Farewell 1: Keep On Keeping On (Acts 20:17-38)

This week I begin a series of three farewell messages before I move to another circuit. This one is for my Byfleet church.

Acts 20:17-38

Here we have a story about a church leader saying goodbye to a church he loves. Therefore you can see why I picked it for today.

I want to make it clear that I am not taking it any deeper than that. I am not comparing myself to the Apostle Paul. I am not expecting to go to prison when we move to Liphook. And I am not saying we shall never meet again.

And to reassure one person who saw this passage in this week: no, I am not expecting you all to kiss me before I go! For the ‘brotherly kiss’ of the New Testament, think something of the way the French greet one another. We are not in France.

No: let’s just keep this story on the simple level: a church leader saying goodbye to a church he loves. Just like Debbie and I are today.

And within that, some of the things Paul says to the Ephesian elders are things I would urge you to remember, too.

Just to keep you going in my absence, I have six things to share! But don’t worry, this isn’t a double-length sermon! I’ll keep each point brief.

Firstly: keep to the basics (verses 18-21)

Paul says he has kept to what is helpful to preach and that he has preached repentance and faith in Christ to both Jews and Greeks. While I don’t doubt he brought his great learning to bear on his treatment of the Scriptures, it’s clear he didn’t share the minutiae of some obscure PhD thesis (or the ancient equivalent). He kept things at the basic level.

It doesn’t matter how experienced we are as Christians, we often need to return to the basics rather than think we are above such things. Repentance and faith in Christ are not one-off decisions at the beginning of our Christian pilgrimage, they are lifelong practices. I suspect that the closer we get to Christ, the more we shall realise what needs changing in our lives.

It’s rather like something a wonderful Local Preacher in my home circuit used to say. “Have you been converted? I’ve been converted many times.”

Never think you are above such things. Let the Scriptures and the preaching of the Word keep bringing you back to the basics of Christian faith and living.

My home circuit once had an exhibition of resources for churches to share. My father promoted a Christian basics Bible study course. One sniffy lay leader at another church looked down his nose at it and declared, “We don’t need that stuff. We’re beyond that.” Please never take that man’s attitude.

Secondly: keep following (verses 22-24)

Paul knew he had to move on elsewhere. The Ephesians knew they had to stay put. Debbie and I know we have to move on, and most of you expect you are called to stay put.

Although the basics God calls us all to are the same, the details can be different. Be sure you know where and how God is calling you to follow him. Are you open to new ways and new surprises? Might he be moving you on? Could he be showing you something new in the place where you are?

Sometimes the basic message is to ‘Go’, as in the Great Commission of Jesus in Matthew 28. On other occasions, the command is to stay where we were when God first called us, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7.

Just remember, the core message of Jesus was ‘Follow me.’ Following him involves both what we do and where we do it. Could he be calling anyone here to something new or somewhere new?

What matters is that like Paul we aim to finish the task of testimony that Jesus has given us. What might that involve for you or for me?

Thirdly: keep watching (verses 25-31)

Paul calls the Ephesian elders to keep watch over the flock in place of him, who has done that by ‘proclaim[ing] … the whole will of God’ (verse 27).

That, he says, is how shepherds watch over the flock of God. They proclaim the whole will of God, because the ‘savage wolves’ (verse 29) who will come after the flock are men who ‘will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them’ (verse 30).

So be on your guard. If anyone comes along, be they a preacher, a member of the congregation, or a friend, and urges you to do or believe something that you know is contrary to the teachings of Holy Scripture, then watch out. If you hear the seductive claims that you should follow the spirit of the age rather than the ancient wisdom handed down to us, then beware. This is how wolves snatch the sheep from the flock of God.

If they won’t accept correction, then complain to the Superintendent. Even if they are sincere rather than malicious, you still need to take action. Sincerity is not enough. I remember the story of an inquest after someone died on a hospital operating table. The anaesthetist had mistakenly administered the wrong anaesthetic, and this killed the patient. The coroner addressed the anaesthetist and said, “I have no doubt you sincerely thought you were giving the correct drug, but you were sincerely wrong, and it cost a life.”

It doesn’t matter whether someone is malicious or sincerely wrong, if they are trying to lead people down an unscriptural path they will take sheep from the flock. Keep watching.

Fourthly: keep giving (verses 32-35)

On the surface, here’s one way in which Paul practised ministry differently from us. He still engaged in his profession of tent-making, and used it to finance his ministry, which must therefore inevitably have been a part-time affair. In fact, he says he financed not only his own ministry but that of his companions, too. This model exists in Scripture alongside ones that are closer to our practice of setting ministers aside full-time.

But the point here is that we give in order to help the weak, because it is more blessed to give than to receive.

So I’m not talking about regular church weekly or monthly giving here. I’m asking that we continue to give in order to serve and bless the poor.

For example, here’s one thing I wish I’d thought of at the time. We’ve had the food bank running here for a few years now, and it’s wonderful that people from the village make contributions in the box at the Co-Op. It’s encouraging that people deposit gifts for it in the box in our foyer. It’s lovely when a local business or other organisation donates to us.

But why on earth did I not think of suggesting that we had a regular time when we as a congregation specifically gave to the food bank, more than the annual donations at harvest festival? I do know that individuals from the church family have given to it, and done so generously, but I should have thought of some way of building a rhythm of such giving into the life of the church.

We need to keep giving not just for the maintenance of the church, but so that we can bless the poor.

Fifthly: keep praying (verse 36)

Paul and the elders kneel together before he goes and he prays for them.

Here’s a thought for you: many of you will know that what I am paid is called a stipend, not a salary. Now stipend is not a religious word for a salary, it has a distinctive meaning. Whereas a salary is supposed to be a fair recompense for the job undertaken, a stipend is a living allowance. It is meant to be enough for someone to live on without being in need. The idea is that I am set free to pray. That I may prayerfully determine my priorities. That I may pray for my churches and my members. If the stipend were taken seriously, then prayer would be at the heart of what ministers do.

But we also need you to pray for us. I have been blessed over the years to have four people who have prayed daily for me. Three of them are now dead. There may be others praying for me that I don’t know about.

Prayer is not a mechanical thing that ‘works’, like pushing a button – and that’s why I don’t like the expression ‘Prayer works.’ Prayer is an expression of our relationship with our heavenly Father, and at its heart that’s what the Christian faith is – a relationship with God.

So the reason to keep praying is because it’s a fundamental expression of our faith. Prayer is not just a list of requests, although it includes that. It is time with our heavenly Father, mediated by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Nurturing the relationship is as vital as filling up your car.

Sixthly and finally: keep loving (verses 37-38)

The weeping, kissing, and embracing tell us something about the strength of the love between Paul and the Ephesian elders.

Without love we are nothing. A church can have a mission statement but without love it is nothing. A church can have generous giving but without love it is nothing. A church can have wonderful building facilities but without love it is nothing. A church can have amazing worship music but without love it is nothing. A church can have exciting youth work but without love it is nothing.

Prioritise love for God and one another. When love grows cold, make sure you warm it up. When you fall out with one another, find ways to reconcile. When different personalities don’t understand each other, make sure you think the best of one another.

And I say this to you not because I believe love is absent here, but because it is present and you can build on it. I could think of many examples over the eight years I have been your minister, not least the way you have embraced your brothers and sisters when they have been bereaved. But one example is special to me, and that is the way you have taken my wife Debbie to your hearts.

It’s not start loving but keep loving. Not only will you make your church leaders happy, there will be joy in heaven as the Almighty and the heavenly host behold you.

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Engagement, Not Attendance, Matthew 10:24-39 (Ordinary 12 Year A)

Matthew 10:24-39

Let me begin with an observation from a wise church leader:

If you want to grow the church, don’t concentrate on church attendance.

Does that shock you? Don’t we want to grow numbers at church?

Let me give you a fuller version of the quote:

If you want to grow the church, concentrate on engagement, not attendance.

The point is this: anyone can attend church, and that’s fine: all are welcome. But that doesn’t make them a Christian. What Jesus said was, ‘Follow me.’ That’s more than attendance. We don’t merely seek more attendees or even church members. We seek more disciples of Jesus. People who will engage with him.

So it’s fitting that in today’s passage Jesus concentrates on discipleship. If we listen to him, we will know more of what call we put out to those whom we desire to be his followers and part of his family.

Firstly, discipleship is essentially imitation:

It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. (Verse 25a)

I hear those words and what comes into my mind is the old song from The Jungle Book, ‘Oo-be-do, I wanna be like you.’

In the culture of Jesus’ day, disciples were the students who learned from their teachers. But it wasn’t classroom knowledge. It was the kind of learning where the disciples learned from their masters how to live. They learned by imitating their teachers.

Some disciples of rabbis took this to extremes, and I could offend delicate sensibilities if I gave some examples. But the basic point was that a disciple wanted to learn how to live the godly life by imitating his rabbi.

The Christian tradition soon took this up. Not only did disciples follow Jesus, but the Apostle Paul would tell people to follow him insofar as he followed Christ.

In the late medieval era a Dutch-German Christian called Thomas a Kempis captured the spirit of this when he published a book entitled ‘The Imitation of Christ.’

That’s our priority: more people looking more like Jesus. We need to organise our priorities and our practices as a church around things that promote that. It means, for example, an emphasis on small groups – but not just ones that study the Bible and then close it. It means groups that look at how they are going to put into practice the teaching and example of Jesus, and the next week discuss how they got on.

Of course, we will all fail in imitating our teacher Jesus. But he has provided for the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross, and so we get back up, dust ourselves off, and go again.

It’s not enough for us simply to say that the Gospel is inclusive. If we say that God loves everyone but do not include the need to change, then that will never attract people, because they will think they can stay just the way they are. There is no need for Christian faith and the church on that basis.

But if we build on the fact that many people still have a warm regard for Jesus even if they are less positive about the church, then we have a real chance. We can say to people, ‘Come and see what it’s like to follow Jesus and be like him.’ That is a Gospel message. Just saying ‘All are welcome’ isn’t.

Secondly, discipleship is rooted in God’s love:

Jesus was loved – but not by all. The common people loved him, but the powerful generally didn’t. It earned him conflict, suffering, and eventually death.

If we are going to imitate Jesus then without us being provocative that is going to earn us opposition and pain at times. When bad times dominate, we may be tempted to despair. Is it worth it if the evil people come out on top?

So Jesus tells his disciples not to worry – God will expose the deeds of the wicked to the light. That’s why Jesus tells his followers not to be afraid of those who can kill the body, but not the soul (verses 26-28a).

Sure, there is a proper holy fear of God, but at the root of it all is a God who loves us so much more than anything else in all creation, sparrows included. We have a value to our heavenly Father (verses 28b-31).

And so just as Jesus’ security was in his Father’s love for him, our security as disciples is in the Father’s love for us.

There can be plenty of things to discourage us as Christian disciples. We are a minority. We are misunderstood. People reject us. Even family members take issue with us. It isn’t unusual for us to go through phases in life where we feel there isn’t much hope for all that is good, beautiful and right in the kingdom of God. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to chuck it all in and go along with the ways of the world?

To that experience, Jesus says,

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Is anyone here in a situation of discouragement or even despair about their life of faith? If you are, then Jesus says to you that his Father’s love for you has not changed. You are so valuable in his sight. After all, he made you in his own image. He knows you so well that he can count the hairs of your head – even if that gets progressively easier for him as time goes by!

You are loved. You are loved with the everlasting love of heaven. Whatever bad things happen to you in this life because you follow Jesus, nothing changes the fact that your heavenly Father loves you and that he will do justice in his time.

Remember: for the Christian, if the end is bad, then it’s not the end.

Thirdly and finally, discipleship is our priority:

Here I’m referring to what Jesus says about not bringing peace but a sword, how family members will be divided against each other, and how we must choose following him even above the desires of our families (verses 32-39).

This might get us worried. Is Jesus telling us to neglect our families? No, he isn’t. But he is telling us that because he is Lord our allegiance to him trumps everything else in life, even our families.

When we commit to Jesus Christ we are not joining a social club. We are not taking on a new leisure interest. We are reshaping our entire lives around him. This is not like taking out a monthly subscription to the new branch of PureGym.

And of course many of us already know the pain of divided families, where some of us are committed to Jesus Christ and other family members are not. Jesus reminds us here not to compromise our own commitment to him in order to appease our loved ones.

By implication, he also reminds us here not to make excuses for those relatives who do not follow him. Wishful thinking about their eternal destiny is just that: wishful thinking. God doesn’t suddenly lower the bar for someone just because they are related to us.

What should we do, then, when we are faced with this division in our families and perhaps our friends as well? We know Jesus doesn’t want us to back down on our commitment to him or to dilute it, and we also know we don’t want to be harsh.

I believe this should drive us to regular, sustained, and passionate prayer. Pray regularly for those loved ones who do not follow Jesus. If you can, pray every day for them. Prayer is what moves spiritual mountains. Prayer is what removes blockages in people’s lives.

The evangelist DL Moody prayed daily for one hundred of his friends to surrender their lives to Christ. During his lifetime, ninety-six did. The other four gave themselves to Christ at Moody’s funeral.

So keep up the praying. Don’t give up, and don’t compromise, because you’ll be surprised in the long term what God can do. Let your tears for your loved ones drive you to your knees for them.

Conclusion

It may seem a paradox, then, but according to Jesus the way to grow the church is not by lowering the bar but raising it, not by making entry easy but by being frank about how difficult and challenging the Christian life is.

Are we ready to embrace that challenge for ourselves, and to take it to the world?

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And The Book Is Published!

Yes, really, it’s out there in the wild now! It’s available for £9.99 in paperback or £5.99 in Kindle from Amazon.

I don’t yet have my author copies, but when I do I’ll advertise signed copies and the odd launch event. I’m also arranging a blog tour for around three weeks’ time.

But in the meantime, here’s a rather excited me (or about as excited as this introvert ever gets) in the back garden this morning:

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Coming Soon: My First Book

I’m just taking a break from my sabbatical to share with you the video trailer I have made for my forthcoming (and first-ever) book: ‘Odd One Out: Good news for those who don’t belong.’

I don’t have an exact publication date yet but I don’t expect it to be that long. Watch this space – and/or my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram feeds where I shall also be posting news.

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You Are Not Alone: The Temptations Of Jesus, Matthew 4:1-11 (Lent 1 Year A 2023)

Matthew 4:1-11

So we begin Lent and our journey with Jesus to the Cross. When we get to the Cross, we are used to saying things such as, ‘Jesus died for us,’ and indeed he did.

But one thing we miss is that Jesus could only die for us because he lived for us. Yes, his death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins, as the New Testament says, but there is more to it than that. In his death and our faith in him, we are united to his life and the benefits of his life for us. He did not only die for us (as if everything up until Calvary was just filling in time), he also lived for us.

I think that’s important when we consider the temptations of Jesus. It’s important to say he was tempted for us. And that’s the way I want us to explore this oh-so-familiar story that we read in one of the Gospels on the First Sunday of Lent every year.

So here are three strands of the temptations story that help us because we are united with Christ:

Firstly, fellowship.

Most weeks when I prepare a service I have to choose the hymns before I have written the sermon or even know what direction I’m going in with the Bible passage. More often than not that works out all right, but I have to confess that this week we’re now going to be singing a hymn after the sermon that takes a completely different tack from what the passage says.

What we’ll be singing is the hymn ‘Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us.’ It imagines Jesus in the wilderness and the hymn-writer says,

lone and dreary, faint and weary,
through the desert thou didst go.

And that’s how I’d conceived Jesus’ wilderness experience – as a tough, solitary time.

However, then I began to read and consult scholars about the passage, and I’ve had to admit I was wrong. Ian Paul points out that Jesus wasn’t alone. At the beginning, the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness (verse 1), and at the end of the story ‘angels came and attended him’ (verse 11).

So if last week when we thought about the Transfiguration we sang the old 80s song ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’ by Alison Moyet, this week we sing with Michael Jackson, ‘You Are Not Alone.’

Jesus was not alone in facing temptation. Neither are we, and that’s good news. It’s easy to feel that we are on our own when temptation comes, but it’s not the case that we are isolated. The Holy Spirit is with us to give us strength to do what is right. God’s angels are not far away to encourage us in the ways of the kingdom.

We may well feel alone when temptation comes, but that is all part of the lie. God’s Spirit is on hand to help us to say no to temptation and yes to Christ. It may be that all the noise and pressure of the temptation is there to stop us recognising God’s presence with us, but present he is.

Or it may of course be that really to our shame we want to give in to this particular temptation, and so we ignore the presence of the Holy Spirit with us in our hour of testing.

But God is there. He is our escape route. He is our strength in times of weakness.

When we are tempted, let’s look for God. He won’t abandon us.

Secondly, obedience.

I once heard a preacher declare as if it were blindingly obvious to everyone, ‘Of course Jesus was unable to sin,’ but I sat there thinking, well if that’s the case, the whole story of the temptations is pretty pointless!

I think the preacher’s error came from so wanting to defend the divinity of Jesus (which is a right and noble thing to do) that he forgot Jesus was fully human as well as fully God. And because Jesus took on sinful human flesh, it would have been possible for him to sin.

The Good News, though, is that he didn’t. Here at the temptations as at every stage of his life, Jesus, in the words of John Calvin, took sinful human flesh and turned it back to obedience to the Father.

You can’t miss the parallels between Jesus in the wilderness for forty days and Israel in the wilderness for forty years. But whereas Israel disobeyed and her life became futile, Jesus obeyed. He redeemed sinful human flesh by his obedience.

So when you and I find ourselves facing temptation, our union with Christ means that we have his obedience available to us. Before we resist the devil we submit to him and say, ‘Lord, give me the gift of your obedience.’

Our world doesn’t appreciate talk of obedience. It claims we are only answerable to ourselves and only need take others into account by ensuring we don’t hurt them. Obedience to anyone – let alone the Almighty – is out of date and repressive.

But you know what? Obedience to God is nothing of the sort. It is in fact the way we enter into true freedom. For true freedom is not the chance to do anything we like, but freedom to do what is right instead of being enslaved to sin. And as such, obedience to God is the most liberating of practices.

The expression, ‘Do what thou wilt’ is actually one of the cardinal tenets of Satanism. But ‘Do what God wills’ is the road to freedom. It may seem difficult, if not unattainable at times, but it is possible for the Christian because we are united with Christ and he gives us the gift of his obedience.

Thirdly, example.

The thing about the temptations story when it comes to us preachers is that it looks like an easy shoo-in for one of our favourite three-point sermons, one point for each temptation. And I’ve done that plenty of times over the years.

But while I’m still giving you three points this morning, I’m trying to show you the bigger picture. And so I want to think about all three temptations under this one heading about Jesus’ example. Because the temptations that the devil tries on Jesus come in some form to every generation. And Jesus’ example shows us how to rebut them.

So the devil tries to attack Jesus’ identity – who God says he is. God has just spoken from heaven at his baptism to say that Jesus is his beloved Son, and so the devil kicks off two of the temptations with the words ‘If you are the Son of God.’

Likewise to us he would love us to take on any identity except that of being beloved children of God. I could say that my identity is male heterosexual, a husband, a father, a Methodist minister, and a photographer, but these all pale into insignificance beside the fact that God loves me as his child. There is no more secure identity than that, and it’s important not to let the enemy to tempt us into skewing what our most fundamental identity is.

The devil wants Jesus to live by bread alone, just as much of our society, especially that influenced by atheists, wants us to believe that life is solely comprised of material things, that there is no soul or spirit, and unless something is material, it doesn’t exist. You and I know otherwise, and we cannot afford to compromise or forget that truth.

The devil wants Jesus to test God by jumping off the top of the Temple to certain death, and many people today say they will only accept the existence of God if he passes a test they set for him. It even comes in apparently heart-rending forms: ‘I will believe in God if he heals my auntie from cancer.’ Now it isn’t that God lacks compassion, but it is that allegiance to him must come first, whether he blesses us by fulfilling our requests and tests or not.

Finally, the devil comes out with his most naked temptation: you can have all the kingdoms of this world, Jesus, if you will only worship me. And this reminds us that we are all worshippers, whether we accept it or not. As Bob Dylan sang,

You’re gonna have to serve somebody
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

To what do we give our time, our affections, our money, and our energy? This will give us a good idea of who or what we worship. Those which are lesser than God may well be good things, but if they command our affection ahead of him then in our lives they are instruments of Satan.

Conclusion

Lent can be quite severe as we engage the spiritual discipline of warring against evil. But Jesus teaches us here not to lose heart, and to be encouraged.

For he is with us, and we can draw on his presence when we fight evil.

His obedience is available to us through our union with him so that we can conquer.

And his example shows us that what we face today is nothing new but rather simply old tricks given a new polish. They can be resisted in his name as he did, and we can live for the glory of his Name.

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Weak In The Presence Of Beauty: The Transfiguration, Matthew 17:1-9 (Sunday Before Lent, Year A, 2023)

Matthew 17:1-9

One of the early solo hit singles by the singer Alison Moyet was entitled ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’. The words describe the protagonist bumping into an old boyfriend, and they imply that this man was bad news. However, he was also good-looking, and the singer knows she cannot afford to spend time with him, for fear that she will go ‘weak in the presence of beauty.’

When we are in the presence of beauty, we do strange things. We stop being rational. Men stumble over their words in the presence of a beautiful woman. Peter babbles incoherently in our reading when he sees Jesus transfigured and Moses and Elijah appear.

4 Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’

Other Gospels tell us he just didn’t know what to say.

The spiritual equivalent to being overwhelmed by beauty is to be overcome by the tangible presence of God. Right now, there is a story in the news that exemplifies that.

On Wednesday 8th February, a regular daily act of worship began in a chapel at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. It’s still going on. People have so encountered God that they have not wanted to leave. Some are caught up in passionate worship. Others are on their knees, repenting of sin. Still others are sharing testimony to what God is doing then and there in their lives. Others are bringing prophetic words. People are travelling great distances to join the queue and get into the chapel. The American fast food chain Chick-Fil-A has been delivering food to the chapel so that some people can eat there and remain longer.

Does that sound like religious mania to you? If it does, let me bring you down to earth. Asbury Seminary is one of the leading training institutions in the United States for … Methodist ministers. Two of the New Testament scholars who I most frequently use in my studies and quote in my sermons, Craig Keener and Ben Witherington, are Asbury professors.

It’s too early to classify this formally as a revival, but it has all the hallmarks of a work of God. There are some similarities to outpourings of the Spirit as described in the Book of Acts. What is going on at Asbury is a return to Methodist roots, because we were a revival movement at the beginning – a revival movement where it was nothing unusual for people to be overcome by the tangible presence of God, just as Peter, James, and John were at the Transfiguration.

Now here’s the question I have this week about the Transfiguration experience. Who was it for?

And I have to say that I have changed my mind about my answer. In previous years, I have looked at the Transfiguration and those amazing words from heaven that affirm who Jesus is, and I’ve said: that was for Jesus. The words from heaven are very similar to those that come from Heaven at his baptism to affirm him before his public ministry starts. Now, he is about to embark on his journey to Jerusalem where he will suffer and die, and this equips him for it. When I have preached that in the past, I have emphasised how often dramatic experiences of God occur in the church among those who suffer for their faith, and there is some truth in that. I can support that from church history and personal testimony.

But as I said, I’ve changed my mind. I now think the Transfiguration, with its powerful experience of God’s nearness, was for the disciples.

Why? The voice from heaven was not addressed to Jesus, but to the disciples:

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’

Listen to him! That can only be addressed to the disciples! Why didn’t I see this before? That’s what I’ve been asking myself in the last few days!

And that’s one of two things that follow for disciples of Jesus from their dazzling spiritual experience: listen to Jesus.

They needed to hear that message. Just before the Transfiguration Jesus has prophesied for the first time that he will suffer and die. They couldn’t handle it. Peter in particular rejected it. That didn’t fit with their understanding of a triumphant Messiah.

So at the Transfiguration God takes matters in hand with these men who will be apostles. Listen to Jesus. He is my Son. I love him, he’s doing great things.

The particular thing they need to heed from Jesus is the necessity of him going to the Cross, as I said. It would be the centre of the Christian message. It would be the means of transformation for anyone who comes to Christ, for there they find love, forgiveness, and a new start. If you go away from the message of the Cross, then you also depart from Jesus.

I mentioned last week that my Byfleet church recently hosted a wedding blessing for a couple from a church that didn’t have its own premises. After the service, everyone was invited to write a message to the happy couple in a special book. This is what I wrote:

Stay together at the foot of the Cross and you won’t go wrong.

We have the reading about the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent starts, precisely for this reason. From here Jesus starts his journey to Jerusalem in earnest, knowing he will be betrayed, falsely convicted, tortured, and killed. If you want to go with Jesus from the Mount of Transfiguration, you have to go with him to Calvary.

I think that’s why many of the people in the chapel at Asbury Seminary were on their knees, confessing their sins. Their dramatic experience of God’s presence took them to the Cross.

And like the wedding couple whom I advised to ‘stay together at the foot of the Cross’, it is not a place that we visit once and from which we then move on. It is a place to dwell.

You may not fully understand it. Like those first disciples, you may feel like you only have a few pieces of the jigsaw and you need more in order to see the big picture God is putting before you. But when you do, you will see a picture of the Cross.

So listen to Jesus, and go to the Cross.

The second of the two things that follow from the awesome experience of God at the Transfiguration is something not said by the Father from Heaven, but by Jesus:

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

It may be natural when God’s presence comes close in awesome power to be afraid. This may be a genuine setting for ‘The fear of the Lord.’

And given that most times we don’t experience God as so close (and maybe, if we’re honest, don’t want to) when he comes that near to us it’s not surprising that the nearness of his holiness shows up our lack of holiness. So no wonder the response of many to such an encounter is the confession of sin.

But while that may be a necessary stopping point on the journey, it isn’t the destination. Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to remain permanently in the place of fear. Yes, God is holy – but he also loves us. Yes, we need to confess our sins – but God also wants to forgive us and renew us.

So this is an invitation to get going in the life of the kingdom in close fellowship with Jesus. The One who was seen in blazing light by the disciples and who will also be seen in blazing light at his return is the One who will accompany us in life.

So as we like Peter, James, and John prepare to come down from the mountain-top experience, we do so knowing that whatever trials will test us and whatever mundane things threaten to take the shine off the glory, Jesus the Transfigured One is still with us. His light and glory are not far away.

For us, of course, it is not his physical presence but the presence of his Spirit. And while we might prefer, as a child once said, ‘God with skin on’, the fact that his Spirit accompanies us makes it possible for him to be close to all who honour his Name.

Yes, I know there are times when he tests our faith by hiding behind the clouds of life for a protracted period, but he is still not far away from us.

And if he does come in splendour and glory into our lives, don’t run. Hear him say, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Listen to him and let him take you with him to the Cross.

And allow him to draw close to you as friend, even with his stupendous power and authority.

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How To Be Better Than The Pharisees, Matthew 5:21-37 (Ordinary 6 Lent -2 Year A 2023)

Matthew 5:21-37

In last week’s Gospel passage from the preceding verses, Jesus said that his kingdom community was being watched by the world and so needed to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

But he then went on to say a third thing: that the world needs to see that we are better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. We are not just forgiven people, we are people on a journey of transformation.

This week’s passage puts flesh on those bones. In these verses, Jesus gives us specific examples of how we are meant to be better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.

Jesus does this by taking examples from the Ten Commandments specifically and the Jewish Law, the Torah, generally. You will have noticed there was something of a formula going on in each example in the reading. First, there is a statement along the lines of ‘You have heard that it was said long ago’, followed by the law in question, and then Jesus says, ‘But I tell you’ and he then proceeds to up the ante and make that particular Law even more challenging.

This formula of ‘You have heard that it was said’ followed by ‘But I tell you’ is one that several Jewish teachers used. It’s a way of saying, ‘I have a different and better interpretation of the Law than what you have heard up to now.’ Well, you can bet Jesus has!

What is he trying to get over? That it’s not enough to obey externally in our actions the letter of God’s Law, what God is looking for is more than that. He is looking at our character.[1]

Now it’s easy to see what sort of character faults Jesus is condemning here, but maybe we should take those and reverse them to see what character traits he is commending as worthy of his kingdom.

So let’s look at the four examples he gives that we read.

Firstly, when Jesus talks about the command not to murder, he identifies anger, putting people down, and broken relationships as character faults behind the outward action and similar to it. The positive quality he identifies as important for his followers is reconciliation (verses 21-26). Be reconciled to the person who has something against you before you come to worship. Be reconciled to the person who is taking you to court for a debt.

We know how this fits into wider Christian theology. Because God has reconciled us to himself through the Cross of Christ, he calls us to be reconciled to each other. The church is meant to be a community of reconciliation.

We reflect this at least in part in our denominational structures in the Methodist Church. If a formal complaint against someone cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties in the local circuit, it is passed onto the District. And the body there which tries to resolve the problem is called the District Reconciliation Group.

It’s a shame, then, that some people in our churches would rather complain and assassinate someone’s character, and even make up false accusations rather than seek reconciliation. And after I first wrote those words, I reflected on the expression ‘character assassination’ – you can see why Jesus links attitudes of the heart to murder there.

When I call for reconciliation I am not asking that we sweep differences or pain under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. That is not reconciliation.

Of course, reconciliation can be difficult, if not downright painful. Sometimes we need a mediator to steer all the parties on a helpful course. It can help to have some mediators who have had particular training and gained certain skills.

But make no mistake, reconciliation is core to who we are as the Christian church. If we undermine it or despise it, then we are undermining our very identity as the church. We become not a place of life but of murder.

Secondly, when Jesus talks about adultery and the adultery of the heart that is lust (verses 27-30), he is calling us to the positive character trait of contentment. For what Jesus is doing here is linking the commandment not to commit adultery with the commandment not to covet. If a man lusts after another woman, he is lusting after someone else’s spouse or partner or daughter.

Jesus does not, of course, refer here to passing attraction, “but the deliberate harbouring of desire for an illicit relationship”[2].

When we are not content with our possessions, we covet buying more. When we are not content in our relationships, we covet someone else.

One of the problems we have with relationships today, and I think I’ve said this before, is that in the absence of belief in God, we expect too much of our romantic partners. We expect them to fulfil all sorts of needs – not just physical, but emotional too. We place a heavy burden on them that really only God can fill.

So when our loved ones fail to meet all our needs, the seeds of discontent are sown. And as those seeds grow, they burst through the surface of the soil as weeds that strangle our contentment. We begin to think that someone else would suit us better.

It’s a delusion. It doesn’t work. And if the thought is allowed to proceed to action, then two families can get destroyed.

As the church, we need to be a community that resists the lies of our world that say we shall only be satisfied with more, more, more. It bankrupts our bank accounts and it breaks up our families and relationships. Betrayed spouses may spend years before they ever trust someone again. Children suffer in their upbringing, however heroic many lone parents are.

I’ve quoted before in weddings the old saying that the bride’s aims and goals on a wedding day are Aisle-Altar-Hymn. But we need to accept one another’s imperfections and frailties, showing some of the grace that God has shown to us in Christ. We need to be less concerned with changing them for the better (and if they don’t, changing them for a newer model) than with changing ourselves.

Thirdly, when Jesus talks about divorce (verses 31-32) the positive character trait he has in mind is faithfulness.

We do have to read Jesus’ words here in parallel with what he says elsewhere in Matthew (in chapter 19) where he underlines sexual immorality as grounds for divorce, and what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, that if a Christian is married to a non-Christian and the non-Christian wants out, that too is a ground for divorce, but what is at the root of this teaching is that marriage is meant to be one man and one woman exclusively for life. The New Testament scholar Craig Keener says that Jesus and Paul

… exonerate those who genuinely wished to save their marriage but were unable to do so because their spouse’s unrepentant adultery, abandonment, or abuse de facto destroyed the marriage bonds.[3]

Jesus in his typical use of extreme hyperbolic language is not here sending abused wives back to their abusers, as I have sadly heard some Christian ministers do, but calling on those who have done wrong to mend their ways.

The other week Byfleet church hosted a wedding blessing for another church – one that doesn’t have its own premises. As the pastor took the young couple through their vows, I noticed that when he asked them questions such as ‘Will you be faithful to her/him until you are parted by death?’ their answer was ‘I will.’

Now that’s fine up to a point. ‘I will’ indicates both that it is a promise going into the future, and that sometimes love and faithfulness is an act of will. Because for all the joys of marriage, it will also be tough at times.

I much prefer our marriage service, where the bride and groom don’t say ‘I will’ but ‘With God’s help I will.’ God is ready by the Holy Spirit to help us with those challenging assignments he gives us.

And that isn’t just about marriage. It’s about us in the church being faithful to Jesus and faithful in our commitment to each other. Does Jesus see faithfulness to his teaching and to one another among us?

Fourthly and finally, when Jesus talks about whether or not you should swear an oath in court (verses 33-37), he has in mind the positive character trait of integrity.

Jesus’ banning of oaths wasn’t an unique position, but it was rare, and of course there are examples of oaths in the Old Testament, where the expectation is that if you make an oath you must keep it, even at great cost to yourself. It also warns against foolish oaths.

The intention behind Jesus’ teaching is probably similar to the ancient Greek view that your word should be as good as your oath. It makes me think of my late father’s experience of working in banking in the City. When the so-called ‘Big Bang’ happened in the financial world in 1987, my father bemoaned the fact that what disappeared overnight was the notion that a gentleman’s word was his bond. So much business was conducted in the city on a well-founded basis that if someone gave their word they would keep it. A handshake sealed the commitment of both parties. But this was replaced by lies and suspicion that had to be kept in check by laws.

Jesus is calling his people to be so known for their commitment to truthfulness that our reputation means no-one needs to ask us to back it up in some legal way. He calls us to remember that when we speak, we do so not merely in the presence of human witnesses, but in the presence of God. Yet how much do we live our lives in the knowledge that God is present? Should that not have an effect on our commitment to truth?

In Jesus’ day, some people thought it OK to break an oath and deceive people if they swore on something trivial, such as their right hand, but he wants his people to be different. In our day, we know how easily some people find it to engage in bare-faced deceit. Sadly in the last couple of years we have had too many examples of that in Parliament, but it’s not the only arena where we’ve witnessed this disturbing trend. Some people think they can say anything they like on the Internet, and there will be no consequences. They are wrong.

So if Jesus calls us to be people who are habitually known for their truth-telling, it is another way in which he is calling us to be distinctive in the face of the watching world.

The same is true of the other character virtues we’ve been thinking about today. His call to faithfulness comes to us in a society that has replaced lifetime faithfulness with serial monogamy, and now ‘throuples’. His call to contentment comes to us in a society where we are forever meant to buy bigger and better things, regardless of whether we need them, relationshhips included. His call to reconciliation comes to us in a society where we seem to have caught the American disease of ‘If it moves, sue it.’

How is God calling me to be distinctive as a Christian today?

How is he calling us as a church to be distinctive?

How indeed shall we be the light of the world?

[1] Craig Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, pp 180-182.

[2] Op. cit., P189.

[3] Op. cit., p192.

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We Are Being Watched, Matthew 5:13-20 (Ordinary 5 Lent -3 Year A 2023)

Matthew 5:13-20

Earlier this week I was at the Byfleet Tuesday Fellowship where over a series of meetings I have been telling them the story of my life and faith. Bit by bit, episode, by episode, this week we finally got to the point where my family and I arrived in this circuit in 2010 – which was probably a good point at which to end.

One of the hymns we sang on Tuesday was ‘Blessèd Assurance’, for its theme of testimony and those lines, ‘This is my story, this is my song.’ I hope that in hearing my story people heard how my story fits into the bigger story of Jesus.

We’ve been tracking the story of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in recent weeks. A fortnight ago, we heard how Jesus came into Galilee of the Gentiles with a proclamation that was to begin forming his community of light, a community that forms through repentance. Last week (if you watched my video) you’ll know I preached on the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus shows us what the repentant life with him looks like.

This week, Jesus tells us what the community of light is meant to look like to the watching world.

Firstly, says Jesus, his people are the salt of the earth.

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Now before we think about the salt, I want us to think about the earth.[1] The word here could just mean the soil, or it could mean the land, be that the local land where they are or the land of the whole world.

If it’s the local land, then it would be an image of Israel. Remember that before Jesus ever said, ‘Blessèd are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5), the Psalmist had said that the meek will inherit the land (Psalm 37:11). The land was so crucial to Israel: it was, after all, the Promised Land. If that’s what we’re talking about here, then Jesus is seeing his people as a renewal movement within the people of Israel. And I guess initially that’s what Christ-followers were.

But I mentioned a fortnight ago that Matthew has the mission to the Gentiles in view. He emphasises that Jesus comes to ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, and he ends his Gospel with the Great Commission. So in the long term the earth here is surely the whole world. We are to be salt in the whole world. This is an image of the mission to which Jesus calls us.

So we need to know what the salt is. We know how salt had various uses, the main ones being as a seasoning, a preservative, and as a fertiliser. I am going to dismiss the first two of seasoning and preservative here, partly because they refer to food whereas Jesus is talking about salt of the earth, and that’s where it was used as fertiliser.  Besides, it makes little sense to talk of the Christian calling as merely seasoning the world or preserving it. We are not here simply to make the world more flavoursome, or to preserve it, when there is much wrong with it. It is not our calling to bless everything that goes on in the world.

No: if we are salt of the earth, then Jesus means that we are fertiliser. The kingdom community is divine fertiliser. We enable life and growth where there is death and despair. Ultimately, that life only comes in Jesus Christ. We point people to that by our words and deeds. Food banks and the like are signs and pointers to the life of Christ in the midst of death and hopelessness. We also need to speak about the life Christ brings.

So a church community is meant to be fundamentally outward-looking. A fellowship that only looks inwards on itself is one where the salt has lost its saltiness. That may seem strange to us, who are used to our salt largely just being made up of one chemical compound. But in the days of Jesus salt was often found in a mixture with other minerals, and it could be dissolved out of it.

To us, salt losing its saltiness is absurd. Jesus would say to us, a church that only looks in on itself and does not make outreach a priority is equally absurd. Such a church cannot offer life, because it has dissolved the life out of itself.

Secondly, says Jesus, his people are the light of the world.

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Go back two weeks again in our story. Jesus has come to Galilee of the Gentiles to bring light to those living in darkness. Now, he says, that’s the ongoing task of his people. While in John’s Gospel Jesus owns the title ‘Light of the world’ for himself, here in Matthew he gives it to his kingdom community.

Sometimes we’re happy at the thought that Jesus is the light of the world, but we baulk at the fact that he called his church to be that light, too. It would be easier and more comfortable for us if our faith were just a private thing. We wouldn’t have to worry about being a good witness and what reaction we might get to that in society.

And there are factions in our society who would like us to adopt that attitude. Groups like the National Secular Society and others argue that faith has no place in public life. Either they don’t understand what faith is, or they don’t want to understand.

Jesus says, we are going to be seen – both as individual disciples and as a community of believers together. It will be our good deeds that shine light into a darkened world. We are not doing them so that people praise us, as Jesus condemned some religious leaders for doing: we are doing good deeds so that people may ‘glorify [y]our Father in heaven.’

Do we want to make a first step in changing this world for the better, for the glory of God? Surely we do. Then we need to think, talk, and pray about what good deeds would show up as light in our dark world.

So let me remind you of some of John Wesley’s most famous words:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

I think Jesus would approve of those words.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus calls us to be better than the Pharisees.

Jesus says he hasn’t come to abolish the Jewish Law but to fulfil it, that we should therefore not dilute it, and that in fact our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law (verses 17-20).

We need to hear this, and hear it carefully. Jesus is not saying that we should obey every Old Testament law, for he said that the food laws were no longer necessary (Mark 7:1-22) and the New Testament generally sees his death on the Cross as fulfilling the sacrificial laws.

Therefore, we need to read the Old Testament and its laws carefully. As Dr Ian Paul says,

… God looks on the heart as well as the hands. We must, in our reading of the Old Testament, always move from ‘What does it say?’ through ‘What is the intention?’ before we ask ‘What is God saying to us now?’[2]

The bottom line is that we cannot be casual about our conduct. Just because we believe in grace, mercy, and forgiveness does not mean we can live carelessly. That will not shine light into darkness. That will simply make us hypocrites, just as Jesus often said the religious leaders of his day were.

No. In God’s grace and mercy in Christ we do indeed find forgiveness and many a fresh start in life after we have messed up. But that grace then calls us to aspire to a higher standard. If all we are called to be as Christians is ‘nice’ then what makes us shine as the light of the world?

That’s why the early church gave dignity to the dead by taking funerals for those not considered worthy of one in the Roman Empire. That’s why they also took care of babies abandoned to die because they were the wrong sex or in some other way did not fit their parents’ aspirations.

Friends, if we are called to bring life to our world and shine in the darkness, how is the Holy Spirit calling us to a higher standard than mere religion?

It’s a question we need to ponder.

[1] Here and in most of what follows I am dependent on Ian Paul’s blog post ‘Being distinctive as the people of God in Matthew 5’.

[2] Ibid.

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