Finding Jesus in the Storm (Mark 4:35-41, Ordinary 12)

Mark 4:35-41

This week in the south-east of England our weather has gone from the extreme heat of Wednesday with temperatures around 29C to rain and thunderstorms with the temperature not above 16C on Friday. We’re used to the idea that a period of considerable heat can be broken by thunderstorms. Often we’re grateful!

On the Sea of Galilee with its particular local geography they were used to sudden vicious squalls appearing, like the one in this story. However, they weren’t welcomed, because they could be a threat to life, especially to those who made their living on Galilee from fishing.

Our story from Mark depicts on such naturally occurring storm, just as all sorts of naturally occurring events can disrupt our lives and plunge us into fear, as it did Jesus’ disciples.

But alongside the naturally occurring threat are hints of something else. Jesus and his disciples are striking out on a new stage of his kingdom of God proclamation. ‘Let us go over to the other side’ (verse 35) is not an idle comment. It’s not like saying, ‘Let’s cross the road.’ Jesus wanted to go from the Jewish side of Galilee to the Gentile side. He wanted to go from the place where people sought to be true to the faith (although some of the most fiercely devout people opposed him) to a place where what was practised was dodgy and often heretical.

Not only that, he also leaves the crowd behind (verse 36). Fancy leaving behind all these people he has built up. But he does.

So imagine that for his disciples this is about leaving behind the familiar and the successful for a venture into an area that didn’t traditionally practise conventional and orthodox forms of faith. Jesus is extending the reach of the kingdom outside natural comfort zones. It’s something we in the church often don’t like to do. We’d prefer to stay with people who are just like us, with whom we feel safe. But the ministry of Jesus is rarely safe!

In that context we might see the storm differently, and not least because when Jesus wakes on the boat and responds to the disciples’ plea, we read that he ‘rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’’ (verse 39). This is the sort of language he uses in exorcisms! It’s as if Jesus sees demonic opposition behind the storm, which is not surprising if this boat ride is a journey to extend the kingdom.

Add to that the fact that Mark borrows some language here from Jonah chapter 1, where Jonah the reluctant missionary finds himself on a boat in a storm, and you have further evidence why it’s not far-fetched to see a mission dimension to this story.

And maybe that’s why we like to stay safe. We know that the call of Jesus may put us into tricky and risky situations. It will. But rather than saying ‘No thank you, I’ll stay at home,’ this story gives us reason to go on that risky adventure with Jesus.

I want you to have in your minds any challenging call you have from Jesus. It might be the general challenge most churches are facing at present to navigate a new future in a world scarred by COVID-19. It might be that Jesus is calling you or your church to a new form of outreach that is beyond your experience or involves people you don’t naturally like.

And I also want you to hold at present any of the ordinary storms of life that may be buffeting you. Serious illness, bereavement, job losses, problems in your family, and so on.

Into those storms come two truths about Jesus.

Firstly, Jesus is present in the storm.

Sometimes when we are in a storm it feels like Jesus isn’t there. Or we might acknowledge his presence in theory, but to all practical ends it feels like he isn’t or he might as well not be.

I suppose it was something like the latter for the disciples here. They knew he was there but ‘was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion’ (verse 37). And maybe we can identify with them waking him and saying, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’ (Verse 38)

Perhaps we should ponder, then, from this story what it means when we know Jesus is present in our storm, but we aren’t hearing much from him. Could it be the equivalent to him being asleep here? But rather than that indicating his lack of care for us, is it actually a sign to say, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got this’?

Could it be that Jesus is quiet in our storms because he is saying to us through his silence that we don’t need to fear? Could it be that this is an occasion where Jesus shows his will for us not in his words but in his example? He is not afraid of the storm, and we don’t need to be either, seems to be the message of him sleeping in the stern.

On this subject, I used to quote the lyrics of a song by an artist who used to be known as Leslie Phillips (no, nothing to do with the British actor of ‘Ding dong!’ fame, this Leslie Phillips is female and American). She is now known as Sam Phillips, which confuses her with someone else.

Anyway, she wrote a song called ‘Answers Don’t Come Easy’ that is relevant to this idea that Jesus is present in the storm, even when he’s not speaking to us. The chorus says this:

Oh, and I can wait
It’s enough to know you can hear me now
Oh, I can wait
It’s enough to feel so near you now
And when answers don’t come easy
I can wait

I want to assure you that whatever storm you are facing, whether it’s the risky adventure of following Jesus out of our comfortable church existence into mission in the world or whether it’s a painful life crisis, he is with you. His silence speaks. And his silence tells you that even as the elements rage he’s still in charge.

I invite you to find that silence in the middle of the storm.

The second truth is that Jesus is in charge during the storm.

When Jesus gets up and stills the storm, some English Bible translations have it that he says ‘Peace!’ but he doesn’t. If it were, you would have the Greek word eirene here from which we get the girli’s name Irene.

The NIV which we read gives a better flavour when it says he ‘rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’’ (verse 39). The natural elements are given a telling-off by Jesus! It’s like even the elements here are in disobedience to him and he commands their obedience.

You might say his words are like scolding naughty children, but it’s stronger and that word ‘rebuked’ gives the game away. As I said earlier, this is exorcism language. Every part of creation, not just human beings, is commanded to come under obedience to Christ. One day, as Paul told the Philippians, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). Or as Charles Wesley put it in his hymn ‘Jesus, the name high over all’,

Angels and men before it fall
And devils fear and fly.

Now you may say that day isn’t here yet. We don’t always see the storm calming down. And you would be right. The kind of dramatic intervention by Jesus that happens in our story today isn’t an everyday occurrence, although maybe sometimes we’re too scared to ask.

No, we’re not yet at that time Paul prophesies about in Philippians where every knee will bow, and so in the meantime sometimes Jesus saves us from the storm and sometimes he saves us through the storm.

But rest assured of one thing. The storm will not have the final word. Jesus will. For we are people of resurrection faith.

So in conclusion, how might we respond when we are in a storm? Well, if we can appreciate that Jesus is present, even when silent, and if we can believe that he is in charge, even as we wait for the fulness of his kingdom, then I pray our faith and trust in him will grow and we shall not hear him say to us as he did to his first disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ (Verse 40)

Instead, while they then wondered and pondered, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’ (verse 41), may we, who know who he is, turn our wondering into worship and our pondering into trust.

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Video Teaching: First Principles of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:6-17)

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

In my O-Level Physics class there once came an occasion where our teacher set us a problem for homework that none of us could solve. When my parents saw me struggling with it my Dad decided to write a letter to the teacher, asking him why he had set homework that none of the pupils could do.

In response to that letter the teacher phoned my Dad. He explained that all we needed to do to solve the problem was go back to the first principles we had learned in that topic.

When I heard that, I learned an important life lesson. Always go back to the first principles.

There is something of ‘first principles’ in our reading from 2 Corinthians. It’s a strange selection of verses in the Lectionary – but hey, what’s new there? But even despite that and the fact that we’re reading these verses out of context, we can pick up on some first principles. Because like my old Physics teacher, the Apostle Paul also always went back to first principles.

So today we are going to think about some of the First Principles of the Gospel. What are the first principles Paul talks about here, and how do they affect the way we live?

Number one first principle is that we live by faith, not sight.

Paul tells us that in the life to come we shall be at home with the Lord and shall see him, but right now we are away from home and do not see him, so we have to live by faith, trusting in the God whom we do not yet see. But when we do see him, he will call us to account for all that we have done while away from home (verses 6-10).

What does that mean for us? To live by faith means that we trust that even though we don’t yet see God, one day we shall. And in the meantime, we are to live as those who know we shall see God one day. That’s what living by faith is here: trusting that we shall meet God face to face in the life to come, and letting that reality direct the way we live now. The Gospel promise of meeting God face to face one day is meant to change us on this day.

So for one thing, living by faith means that we consider our attitudes and our actions now. Would we act the way we do if we had to live our every moment before the visible face of God? How does the fact that we shall one day see him face to face affect how we live today? What would we be happy doing in that knowledge? What would make us ashamed?

For another thing, we know that the Lord has entrusted us with resources, gifts, and talents in this life. So another part of living by faith is to consider how we use these things. From the abundance of creation to our natural talents, how would we use these if we were doing so before the face of God? How would we use our brain, our artistic abilities, our work skills, our homes and gardens, our possessions? The answers to questions like these will show how much we are living by faith – or not, as the case may be.

We often restrict the expression ‘living by faith’ to those Christians who have to trust God to supply their financial needs. I have no quarrel with that: I have had to do that at times. But Paul tells us to expand our vision of living by faith, because he tells us here that all Christians live by faith. How are we going to live now, knowing that we shall one day see God face to face?

Number two first principle is that Christ’s love compels us.

Paul talks about the love of Christ being a compelling motive in the Christian life, and he links it to his death on the Cross. If you hadn’t heard the whole reading but were just hearing his letter read out in public for the first time you might have thought that the link from the love of Christ to the Cross was going to be the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross. But it isn’t.

Of course, it’s true that Christ’s love brings us forgiveness through the Cross, but Paul makes a different point here. His punchline comes in verse 15:

15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Christ’s love compels us, because his example shows us that we are to live for Jesus and for others, not primarily for ourselves.

That’s why a church that gets hung up on just wanting the things that the members themselves like is an unhealthy church: it’s not modelled on Christ’s love.

In fact, were I to choose a church to be part of based on my own preferences it almost certainly wouldn’t be the Methodist Church. There are so many things in Methodism that I find tedious, frustrating, or annoying. But God called me to serve here. He loves me in Jesus, and calls me to return that love in the context of Methodism.

You may know the famous comment of Archbishop William Temple, when he said that the church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. It’s not a perfect statement, but it does capture some of this idea: Christ’s love means we live for him and for others.

Each and every one of us needs to be asking ourselves, how am I imitating the love of Jesus by serving him and serving others?

Number three first principle is the new creation.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!

Following Jesus makes us treat people differently, says Paul. But it’s that final verse where I need to give you this week’s episode of Bible Trivia.

‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,’ said many older translations. Some newer translations say, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’ That’s bit different.

So which is it? Is it that the convert is a new creation? Or is it that conversion promises the general new creation of all things?

If you go back to the Greek you’ll see why we have this problem. It’s ambiguous. A literal translation would be, ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ For us English speakers there are missing words. To translate it into English, we have to add words. Whether we opt for ‘the person is a new creation’ (favoured by those Christians who emphasise personal conversion) or ‘there is a new creation’ (favoured by those who care about the environment and social justice) depends largely on our existing theological preferences.

But what if the words ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ are deliberately ambiguous and cover both of these possibilities? I think both are true biblically.

When we are united with Christ, God makes us new by his Spirit, and starts a work of holiness and healing in us that will not be complete until glory. He calls us to co-operate with his Holy Spirit in this work.

But our union with Christ also shows God’s project to make the whole creation new, just as he makes us new. He is not content to leave the world as it is and calls us to join with his Spirit in the renewal of all things.

So he will send us into the world both to call people to conversion and to make a social difference.

Therefore, if any of us prefers personal piety to social justice, we have sold the Gospel short. And if any of us is willing to campaign for social justice but not seek personal conversion and holiness, then we too have diluted the Gospel.

To sum up, the three Gospel first principles we’ve looked at today all lead to transformed lives and transformed society. When we live by faith, not by sight, we live as if we were doing so in the presence of God, and that surely changes our actions and our priorities.

Christ’s love compels us through the Cross to live for him and for others, rather than for ourselves.

And the new creation is both personal with our conversion and our journey of holiness but also social as we anticipate God making all things new.

Each of us needs to ask: in what way is the Gospel changing me? And in what ways am I serving the kinds of change God longs to see in his world, as a result of the Gospel?

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Video Teaching – Dealing with Unwarranted Abuse (Mark 3:20-35)

Mark 3:20-35

We hear so many stories of verbal abuse on social media these days. One story the week before last was about how the black English footballer Marcus Rashford suffered seventy cases of racist abuse following his team’s defeat on Wednesday night in the Europa League Final. I was pleased to read two days later that the people behind some of the anonymous accounts that sent the foul messages had been identified and the information passed to the police.

Religious people should be different. But too often we’re not. Today’s reading is a story of Jesus being on the end of abuse from his family and from religious leaders. His own family – the so-called ‘holy family’ – claim that ‘He is out of his mind’ (verse 21). Transfer the story into our society today and they’d be calling for the signature of two doctors so that he could be sectioned.

As for the religious leaders, well you can’t get much worse an insult than the one they dish out: ‘He has an impure spirit.’ Jesus calls this ‘blasphem[y] against the Holy Spirit’ (verse 29) – in other words, committing libel against God.

I’d love to tell you these problems don’t exist in today’s church, but they do. A school chaplain at a church school preaches a sermon in which he says you can dispute some teaching about LGBT issues, but you must love your gay neighbour as yourself. What happens to him? He is reported to the Government’s Prevent strategy by a member of staff as a potential terrorist and he loses his job.

I won’t give you any specifics for obvious reasons, but there has been the odd time when the vitriol against Debbie and me in the church has been so untrue and malicious that we would have been within our legal rights to sue people for libel.

So what do you do? Certainly there are times when it’s more dignified to say nothing, but on other occasions you still need to say something and keep on keeping on. Let’s look at the two things Jesus does here – one in respect to the religious leaders who libel him, and one in respect to his family who want him locked up in a secure unit.

Firstly, how does Jesus deal with the religious leaders? Put simply, he tells the truth. When he gives that spiel about how a house divided against itself cannot stand, he is following through some simple logic to show how ridiculous their claim is. It’s doing that which enables him to expose their real attitude of heart, which is that they might proclaim to be faithful to the religious traditions, but in reality they are enemies of God.

Sure, there are times to ignore your critics, as I said. On the Internet that’s often known as ‘not feeding the trolls’. And we know how Jesus kept silent through many of the interrogations when he was arrested.

But there are other times when we need to put these people right and expose them for who they are, because they are carrying out their nasty work in public and there is a risk of them influencing others for the worse. That’s what happens here – whereas when Jesus stays quiet at his trials it’s not in public.

This doesn’t guarantee that we shall be successful in persuading these people they are wrong. If they have hardened their hearts, they may remain intransigent as opponents and may continue to cause grief to us. We can’t force them to do otherwise.

But we can stay publicly faithful to the truth, so that onlookers who might not understand or who might run the risk of being deceived hear a clear testimony to God’s truth.

The example of Jesus here is that we have the courage to stand up for the Gospel and all its implications, and that we don’t let our enemies shut us up. Even those in the church.

Secondly, how does Jesus deal with his family? At first sight it’s not very charitable. When he’s told that his mother and brothers are outside looking for him (verse 32) he replies,

33 ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked.

34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle round him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’

Jesus redefines the family. He has a new family. It’s the family of God. Those who go in the way of the kingdom are themselves a family.

Jesus won’t let social conventions get in the way of him proclaiming and building the kingdom of God.

We know that later his brother James would lead the church in Jerusalem and his mother Mary would be revered in the church but these things didn’t happen because Jesus went home and played Happy Families. Instead, he stuck to his guns about the kingdom of God, even though at this stage they thought he was mad. But over a period of years they must have been persuaded. Had he given up on proclaiming the kingdom it wouldn’t have happened.

Sometimes we think that when we have a conflict or a misunderstanding with someone who doesn’t share our faith that the Christian thing to do is to compromise or to water down our faith. However, the example of Jesus here shows that’s the wrong thing to do. Stay faithful. Don’t be harsh or you’ll become like Jesus’ religious enemies. Live well for Christ.

So – these are the two strategies: speak the truth and live for the kingdom. There is no guarantee of success, as I said. Some of those religious leaders later plotted to have Jesus executed. I don’t know whether that school chaplain will get his job back.

But these are the right things to do when people defame our character because we are Christians. And if we don’t speak the truth and live for the kingdom we’ll sell Christianity and Jesus short.

Just remember that we believe in a God of justice who vindicates those who are unjustly treated. He may do that in this life, or it may wait for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgement.

Let’s make sure with the help of the Holy Spirit that we don’t let Jesus down when people unfairly target us.

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Time Off

No video teaching this week – I have some time off and I’m putting my feet up at home.

It’s Trinity Sunday, and I’m sure you can find some good material elsewhere on the Internet on that theme.

See you next week, God willing.

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Sermon: If You’re Down In The Valley, Then Pentecost And The Gift Of The SPirit Is For you

Ezekiel 37:1-14

A film I enjoyed back in the 1980s was a comedy called Clockwise, starring John Cleese. He plays Brian Stimpson, the headmaster of an independent school. Stimpson is known for his strict punctuality, something he enforces in the culture of the school.

Stimpson is invited to be the guest speaker at an educational conference. However, one obstacle after another puts him more and more behind time to get there – the very worst thing for such a punctual man.

As the stress on him heightens with hopes regularly raised and then dashed, Stimpson says this:

I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.

Ezekiel knows something of the oscillation between despair and hope, and what that can do to someone. In the previous chapter, he has had a wonderful message from the Lord about how he will give Israel a new heart and a new spirit. It’s a wonderful message, where God’s people are back in their own land, and no longer in exile in Babylon, as is the case at the time of Ezekiel’s ministry. Imagine how that lifts him up.

Then in here in chapter 37 it begins with ‘The hand of the LORD’ being on him (verse 1), and so surely this exhilarating sense of hope is going to continue. But no. He is taken to a valley – rarely, if ever, a good place in Scripture – and that valley is filled with the dry bones of the dead. Israel isn’t alive. She is dead.

And you realise just how down in the dumps Ezekiel has become when the Lord asks him,

‘Son of man, can these bones live?’

I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ (Verse 3)

Not much hope there. The vision of the new heart with God’s Spirit inside and God’s people living back in the Promised Land has been sunk by seeing the valley of dry bones. I don’t know, Lord, says Ezekiel, only you know.

I labour the point because something similar can be our experience. We have in a sense gone into exile too in that Christians are now not only a minority in our culture but also increasingly a group that is thought of as evil. Every now and again, though, we see some signs of hope. But then along comes a pandemic, our churches lose a lot of money, decisions and crises that were still potentially five or ten years away suddenly confront us, and even when in-person worship resumes not everybody feels happy to come back. Some of those who don’t return make that decision for obvious medical reasons, but others who don’t show up again are a big surprise.

Are we walking among a valley of dry bones? Sometimes we are.

Is there any solution? Yes there is, but what Ezekiel 37 and the Feast of Pentecost make clear is that it doesn’t lie with us. None of our programmes, none of our wheezes will make a scrap of difference. We are dry bones.

No, the solution comes from God and it is in the shape of his Spirit. There are three prophecies about the Holy Spirit that Ezekiel receives, and each shows what God can do for us when we are open to being filled with the Holy Spirit.

The first prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of promise:

4 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”’

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

It all begins here. The job isn’t finished – those last words were ‘there was no breath in them’ – but here the sending of the Spirit (or breath, it’s the same Hebrew word) is the sign that God will keep his promise to give life to his people.

But the question is, will we seek and pray for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Yes, it’s a work of divine grace, we are dependent on God for the gift of the Spirit, but that happens after Ezekiel prophesies the word of the Lord. So will we seek the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

I know some Christians get nervous about the Holy Spirit. There is something about that word ‘Spirit’ and sometimes the Holy Spirit does strange things. However, we shouldn’t expect the Spirit of God to do things exactly our way! The good news is that the Holy Spirit is also called in the Book of Acts ‘The Spirit of Jesus’, so what if the question instead were this: how much do we want the Spirit of Jesus to be at work in our lives?

Or put it this way: if I’m conscious that I’m not as much like Jesus as I might be, then what I need is more of the Spirit of Jesus.

And frankly, which one of us is as much like Jesus as we might be? So don’t we all need more of the Spirit of Jesus?

It’s time to put our fears about the Holy Spirit aside and recognise that we need to be filled and filled again with the Spirit.

The second prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of power:

9 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”’ 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army.

Now there is life and breath in the bones, and they become not an enormous mausoleum but ‘a vast army’. That is God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit, at work.

Doesn’t this speak to another way in which we sense our inadequacy from operating on our own without the Spirit of God? Isn’t it true that so often we look at ourselves in the church and feel powerless to do anything effective in society? Do we feel that our best efforts are feeble in the face of overwhelming social forces that aggressively promote values that are contrary to what we hold dear as Christians? Do we look like a vast army? Probably not, much of the time.

Then think of how it was said of the early church that they had turned the world upside-down. Oh sure, they hadn’t got rid of some vicious Roman emperors, but they had started a subversive revolution at ground level. For all the good the church does today, I have to be honest and say I don’t think we’re leading a Jesus revolution in our day.

Of course, we don’t want to be a vast army in a literal sense. That’s not how God’s kingdom works, as Jesus showed, and as the early church lived. But the battle for what is good, pure, true, and beautiful is one in which we need to be engaged, and we need to fight in a manner like Jesus and the apostles.

So once more, there is really only one solution: to cry out in persistent prayer for more of the Holy Spirit.

The third prophecy reveals the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prophecy itself:

11 Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”’

It is prophesied that Israel will be back in her land of promise. And a few decades later, it happened.

Not for Christians, of course, is there to be a physical land with its borders somewhere on this planet. Instead, we seek the kingdom of God, where not only God reigns but people walk in his ways and no longer rebel against him. And even inanimate creation is affected, no longer damaged but flourishing. Under God’s reign we have a community of disciples, a community of beauty, of peace, of love, of justice.

We’re a long way short, aren’t we? Not just in society, but in the church. Whatever good things we find in the church, it would take someone with the most rose-tinted spectacles ever made to argue that we were close to the kingdom in all its fulness in the way we live.

Certainly, I believe we’re a long way short. Not only do I as a minister often see the dark side of the church, the longer I live as a Christian the more conscious I am of the ways I fall short.

Either way, there is only one answer, and it’s the one we keep coming back to this week: we need to be more full of the Holy Spirit than we are right now. That is how God changes things for ancient Israel: ‘I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.’

In conclusion, everything points to us needing more of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit isn’t absent from us as with ancient Israel, when the Spirit only came upon selected individuals. In our era, the Holy Spirit comes upon all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ.

But just as some people have a vitamin deficiency where they need to take more vitamins, so I think the signs I’ve described show that we have a Spirit deficiency.

If there is one thing we could all do that would lead to a major difference in the life of the church of Jesus Christ, it would be that we set ourselves persistently, regularly, and urgently to pray that God would fill us with his Holy Spirit.

Because when he does we shall be more like Jesus. When he does, we shall be more equipped to be Christ’s subversive army of love in he world. And when he does, we shall see more of his beautiful kingdom.

And if the church changes like that, then we shan’t be weighed down with despair, but surrounded by the growing seeds of hope.

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Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday After Ascension): Waiting Well

For the foreseeable future, the videos are only going to be the Bible reading and the talk. My workload at present makes it difficult to find time for sourcing and editing the music and prayers that I have been including. (On top of a full appointment, I am temporarily the Acting Superintendent of my circuit while my boss is on sabbatical.)

Luke 24:44-53

Since this video goes beyond my usual congregations via YouTube, I hope my churches will forgive me if I begin this Ascension reflection with some material they may have heard before.

At this time I always remember the story told by one famous Anglican bishop about how he was invited to perform the reopening of a local Post Office. It happened to be on Ascension Day.

When he arrived, he found a hot air balloon tethered in the field. There was also a brass band. He learned that the Post Office had planned to combine his reopening with Ascension Day. So they expected him to soar up into the sky in the balloon while the band played the hymn ‘Nearer My God To Thee’!

The idea of Jesus ascending into the sky is an intimidating story for us today. I was also intimidated one year when as a theological student the local Methodist minister invited me to fill his pulpit on the Sunday after Ascension. There in the congregation was the local university Professor of New Testament, following the Bible reading in his Greek New Testament. If ever I had to get a difficult reading right it was that morning!

I have found most help from a source not commonly quoted in my own theological tradition, indeed someone who is often reviled among Methodists. And that is John Calvin. He wasn’t all double predestination and executing his enemies, he had some good points!

One of them was his doctrine of ‘accommodation’. He said that in revealing himself and his truth to people, God often had to ‘accommodate’ the way he did that to the limited understanding of human beings.

The Ascension would be a good example of this. Jesus ‘lifting off’ like a rocket from Cape Canaveral seems strange to us, but how else was he going to show his followers that he was returning to heaven? So the Ascension story isn’t designed to tell us that heaven is literally above us, the miracle is there to communicate a theological truth about where Jesus is in terms that would have been understood two thousand years ago. How Jesus would do it today I’m not at all sure, but this is how he needed to communicate it at the time.

Now when Jesus ascends, his disciples are left waiting for Pentecost and the arrival of the Holy Spirit. He expressly tells them to wait in Jerusalem for that event:

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

Waiting can be an exciting time, as we anticipate something we’re looking forward to. But it can also be a difficult time spiritually. ‘Lord, when are you going to fulfil your promises? When are you going to do what we need you to do?’ Does that sound familiar to you?

I recall a time as a child of primary school age when in the school holidays I went over the park that was opposite our house to play with my schoolfriend Tony. We were set upon by bullies, and Tony ran away. I was terrified.

But a few minutes later I discovered why Tony had run away. He had gone back to our house and returned with my father. The bullies then ran away!

It was awful waiting for those few minutes and not even knowing why Tony had gone, but the wait brought a good outcome.

Unlike those first disciples, we don’t have to wait for the Holy Spirit. But those other times of waiting for the promise of God that I alluded to a moment ago are common to our spiritual experience.

And therefore a question that the Ascension helps us with is this: how do we wait well as Christians?

I see two elements in the story about how we can wait well for what God wants to do.

The first is that the disciples are blessed people.

50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

That’s how Jesus leaves them – with a blessing upon them. But what does it mean to be blessed by Almighty God?

Essentially, if God blesses you, then you receive his favour. Perhaps the most dramatic example is when the Archangel Gabriel appears to Mary to announce her pregnancy. He says she is ‘highly favoured’ and that ‘the Lord is with [her]’[1]. That’s a blessing – well, that particular one may be a blessing and a half!

When I as a minister pronounce a blessing at the end of a service, what I am praying for is that everyone in that congregation leaves knowing that they are favoured by God. This is the good news: sinners receive the favour of God.

And it forms our core identity as Christians. It’s the most important thing about us, that through no merit of our own we are blessed, we are favoured by God.

If we don’t make it our core identity, then things go awry. I had an elderly lady in one previous appointment who made the fact that she was a Local Preacher central to her sense of worthy. But the time came when her mind and body began to fail. The most telling occasion was a service where she introduced the Lord’s Prayer three times. We asked her if she would step down gracefully and we would hold an event to celebrate all her years of preaching, but she refused. I know it would have been hard for anyone in her position, but she carried that bitterness with her as her health declined, instead of recognising the unchanging fact that she was a beloved child of God.

But more positively, if we do accept that we are favoured by God as his dearly loved children, then this holds us through the waiting times. On a small scale it happened to me earlier this week when I was preparing this talk. That morning I received an email that caused me some stress. I was rather anxious as I waited some hours for the outcome of it, and in the meantime had to go off and do other things.

But then the very teaching I’m giving you here hit me. What doesn’t change is that I am a beloved child of God. I am blessed by him. Therefore I can trust God to work this thing out. And he did.

So can I encourage you, then, to live out your identity as a son or daughter of the living God? That he has adopted you into his family is a sign of the most monumental blessing you can possibly imagine. Let that truth hold you up in the times of waiting.

The second element is that the disciples are worshipping people.

52 Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Why do they worship Jesus? For sure, one reason is the blessing they’ve just received, but there has to be more. As good Jews, they would only worship Jesus if they thought he had divine status. They know now that he is more than a prophet. At the beginning of our reading, he has taken them through the Scriptures and shown how necessary his suffering, death, and resurrection were, and how that good news must now go out to the nations. Instead of the nations coming to Jerusalem, now God’s people will go from Jerusalem to the nations. All these things are wonderful signs that God’s purposes are being fulfilled, and that God has kept his promise to Israel – just not in the way they were expecting.

And when they appreciate all that they are filled with wonder. And that wonder comes out in praise and worship.

It’s interesting to compare this with the description the crowd at Pentecost gives the disciples when they hear them speaking in tongues: they say they hear them ‘declaring the wonders of God’[2], which could be a pretty good description of worship.

Yes, they are full of wonder at what God has done. They were slow to get it during the three years that they followed Jesus around, but now the shekel has dropped and it makes sense.

How does this help us when we are waiting? It would be good for us to be reminded of the amazing ways in which God has fulfilled his purposes over the centuries, supremely in his Son Jesus. It would be good for us to recount the promises God has made to his people and kept.

Sometimes we recount them in broad brushstrokes during the great prayer of thanksgiving at a communion service. We go back to the marvels of creation. We move on to God making a people for himself and continually calling people back when they stray through patriarchs, judges, and prophets. Ultimately, we celebrate the coming of Jesus, with his birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and – yes – ascension. The next time you’re at a communion service, listen for the minister covering those great topics in the thanksgiving prayer.

These things fortify us because they remind us of the great truths relating to our God. Our faith and confidence increase. We sing his praise. And we become more certain that he will see us through the difficulties of the waiting time, because he is a purpose-fulfilling, promise-keeping God. His ascended Son is at his right hand praying for us, and his Holy Spirit is within us and praying through us.

Don’t neglect worship. We engage in it because God is worthy of our praise. But as we worship, it builds up our own faith and trust.

So there you have it – two elements from the period between the Ascension and Pentecost that strengthen us in those periods when we have to wait to see God at work. One is done to us – we are blessed, we are favoured as adopted children of God by grace. The other we ourselves do in response – we worship, because God keeps his promises and fulfils his plans, and he will do the same for us.

I hope and pray that as a result, each of us will be able to bear the waiting times with greater faith.

[1] Luke 1:28

[2] Acts 2:11

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Sixth Sunday of Easter: Responding To God’s Love

John 15:9-17

Welcome to Part Two. No, there hasn’t been an advertising break, although I can do nothing about the adverts which YouTube runs on these videos, all of which are beyond my control, and none of which benefits me financially.

No, this is Part Two of the ‘I am the Vine’ passage in John 15. Last week we looked at what Jesus said about our relationship with him, particularly with reference to being pruned branches and remaining in him by listening and obeying.

This week we focus in more closely on that ‘remaining’, specifically because in these verses Jesus expands ‘remain in me’ to ‘remain in my love’, which we do in response to his love, which in turn comes from the Father’s love for him. We’re going to look at our love for Christ and our love for one another, but before we get to those two points, let’s just dwell on the fact that the love we show is a response to Christ’s love for us.

John’s Gospel here is very similar to the First Letter of John, where we read, ‘We love, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). God’s love in Christ comes first, to the extent that the Apostle Paul said, ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8). Does that amaze you? God in Christ loved us while we were still sinners. We were loved by the Almighty when we were the most unworthy of that love. Always that love of God’s comes first.

The Gospel question, then, is something like this: you are loved – how are you going to respond? If we fail to respond, then we cannot receive the wonderful offer of God’s love and remain outside it, potentially for eternity. But if we do respond, then we respond as sinners who are dearly loved. All our response to such love is a ‘thank you’ for it.

To put it another way, the love we are called to show does not earn us the love of God. It does not make us worthy. We shall never be worthy of ourselves. We cannot rely on saying, ‘Look, Lord, at how good and loving I am. I deserve your love.’ Whatever the best of our life is, we cannot offer something that matches up to God’s love in Christ. Rather than giving anything, we hold out empty hands to receive his love. Then, when we have received the gift of that wonderful love in the forgiveness of our sins, in his power to live a new life, and in his reorientation of our lives towards his kingdom, we show love for God and for others as gratitude, as a sign that we have received his love.

So how are we going to respond in gratitude to God’s love in Christ? As I said, there are two ways: loving God and loving others. Now is the time to explore them both a little more.

Firstly, loving God. Let’s boil this down mainly to one verse, namely verse 10:

10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 

It’s simple, isn’t it? The way we love God is by keeping his commands.

Now you may think that’s simple to state but less simple to justify or to live. What kind of love is so one-sided that one party needs to obey the other? Haven’t we done away with such concepts of love, for example where a bride no longer promises to obey her husband in the marriage service?

This is to assume that all love is mutual between two equals. But that is a mistake. Would we say that of the love between a parent and a young child? We would expect that the parent loved the child sacrificially in time, attention, energy, money, and so many other ways. We would not expect the child to be able to match that. But we would normally expect a child to follow the instructions and wishes of a loving parent.

That gives us a clue here. We shall never be equals with God. Creatures are not on the same plane as their Creator. We are sinners, God is holy. Our knowledge is far more limited.

I could go on, but the essential point is that God ranks far above us. There is nothing unreasonable in Jesus saying, ‘If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love’.

And obeying Christ out of love makes for an interesting test of our actions and our attitudes. When I resist what I know to be the command of Jesus and choose to do something else, I am saying, I prefer my will to yours, Jesus. It’s a case of ‘My will be done,’ not ‘Thy will be done.’ When I put it in those terms I realise how wrong my actions are. They aren’t just a moment of weakness, they are a moment of defiance. No wonder God takes them seriously.

But having noticed that, let’s be positive. We want to show gratitude for God’s great love for us in Christ, love that went to the Cross. What he has done for us is so wonderful and so stunning that we want to show our gratitude. We do that by obeying him.

Think of it like this – although it might seem trivial in comparison to the Cross. Have you ever had someone do something marvellous for you, whether it’s one particular act or some sustained actions over time? You may have thought, how can I show my gratitude? So you ask their spouse, is there something they particularly like? Armed with the answer, you go out and buy that. You want to please them in the way you show how grateful you are. When you see their reaction to your gift, it brings joy to you as well as them.

I think that’s why Jesus goes on to say,

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 

The sequence is something like this. God loves us, especially by Jesus dying for us. We are so grateful for such love that, in the words of Paul in Ephesians, we ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:10). When we do that, it brings joy to Jesus and that reverberates in us.

How can each of us bring joy to God today by obeying his commands?

Secondly, loving others. Jesus goes on to say:

12 My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.

The snag is, how has Jesus loved us? The answer, of course, is by going to the Cross. So it’s not surprising that he then says,

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Jesus goes on to explain that he calls us friends, and so it is us for whom he lays down his life. Therefore – and here’s the challenging bit – he calls us to imitate his love, even to that limit, if necessary. Not that we can die for the sins of the world, of course, but we may need to lay down our lives for the well-being of our friends.

Just to say that causes a sharp intake of breath for me, I don’t know about you.

That said, we do recognise this in other ways. I think if one of my children was about to be run over by a car and there was no alternative, I would as a parent risk my own life to save theirs. That’s what love does.

Maybe one of the differences here, then, is that we just haven’t had relationships with our fellow Christians that are as close as a loving family. We may say they are our brothers and sisters in the faith, and we may refer to the church sometimes as a ‘family’, but to be honest, these are just words. We are more of a social club than a closely-knit family of believing disciples.

God’s love for us in Jesus is meant to bind us so closely to him that we love to obey him, and so closely to one another that we would give up our lives for one another if that were required.

Well has it been said that you can choose your friends but not your family, but that doesn’t really extend to the church. We can’t choose who our friends and family in the church are at all!

If we were gathered together in a church building I would at this point invite you to look around at your fellow friends of Jesus, your brothers and sisters in Christ, and I would ask you to consider for which of them you would be willing to lay down your life.

When we reflect on those we would love to the point of death and those we wouldn’t it’s a searing test of how near or far we are from Jesus’ concept of his kingdom community.

So it’s worth considering what would need to change for us to be the family or the band of friends where we do love each other so much because of Jesus that nothing would be too much for us. What needs to change in my heart? In your heart? Where is it that we haven’t yet apprehended ‘how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ’ (Ephesians 3:18)?

Do you remember how, according to the church leader Tertullian it was said of the early believers ‘See how these Christians love one another’? Wow! Don’t you think that means they had an incredible grip on how much Jesus loved them first?

What would the world say if we had a similar sense of how much we were loved by God in Christ?

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Fifth Sunday in Easter: I Am the Vine

I made one very tired mistake in the video below: I forgot to set my camera to eye autofocus, and so at points I go out of focus during the video. Of course, you may prefer me that way!

John 15:1-8

Last week we thought about one of the seven ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel, namely, ‘I am the Good Shepherd.’ This week we think about another one: ‘I am the Vine.’

We need to carry over two things from last week. The first is to remember that this very emphatic way of saying ‘I am’ indicates a claim by Jesus to divinity, reminiscent of God calling himself ‘I am who I am’ to Moses at the burning bush.

The second thing we need to carry over is to look to the Old Testament for some background to the title. So just as we looked at the title of ‘Shepherd’ last week, we must now look at ‘Vine’, and the obvious place to go is Isaiah 5:1-7, where the prophet describes Israel as like a vineyard. However, it’s a bad vineyard, and is symbolic of God’s people being persistently and seriously disobedient to God through their disregard for justice. God promises to withdraw the vineyard’s protective hedge and leave it to decay and destruction.

A new vineyard is needed. That’s what Jesus claims to be here in today’s passage. This is yet another New Testament passage where Jesus claims to be the True Israel, fulfilling everything that Israel should have done but didn’t.

And with Jesus’ disciples being the branches, Jesus says that the vineyard is now constituted differently, not on the basis of observing Torah, but on the basis of union with him.

Now we often say that all metaphors are limited, and one of the limitations here is that Jesus doesn’t describe how we become branches of the vine. There’s nothing obvious here about salvation by grace through faith, for example. We conclude that’s not the purpose of Jesus choosing this image.

Instead, Jesus seems to talk about what it takes to remain one of the branches. His Father is the gardener (verse 1). In the Apocrypha, the literature between the Old and New Testaments that our Catholic friends recognise as Scripture but we don’t,  

The state of a tree’s fruit … was said to attest how well the farmer … had cared for it (Sir 27:6), reinforcing the importance of a gardener’s care for it.[i]

So, if you like, God’s reputation is at stake here! But he trusts that reputation to our behaviour – a very chancy thing, you may well think. It’s something that came home in a distressingly powerful way to me this last week when reports began to appear online that alleged the long-deceased headmaster of my old secondary school was a paedophile. You see, it was a Church of England school, and one of the alleged victims said that this behaviour pushed him towards atheism.

God’s reputation is at stake according to the conduct of his people.

So we need to give careful attention to our relationship with Christ.

A couple of things strike me about that in the reading.

The first is that we have a choice between being pruned and being cut off. Both sound painful. There is no choice that involves the avoidance of pain. It’s rather as I heard Adrian Plass put it some years ago:

Life is a choice between doing what you don’t want to do and doing what you really don’t want to do.

What’s the difference between being pruned and being cut off? Pruning took place in late Spring: the tendrils of the vine were clipped back to allow the fruit to grow. The idea was to get the vine to put all its energy into producing fruit.[ii]

Being cut off was much worse. This was when branches that would no longer produce fruit were removed to leave space for new ones that would.

I’m sure you can see some spiritual parallels here. God the Father is determined that the church of his Son Jesus be spiritually fruitful in what it does. If we share that concern (and if not, why not?) then we shall be wiling to submit to his pruning, removing those things from our lives individually and together that get in the way of fruit growing.

What might God prune from our lives if we are willing to let him work in us so that we are fruitful? I suspect it would include all those frivolous and shallow things on which we spend our time. How many of us are just not getting down to serious prayer and spiritual reading because we are filling our time with trashy magazines, Internet gossip, and maybe worse things? Or maybe he’s calling us to put aside something good in favour of what is better?

Are we aware of God wanting to prune us of the things that stop us going deeper with him?

And then what about the cutting off? How many of us have not only become unfruitful, we have also managed to get ourselves in the way of those promising branches that could become fruitful?

How might that happen? Do we dominate church life at the expense of those who want to move forward spiritually? Have we belittled the passion of those who want to press on with Christ?

Look at how few of us take our devotional life seriously, to the point that some surveys show many Christians only interact with the Bible on a Sunday morning, and when we talk about what we believe, it’s utterly infused with the values of the world rather than the Gospel.

In these cases, God has every right to look at his church and say, the situation is so serious that I shall have to get some people out of the way if the church is to have any hope.

Pray God that we shall not give him reason to consider us. Pray God instead that we accept his pruning.

The second strand of Jesus’ thought I wanted to pick up on is connected with this and is all the language about remaining – us remaining in Christ and Christ remaining in us.

The late Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message, paraphrases this language as a call to make our home in Jesus just as he does in us, or to be joined to him in an intimate and organic relationship.

I wonder what it means to be at home with Jesus? Surely it sounds like the sort of relationship where we are comfortable with him – as a Person, and in what he says and what he does. It’s not just a distant admiration for a great man: it’s such a desire for him that we want to draw close to him and even imitate him.

So yes, this begins with all the sorts of things I regularly bang on about: the importance of personal Bible reading and prayer, and all the other spiritual disciplines.

But that’s only where it begins. If it stops there it won’t be enough for us to remain in Christ. I have known avid Bible readers who have also been avid back stabbers.

It was the twentieth century American saint A W Tozer who captured the spirit of what I’m trying to say here in these words of his:

The driver on the highway is safe not when he reads the signs, but when he obeys them.[iii]

When we not only listen to Jesus but put into practice what he says, then what do we think the result will be? Answer: spiritual fruitfulness.

Alternatively, when we hear the words of Jesus (and most of us have heard them regularly for years) but do nothing about them, what is the logical conclusion? The answer, surely, is the predominantly fruitless church that we have today. God is determined to have a fruitful vine,, not one he has to leave to rack and ruin again. Will we draw close to him in listening and in obedience so that he makes us fruitful for him? Or will we be so casual in our faith that in the end he says, these people are getting in the way, I must remove them so that I can use newer and younger branches?

[i] Craig S Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, Volume 2, p994.

[ii] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-true-vine-in-john-15/

[iii] https://www.pinterest.com/CandidChristian/aw-tozer-quotes/

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Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Good Shepherd

This week we consider the famous ‘Good Shepherd’ passage. Why think about this in the Easter season? Because Jesus references his death and resurrection, and what flows from them.

John 10:11-18

As many of you know, my plans for university at the normal age of eighteen were interrupted by the sudden onset of serious neck pain. One evening, sitting in a prayer meeting, I gravitated towards the armchair most likely to give me some support and relief – one that elderly people usually sat in.

A lovely member of that group called Peggy saw my pain and quoted the words with which today’s reading began: ‘I am the Good Shepherd,’ and led a prayer for me. So I know first-hand the comfort this passage brings to people.

Yet what I’ve discovered over the years is that these comforting words are also challenging words. So today we’re going to meditate on both the comforting and challenging messages of these verses.

The first thing to observe is how Jesus teaches here about his divinity. Right from the opening words, ‘I am’, we have a claim to divinity. Those two words may be unremarkable in English, but you may recall that God revealed himself to Moses as ‘I am’. There are then seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s Gospel, and what we don’t see in English is one particular feature of the Greek. If you wanted to say ‘I am’ in the ordinary sense in Greek, you just needed to say ‘Am.’ But adding in ‘I’, the personal pronoun, gives it added emphasis that echo the Old Testament notion of God as ‘I am.’ In the ‘I am’ sayings, the Greek uses that emphatic ‘I am’ rather than simply ‘Am.’

This claim to divinity is bolstered by the title ‘Shepherd’. Of itself it isn’t necessarily a divine title, because the rulers of Israel were commanded by God to shepherd the people[i]. However, the rulers were given the title ‘Shepherd’ as derivative from the Lord, under whom they served. The ultimate ‘Shepherd of Israel’ was God himself[ii]. This was also deeply personal, most famously in Psalm 23, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd.’

Therefore when Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he is taking on for himself a title that ultimately belongs to God himself. Combined with emphatically saying ‘I am,’ Jesus is making it abundantly clear that he claims divine status for himself.

All very interesting, you may think, but what does it mean for us and what did it mean for the first hearers? Quite simply, if Jesus is divine, then we owe him our allegiance. It’s hinted at later in the passage when Jesus is talking about ‘other sheep that are not of this sheepfold’ (verse 16). He says, ‘They too shall listen to my voice and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.’

So the other sheep are listening, but not them only: Jesus said, ‘They too will listen to my voice.’ His assumption is that not only will the other sheep listen, they will listen, because the original sheep are listening intently in the first place.

And for all who act as under-shepherds in the church among God’s people today, we are therefore not only to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd for ourselves but also obey that voice and furthermore encourage or urge those in our care to obey his will.

The second observation in Jesus’ teaching here is his love:

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (Verse 11b)

17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.’

Note all those references to Jesus laying down his life. Risking one’s life is honourable and to be applauded, but to lay down one’s life demands more. When we risk our lives, we put ourselves in harm’s way and we may be killed or maimed, or we may survive unscathed. But in laying down one’s life, death is certain. He will die, and he will do so voluntarily. He is not a political protestor who happens to get caught and executed, but one who willingly presents himself. He could have prevented it, but he doesn’t.

The word ‘love’ is not explicitly used for these actions, but when the good shepherd is contrasted with the hired hand who will run off with his wages rather than protect the flock from danger it’s clear that Jesus is in this for love, not money.

For reasons that Jesus doesn’t explain here (we must go elsewhere in the New Testament for answers) the protection of the flock from harm can only be achieved by the sacrificial love of the Shepherd.

So the Lord himself is willing to put himself in harm’s way for the sake of those who will be saved.

What sort of response does that call for from us? For one, surely it leads us to a sense of wonder and worship that God in Christ has done this for us. How can we not ‘sing the wondrous story’?

For another, remembering that the life of Jesus is a model for us, we know from this that he calls us to love in sacrificial ways, too. Many of our Christian sisters and brothers around the world still lay down their lives for their faith. While that seems far less likely for us and I pray such trials never come our way, should not each one of us ask what we have sacrificed out of love for Jesus and love for his people?

None of us can give up our lives for the salvation of the world, but we are called to love because Jesus has shown love. Christian disciples respond to God’s love in Christ by showing that we are in this for what we can give, not what we can get. That’s what distinguishes shepherds from hired hands.

What am I giving up out of love for Jesus and his people? Can I answer that question?

My third observation is that Jesus teaches us here about his mission:

16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

Here Jesus looks beyond the sheep in the immediate courtyard. These are not secret believers in other religions, as if all religions are valid ways of coming to God, because the second part about ‘one flock and one shepherd’ rules that out. This is about the mission to the Gentiles that will take place after the Ascension and Pentecost.[iii]

The sacrificial love of the divine Shepherd is such that he wants to draw all into his flock. His death is the effective way to bring all who will respond to follow him. Not only does he know those who are already part of his flock, he knows all people, and so he calls them, inviting them to recognise his voice and follow what he says.

And the relevance for us is this. While sometimes Jesus reaches out to people in unusual, direct ways – for instance, I’ve heard accounts of him appearing in dreams to people and calling them to follow him – mostly he works through human intermediaries, who are empowered by his Spirit. And you know who that means. Us.

Therefore, when we accept the call to join the flock of Christ and tune into his voice as the way to know how to live, part of that includes the fact that he speaks to us about sharing the news of his self-giving love with the world.

That doesn’t mean we all go knocking on doors. It doesn’t mean that quiet people have to become loud. Nor does it mean that we all have to know all the answers to all the objections to our faith (although a bit more studying of our faith by many of us would surely do no harm).

But it does mean that we all have a privilege and an obligation to be bearers of Christ’s good news to the world in our words and our deeds. It is a wonderful story we have to tell of a God who was so concerned about the alienation between him and his creation that he took the pain of reconciliation entirely upon himself.

Some of us will find it easier to talk about Jesus than others. But if we are not so fluent with our words and start to get nervous at the thought of talking about our faith, we might want to reflect on Who it is we are talking about and what it is he did for us. Does the cost of our nerves stack up against the price Jesus paid on the Cross?

[i] See, for example, 2 Samuel 7:7, 1 Chronicles 17:6

[ii] See, for example, Genesis 49:24, Psalm 80:1, Jeremiah 31:10, Ezekiel 34:1.

[iii] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-good-shepherd-leads-his-sheep-in-john-10/

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The Resurrection of Jesus and the Healing of Creation: Worship for the Third Sunday of Easter 2021

This week I explore Luke’s account of the risen Jesus appearing to most of the disciples on the evening of Easter Day and ask what it conveys to us.

Luke 24:36-48

If you ask several witnesses to give their accounts of the same incident, their stories will have common themes, but the details will differ. Does this matter? Does it show them to be lying?

Not necessarily at all. The different accounts will be because different elements were important to each of them, because they remembered different parts, their concerns and interpretations varied, and so on. Some may summarise part of the event, and others may spell out things in word-for-word detail.

Those who criticise the accounts of the Resurrection in the four Gospels for being so different need to remember basic elements of human nature like this. And our story this week seems to be Luke’s account of at least the first of the two resurrection appearances behind locked doors that we considered in John 20:19-31 last week.

So in Luke’s account, what does Jesus want his disciples to learn about the Resurrection?

Firstly, Jesus wants his disciples to understand that the physical nature of the Resurrection.

Look at the two proofs he gives them. Firstly, Jesus invites the disciples to touch his hands and feet to prove that he has flesh and bones, unlike a ghost (verse 38), which is what in their fear they thought they had seen (verse 37).

In other words, Jesus isn’t an ethereal being. He isn’t a spirit who has found no place to rest in death. He is not ‘a cadaver brought back to life’[i], nor is he a zombie: this is not an episode of ‘The Walking Dead’. This is no horror movie. There is no need to fear. Jesus has been resurrected to material, physical life. Sure, it is different in some ways. But it is still physical.

This is underlined by the second proof Jesus gives, when the disciples are still too emotional to believe. He asks for food and promptly devours some fish (verses 41-43). As the only fish and seafood eater in his family, I approve enthusiastically!

When Jesus eats the fish, he isn’t just showing he has a physical body, he is also emphasising ‘an “immortal soul” free from bodily existence’[ii]. That’s important for us, because too often we default to that view of life after death. We say things like ‘the body isn’t important, it’s just a shell for the real person’, but this is what the Greek philosophers believed, not what the New Testament apostles believed. And it’s a disastrous belief to follow through on.

Why? Because if the body doesn’t matter, then it certainly doesn’t matter if we abuse it. Nor does it matter if we abuse someone else’s body, despite the physical and emotional pain we cause.

And if the body doesn’t matter it’s probably a sign that physical and material things generally don’t matter. Therefore we just believe in a spiritual heaven. We don’t need to worry about damage to the world, because, like the dreadful old hymn said,

This world is not my home,
I’m just passing through.

So we need to turn this round and be positive. Jesus’ physical resurrection is a sign that God cares about the physical and material. Remember that in the creation story of Genesis 1, he looked at each stage of creation and either pronounced it ‘good’ or ‘very good’. God’s attitude to his material creation hasn’t changed. The Resurrection tells us that he intends to redeem it. Remember how Revelation 21 speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, and of God making all things new. Well, the Resurrection is the beginning of that process.

The Resurrection is therefore why we care about healing. The Resurrection is why we care about justice. The Resurrection is why we care about climate change and creation care. Take away the Resurrection and none of those things matters. But they do matter, because God is about making all things new, including the material world, and the physical Resurrection is his supreme sign to the world that these matter.

So think of Jesus eating the fish next time you eat fish and chips. Our Catholic friends eat fish on a Friday to avoid eating meat on Good Friday, when we commemorate the death of Christ. But I suggest to you it’s every bit as valid to eat your fish and chips on a Sunday, when we celebrate the Resurrection, because it reminds us of Jesus’ physical resurrection and all that rides on it.

And therefore, don’t just think about the physical nature of the Resurrection: go into the world to bring healing to people, to relationships, and to the creation itself. Don’t let the truth of Jesus’ physical resurrection stay residing in your brain: let that truth travel to your hands and feet and make a resurrection difference in the world.

Secondly, Jesus wants his disciples to understand the place of the Resurrection in the purposes of God.

Proof and evidence are important, but they only take us so far. They are the preparing of the ground for commitment. We can provide solid evidence for the Christian faith, but on its own it doesn’t bring anybody to Christ. It prepares someone’s heart and mind for the challenge of commitment. That is what has happened so far in this story, and it’s often what happens in discussions with people today.

To make the jump from understanding to commitment, we need Jesus to send the Holy Spirit to interpret the purposes of God to us. We need that spiritual element.

And that’s what Jesus does when he ‘open[s] their minds so they could understand the Scriptures’ (verse 45). It takes a divine unveiling to appreciate the purposes of God and then be ready to throw our lot in with Jesus.

So now that’s what Jesus does. He reveals the place of the Resurrection in the divine purposes. He says it was always God’s plan that the Messiah would suffer, die, and be raised, and that this would lead to the preaching of repentance throughout the world (verses 46-47).

But that’s rather puzzling. Because taken on their own the Scriptures in question (which are basically the Old Testament as we know it) don’t make such claims in any particularly obvious way. You can only start to see it in the light of the Resurrection. Then you begin to understand what God was up to in the prophecies of the Servant in Isaiah, or the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days in Daniel, or the Lord inviting another Lord to sit at his right hand in the Psalms. You wouldn’t have guessed without the Resurrection.

But now the penny drops and Jesus tells his disciples, ‘You are witnesses of these things’ (verse 48). This comes back to that favourite Tom Wright quote of mine, ‘Jesus is alive and we’ve got a job to do.’

Why? The Resurrection shows that God has vindicated Jesus. Those who called for his crucifixion are exposed as in the wrong, and we realise we are all in the wrong before him. We all need to hear the call to repentance, because in the Resurrection God says that Jesus is in the right and we are in the wrong.

So the Resurrection is here to bring two changes in our lives. One is repentance, as we renounce our selfish ways of living to follow Jesus. The second is we are moved from inward-looking to outward-looking, because this concurs with the application of the physical nature of the Resurrection. But not only are we sent into the world with the message of the healing of all creation, we now realise that healing message is also about healing the rift between people and God.

Now I’m not suggesting this means that we use every minute of the day to bludgeon people with the Gospel: many of us have been subjected to that and know how bad it feels. But what it does mean is that we have this outward-looking focus where as disciples of the risen Lord our passion is for the healing of creation, the healing of people, the healing of relationships, and the healing of the breach between people and God. We shall show that in our actions and our priorities, and we shall speak when the time is right and when opportunities come.

Remember: God is making all things new, and he began that task when he raised Jesus from death.

[i] Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, p854.

[ii] Ibid.

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