of drawing near to him.

And no, not all prayer times are ecstatic, but that’s OK. Not all meals are memorable, but they all feed us. So in anticipation of the coming kingdom, prayer is a sign of the intimacy with God that is promised.

Fourthly and finally, there’s a theme that runs through all the three we’ve discussed so far. And that theme is service.

When Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is healed, her response is to serve (verse 31). When Jesus casts out demons, he commands them to be silent ‘because they knew who he was’ (verse 34) and had they blabbed who he was, people would not have understood that Jesus saw himself as the Messiah in terms of Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord, rather than a military leader. And true prayer is an act of service, because prayer reminds us that we are ranked below God, and owe him service.

Serving is a sign of the kingdom because it characterises the relationships of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a place where we seek to grab all we can for ourselves, it is somewhere that we say, ‘What can I give to others?’

Perhaps you know the old story wherein it was imagined that in both Heaven and Hell the occupants were given very long chopsticks with which to eat a meal. In Hell, people starved, because they only thought to try and feed themselves and the length of the chopsticks precluded that. In Heaven, however, everybody flourished, because people sat opposite each other and fed one another with their long chopsticks.

When we follow the pattern of Jesus by serving him and serving people, we are imbibing the culture of God’s kingdom. It’s an important way that we prepare for the life of the age to come – alongside our ministry to the sick, our opposition to evil in the power of the Spirit, and our fellowship with God.

May we more truly point to the coming kingdom through our lives.

0

The Superior Authority Of Jesus (Mark 1:21-28)

A shorter act of worship and a shorter talk too, this week. It’s just the way it worked out. This was the material I could find. (Usable material with copyright permission that didn’t cost a bomb was in short supply for this passage.) And as for the talk, well, I’d said what I wanted to say and didn’t feel any need to prolong it.

So here’s the video, and the script for the talk is below as usual.

Mark 1:21-28

You may know the famous story of the preacher who asked some children, ‘What’s furry, either red or grey in colour, and collects nuts?’

A little girl nervously answered, ‘I know the answer should be Jesus but it sounds like a squirrel to me.’

Unlike that occasion, the answer to the biblical story we’ve just read very definitely is Jesus. For Jesus and his authority are the focus of Mark’s account here.

And Jesus demonstrates his unique authority in two ways in this narrative.

The first is the authority of his teaching:

22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

What was the difference between Jesus and the teachers of the law? Well, the teachers of the law were learned men, but when they taught all their exposition of the Scriptures would be based on quoting ‘previous authorities and commentators’.

To a large extent, the modern preacher does the same. Without you knowing it, I just quoted a scholar named Ian Paul. I could also look at my shelves of Bible commentaries and turning to Mark’s Gospel, I could cite William Lane, Robert Guelich, Craig Evans, or James Edwards. Whether I quote them or not, I will have engaged with their writing while working out what to preach.

Jesus doesn’t need to do any of that. He has come from the Father. He is the Son of God. He doesn’t need to derive anything. He speaks with personal, divine authority. If he came to preach, he wouldn’t need to say, ‘Ian Paul thinks this.’ If he wrote an article, there would be no footnotes.

You get a flavour of this in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus often says, ‘You have heard it said … but I say to you …’

If you encounter the voice of God through a preacher today, it will be because the preacher has worked on faithfully and accurately relaying to you the teaching of Jesus (which may involve consulting learned sources). And there will also be the explicitly spiritual dimension. The preparation will be soaked in prayer. The Holy Spirit will sovereignly choose to light up the words of the preacher in your hearts and minds, such that you hear the voice of God, rather than the preacher.

Please pray for your preachers. We only have this secondary authority. Pray for our faithful study of the Scriptures. Pray that we will be in tune with the Holy Spirit.

And for all of us, preachers or otherwise, what we need is an authentic encounter with the voice and teaching of Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures have been preserved for us as the primary and supreme way to hear his authentic voice today.

Therefore it’s not just a case of praying for Sunday’s preacher. It’s about exercising the privilege we all have to read the Scriptures under the illumination of the Spirit and encounter Jesus, to whom they point.

The second way Jesus demonstrates his unique authority in today’s passage is in the authority of his power over evil:

23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, 24 ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!’

25 ‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ 26 The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

This is a battle for power. The unclean spirit uses words that were commonly used as a rebuke: ‘What do you want with us?’ The spirit also names Jesus as ‘Jesus of Nazareth … the Holy One of God’, a reflection of the ancient belief that knowing someone’s name gave you power over them.

But it doesn’t work with Jesus. He doesn’t use spells or incantations. He doesn’t even need to pray. He acts on his own superior authority! ‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ And that’s that. All done and dusted.

Jesus doesn’t just have words, he has deeds. And those deeds validate the content of his teaching that we thought about last week, where he proclaims that the kingdom of God is near and it’s time to repent.

It’s something that confronts us all. Very few people are demonised, but all of us face the conflict with evil and the temptation to go the wrong way.

And so this combination of authoritative teaching and authoritative deeds face us with a choice. What will we do with Jesus?

At the end of the passage we don’t hear what choice the members of the synagogue make about Jesus. We only hear about their amazement (verse 27). Who will follow Jesus and who will oppose him? We know that very soon there will be a split. Teachers of the law whose authority as we have seen is displaced by Jesus will largely oppose him. Many ordinary people will follow him.

But what about us? It’s not enough just to admire his teaching and call him a good man or even a prophet. Choosing to do nothing about him is effectively to choose against him, because we are saying we don’t want him to change us.

Why, some people even try to neutralise the influence of Jesus by saying that they worship him on Sundays in church. But that same worship is also meant to convey the word and works of God in Christ to us. We still need to choose.

Perhaps some of us listening today are also amazed by Jesus and his authority. But let’s be more than amazed. Let’s respond to him by following him.

0

Zooming In On The Ministry Of Jesus

Here’s this week’s video worship. I discovered some good music this week for the confession, Lord’s Prayer, and blessing.

As usual, the text of the message is below the video.

Mark 1:14-20

Many of you know that I’m an amateur photographer. When I want to make a photo of an object that is a long distance away and I can’t physically get close to it, I use a zoom telephoto lens. I have two such lenses.

This first lens will go from making things about one and a half times larger than we naturally see them to about four times. This second lens is my monster and will make objects look between about four and ten times larger than our normal field of vision.

Our reading today is like the experience of zooming in closer on Jesus’ ministry. Here, he begins his public ministry, and we get to see him laying out the fundamentals of that ministry. In a week where we’ve seen the inauguration of a new American President, and where like many new Presidents, Joe Biden has set out his plans for his first hundred days in office to show what he hopes to be the important threads of his presidency, so here we see Jesus setting out the essential elements of his ministry.

Firstly, we see the context. This is the wide view.

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee

Something is lost in the NIV’s translation here. It’s OK to translate the opening words as ‘After John was put in prison’, and we know from later in Mark that he was imprisoned. But a strict translation would say, ‘After John was handed over’. He has been handed over (or betrayed, possibly) to the henchmen of Herod Antipas.

One or two things flow from this. John has done his work of preparation. Now the stage is set for Jesus. Just as he has been handed over, so he hands over the public ministry to Jesus.

But also, the language of handing over will reappear in Mark and the other Gospels. For in Gethsemane, Jesus too will be handed over.

And so too may some of the first readers of this Gospel. It’s likely that Mark wrote his Gospel for Christians suffering under the persecution of Nero in Rome in the mid-sixties.

So the wide context of John handing over to Jesus is that the shadow of suffering for one’s faith is cast across the landscape. It’s present here near the beginning of the Gospel, and it doesn’t go away. With our comfortable life in the West we often don’t see this shadow, but millions of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world will recognise this, and we have a duty to stand up for them.

Secondly, we see the theme of Jesus’ ministry.

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [Italics mine.]

‘Good news’ here is a technical term. The Greek used here is the same as where the Septuagint, the famous Greek translation of what we call the Old Testament, speaks about reports of victory coming from a battlefield[i]. Similarly, when a Roman herald came to a town or village in the empire and said he was proclaiming good news, it was usually the news that Rome’s armies had won a great victory somewhere.

So when Jesus comes to herald ‘the good news of God’, it is a public announcement that God himself has won a great victory. The ordinary people will have received such an announcement with great joy.

But of course they will be disappointed. They will discover that Jesus does not herald a God who wins great battles by the force of his armies. No legions of angels appear to dispatch the hated Romans.

Instead, this Gospel which begins with the shadow of suffering introduces us to a God who wins his victories in completely different ways. He wins them not with violence but with compassion, as seen in the healing miracles of Jesus.

And he wins the greatest victory of all through suffering, as Jesus goes to the Cross, which becomes not a place of defeat but of triumph.

What an amazing message this is for those living under the shadow of unjust suffering as those Christians in Rome did. It is the same for those who suffer for the name of Christ today.

And what a confounding message for those in our day who cannot accept God unless he deals with pain and suffering in their prescribed ways. Loud and clear comes the message from the throne of the universe, ‘I do not do things your way. Learn what I am like and how I achieve the ultimate conquest.’

Thirdly, we get closer still to the action as we hear the content of Jesus’ ministry.

15 ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’

The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. You bet it has. When Jesus says the kingdom of God has come near he means it has come close in a spatial sense. It’s close in physical distance rather than being close in time.

And that’s because the kingdom comes in and with him. So his arrival makes the kingdom near. And thus the time really has come. When God’s kingdom comes this close, it’s time to do something. This is the hinge of history.

In Jesus God is acting in kingly power. And while it’s good news, that God is doing this, it’s also why the necessary response is ‘Repent and believe the good news’.

Why? Plenty of people say they believe in Jesus. They believe he existed and they have a warm regard for him. But if we truly want to believe in him then we have to accept what he says here, which is that no belief in him exists without first being preceded by repentance.

And that’s because believing in Jesus requires conforming to the ways of God’s kingdom. Yes, God coming and acting in kingly power is good news for his people, but it isn’t as simple as booting out the enemies of God’s people. It also means God’s people need to polish up their act.

I wonder whether the Holy Spirit is prompting any of us in this way? ‘You say you believe in Jesus, well great – but are you conforming your life more and more to his ways and his pattern?’

Fourthly and finally, we zoom right in on the ministry of Jesus in the calling of the first disciples.

16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.

19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Simon, Andrew, James, and John have missed out on the opportunity to be disciples of a rabbi. Those chances went to the bright lads. So they’ve gone off into their family businesses.

But here comes a second chance, and it’s a surprising one. Normally, a young Jewish man would ask a rabbi if he could apprentice himself to him. It wasn’t the done thing for a rabbi to come and call people to be his followers. But Jesus did that.

And the call was different in another way[ii]. The usual pattern was for a disciple to say that they were following Torah (the Jewish Law). They didn’t say they were following a person, not even an eminent rabbi. But Jesus is different. He’s on a different plane from the normal rabbis. To follow him is to follow the law of God, for he is the instigator of it.

Further, this was not to be some academic call to learn Torah and its meaning. It was a call to service: ‘I will send you out to fish for people.’ Thus, it’s possible for Jesus to issue this kind of call to anyone. No qualifications are needed.

And even more than this, it was a call to fellowship, for Jesus creates the beginnings of a community here. This is not an isolated individual call. This is about the making of a new community. Jesus calls all his people to that, too, for he is making us into a sign to the world of how human community is meant to be as he makes all things new. That’s why we have to dispense with all the ways in the church that we carry on as if we are just a club or a social organisation. Our destiny is far greater than such trivia.

So this is where we get to when we zoom in on the ministry of Jesus. In the shadow of suffering, God wins a great victory. Jesus calls us to a belief in him that requires aligning ourselves with his purposes. It involves loyalty to him, a commitment to service, and the building of a new community.

Is that what we are about in our churches? It needs to be, if we care about the kingdom of God.

[i] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p24, discussing the meaning of ‘gospel’ in 1:1.

[ii] What follows is based on Edwards, pp49-51.

0

Video Worship – A Conversation Can Change The World

This week’s video worship is based on the story of Philip introducing Nathanael to Jesus. Here’s the video; the text of the talk is below.

John 1:43-51

This simple story may make us nervous. Some of us find it difficult to share our faith. So to hear a story which makes the importance of faith-sharing clear and which makes it sound effortless for others may give rise to concern.

But as we make our way through John’s narrative I hope to show you that this is actually quite an encouraging account of sharing Jesus with others.

Chapter one of the story is about conversation. Jesus’ approach to Philip is conversational:

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

The same could be said of Philip’s approach to Nathanael:

45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’

Take a moment to consider something about Philip and his background.

44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.

He is from up north, away from the sophisticated south around Jerusalem where all the movers and shakers lived. He and Andrew have Greek names, and given that parts of Galilee had been influenced by Greek culture you might say they have a less than entirely kosher background. Therefore, they are not likely to be fluent Jewish theologians, able to express the pure faith eloquently and defend it academically.

In other words, they are like many ordinary church members.

But what Philip (and Andrew) can do is talk simply and honestly with people about why Jesus is important to them. Philip has a simple faith, and he can tell Nathaniel that he believes Jesus is the fulfilment of all his hopes.

And that is something we can all do in ordinary conversation. It doesn’t have to be forced. We don’t have to steer the conversation. We are not all evangelists but we are all witnesses and we can say what Jesus means to us.

That might be quite significant at present. What if Christians were saying how their faith in Jesus has held them up through the coronavirus pandemic?

We don’t know whether people will react positively or not, but we’re not responsible for their reactions: they are. Our responsibility is to be a witness to Jesus and all he has done for us.

Chapter two of this story is about cynicism. Nathanael’s initial response is indeed negative:

46 ‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’ Nathanael asked.

It’s pretty disdainful, isn’t it? Nathanael comes from a village nearby, namely Cana, and perhaps there was some rivalry. But Nazareth was certainly what we might call a ‘humble’ place. In Surrey terms, Jesus’ upbringing was more Sheerwater than Virginia Water.

What do we do when the response to our conversation about Jesus is this kind of cynicism? I can tend to get defensive or alternatively walk away when people get cynical with me, but Philip was a better man than I am. His reaction is simple (and perhaps quiet):

‘Come and see,’ said Philip.

He doesn’t press Nathanael for a decision. He doesn’t demand immediate acceptance. He knows if Nathanael is to follow Jesus he must embrace the decision for himself. ‘Come and see.’

How can we say ‘Come and see’ to cynical friends today? The pandemic makes it particularly hard, because we can’t invite someone to church or to a small group. But in the present circumstances we could point them to suitable videos online or to books.

And the sheer fact that we can simply say, ‘Come and see’ in a way that shows we don’t feel threatened may be its own witness to what the peace of Christ in our hearts does for us.

Chapter three is about encounter.

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, ‘Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’

48 ‘How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.’

49 Then Nathanael declared, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.’

Cynical Nathanael has his world rocked.

Cliff Richard once covered a Christian song called ‘Better than I know myself.’ The chorus said, ‘You know me better than I know myself.’ This is what Nathanael discovers about Jesus, and it stuns him.

And Jesus knows him not only as cynical Nathanael, but as ‘an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ He sees not merely the sin but also the potential for goodness.

Effectively by saying that Nathanael has no deceit in him, Jesus is giving a big compliment: he is telling him that he is better than the founder of Israel, Jacob, who spent so much of his life deceiving family members. That’s quite something to say to someone who has been sitting under a fig-tree – the usual posture for someone seriously studying the Jewish Law.[i]

St Augustine says that he was reading beneath a fig tree when he heard the call of Jesus to ‘pick up and read’ the New Testament.[ii]

Augustine had led a sexually dissolute life to the distress of his mother Monica, but the voice of Jesus changed everything. And although he remained imperfect and didn’t resolve all his personal issues in this life, he became one of the greatest ever church leaders and Christian thinkers the world has seen.

We cannot manipulate people into the kingdom of God, and we shouldn’t try. Our rôle is to tell people how Jesus has made a difference in our lives and to invite them to ‘Come and see.’ It’s then up to Jesus to do the rest and for people to decide whether to respond. So we simply pray for him to reveal himself to the people with whom we have shared our faith.

Chapter four, the final chapter of this story, is about revelation.

50 Jesus said, ‘You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig-tree. You will see greater things than that.’ 51 He then added, ‘Very truly I tell you, you will see “heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on” the Son of Man.’

You may remember that the comedians Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse created two characters called Smashie and Nicey. They were old, hammy disc jockeys, allegedly based on Dave Lee Travis and the late Alan Freeman. Every sketch finished with them playing the same record on the turntable – Bachman Turner Overdrive, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Well, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ could be a summary of Jesus’ response to Nathanael’s confession of faith in him. Jesus this is bigger than just you and me. I have come to connect heaven and earth – hence the angels ascending and descending on him.

Mission is more than just the personal relationship between an individual and Jesus, important as that is. Mission connects us with the vast, eternal purposes of God to reconcile heaven and earth and to make all things new. When Jesus calls someone to have faith in him, he calls them to play their part in those eternal plans.

Indeed for some, that is the appeal of the Gospel. While many may be drawn by the promise of sins forgiven, others connect with Jesus when they realise that he gives them a purpose in life that goes way beyond what an ordinary career can offer.

So one former acquaintance of mine has a global ministry of speaking and writing on creation care. His concern for the environment has spanned decades and it all goes back to a faith that believes in a God who wants to make all things new.

Another acquaintance found his career changing from being a professional theologian to one with a passion for adoption and fostering. He set up a charity and has recently handed over the leadership of it, because he has been appointed as a government adviser on adoption and fostering. Where did it all come from? A big picture of a God who wants to bring reconciliation and healing everywhere.

Now doesn’t that make you wonder? What if we spoke more about what Jesus means to us? What if some people, even though cynical, were willing to be introduced? What might Jesus do in their lives? How might he use them for good as he brings together heaven and earth?

It all starts with an ordinary conversation.

[i] Richard A Burridge, John: The People’s Commentary, p45.

[ii] Ibid., citing Confessions 8:28-29.

0

Video worship – The Baptism Of Jesus As His Ordination And Ours

Here’s the video for this week’s devotions. A text version of the talk is below.

Mark 1:4-11

My ordination service was memorable for all the wrong reasons. For one thing, I never experienced the spiritual exhilaration that others report, only a sense that at last I was no longer under suspicion from the church authorities.

For another, my sister and brother-in-law weren’t there. They had been invited, they had booked into an hôtel, and they had ordered a buffet there afterwards for a family celebration. But there was no sign of them.

You have to understand that this was in a time when few people had mobile phones. So my father went outside to look for them. When they didn’t arrive for the service, we decided afterwards to find a phone box. Then we discovered that they had been to a wedding the day before, and my sister had suffered a fish bone getting stuck in her throat at the wedding breakfast. They had tried to get a message to me, but it hadn’t got through.

I have often viewed the baptism of Jesus as his ordination service. Here is the public confirmation and commissioning of the ministry to which he had been called since before the beginning of human history.

And like our ordination services, the place of the Holy Spirit is significant here. At an ordination, we often sing the ancient hymn ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ (‘Come, Holy Spirit’) and we lay hands on the ordinands, praying that the Holy Spirit will equip them for their calling.

So in this talk, I want to reflect on what the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus tells us about the public ministry he is about to begin.

10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

These words are loaded with scriptural resonances from elsewhere, and when we realise that their significance for the ministry of Jesus will become apparent.

Firstly, Jesus ‘saw heaven being torn open’ (verse 10).

When heaven is opened in the Scriptures, it usually means God is about to reveal his glory and his will. Ezekiel’s inaugural vision that makes him a prophet begins when ‘the heavens were opened and [he] saw visions of God’[i]. Stephen the martyr, on trial for his life and facing stoning, saw ‘heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’[ii] The revelation Simon Peter receives to mix with Gentiles and ultimately proclaim the Gospel to them begins in a trance when he sees ‘heaven opened’[iii]. There are at least eight examples in the Book of Revelation itself[iv]. And so on.

Therefore in this incident the Father is telling Jesus that something important is about to be communicated.

We may think that such spiritual experiences are rare, unusual, or even non-existent for us. However, there are occasional times when we are conscious that the presence of God is close or even virtually tangible. It does not feel like the sky has a ceiling and our prayers bounce back down to us without reaching heaven. We have those times when we know the lines of communication are clear.

If we do, then this passage tells us to pay attention. God may be opening heaven to say something important to us, or to do something important with us.

I wonder whether we stand to attention at such times?

Secondly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him’ (verse 10). This has echoes of the creation story in Genesis 1, where ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’[v] before the six days of creation begin.

So here too God is about to begin a work of creation. Except creation already exists! With Jesus he begins the work of the new creation. Through Jesus all things will be made new.

This shows us that Jesus is way bigger and more important than the ways in which we often treat him. For all our confessions of him as Son of God and Saviour, there are too many times when we treat Jesus as if he were someone who helps us to improve our lives, or who mentors us in good ways of living. We treat life with Jesus as some kind of deluxe addition to life.

But that is not why Jesus came, it is not why he ministered, and he will not have it. Jesus came that we might say goodbye to all that is old, decaying, and twisted due to sin and instead to welcome in a world where not only are we individually made new in our lives, but that all creation will be made new. Even our bodies will be made new at the Resurrection.

Following Jesus is not like buying a new car, where we look at the specifications and say, I’ll add on some extra features, like a parking camera to help my reversing, and a heated driver’s seat to keep me comfortable.

No: the ministry of Jesus is one where our old life is put in the grave and we are raised to a completely new life. It is one where we look forward to the old world going and living in the new heavens and new earth.

To welcome Jesus into our lives, then, requires that we are willing to sing the words to the old chorus ‘Spirit of the living God’: ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me.’ When we allow him to do that in our lives, he will make us new and make his world new.

Thirdly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him like a dove’ (verse 10, italics mine).

That the Spirit descends like a dove takes our last thought further. The most obvious biblical precedent here is of Noah using a dove to find out whether the flood waters had receded[vi].

This is an indication, then, that as Jesus comes to make his new creation, he does so as One who rolls back the damage of the past, and who shows that the judgment of God no longer pertains to all who own the name of Christ. Yes, ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me’ can be challenging, disconcerting, and disturbing, but Jesus also comes as the gentle One who restores where we have been broken by the actions of others and who tells us that no longer have to live under our past, because through him God has offered us forgiveness.

If you are already broken, let Jesus put you back together in a new and beautiful way. Maybe you think that the brokenness will still show. Maybe in this life it will, but don’t let that daunt you. After all, the risen Jesus showed his scars to the disciples.

Think if you will about the Japanese art of kintsugi. This is the practice of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. Even the flaws and imperfections are beautified, to make a more attractive piece of art. See that as a picture of what Jesus wants to do in your life. Why not invite him to do his work of restoration in you?

Fourthly and finally, verse 11:

And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

The first thing that has always struck me here is that the Father proclaims his delight in his Son before he has even begun his ministry. It is a powerful statement of unconditional love.

But if we want to dig into the biblical background here, then the obvious stopping-off point is the so-called Servant Songs in the Book of Isaiah, especially the first of those songs[vii]. It begins with the words,

‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.’ (Verse 1)

The main difference is that whereas in Isaiah the designation ‘servant’ is used, here in Mark it’s ‘Son’. We draw the conclusion that God’s own Son came as the Servant of the Lord. The Son of God is the Servant.

Later in Mark Jesus will tell his disciples that servanthood rather than status is what matters in the kingdom of God, and that even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many[viii].

But it’s established right here at the beginning of the Gospel that Jesus will carry out his ministry of salvation in the form of a servant. The Son of God will bring in the new creation and all heal the broken not in the way that many assume an Almighty God will do, with force and irresistible energy, but by treading the path of servanthood.

And so he comes to serve – not in the sense that he waits on our every indulgence but that he provides our every need and he knows that the only cure for the wounds of he world lies at the Cross.

When we receive that, he then enlists us to serve him by serving others that they may see through us the nature of God’s transforming love. That is what Jesus is ordained to do. This is what all his followers, reverends or otherwise, are all ordained to do as well.

[i] Ezekiel 1:1

[ii] Acts 7:56

[iii] Acts 10:11

[iv] Revelation 4:1; 5:3; 8:1; 10:8; 11:19; 13:6; 15:5; 19:11.

[v] Genesis 1:2

[vi] Genesis 8:8-12

[vii] Isaiah 42:1-7

[viii] Mark 10:35-45

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑