Good Habits Versus Wrong Desires, John 6:24-35 (Ordinary 18 Year B)

John 6:24-35
Many of us remember fondly the Wallace and Gromit movies. The second one, The Wrong Trousers, finds Wallace taking in a penguin lodger to alleviate his debts.  

Unfortunately, the lodger is the infamous criminal Feathers McGraw, and he spies the special techno-trousers Wallace has developed for taking Gromit on walks. Rewiring them for remote control and getting Wallace into them while he sleeps, he attempts to steal a diamond from the city museum.

The crowd in today’s reading don’t have a problem with the wrong trousers. They have a problem with asking the wrong questions. And their wrong questions betray their wrong desires.

As I said last week, the crowd has a choice between the grace Jesus offers them and their own mentality of grabbing. Ultimately, their wrong choices (which are also driven by wrong desires) will lead to them deserting Jesus.

Our desires are important – more so than we sometimes give them credit. Some Christians say we just need to get our thinking right and everything else will follow. It’s the religious version of the famous statement by the philosopher Descartes, ‘I think, therefore I am.’

But as the Christian thinker James K A Smith points out, that just makes us ‘brains on a stick.’ He urges us to remember the teaching of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who reminded us that what actually drive us are our desires and our loves. These are what form us, especially the habits they encourage in us. Smith puts it this way: ‘You Are What You Love.’

So it’s important to examine our desires. And hence today we’re going to look at the wrong desires in the crowd that are betrayed by their wrong questions so that we can nurture the right desires in our lives as Christian disciples.

The first wrong desire is to prefer physical satisfaction at the expense of the spiritual.

25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’
26 Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 

They are glad to have had their bellies filled – and Jesus was happy to meet their needs. But after that, it all went downhill. Or perhaps it’s better to say that their real attitudes were exposed.

Because there’s nothing wrong with Jesus and his people meeting physical and material needs. In fact, it’s important, and it’s often the first step in Christian witness. As General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once said: if you want to give a hungry man a tract, make sure it’s the wrapping on a sandwich.

The crowd is happy to receive the gift, but not the Giver. It’s me-centred, or perhaps we-centred, but not God-centred.

These attitudes still persist today. If God won’t give people what they want physically, then God must be rejected. It can be summed up in the T-shirt slogan, ‘He who has the most toys wins’ – to which the answer is, ‘He who has the most toys still dies.’ Paul’s teaching that ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Timothy 6:6) is not popular teaching with our culture – and nor with our politicians and economists.

Nowhere is this more evident in our society than in the attitude to sex, where the typical time frame for a couple first to sleep together is now on just the third date. They would prefer to believe that God is a spoilsport and Christians are prudes to the truth that God actually has their well-being at heart when he prescribes a different and stricter approach.

We in the community of faith are not immune to these pressures to prioritise physical satisfaction and diminish or exclude our need to feed on Christ and his word. How easily we forget the way Jesus quoted Deuteronomy to the tempter in the wilderness, that we do not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And that’s why we need to develop regular sustainable habits for our devotional lives. We have our regular habits for eating, and we know why we need them. So why do we shy away from doing the same for our spiritual sustenance? You cannot tell me that the average person cannot put aside at least ten or fifteen minutes a day for Bible reading and prayer.

And furthermore, we are spoilt for choice these days in the availability of resources to help us – from traditional daily Bible reading notes to apps for our smartphones.

Do we give an appropriate priority to our spiritual feeding as we do to the meeting of our physical needs? Or are we numbered among those the late AW Tozer had in mind when he said, ‘Most Christians live like practical atheists’?

The second wrong desire is to prefer human works at the expense of divine grace.

Continuing the conversation with the crowd, Jesus says,

27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.’
28 Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’
29 Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’
The crowd falls into the trap of Jesus mentioning working for food that endures to eternal life. They want to work in order to receive approval from God. Did Jesus know their hearts and minds? I rather suspect he did.
For Jesus’ response is to tell them to do something that isn’t really work:
29 Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’
There are no works you can do to win the approval of God, he says. What God requires is that you put your faith in me.

The crowd makes a common mistake. People use the following of God’s laws either as good works that they hope will win favour from God, or as boundary markers to show who’s in and who’s out – hopefully proving that they are ‘in’.

And it’s a mistake to say this is just a fault seen in Jewish opponents of Jesus. The idea that we are not fundamentally sinners and can be good enough on our own to be accepted by God has been called by some ‘The English heresy.’ It has a long and tawdry history in our culture.

It is seen in the relegation of the word ‘sin’ to the salacious stories that were always so beloved of Sunday tabloids, usually of a sexual nature. Even in our day as newspapers are replaced by the Internet, there are plenty of these tales around.

But Jesus says we just need to believe in him, and that isn’t a good work that merits us the love of God. Faith is to hold out empty hands to God and believe that he is going to fill them with his good things.
Sadly, the good works heresy still squirms its way into the church. I have had people ask me if they were good enough for church membership. To which the proper reply is no, but neither am I. We are here by the grace of God alone, and we receive that by holding out the empty hands of faith.

It’s why whatever we say about right and wrong in society and in other people, we must be careful not to become judgmental. We are only in the family of God by his grace, received by faith in Jesus and his death for our sins.

I once met a Christian who had a particular way of reminding himself of this. I met him when we were both patients on a hospital ward, and he gave me his business card. After his name were the initials ‘SSBG’, and I was puzzled. What degree or professional qualification was that, I asked him?

‘It stands for Sinner Saved By Grace,’ he replied.

‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’

The third and final wrong desire is to prefer signs at the expense of the Saviour.

30 So they asked him, ‘What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’

When I hear this, I’m inclined to think: what a cheek! You want a sign to prove that this is the One you should believe in? Well, what do you think you saw when he fed all five thousand of you?

It reminds me of what the Apostle Paul said in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians on this subject:

22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles

Some people have a lust for the spectacular and the dramatic. If there is a God, they expect a firework show with drones like the New Year extravaganza in London.

But Jesus points the crowd to the Father who gave bread from heaven in the wilderness, and ultimately to himself as ‘The Bread of Life’, because signs aren’t meant to be an alternative to faith in him and allegiance to him.

Now don’t get me wrong. Jesus did miracles. I believe he did. I also believe that miracles are not extinct. I do believe in a God who shows up in history and is not remote from us. And therefore, I believe in things like intercessory prayer.

But the signs are not an end in themselves. They are meant to point to Jesus. And that’s what we’re meant to focus on. That’s what matters.

Miracles are real, but rare, as CS Lewis said in his book on the subject. Why? Because the scientific laws by which our universe lives are a description of God’s habits – they must be, if it is true that Jesus ‘sustain[s] all things by his powerful word’, as Hebrews 1:3 says. The universe relies on God’s habits. Miracles are when God breaks his habits, but of necessity can only be rare, or the upholding of the universe will be disturbed.

Next time we want church or faith to be some kind of whizz-bang show, we need to ask ourselves whether we are putting our thirst for a religious performance ahead of our relationship with Jesus.
To be sure, I am not for one moment suggesting that church and faith should be boring. We believe in Jesus, and when we read about him we can be sure that he was many things, but one thing he certainly wasn’t was boring.

But the life of faith is not the explosive adrenaline rush of the hundred metres sprint, it is the marathon. We keep Jesus and the finish line before us in what Eugene Peterson called ‘A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.’

Conclusion

So what if we are to make the right choices, not the wrong ones? At the beginning, I linked this with the need to establish habits.

If we are not to prefer physical satisfaction over the spiritual, then I talked about the habit of regular Bible reading.

If we are not to prefer human works over grace, then we need the regular discipline of both confessing our sins and receiving the assurance of forgiveness. So yes, let us notice this as a rhythm in Sunday worship every week. But we might also consider a daily review of our lives. There is an old Christian practice called the Examen, where we review the day before going to bed. We rejoice in the good of the day and where we have seen God at work. We also repent of those times we have failed him and are assured we are forgiven.

If we are not to prefer signs over the Saviour, then these first two disciplines, along with our other commitments of worship, the sacraments, prayer, and fellowship will all be tools of the Holy Spirit to form us in the marathon race of God’s kingdom. Just so long as we keep doing them and they become regular habits.  
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Making A Choice About Jesus, John 6:1-21 (Ordinary 17 Year B)

John 6:1-21

You are at the pub quiz night – or community centre, if you prefer – and your team gets this question:

Apart from the crucifixion and the resurrection, what is the only story to appear in all four of the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Full marks if you said, the feeding of the five thousand.

Now do not let modern scepticism explain it away, for example, as a symbolic story. In Mark’s account, he makes the apparently incidental comment that the grass was green, which implies this happened in springtime. John corroborates this when he observes that ‘The Jewish Passover Festival was near’ (verse 4). Passover occurred in the spring.

No: this incident must have made a massive impact on the early Christians for all four evangelists to record it.

And in John’s case, you can tell that from the fact that he includes it as one of the seven ‘signs’ in his Gospel. John never just speaks about ‘miracles’. Even the healings at the beginning of this account (verse 2) are called ‘signs.’

Why a ‘sign’ and not just a common-or-garden miracle? Because a sign points somewhere. The signs in John point to Jesus. Read on in the chapter and we will find Jesus making one of his ‘I am’ sayings that are also a feature in John – in this case, ‘I am the bread of life.’ That is where ultimately the feeding of the five thousand points to as a sign.

But even before we get to that point, there is a very basic issue that both the disciples and the crowd must face. In different ways, they need to make a choice about Jesus. We’re going to explore those choices about Jesus, because the alternatives before them also come up for us.

Firstly, with the disciples, there is a choice between problems and possibilities.

We read that Jesus knew all along what he was going to do, and when he asked Philip where they were going to buy bread to feed the crowd, he did so in order to test him (verses 5-6). And Philip doesn’t do too well on the test:

‘It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!’ (verse 7)

All he can see is the problem.

Andrew does marginally better. He who had brought his brother Simon to Jesus in chapter 1 now brings the boy with the five barley loaves and two fishes, even if he also asks how that meagre offering will feed the multitude (verse 9). Andrew struggles, but at least sees a tiny possibility.

Meanwhile, all along, Jesus knows the divine possibilities.

If we are to be people of true faith in Jesus, then we need to start tilting towards possibilities rather than problems.

But I confess to you, I am far from perfect myself in this area. My wife will tell you how frustrating I can be when she comes up with a bright idea, and my instinctive response is to list all the hurdles it faces. I like to think that I’m simply setting out what obstacles we’ll need to cross in order to achieve her idea, but I’m not convinced she believes me. Maybe it’s my depression speaking, or a lack of self-confidence, but I know I can present as being a glass-half-empty person who takes the remaining water in the glass and uses it to douse the flames of enthusiasm.

Yet for all that, I’m very different when the boot is on the other foot. If I am making suggestions to a church about things we can do and all I get in response is, we can’t do that, we don’t like that, we won’t do that, then I become the frustrated one. Churches ask you to give them a lead and when you do, they don’t take it. Many a time I have come home from a meeting and told my wife that I am wasting my time as a minister.

Jesus calls us to be people of possibilities, not problems. He calls us to be people of faith. We nod our heads to that, but then refuse to live that out in practice. Some of us are addicted to middle-class comfort, rather than committed to living out a life of faith in Jesus.

The other day, I watched an interview with the late Tim Keller, who planted a successful Presbyterian church from scratch in New York City, and then when he stepped down, he set up an organisation to support anyone else who wanted to reach people in cities around the world with the Gospel. The interviewer asked him why he was so passionate about cities.

Keller replied that more and more people are moving into cities, but Christians are retreating from them. He said too many Christians are more concerned to ask where they will be comfortable than where they will be useful to God.

So I want to lay this out as a challenge to the church today. Are we so bound up in problems that we have forgotten that we are meant to have a live faith in Jesus? Could it even be that our obsession with problems is a way of avoiding the challenge of the possibilities he lays before us, so that we remain comfortable, rather than finding out where we are useful to Christ, with the attendant discomfort that may bring?

If we keep running away from the challenges Jesus sets before us, won’t we become like the man in the parable who buried the one talent he had, instead of investing it? You know what happened to him. The same can happen to a church.

Let’s make sure we choose the possibilities of Jesus over the problems we see.

Secondly, with the crowd there is a choice between grace and grabbing.

Right from the outset, Jesus is generous and gracious towards the crowd. Why should he feel obligated to feed them? Shouldn’t he have expected them to prepare and pack provisions if they were going to be out for the day? Surely they should bring the first century equivalent of a packed lunch or snacks? One lad did. If we encountered such thoughtlessness or laziness on a grand scale, wouldn’t we be inclined to say, it’s their fault, they can sort it out?

Not Jesus. In his kindness and compassion, he miraculously provides for this huge gathering.

And that is entirely consistent with what we know about the character of Jesus. Hasn’t he provided a world where there is enough for all, regardless of our selfishness? Doesn’t his Father send the sun to shine on both the righteous and the unrighteous? Isn’t he the One who asked sick people, what do you want me to do for you?

And isn’t it our own fault that we are messed up with our sins? Don’t we deserve to be left to our own devices and rot?

Jesus doesn’t see it that way. He offers his very life that we might find the forgiveness of sins. He rises from the dead for us to know new life. He sends his Spirit on us to begin the work of transformation. We don’t deserve any of that, but this is his generous, gracious love in action.

Jesus is characterised by generosity and grace. He isn’t stingy. The disciples filled up twelve baskets with the leftovers from the miraculously multiplied barley loaves (verse 13).

And after the feeding of the five thousand, look at how he calms the fears of his disciples when he comes walking on the water. ‘It is I; don’t be afraid’ (verse 20).

This is Jesus. He isn’t miserable. He isn’t mean. He doesn’t have a thunderbolt in his back pocket that he’s just itching to throw at you. He longs for us to know and experience his generous love and his grace.

But the crowd makes the wrong call. Having enjoyed all that Jesus had done for them and given them, then instead of gratitude for that love, they want to grab Jesus for their own purposes:

14 After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

They just want to use Jesus for their own purposes and what they can get out of him. This is not the relationship of friendship and love that Jesus would later talk about. They just wanted to grab Jesus and use him.

The stakes are high. Had the crowd succeeded, then Jesus would have become a failed Messiah. He can’t afford that. He has to withdraw from them.

And if we just want to manipulate Jesus for our own purposes, he will withdraw his presence from us, too. What he offers us in his generous love and grace is the very best and most important gift we need, in his reconciling love. But if we want to use him for our own ends, he will withdraw from us. We have refused what he knows we need the most.

Does this sort of thing happen today? Yes. Plenty of people invoke God for their own political ends. Maybe it’s more obvious in the USA than the UK. Donald Trump claimed God protected him from the assassin’s bullet. I’m not sure what that says about the family man at the rally who nevertheless died protecting his wife and children. Joe Biden said that God led him to step down from the presidential race. Does that just give a gloss to what he should have done weeks or months earlier?

Us? Do we sometimes treat Jesus as some glorified fortune cookie? We just want what we can get out of him. We’ll follow him while he offers us the things we want from him, but when he asks for our loyal commitment to him and his cause, then we’ll drift away. It’s no coincidence that by the end of this chapter in John most of the crowd has given up on following him. Just being in it for what we can get out of him doesn’t last. It shows us up for how shallow we are.

Yes, Jesus is full of generous love. He is full of grace and mercy. It is his nature. But he also longs for us to follow him, and not just ask ourselves what’s in it for us.

And maybe that’s the point at which the two sets of choices come together for us. How we make those choices will determine whether we move from the crowd to the disciples.

Firstly, we need to receive the generous love and grace of Jesus, as in his kindness he forgives us our sins and provides us with everything we need. In gratitude we choose to follow him rather than just exploit him for all we can selfishly get out of him.

That moves us from crowd member to disciple. And then as disciples, hearing the call to follow Jesus, we join him on the adventure of faith when we refuse to play life safe by concentrating on the problems and instead embrace all the possibilities far beyond our own imagination that Jesus lays before us for the sake of his kingdom.

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Mission in the Bible 14: Our Of Our Comfort Zone (Acts 10:1-23a)

(This is a lightly revised version of a sermon I preached ten years ago.)

Acts 10:1-23a

There is an old joke that takes a Bible verse about some people not dying before the Second Coming of Jesus and applying it as a motto for a crèche or other gathering of babies:

“We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed.”

Change. Children change your lives like nothing else. Marriage is a big change, but having children requires far greater adjustment.

We’ve heard a lot in the election campaign about change, too. Now, with a new government in office, we’re about to find out whether there will be change, and if so, what.

In our Bible reading today, we meet two people who are on the verge of major change in their lives – Cornelius the centurion, and Peter the apostle. Both are in a comfortable place in their lives, but things are about to take dramatic twists for both of them as their lives are about to meet.

First, Cornelius. To the readers of Acts, who are probably Roman, Cornelius as a centurion is an all-round good guy. Roman citizens admired their centurions, rather like the way many in our society see our soldiers as heroes. One Roman writer put it this way:

“They wish centurions not so much to be venturesome and daredevil as natural leaders, of a steady and sedate spirit. They do not desire them so much to be men who will initiate attacks and open the battle, but men who will hold their ground when worsted and hard pressed and be ready to die at their posts.” (Polybius, Histories, 6.24.9)

And not only that, Cornelius would have been regarded as a good egg by Jews – at least, as good as a Gentile could be:

He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. (Verse 2)

He hadn’t quite gone all the way to becoming a Jewish convert – that would have required a painful snip for him – but in prayer and giving to the poor he practised two of the three basic disciplines expected of a Jew (the other being fasting).

But we can’t stop there. According to the angel who appears to him, even God has taken a shine to him:

Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. (Verse 4)

It’s all good, isn’t it? Admired in society, respected in the community of faith, and pleasing to God.

Except … God still has an agenda of change for him. That’s why he needs to meet Peter and hear Peter’s message. He believes in God, he does good deeds, and contributes to the well-being of society. Yet God says, ‘Cornelius, you need more. You need change in your life.’

Perhaps we know similar people today. We might be one of them. Good people – after all, the church has no monopoly on goodness. They may pray or even turn up at worship sometimes, but some say, “I don’t need to go to church to be a good Christian.” They may work hard at their job, love their families, and put in extra effort of an evening to do something positive in the local community. Perhaps they are in a profession that benefits the well-being of others.

And maybe God says the same today. ‘You need more. You need change.’ Specifically, I think he says something similar to what he effectively says to Cornelius. ‘You need to meet someone who will tell you about Jesus.’ Because that is what Peter would go on to do when they finally met.

Why do we need to meet Jesus when we believe in God, and do good in our community? Well, if we are serious about our belief in God and wanting to do what he likes, then we shall want to be acquainted with the One he sent to bring peace, forgiveness and true purpose of life. That One is Jesus. If God has been quietly working in our lives and we’ve been seeking to respond to him, then when we hear about Jesus we’ll be positive. If on the other hand all our talk about believing in God and being good is a smokescreen to avoid serious commitment, then the mention of Jesus will expose the truth of our hearts.

Happily, Cornelius wasn’t like that. He was truly interested in God and God’s ways. Change would come for him. Dramatic change, but good change.

Second, Peter. To get inside Peter’s attitude to life, let me ask you this question: have you ever been concerned with the fear that bad company corrupts good character? Perhaps if you are the father of a daughter and you are bothered what kinds of boyfriends she might have, you will understand this mindset. Can any young man ever possibly be good enough for your princess? What will you want to do to him if he wickedly steps out of line – say, he brings her back from a date five minutes later than promised? Really, you don’t want your angel influenced by such a wayward soul.

Translate that into a religious context and what you’ve got is a guy who has been brought up to believe that you shouldn’t mix with the wrong sort of people or your pure religious faith will be contaminated. And so, as a good Jew, he had believed he should have nothing to do with those who, in religious terms, were ‘unclean’. Cornelius, despite hanging out at the synagogue, was in some sense unclean to him, because he hadn’t become a fully-fledged Jew.

Now, it has to be said, Peter isn’t always consistent in his convictions. We learn in this story that ‘He is staying with Simon the tanner’ (verse 6), and that is suspect behaviour for a devout Jew. Why? Because a tanner in his trade deals with the skins of dead animals, and good Jews were not meant to have anything to do with dead bodies. Yet Peter accepts hospitality from such a man. Either he’s compromising his convictions or he’s beginning to change before this incident. I suspect it’s the former.

But here, everything definitely begins to change for him when he gets hungry at lunchtime. As he falls into a trance he sees this strange vision of a huge sharing platter. Some of the items on the menu are foods regarded as unclean by Jews, but in the vision he forgets that Jesus had declared all goods ritually clean. However, the call to eat ritually unclean food becomes a metaphor for mixing with people he would normally shun (verses 9-20).

If Peter is to live in the will of God according to the love of God, then he has to make a drastic change to his life. He has to begin hanging out with people who are different from him. He needs to start relating to people whom he would otherwise consider anathema. What’s more, he will have to do all this for the sake of sharing God’s love in Jesus Christ.

You see, up until now, the followers of Jesus were effectively nothing more than a small Jewish sect. Just about everybody who had begun following the way of Jesus had been Jewish. There was the odd exception, like the heretics of Samaria, but the new faith hasn’t burst outside Jewish boundaries. The question of whether it should hasn’t even been raised.

But it is about to be raised, and effectively it’s God who does so. God calls Peter to a radical change that will take his life-transforming love in Jesus beyond the Judaism where it has begun to the rest of the world. Christianity as a world faith is about to begin in this story.

And you know what? It means something similar for those of us who are church regulars, too. Those who have heard me a lot here won’t be surprised to hear me say this, but it needs repeating, because we must take this on board. It might feel nice and safe to draw most of our friends from the people like us who share our beliefs and values, but really that’s the way to build a spiritual ghetto. We need to make friends with people outside the church if we are going to make a missionary difference today. I hope we will not be known as the kind of religious people who are forever looking down their noses at those whose values we query.

The church is not a social club. It is a worshipping community and a base from which to launch God’s mission of love for all people. If we are to see God’s love spread to more people, then like Peter we may need to embrace a radical change where we don’t wait within the walls of the church building for people to come to us on our terms. Instead, we risk getting dirty in the world showing the love of God to people.

Maybe then we shall meet the Cornelius types. People where God is already on their case and who are reaching out for him. Perhaps we can have the humble privilege of making the introductions.

You know, it could even happen today if people are reaching out for God.

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Mission in the Bible 13: Divine Initiative Seen in the Conversion and Call of Saul/Paul (Acts 9:1-19a)

Acts 9:1-19

I don’t look forward to my eye test every two years. When they ask you how many dots you can see that have flashed up momentarily to test your peripheral vision, I’m always afraid of getting it wrong. I don’t like the sensation of the air pumped into my eye to test for glaucoma. And I’m not fond of the flashing light when they take a photo of my retina.

Last time, having gone into see the optometrist and she had completed all her tests with different lenses and reading letters on a board, and then shone her torch into my eyes, she then said to me, “Were you told last time that you are going to develop cataracts at a later date?”

“No,” I replied, while silently thinking, “Oh great, another sign of getting older.”

This famous story of Saul’s Damascus Road conversion can be organised under the theme of sight. Saul is blinded, but Ananias receives a vision. Note the contrast: blindness and vision.

When the Lord blinds Saul and later heals him, and when he speaks to Ananias in a vision, he is showing that he is in charge and he is taking a divine initiative to bring salvation not only to Saul, but also to many others.

Firstly, then, the blinding of Saul:

To all intents and purposes, Saul has a licence to kill. He is ‘still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples’ and asks the high priest in Jerusalem for letters permitting him to take prisoner any ‘followers of the Way’ in Damascus, with the help of the synagogues (verses 1-2). I think we can safely assume that even though he only has permission to arrest people, the religious authorities in Jerusalem will probably turn a blind eye if he also kills anyone. After all, they had stoned Stephen to death, and Saul had approved (Acts 7:1-8:1).

Since Stephen’s summary execution, persecution had broken out against the disciples of Jesus. Apart from the apostles, they had scattered from Jerusalem. Surely things were out of control. They feared for their lives. Some years later, Saul (by then named Paul) would tell the Galatian Christians that he was destroying the church. This is a lethal crisis for those first believers.

But God is in charge, and if his church is powerless, he is not. He takes the initiative. Jesus intervenes.

And he intervenes in a way that counters all the sentimental ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ nicey-nicey Jesus images. He acts as the holy king in blazing glory.

Of course, Jesus has wider purposes here. Not only does he save the physical lives of believers who would have been arrested and most likely tortured and probably killed, he acts here to bring Saul to him so that many more will be saved in the spiritual sense.

But to get to that point Jesus has to act in a way that the writer and friend of C S Lewis  Sheldon Vanauken called ‘A Severe Mercy.’ Saul is so set in the ways of his misguided zeal that it will only take something radical to stop him, and, moreover, to humble him before his Lord.

So the Damascus Road conversion is dramatic, but for a specific reason. And those of us who worry that we might not be Christians because we have not had what is often called a ‘Damascus Road experience’ need not worry. A survey some years ago showed that little over a third of Christians can name the date or time of their conversion. I am one of that minority. For me, it felt like a sudden revelation. But for most believers, it is a gradual process.

Think of it this way: do you have to remember the moment of your birth to know you are alive? Of course not! None of us does! We know we are alive because we manifest the signs of life. Our heart beats. We breathe. We eat and drink. We think. We get signals from our senses and our nerves.

In the same way, the question for us in terms of faith is less, do you remember the day you were converted, and more, are you showing signs of life in Christ? Do you love Jesus and want to know him more? Is the fruit of the Spirit growing in you? Do you have a desire to worship him and to serve him in the world?

Saul needs to be stopped in his tracks and humbled. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us in our prayers for some people and places to ask the Lord to do ‘whatever it takes’ to humble people before him and bring them to repentance and faith.

Secondly, the vision of Ananias:

Saul will become famous as Paul and will become probably the most influential follower of Jesus ever. He will carry the Gospel to nation after nation and write letters that reverberate down the centuries. Just one of them – Romans – transformed the lives of St Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and John Wesley, each of whom went on to have major impacts on Christianity and the world.

But Ananias? He makes this one appearance in the story and then disappears from view. Yet, by being the model disciple he leads Saul to Christ and the implications are, as I just indicated, transformative for the world for over two thousand years so far.

When the Lord calls him in a vision, he gives the exemplary response of a Jesus-follower: “Yes, Lord” (verse 10) – or “Here I am, Lord,” as other translations render it. It’s reminiscent of the boy Samuel in the Temple in the Old Testament, hearing the voice of God for the first time and learning from Eli to say the same thing: Here I am.

Yes, Lord. Jesus appears and speaks to one who says yes to him. But if the thought of saying yes to Jesus makes us nervous, note that it did to Ananias, too. When he hears that Jesus wants him to go and lay hands on Saul (verses 11-12), he responds with an understandably anxious question:

13 ‘Lord,’ Ananias answered, ‘I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.’

I think he is somewhat like Mary when the Archangel Gabriel appears to her and tells her she is going to conceive the Messiah, despite being a virgin. She certainly had her questions.

And it’s OK for a ‘Yes, Lord’ to be accompanied by questions, because Jesus is patient to explain to Ananias why it is important that he obeys:

15 But the Lord said to Ananias, ‘Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.’

Ananias has questions, but they are not a reason for him to turn ‘Yes, Lord’ into ‘No, Lord’ (which is a contradiction in terms, anyway).

Jesus gives us no guarantees of whether we will be well-known believers like Saul/Paul, or obscure ones like Ananias. What he requires of each of us is, ‘Yes, Lord,’ even if it is accompanied by questions.

Thirdly and finally, the scales drop from Saul’s eyes:

Blind Saul has nevertheless received a vision of Ananias coming to lay hands on him to restore his sight (verse 12), and now it happens. As Ananias prays, scales fall from Saul’s eyes (verses 17-18).

In a sense, scales have fallen spiritually, too, from both Saul and Ananias. Saul receives the Holy Spirit (verse 17), and he will now be able to redirect his zeal in the holy cause of Jesus and his kingdom. His baptism (verse 18) confirms this radical change of direction. Moreover, he will now have the spiritual strength to endure the suffering that will come his way as he sets out on this mission (verses 15-16).

And in Ananias’ case, he addresses Saul as ‘Brother’ (verse 17). They are not biological family, and nor is this about shared ethnic identity. They are family in Christ. Saul takes food (verse 19), which likely means that he and Ananias share table fellowship[1]. Yes, the persecutor and one who was possibly a fugitive from him[2] are one. This is the miracle of the Gospel. It is similar to Jesus bringing both Matthew the tax-collecting Roman collaborator and Simon the Zealot freedom-fighter together in his twelve disciples. Faith in Jesus does this – even, dare I say, making Spurs and Arsenal supporters one!

There is a lot of talk in the world about how there is only one race, the human race, and that there is more that brings us together than keeps us apart. Unfortunately, that well-meaning talk overlooks the way in which sin has broken relationships. But here, Saul and Ananias’ eyes are opened to see that it is Jesus who restores this unity. That human unity is now found in him.

This is what Saul, later as Paul, will say to the Galatians:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

This is Jesus opening our eyes to the fact that the Gospel is not just personal, individual reconciliation with God – the forgiveness of our sins. It is also the healing and reconciliation of our relationships with one another.

And that’s why it’s important that the church demonstrates this if we are to be a sign of the Gospel. It’s why I love going to my church at Lindford, where the worshipping congregation goes right across the generations, across races, across social and educational backgrounds, and we hang together as one body in Christ. The politicians should be envious! Because they can’t create something like that! But Jesus can!

What will we do so that our church life is not just fellowship with people who are just like us? Do we believe at this election time that we can hold unity in Christ with Christians of differing political convictions, for example? In a deeply divided nation, this is the sort of thing that can become a powerful witness. We need to ‘see’ this so that the world will see Christ.

Conclusion

In using this metaphor of sight and blindness for this sermon, the old chorus popped into my head:

Open our eyes, Lord,
We want to see Jesus,
To reach out and touch him
And say that we love him.
Open our ears, Lord,
And help us to listen,
Open our eyes, Lord,
We want to see Jesus.[3]

But open our eyes, Lord, that we may walk with you and not resist you and need blinding and humbling to find you. Open our eyes, Lord, that we may say yes to you, even when we have questions. Open our eyes, Lord, to see that your Gospel brings reconciliation both with you and with others and help us to practise that to your glory before the eyes of the world.

[1] Craig Keener, Acts, p282.

[2] Keener, p281.

[3] Robert Cull, b 1949; Copyright © 1976 Maranatha Music.

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Mission in the Bible 12: Listening with Two Ears (Acts 8:26-40)

Luke 8:26-40

If Debbie tries to speak to me about something while I am watching the television, there is more than a fair chance that I won’t take in what she’s saying. She will have to tell me to stop listening to the TV in order to listen to her. After all, as a man, I can only ever do one thing at a time. And I certainly can’t listen to more than one source simultaneously.

It makes me think of something I was told in a training session for people who were going to engage in prayer ministry. The instructor said that we had two ears, and that we had to listen to the person in need with one ear and the Holy Spirit with our other ear. That sounded tricky! It was better when they advised a team of two people to pray with whoever came forward, with one team member listening to the person and the other listening to the Spirit.

But part of our task as the church is to engage in multiple listening. The late John Stott called it ‘double listening’, where we listen to the Bible and to the world. Not that we squeeze the Bible into today’s standards and values, which happens far too often, but that we find where the Gospel speaks to today’s world.

And in our strange and wonderful Bible reading today, Philip engages in multiple listening. And it’s this multiple listening that enables him to lead the Ethiopian eunuch to faith in Christ.

Firstly, Philip listens to the Holy Spirit:

An angel (speaking on God’s behalf) directs Philip to go to the desert road (verse 26) and when he is there, the Spirit tells him to go near the eunuch’s chariot and stay near it (verses 27-29).

Well, it’s easy to say ‘listen to the Holy Spirit’, isn’t it, but harder to get to grips with it for ourselves. At one end of the Christian spectrum we have people who say they have never known God speak to them along with others who say that God only speaks to us now through the Bible.

At the other end there are Christians who, in the words of one preacher, claim to have more words from the Lord before breakfast than Billy Graham had in a lifetime. Some of these people are harmless fruitcakes, but others are manipulative and abusive leaders.

I once heard a story about a man who went to his vicar and said, ‘Wonderful news, vicar! You know that gorgeous blonde woman in the choir? The Lord has told me to marry her.’

‘No he hasn’t,’ replied the vicar.

‘Yes, he has!’

‘No, he hasn’t.’

‘Yes he has!’

‘NO HE HASN’T,’ insisted the vicar. ‘You’re already married.’

I think there’s a healthy middle path to be found here. I do believe God still speaks to us, but I also believe we test that against what he has revealed to us in the Bible.

And I would also say that some of us who think God hasn’t spoken to us are mistaken. He has told us things, but perhaps we haven’t always recognised it was him. Take the common example of feeling prompted to phone a friend or a relative, only to do so and discover they are ill or in some other predicament. We can then pray for the person or help meet their needs. Isn’t that something the Holy Spirit would do?

An Anglican priest friend of mine used to lead an organisation in London called the Christian Healing Mission. In teaching Christians about prayer, John would invite people to sit quietly and ask God to speak to them, then keep silence. He would encourage them to write down whatever impressions came into their mind, believing that God did indeed want to speak to his children. He never denied the need to be discerning about what people thought they heard, but he believed we should be optimistic about God’s desire to speak to us.

So why don’t we open ourselves all the more to the possibility of the Holy Spirit speaking to us? What adventures might he take us on for the sake of God’s kingdom advancing?

Secondly, Philip listens to the eunuch:

Here I’m thinking of where Philip enters into a conversation with the eunuch about what he is reading and what it means (verses 30-35).

When I was a child, we had a family GP who seemed to start writing you a prescription before you had finished telling him what was wrong with you. He didn’t really listen to your problems.

And we have seen something similar in the current General Election campaign. How many of our leaders, when a member of the public asks them a question, be it in a TV debate or on a radio phone-in, just launch into their prepared answer on that subject without listening to the nuances of that person’s personal concerns?

It happens in the religious sphere, too, when well-meaning evangelists splurge out the Gospel without listening to the people they are trying to reach. And while they have a point that the Gospel is unchanging, we need to find the point of contact or even perhaps the point of conflict so that we can make the Gospel connect with folk.

So Philip takes the trouble to listen to the man’s concerns. On his way back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, a journey that would have taken a couple of months by chariot, this man is serious in his enquiring after God. He seems to think there is something in the Jewish faith and is reading the Hebrew Scriptures, but as a eunuch he will not be allowed to convert fully to Judaism. I think there is a desire for God and for belonging here, and Philip picks up on it. Philip knows this man’s deepest longings can be satisfied in Jesus.

W E Sangster, the famous minister at Westminster Central Hall in the mid-twentieth century, said that the Gospel is like a diamond with many facets. We need to discover which facet shines on a particular person in order to make the Gospel connect with them.

And the moment we understand that, we see the need to listen to people, not just regurgitate a pre-packaged version of the Gospel that we have memorised. It’s a good thing sometimes to learn summaries of the Gospel and also to be able to recount our own testimony, but we must be careful first to listen to the people we are aiming to reach for Christ so that we may share the Good News in the most appropriate way.

Thirdly, Philip listens to the Scripture:

I think the fact that the eunuch is reading this powerful passage from Isaiah 53 that we often call ‘The Suffering Servant’ means that the Holy Spirit is already at work in his life, preparing him for the Gospel and pointing him in to where he needs to ask questions. Perhaps he realises that attempts to explain this passage in terms of it merely being about the prophet himself can only go so far and are ultimately doomed to fail. There are parts of it that just don’t fit.

And along comes Philip for a meeting orchestrated by the Spirit. He listens to the Bible passage the eunuch is reading, and he responds.

But notice how he responds:

35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

Philip does what the early church did. They listen to Scripture and interpret it in the light of Jesus. The Hebrew Scriptures had pointed to a coming Messiah. Now he had come in the Person of Jesus, it made sense not just to read the holy writings to quote proof-texts out of context, but to read and understand them in the light of Jesus.

So that’s what Philip does here. He listens to these verses from Isaiah and says that ultimately they only make sense in the light of the Good News of Jesus. And as a result, this man who could not fully belong in Judaism due to his castration can fully belong to Jesus. His baptism (verses 36-39) is surely a joyful expression of that truth.

What Philip is doing is rather like Jesus on the Emmaus Road. As Jesus came alongside the two travellers, he opened the Scriptures and related them to himself. Philip comes alongside the Ethiopian eunuch and relates the Scriptures to Jesus.

This approach grounds us in the centrality of the Bible as the authoritative account of the Christian faith, but we do not act as Bible-bashers. We are not using isolated Bible texts as weapons to hurt people. There will always be the odd prejudiced person who accuses us of that and we can’t do anything about that, but our main task is to listen to the Scriptures and share how they point to Jesus. The Holy Spirit uses this to make Jesus real to people and lead them to him.

However, most of the people we encounter will not be reading Bible passages and asking us to make sense of them to them – although it might happen occasionally. We instead need to be people who are listening to the Bible ourselves anyway and looking for how it points to Christ. As we feed ourselves in this way on Jesus, the Bread of Life, we shall be more fully equipped for the conversations we have with friends and family members who don’t share our faith. Our own willingness to engage in spiritual discipline with the Bible is not only good for us, it has benefits for our witness.

Conclusion

When we consider mission and especially evangelism, we give a lot of emphasis to speaking. And the speaking is of course necessary.

But we need to appreciate the importance of listening too, as Philip knew. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit, who guides us into divine appointments. We need to listen to those we are aiming to reach, so that we may share our hope in Christ in a way that connects with them and challenges them. And we need to listen to Scripture, particularly to the way it points to Christ, because that is the truth we are seeking to share.

Thank you – for listening.

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Mission in the Bible 11: Courageous Witness (Acts 4:1-31)

Acts 4:1-31

Last weekend, monitoring stations picked up seismic activity in Edinburgh. The activity was picked up as far as six kilometres from the epicentre. The cause? Seventy-three thousand fans singing and dancing at one of Taylor Swift’s concerts in Murrayfield Stadium. Each night the ground moved around twenty-three nanometres.

Swifties had had the same effect when their heroine performed on the west coast of America in Seattle and Los Angeles. Her Seattle concert registered 2.3 on the Richter scale.

Which brings us to the conclusion of our reading:

31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

Was this less Taylor Swift and more Jerry Lee Lewis – ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’?

They didn’t need seventy-three thousand – although they were up to about five thousand by this point. They simply needed the Holy Spirit.

But then the whole episode is based on another seismic event: the Resurrection. Matthew reports in his Gospel,

2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
(Matthew 28:2-4)

And the earthquake of the Resurrection is still being felt here. Make no mistake, if all that had happened was that a lame man had been healed and if Peter had not told the crowd that gathered of their need to reassess their attitude to Jesus because of his Resurrection, then this conflict would not have happened.

If all that had happened was a healing, then that would have been nice, the apostles might have been patted on the back, and people would have thought that this was a commendable act of doing good. Were it to have occurred today, it would be praised as an example of inclusion and social cohesion. If the apostles just kept making people well over many years and set up a charity to administer their work, then maybe they would be nominated for an honour from the King.

I would imagine that if our parliamentary candidates saw something like the churches’ involvement in the Midhurst Community Hub they would praise them. They would applaud the Monday community lunches, the telephone befriending service for the lonely, the debt counselling, and the networking of different organisations.

And none of what I am saying is meant to criticise any of these things. We should be about the healing of bodies, of relationships, of the economy, of the environment, and so on. Absolutely. It’s part of building for God’s kingdom, the making of all things new.

But Peter has brought the Resurrection into play, and it brings with it seismic tremors. If Jesus is risen from the dead and he is responsible for the healing of the lame man, not the apostles, then we have a day of reckoning here. And that’s not only for the ordinary people in the crowd who had not sided with Jesus. More specifically, it’s for the powerful figures who had explicitly conspired to get Jesus executed.

The Resurrection is an earthquake in the middle of history. It’s an earthquake for the powerful, and especially for those who oppose Jesus. Seismic activity leaves them with tremors.

So that’s why when Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin, the religious ruling council, and when Peter says again that the healing miracle was wrought by Jesus, whom they had crucified but God had raised from the dead (verse 10) that they want to ban them from speaking about Jesus.

But they can’t. Peter says,

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.’

And later we read,

18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, ‘Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.’

Peter and John understand the Gospel. Just as a Roman herald would visit towns and villages proclaiming the ‘gospel’ that there was a new Emperor on the throne or that Roman armies had won a great victory, so they knew the Gospel of God was that there was a new king on the throne of the universe, and his name was Jesus, and that same Jesus had won the greatest battle of all at the Cross.

So they cannot be silent. If Jesus is King, then the power of all earthly authorities is only relative. Absolute commands, such as to stay silent about Jesus, are invalid. And later, when the Christian message reached outside Judaism into the rest of the Roman Empire, they would use the expression ‘Jesus is Lord’, with the implication that if Jesus is Lord then Caesar is not, despite the Empire’s creed that ‘Caesar is Lord.’ The powers must come under Jesus. And they don’t like it.

And you know what, they still don’t like it. My last Methodist District used to run an annual children’s holiday. They would take children who otherwise would not get a holiday away for a week’s fun. The children would come on the recommendation of professionals such as social workers, and would be from poorer families, or they would be children who were carers, and so on. It required a lot of money, and much fund-raising was done.

They applied to BBC Children In Need for a grant, and were awarded one. Now if you think Children In Need is all fluffy Pudsey Bear stuff, I’m about to prick the balloon of your imagination. Because when Children In Need sent the paperwork through to sign, it contained a stipulation that the volunteer workers on the holiday (including a friend of mine who acted as the chaplain) were not to pray with the children.

Now of course, their rationale was that non-Christians had given money to the charity and they would not necessarily want to see their giving used for explicitly Christian causes. But that is at best a short-sighted reason, and frankly entirely specious. They conveniently ignored all the Christians who give to them. In my opinion, it was a deliberate suppression of the Christian message. My chaplain friend spoke at a Synod to warn other churches about the dangers of applying for funding from Children In Need.

What implications for us to do we draw from Peter and John’s example?

Firstly, let us be clear about the Gospel. Everything turned on their understanding of the Good News, as I just described it. The death of Jesus shows up our sin, his Resurrection shows God’s vindication of him, and our need to change. For he is King of the universe (hence our talk about the kingdom of God) and he has won the decisive battle against evil. We need to call people to allegiance to him.

Salvation is found in no-one else (verse 12), otherwise his death on the Cross was pointless. You may have heard the old story that purports to support the idea that all religions lead to God by comparing things to blind men feeling an elephant, and each describing different parts. But the story is nonsense, because God has promised to open blind eyes to his truth.

These things are core to the Christian faith. Water them down, and you no longer have Christianity. Our calling is not to be ashamed of Jesus and his Gospel. We need to be clear about it.

Secondly, let us be close to Jesus. Hear again the observation that members of the Sanhedrin made about Peter and John:

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 

‘Unschooled, ordinary men’: if you want a strong flavour of what Luke is saying here, then a transliteration of his Greek (as opposed to a translation) would say at this point, ‘ungrammatical idiots.’ They would have failed their GCSEs. They had no academic prospects. No other rabbi had taken then on, because Jesus called them to follow him, whereas what normally happened was the other way around: young men approached rabbis. They had depended on their practical skills to be part of their family fishing business. Would they have been selected for the Methodist ministry? Absolutely not.

But they had the most important qualification. They ‘had been with Jesus.’ For all their weaknesses and all their faults, they had been close to him, and it showed. If you’re going to talk about Jesus, it’s a distinct advantage to be able to reflect him because you’re close to him.

We draw near to Jesus in a different way from them. We do so in prayer, devotion, and reading the Scriptures. In particular, it’s so important to read the Gospels and get that feel for our Saviour there.

Clive Calver tells a story in his book ‘Sold Out’ about meeting a lab technician called Charlie after a meeting. Charlie asked him, why when I read in Acts that people noticed the early Christians had been with Jesus, do people not see Jesus in me?

Calver prayed with him that the Holy Spirit would work in him to answer that request.

The next day, Charlie went into work at his lab, and one of his colleagues said to him, ‘What happened to you last night? You’re a different kind of Charlie!’

For me, my two Theology degrees count for nothing unless I’m close to Jesus. What are we proud of that needs to take second place to closeness with Jesus?

Thirdly and finally, let us be courageous in prayer. When the disciples gather to pray after Peter and John are released, they affirm the sovereignty of God in Christ over all, and they also acknowledge the conspiracies and threats of earthly rulers (verses 23-28).

But they do not pray for protection, which I think is what I might be tempted to do. Oh no. They pray for boldness.

29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

Wow. That’s a prayer that effectively says, Lord, please give us the courage to keep doing the stuff that has just got us into trouble! That’s the prayer that leads to the Holy Spirit earthquake.

I am by nature a cautious person. I make my best decisions slowly, after pondering, rather than quickly. And I think I may have become even more cautious as I have got older. Many of us know that tendency as we go through middle age and then into the Third Age of increasingly feeling a need to play safe.

And we live in a culture that emphasises that. Just how many risk assessments do we have to complete before we can hold a particular activity?

But sometimes for the sake of the Gospel we need to say, here’s the risk assessment, but we’re still going to risk. I don’t mean we’re cavalier with the safety of people in our care, but I do mean what the late John Wimber said when he observed that the word ‘faith’ is spelt ‘R-I-S-K.’

Like the apostles, we are called to go into the world and heal (in the broadest sense). That will make us popular. But we are also called to speak the word, and that may not have the same effect. So let us be clear about the Gospel, close to Jesus, and courageous in prayer.

Then we might see our culture disrupted by a Holy Spirit earthquake of the Gospel.

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Mission in the Bible 10: A Beautiful Act at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:1-26)

Acts 3:1-26

A retired minister friend of mine loves posting puns and one-liner jokes on Facebook. I’m sure he gets some from the comedian Tim Vine. Here are a few of his recent ones:

People say smoking will give you diseases…But how can they say that when it cures salmon?

A slice of apple pie is £2.50 in Jamaica and £3 in the Bahamas…There are the pie rates of the Caribbean.

The other day I bought a thesaurus, but when I got home and opened it, all the pages were blank…I have no words to describe how angry I am.

My friend said: “You have a BA, a Masters and a PhD, but you still act like an idiot…” It was a third degree burn.

My girlfriend said: “You act like a detective too much. I want to split up…” “Good idea,” I replied. “That way we can cover more ground.”

Why start this sermon with a series of puns? Because the episode we’ve read from Acts chapter 3 is like an extended pun. Is the story about healing or about salvation? A man is healed, but then Peter calls the crowd to repentance and faith in Jesus as a result. Which is it: healing or salvation?

We shall find the pun made more explicit in the next chapter when Peter, under interrogation, says that salvation is found in no other name than that of Jesus. Except the word translated ‘salvation’ can also be translated – guess what? – ‘healing.’

And the breadth of what is covered in our story today shows us something of God’s big story of redemption, the story we are called to share in as part of his mission. God’s kingdom is breaking in, making all things new, and in Acts chapter 3 we see some examples of that. We won’t cover everything, but there are some pointers to the comprehensiveness of God’s renewing work in Christ.

So firstly, salvation is physical:

This is straightforward in the text: the lame man is healed. There is something innately physical and material about the Christian faith. It begins with creation. It involves a Saviour who heals and feeds people. It turns on the bodily resurrection of that Saviour. Its goal is a new creation, with new heavens and a new earth.

So no wonder salvation expresses itself in physical terms, such as a healing here. God cares about all that he has made. That’s why you’ll hear me saying from time to time that at the time of a death or a funeral the popularly expressed idea that the body was just a shell for the soul and it’s only the soul that matters is an unchristian thought.

If we are going to witness to God’s salvation, one thing we are going to do is engage with their physical well-being and where that needs improvement.

Should we pray for the gift of healing and pray for people to be healed? Yes, why not? But let’s not be limited to that. There are all sorts of things we can do. This is why it’s right that Christians get involved with food banks, and it’s significant that the biggest food bank organisation in the UK, the Trussell Trust, has a Christian foundation. At the same time, it’s also right that we ask the awkward questions about what kind of nation we have become where so many people depend on food banks.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in issues like disaster relief, be it earthquakes, famines, wars, or any other cause. And when we do so, we seek not only to bring short-term alleviation but also long-term solutions to prevent recurrences where we can.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in combating climate change – although I prefer the more positive description of ‘creation care.’ We don’t simply do this because we need to save on our energy bills, important as that is. We do it because this is God’s creation that has been damaged and that he intends to make new again. So when this Methodist circuit starts making plans to support churches in making their buildings ‘greener’ (and the ministers’ manses, too!) then I say that’s a proper expression of our belief that salvation is physical.

There will be many other examples we can think of together that illustrate this point, but it all begins with recognising that in the six-day creation story of Genesis chapter 1, God kept looking at all that he had made and saying that it was good. We can no longer say that everything in creation is good, but we can set about partnering with God, following the example of Jesus, in bringing physical healing and restoration to his world.

Secondly, salvation is economic:

The lame man begs for money. There is no Social Security for a disabled person in this society. Yet while Peter and John say they have no silver or gold and do not give him any money, what they do lifts him out of poverty. Once he is healed, he will no longer need to beg. He will be able to work for a living.

In a way, it’s similar to when Jesus raised from the dead the son of the widow at Nain. She too would have had no fallback financially, and would have depended on her son to work for economic survival. His death would have plunged her into a spiral of poverty that could have left her starving to death. Jesus’ miracle has an economic effect for good on her.

And this is why it’s right that as part of God’s mission we in the church get involved in issues of poverty – both alleviating it and also asking the questions about why people are poor and what can be done in our society in the long term to guard against it.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m going to break my promise and give some steer on which party I think people should vote for at the General Election next month. I will remain publicly neutral on that. And I recognise that the economic situation will be challenging for whoever is in Downing Street. I would rather pose the question as a Baptist minister friend of mine couched it the other day. He wrote:

I would hope that every candidate standing for parliament in the upcoming General Election would ask themselves the question, ‘Why am I standing as a candidate in this election?’ Are they standing in order to genuinely benefit all the people in the communities they are seeking to represent… or do they have another agenda entirely? Agendas driven primarily by party politics or personal opinion rather than the good of the people?

If we want to participate as voters in this election in a Christian way, I think that is a good part of what we need to do, especially since so much of the debate is about our nation’s economy. Which candidates and which leaders have the good of the people at the heart of what they are aiming to do?

But we don’t just consider economic well-being at election time. Jesus puts it before us all the time. Blessèd are the poor, he said. Woe to the rich. Those statements are not entirely straightforward but they are still challenging. Who are we blessing economically? We need to ponder that prayerfully.

Thirdly and finally, salvation is spiritual:

Repentance and faith are central themes in the reading. The man walks and jumps, praising God – in the Temple, of all places! He’s not worried about decorum, he is so thrilled with what Jesus has done for him.

And when the crowd gathers in curiosity and amazement, Peter calls them to repentance. You were happy to get Jesus crucified, he says, but God has shown how much in the wrong you are by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus is in the right, you are in the wrong. What are you going to do about it? He is the promised prophet, and it’s only by repentance and faith in him that you will be blessed.

Central to the whole renewal of creation is renewing the relationship between human beings and God, which is then meant to lead to changed lives. So we cannot remain silent about calling people to faith in Jesus. There may be issues about when and how we do it, but it’s the churches that are the most silent on this issue that are the fastest declining and aging.

Yes, we get nervous about this. And you know what? So do I. And sure, we don’t want a reputation as Bible-bashers, but neither can we be ashamed of the Gospel. Are we more concerned with what our friends think of us than what Jesus thinks of us? Sometimes I think that’s true.

There is an Old Testament story that I find illuminating in showing us the attitude we need to have here. In 2 Kings 7 God’s people are under siege from the Aramean army. They are gripped by famine, and thus the prices of scarce food are sky-rocketing.

A group of four lepers decides that if they do nothing they will die anyway, so they might as well go and surrender to the Arameans. If they are killed, well, they were going to die anyway. But maybe they will live.

When they go to the enemy camp, they discover that God had miraculously frightened them away in the night. They help themselves to food and drink, gold and silver, and clothing.

But then they say that this is a day of good news, and they cannot keep it to themselves. So they go into the city and tell others.

And it is from this story that the Sri Lankan evangelist D T Niles came up with his famous definition of evangelism. He said,

Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

That’s what we’re being called to do. We are just beggars who have discovered the Bread of Life. Jesus has satisfied our spiritual hunger, and we believe he will do the same for our friends.

And when people find satisfaction in Jesus, we urge them to enlist with us in his great cause, the mission of God, to make all things new.

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Mission in the Bible 9: Fellowship as Lifestyle Evangelism (Acts 2:42-47)

Acts 2:42-47

In recent years, one criticism older generations have had of the young is the way they devalue the currency of words. ‘Awesome’ is used when they simply mean ‘Good.’ Sometimes our daughter says to me, ‘Dad, can’t you ever get excited about anything?’ and I reply, ‘I’ll call something awesome when it really is. Until that time, this is just good.’

However, if we older generations look down our noses at younger people over this, we should realise that in the church we are also guilty of devaluing the currency of words.

And one word we frequently devalue in the church is ‘fellowship.’ ‘We invite you to stay after the service for a time of fellowship over tea and coffee.’ ‘Working together on the Christmas Bazaar is an experience of fellowship.’

Fellowship is so much more than a warm fuzzy feeling.

We see the biblical word for fellowship, ‘koinonia’, deployed in our reading from Acts chapter 2. It has a cluster of meanings: ‘fellowship’, ‘sharing’, ‘in common.’

It’s used elsewhere in the New Testament of things like the Lord’s Supper, when Paul tells us that the bread we break is a ‘sharing’ in the Body of Christ. We have the Body of Christ in common. We have fellowship in the Body of Christ.

Ultimately, our fellowship is everything we have in common in Christ. And the three thousand converts at Pentecost find that such deep fellowship is the first fruit of their faith in Christ. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit leads them in putting into practice the teaching of Jesus.

Much of our fellowship is little more than a religious game of snooker where we bump into each other, and then bounce off. Not them. The first fruit of mission was a shared life. This really was the church as a sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom.

And the preached evangelism from Peter which led to their conversions (verse 41) led to the lifestyle evangelism at the end of our passage where ‘the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved’ (verse 47). So this is important! What did this fellowship look like?

Firstly, it was shared worship:

In verse 42, they share in prayer. In verse 46, they meet together every day in the Temple courts.

This continues what was already happening. The one hundred and twenty disciples upon whom the Spirit fell at Pentecost had been gathering together for prayer. And it continues afterwards. So some years later, when the Corinthian Christians are meeting for worship probably in a large house owned by one of the few wealthy members of the church, they are not simply in the same room together, they are using their differing gifts of the Spirit in the service of worship. Or at least that’s what Paul wants them to do.

The best and most true Christian worship is shared worship. Yes, it’s possible to worship alone and we should, but it’s not the sum total of worship. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian, as John Wesley said.

It isn’t always possible to have mass participation in a typical Sunday service and not everybody likes speaking in front of everyone else, although there might still be things we could do to involve more people and their gifts. But often the place for truly shared worship is the small group such as the house group. In these contexts, it’s often easier to have a time of worship where more people can make contributions based on their gifts.

And so that’s another reason why we need to revisit the idea of small groups in many churches. We need to share in our worship, having the opportunity to use our gifts in that cause.

Perhaps we worry that our gifts aren’t all that good. A small group is a good place to try them out among supportive friends. If we play a musical instrument, we don’t have to be Royal Albert Hall performance standard. Our friends will cheer us on and encourage us.

And I have certainly known examples in the past where the first steps a budding preacher made were in a small group where they led a Bible study. Sharing together in worship has great potential for taking nascent gifts and growing them.

Plus, we don’t have to do this from scratch. There are various resources around to help small groups share in worship. I don’t recall whether I still have it after the big reduction in books I had to do to come here, but I used to have a book entitled, ‘50 Worship Ideas For Small Groups.’ It was co-written by the hymn writer Stuart Townend.

So let me encourage people to be brave in our churches, and truly share in worship.

Secondly, it was shared meals:

Again, we find this in verses 42 and 46. In verse 42 ‘They devoted themselves to … the breaking of bread’ and in verse 46 ‘They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.’

‘Breaking bread’ here is not code for an early form of Holy Communion. It is an everyday expression for eating together. Simple meals earlier in the day often were just bread. But more ample meals later on ‘would start with breaking and blessing bread and wine.’[1]

Later, these practices would help form the framework for celebrating the Lord’s Supper, but what we have here is sharing in that most basic way of meeting human need and sustaining life: everyday eating. It might even be that the common meals in the Christian community were ‘sometimes at the expense of those who could afford the food.’[2]

In this, the early church was following the example of Jesus, who conducted much of his ministry over food. Some of his most dramatic teaching was over a meal. He provided for people’s needs in the feedings of the five thousand and the four thousand. I believe Jesus knew that there is something about a meal where, especially if it is not rushed, people begin to open up some of the deepest things in their lives. So what an opportunity it becomes to share together, support each other, and deepen faith.

And this is something the church can build upon. There are churches that run men’s breakfasts with a guest speaker. I can think of a church I know that has a monthly women’s pub meal. The opportunities are there to make this into something significant for the kingdom of God. Yes, of course we can unwind and let our hair down – if we have enough – but we can also take the moment to build our relationships and our trust so that we can support each other and help one another’s faith grow in the face of life’s challenges. There is a chance here to take something good and make even more of it.

Furthermore, we can develop the biblical gift of hospitality. Remember that one definition of hospitality is to make someone feel at home even when you wish they were at home! So yes, it can include a meal, but it can be so much more.

I often appreciated that when I was single – apart from the times when I arrived to find they had also invited a young lady with whom they were trying to set me up! It was well-meaning but misguided.

Let’s see what we can do under the Holy Spirit’s guidance to make the most of sharing food together.

Thirdly and finally, it was shared possessions:

If the worship and the meals are the bread in the sandwich on the outside in verses 42 and 46, then the filling is in the middle in verses 44 and 45:

44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

So – I guess this one is the biggest challenge of all, especially in a consumerist, materialist society like ours. And even two thousand years ago, what the early church practised was different from other groups. Professional guilds and associations required the payment of entry dues (perhaps not dissimilar from today), and radical religious groups like the Essenes enforced the complete surrender of goods to the community. But what the Christians practised according to Acts was voluntary.[3]

Luke does not describe abolition of private property. Rather, members sold property to help other members as any had need (Acts 2:45). Their resources do not become community property, but are designated for the poor; they were not against property, but valued people altogether more.[4]

I have seen and experienced this for myself. I cannot tell you the whole story now, but when I wanted to go to theological college, I was turned down for a grant (as it was in those days). A number of people gave sacrificially to make it possible for me to go. One was a student who had taken a gap year to earn some money for her own needs, but who gave it to me. Another was an elderly lady at my church, who gave me a large cheque with a letter in which she said, ‘It seems God is calling you to trust him for your provision. We will trust him, too.’ With those words, I read between the lines that this was a significant sacrifice for her.

I saw it at college when a Singaporean student heard that her mother had died back home but she didn’t have the money to pay for a flight to get back for the funeral. The student community, filled with people on limited incomes, rallied round, and raised the money for her to board a plane.

I saw it in the last circuit when due to a technicality a Nepalese church member lost his Nepalese citizenship but could not afford to apply for British citizenship. We set up a fundraising campaign on the website gofundme.com. When we got within an ace of the amount we needed, who gave a donation to carry us across the line? A student.

This is what it means to value people more than property. This again is the church putting into practice the teaching of Jesus about treasures in heaven.

Conclusion

How did the early church devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching (verse 42)? These examples of real fellowship were certainly part of it.

And are we surprised that the apostles performed ‘many wonders and signs’ ( verse 43)? Not really, if the Holy Spirit was already at work so powerfully among the community.

And as I said at the beginning, the evangelistic preaching of the apostles is matched by the evangelistic lifestyle of the church, showing what the kingdom of God is like. No wonder ‘the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved’ (verse 47).

But it takes more than just being nice. I think I have had enough of Christians just trying to be nice. If I want nice, I can go to my camera club and meet plenty of nice people.

Being the sign and foretaste of God’s kingdom calls for more than niceness. It calls for a deep openness to the power of the Holy Spirit, who will mould us into what one author called ‘The Community of the King.’

Are we up for the challenge? Come, Holy Spirit.

[1] Craig Keener, Acts (New Cambridge Bible Commentary). p171.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Op. cit., p174.

[4] Op. cit.. p175.

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Pentecost: The Spirit Brings Life, Purpose, And Hope (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I don’t know what associations go through your mind when you hear the reading from Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones. Perhaps you hear the words of the old spiritual, ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem – dry bones.’

I always remember hearing an Anglican bishop read the passage and then ask the question of his congregation, ‘Can these dead Anglicans live?’

It goes without saying that ‘Can these dead Methodists live?’ is an equally valid paraphrase!

Well, maybe ‘dead Methodists’ is a bit harsh (although not in some places!) but perhaps we ask, ‘Can these struggling Methodists live?’ You don’t need me to rehearse the issues of smaller congregations with older members.

And to that issue, God’s promise to send the Holy Spirit speaks powerfully. In Ezekiel, the people of God are struggling in exile in the alien culture of Babylon. And we struggle as now a minority in a culture which no longer uses Christian values as a foundation for life.

So let’s go digging for hope in Ezekiel 37, and the way I propose to do it is this. Three times in the passage God tells the prophet to prophesy the coming of the Spirit on the dry bones, and each time the promised result gets bigger and better. Come with me and catch a vision of hope in these verses.

Firstly, life:

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.

There is no cure for the state of God’s people other than a spiritual one. At the risk of stating something that is a hobbyhorse of mine, no amount of new programmes will change the fortunes of the church. No new creative techniques will bring life to dry bones. It is our foolishness that we fall for these parodies of the spiritual life so often. It is to the shame of our denominations that national leaders so often propagate them.

The only cure is for the Sovereign Lord to breathe his breath, the Holy Spirit, into us. If the flowers and plants in the garden are withering, we water them. It is the same with us. We need to be watered with the living water that Jesus promised, namely the Holy Spirit.

I want to tell you one of my favourite sermon stories. It concerns the nineteenth century American evangelist, D L Moody. On one occasion, he was visiting the United Kingdom and spoke to a group of church leaders. For his text he chose Ephesians 5:18, where Paul urges the recipients of his letter to ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ Moody pointed out that this is legitimately translated into English as ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’

At the mention of this, a vicar objected. ‘Why do I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit? I was filled with the Spirit at conversion.’

‘I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit,’ replied Moody, ‘because I leak.’

And we all leak. We may well be able to point back to glowing times in our lives when we were particularly conscious of the Holy Spirit’s power at work in us, and nothing I say is intended to diminish those experiences. But we cannot live on past glories. As our cars need refilling with petrol or recharging with electricity, so we need refilling with the Spirit.

Perhaps life or our Christian duties have drained us. Think of the time in the Gospels when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and we read that he knew that virtue had gone out of him. It happened to Jesus. We know he recharged in times with his Father. Why not us, too?

Surely, Pentecost is the best day of all to make this our prayer. ‘Lord, we leak. Fill us again with your Spirit.’

Secondly, an army:

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 if we get nervous at the mention of an army, let me just say that this is a vision, not something literal. There is nothing that follows this which is military. Nor are we meant to conjure up images of extreme militant believers, like the Christian Nationalists in the USA or anything else of that ilk.

I think the force of the image that the coming of the Spirit creates ‘a vast army’ is about the way the Holy Spirit equips all God’s people to be a missionary people, to be a movement that is a force for good rather than evil in the world.

To hear some Christians talk about their experience of the Holy Spirit, you would think that the function of the Spirit was little more than the supplying of a personal bless-up. And while I have no doubt that on occasions the Spirit provides comfort and encouragement for us, and enables us to experience God’s love, I am also certain that the Holy Spirit is not here for our self-indulgence.

On the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit sent one hundred and twenty disciples of Jesus onto the streets of Jerusalem among a multinational crowd with the good news of Jesus.

If you want a contemporary example of this, then the 24-7 Prayer Movement re-formed an ancient lay Christian order called the Order of the Mustard Seed. Its participants take three vows, which are worked out in six practices, that are seen as flowing from the Holy Spirit. Together, they form a corporate body that takes God’s love to the world. These are the vows the associated practices:

What does it mean to be true to Christ?
We live prayerfully
We celebrate creativity to His glory

What does it mean to be kind to people?
We practice hospitality.
We express God’s mercy and justice.

What does it mean to take the gospel to the nations?
We commit ourselves to lifelong learning that we might shape culture and make disciples by being discipled.
We engage in mission and evangelism.

Were we to pray, as Moody recommended, to be refilled with the Spirit because we leak, then I suggest this is the sort of body we would look like, too.

Thirdly and finally, restoration:

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.”’

Now, just as with the word ‘army’, we have to be careful here. The promise of the land was central to Judaism, and certain interpretations of that are central to the current war between the Israeli government and Hamas in Gaza. But the promise of hope for Christians has never been about a geographical nation.

We also have to be careful not to see the idea of returning to the land as meaning for us a thought that things will be restored to the way they were in the supposed ‘good old days.’

Restoration for us is the recovery of our hope. After generations of decline, where in the next couple of decades some long-established Christian denominations may no longer exist in this country, where respect has turned to grudging toleration and then to the attempted silencing of Christians in areas of public life including politics, it’s not surprising that we have become disheartened.

There may or may not be some green shoots of recovery in our society. Justin Brierley, the Christian broadcaster, podcaster, and thinker, has written and spoken about what he calls ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God’. The professed conversions of the former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the media personality Russell Brand, along with the interest in Christianity shown by public intellectuals such as the historian Tom Holland after an answered prayer may start to shift the atmosphere in the public arena.

But whether that happens or not, the Spirit restores our hope not on the basis of whether Christianity’s popularity is waxing or waning, but on the promise of Jesus that he will build his church and the gates of Hades (that is, death) will not prevail against it. It is the hope that even death cannot destroy God’s People, because of the Resurrection and the promise of the new heavens and new earth. The Holy Spirit settles us in that hope, whatever is happening in the wider world.

This becomes yet another reason to pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ It may not be one of the ministries of the Spirit that most readily occur to us, but it is an important one nevertheless.

In conclusion, when we may be troubled about the future of the church, we pray again, Come, Holy Spirit.’ For the Spirit will give life to the tired and discouraged in the People of God. And the Spirit will make us a corporate body of God’s redeeming love in Christ for the world. And the Spirit will give us rock-solid hope, whatever fluctuations there are in the culture around us.

Can these dry bones live? Let us not simply say, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Let us instead say, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’

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What Is The Ascended Jesus Doing Now? Acts 1:1-11, Hebrews 1:1-4 (Easter 7, Sunday After Ascension)

Acts 1:1-11 and Hebrews 1:1-4

When George Carey was Bishop of Bath and Wells, he was once asked to perform the reopening of the Post Office in Wells. However, they didn’t tell him all the arrangements.

He turned up, and it was Ascension Day. There he found a hot air balloon, and the plan was for him to ascend in it while the assembled throng sang the hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to thee.’

Whether the ancient Jews believed that heaven was spatially directly above us is disputed. Some scholars believe their understanding was more akin to heaven being like a parallel dimension to our existence but usually invisible to us. Put like that, it sounds a bit like science fiction, doesn’t it?

But the key aspect in the description of the Ascension that we have in Acts chapter 1 is not simply the being taken up (which is quite a vague expression) but also that ‘a cloud hid him from their sight’ (verse 9). Yes, the ‘taking up’ is reminiscent of Enoch and Elijah going directly to heaven in the Old Testament, but the cloud also has Old Testament connotations, for clouds were sometimes a sign of God’s direct presence. Think of the Exodus, where the Israelites were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

So the Ascension tells us that Jesus has left this existence and is now in the direct presence of God in heaven.

But what is he doing now? I want to take you around a few New Testament references today to answer that question.

Firstly, he is resting:

After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (Hebrews 1:3b)

He sat down. That sense of satisfaction when a job is finished. You’ve probably done that after completing something at home. Put the kettle on, make a brew, and put your feet up. He sat down. Even Jesus.

And so he should, because his mission on earth was complete. John’s Gospel records that just before he died on the Cross, he cried out, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30). And ‘finished’ here doesn’t mean, it’s over, I’ve failed, that’s it, it means quite the opposite. It means, ‘It is accomplished.’ Jesus has completed everything his Father sent him to do. His suffering and death opened the way to God’s presence. He was vindicated in the Resurrection. It’s done. Big tick!

When we celebrate the Ascension, we rejoice that Jesus has done everything necessary to bring us into fellowship with the God Who Is Trinity. There is nothing we can do or need to do to add to it, for we do not earn our salvation. Jesus has done it all, and now offers it as a gift, which we receive with the empty hands of faith.

I once had a couple start worshipping at a church I served, and they asked about becoming church members. I visited them, and they wanted to know if they were good enough to be accepted as members. I wish I’d picked up on that language at the time, because they turned out to be very judgmental people – especially the husband. If you’re forever trying to earn your salvation, you either become hugely self-critical, because you can never live up to your own standards, or you become hugely critical of others, always taking them to pieces.

And indeed, to try to earn salvation is effectively to say to Jesus, you didn’t need to die on the Cross. Which one of us dares to look Jesus in the eye and say that? But it’s what we do when we try to earn our own passage to heaven.

Instead, rejoice that Jesus has sat down. He has done it all. Receive his wonderful gift!

Secondly, he is sending:

‘For John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.’ (Verse 5)

In a few days the Father would send the Holy Spirit through Jesus upon the disciples. Now of course we’ll think about that next week at Pentecost, so at this point I want to focus on the words ‘in a few days.’

Yes, it’s true that we no longer have to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we turn our lives over to Jesus Christ, the Spirit comes into our life. Indeed, even to get to that point the Spirit has already been prompting us. But again, that’s for next week.

What about those occasions when Jesus promises something good but it’s a long time coming? We’re not used to that in an instant society. We like fast broadband, Amazon Prime with next-day delivery, twenty-four hour news channels where political spokespeople are expected to react immediately to the latest gossip rather than take the time to be considered and reflective.

Is there something to be said for Jesus to temper his sending with waiting? Could it be that our demand to have everything now has made us immature, like overgrown children, saying, in the words of the Queen song, ‘I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now’?

Jesus does indeed send us good things, but he may well make us wait. For in the waiting for what he sends he has work to do in us, forming us and shaping us into more mature disciples.

Even the psychologists agree that the ability to delay gratification is a sign of maturity. But Jesus knew that long before the rise of psychology!

Is there something we have been praying about for a long time? To the best of our knowledge, does it sound like something the Jesus of the Gospels would approve of? If it is, then I encourage us to keep praying, even if we have been disheartened. Let him use the time before it is fulfilled to prepare us and shape us.

As someone who had to wait longer than most to find a wife, I speak from experience. But she was worth waiting for. And what Jesus sends to you will also be worth waiting for.

Thirdly, he is praying:

Later in the Epistle to the Hebrews we read these words:

Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. (Hebrews 7:25)

Over time, I have known a few people who promised to pray for me daily. Most of them are now dead. They included my parents, and a wonderful elderly Local Preacher. I only know of one person who prays for me daily now.

Actually, there’s a second. I know that the ascended Jesus is praying for me. He ‘ever lives to intercede for [us].’ You can’t do better than that! Jesus is praying for his people!

Someone I know once had a conversation with some Catholic friends and asked them why they prayed to Mary. They replied, ‘Because she’s human, so she understands.’

This seemed rather sad to my friend, who realised that her Catholic friends were so fixated on the divinity of Jesus that they had forgotten his humanity.

Her response to them was, ‘Why go to the mother when you can go straight to the boss?’

We can go straight to the boss. He is already praying for us.

Have we ever thought of asking Jesus to pray for us? Because his answer is ‘yes.’

What about those times when we really don’t know what to ask for in prayer? Could we pray, ‘Jesus, I have this issue, and I don’t know the right way to pray about it. I’d love you to guide me in the right way to pray and the right things to ask, but would you also pray to the Father about it for me, please?’ It seems to me that this would be a perfectly biblical approach to take and is far better than simply stating our request and just tacking on the end the words ‘If it be your will.’

Fourthly and finally, he is reigning:

‘He sat down’ not only hints at Jesus resting after completing his earthly work, it is also an act of authority. A Jewish rabbi sat down in the synagogue to teach – as Jesus himself did in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4. A king or an emperor would sit down on a throne. And Jesus here sits down ‘at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven’ (Hebrews 1:3).

But how do we understand him to be reigning when so much continues to be wrong with his creation? Allow me to answer that by talking about The Lord Of The Rings.

If you saw all three three-hour movies, you may remember that the final film comes to a climax with victory at the battle of Minas Tirith, and the ring that caused all the trouble being cast into the fires of Mount Doom. After that, most of the heroes board a boat to The Undying Lands, whereas Samwise goes back to the peace of The Shire. It’s just as we would want it.

But that’s not how the original trilogy of books end. There, after the battle is won at Minas Tirith and the ring is destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, we come to a penultimate chapter, entitled ‘The Scouring of the Shire.’ In it,

the Hobbits come back to the Shire to find it under the thumb of Saruman and Wormtongue. It’s an Orwellian nightmare of jobsworths, ruffians and snitchers. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin join forces with Tom Cotton and his family to throw off the Orwellian oppressors and collaborators and MtSGA (Make the Shire Great Again).[1]

The decisive victories have been won, but there are still skirmishes to be had with evil. Can you tell what I’m about to say?

For Christians, the decisive victories have been won at the Cross and the Resurrection. Christ is now reigning at the Father’s right hand. But we still have battles with evil, because not all will bow the knee to Christ in this life, even though the Father has elevated him above all earthly authorities. J R R Tolkien, a devout Catholic, knew this when he wrote The Lord Of The Rings.

Just as in the United Kingdom we have a constitutional monarch on the throne and an elected government in office yet not everyone obeys the laws of the land, so the ascended Christ is on the throne of the universe but not everyone obeys him.

The day will come when everyone will see him and all will bow the knee to him, whether willingly or otherwise. In the meantime, this truth gives us tasks to do. One is to proclaim the good news that Jesus is on the throne of the universe and call people to give their allegiance to him. The other is to demonstrate that truth as we build for God’s kingdom.

In conclusion, I hope you can see how rich and important the doctrine of the Ascension is. Although only Luke mentions the actual event, so much of the New Testament refers to it and builds on it. One scholar even called it ‘The most important event in the New Testament’[2].

But most of all, I hope we can appreciate together what Good News the Ascension is. Jesus who rests, sends, prays, and reigns is in all these things rooting for us.

[1] James Cary, The Forgotten Feast: The Ascension and The Scouring of the Shire

[2] Ian Paul, Why is the Ascension of Jesus the most important event in the New Testament?

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