Tag: Cross

Sermon: King’s Cross, Luke 23:33-43 (Last Sunday Before Advent, Feast of Christ the King, Year C)

Luke 23:33-43

Christmas Pudding Flames: Wikimedia Commons

Last Monday, our daughter went to visit my sister to continue a family tradition. Every year, they meet to make the Christmas puddings together. It’s a tradition that began when my Mum and my sister used to make them. Even when Mum was confined to a care home in the last six months of her life, my sister took the Christmas pudding mix into the care home for her to stir. After Mum died, my sister invited our daughter to continue the tradition with her. They follow an old family recipé.

Yes, today is what has historically been called ‘Stir-Up Sunday’, the stirring of the Christmas pudding mix linked to the traditional Collect prayer for today:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people,
that they, bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be richly rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[1]

But in the last hundred years – in fact, this year is the centenary – the Last Sunday Before Advent has been given a new and better name: the Feast of Christ the King. An initiative of Pope Pius XI to emphasise the reign of Christ in the wake of increased atheism and secularism after World War One, I think it’s an excellent name.

Why? Because the last Sunday of the Christian Year (which begins again on Advent Sunday) should be the climax of the Christian story. Our God reigns – no contest – in the life of the age to come. It’s where we’re heading. It’s our controlling vision for life.

And so I want to reflect on Christ our King today.

Firstly, Jesus is King at the Cross:

Earlier this year, our nation was stunned when a six-figure crowd marched through London for the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally led by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. Many people commented on the number of Christians and people with overtly Christian symbols, chanting Christian slogans, on the march. ‘Christ is King!’ they shouted. Some were dressed in mock-ups of Crusader uniforms. Alarmed at the spread of Islam, particularly in its militant form, they seemed to view a return to what they saw as the traditional religion of this nation as a way of subjugating Islam and Islamic terrorism. It was a view that seemed to want to impose Christianity by force. Is that the way Christ is King?

It’s very different from what Luke tells us. For sure, it’s what the religious authorities wanted from a Messiah. To them, Jesus couldn’t possibly the Chosen One, because here he was, nailed to a Cross, dying a shameful death as a convict:

‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ (verse 35b)

The Roman soldiers saw it similarly. They were used to enforcing the emperor’s will violently:

36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, 37 and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ 38 There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

And yet he was King of the Jews. And not just of the Jews. Here is the enthronement of King Jesus, not on a battlefield taking the blood of his enemies but shedding his own in the conquest of sin and of evil forces.

Had we read from Colossians 2 rather than Colossians 1 for our first reading, we might have come across these verses:

13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

The Cross is an exercise in disarmament. Forgiveness takes away the power of shame that evil forces have over us. Jesus reigns, not through violence but through suffering love.

Is that something for us to remember in our Christian witness? Surely it is. When the world doesn’t like what we say, we don’t cower in silence but neither do we force it on people. Instead, we witness to Christ by a love that is willing to endure hardship and even suffer to be faithful to him.

Secondly, Jesus is King in Heaven:

Hear again some of the words of the penitent thief:

42 Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ 43 He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Jesus has the authority to welcome the penitent thief into Heaven. He reigns there, too. After his Ascension he will return there to reign at the Father’s right hand.

Right now, Jesus reigns from Heaven. He is King there. To be sure, as I have said before, not everyone acknowledges that, any more than criminals acknowledge the laws of our land passed by Parliament and enforced by the Police. That doesn’t change the sovereignty of Parliament in our nation.

The evangelistic call is to acknowledge Jesus as King. Again, as I’ve said before, ‘good news’ in the Roman Empire was the announcement of a new Emperor on the throne or of that Emperor’s armies conquering other nations. We call people to recognise who is on the throne of the universe, and to swear allegiance to him.

And it also means that if this is our message, it is one by which we are to live. Remember that earliest Christian creed: ‘Jesus is Lord.’ It is a challenge for you and for me to live under the teaching of Jesus, because he is Lord (or King).

If you’re anything like me, you will almost immediately know some areas of your life that do not currently conform to the commands of Jesus. Maybe you are battling in those things, wrestling between the will of Jesus and what you want.

But this is important for our witness. The world soon notices when we who proclaim God’s will in Jesus are not living like that. It’s why we are often called hypocrites.

Sometimes we believe the enemy’s lie that satisfaction in life is only found when we concentrate on gratifying our desires. It is as if God is some kind of cosmic spoilsport who just wants to make us miserable. Yet is it not actually the truth that real fulfilment comes from adopting the ways of Jesus, even when they are costly? Is it not a wider application of the principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive?

What are the parts of our lives where we sense Jesus is whispering to us by his Spirit and calling us to walk in his ways, acknowledging him as King? Will we finally believe the Good News that true contentment is found in the kingdom of God and not in self-centredness?

When the world sees Christians living like that, there is often a sneaking admiration for such people. Such Christians as these often earn the right to speak about Jesus, and their words carry weight.

CS Lewis wrote in his book ‘Mere Christianity’:

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

When we live under the reign of Jesus, we point to this better way.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is King for eternity:

Verse 43 again:

He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Paradise. What’s the significance of that word here? I’m going to quote the New Testament scholar Ian Paul:

The language of ‘paradise’ would have made sense to a non-Jewish audience, but it was also used by Jews to refer either to an intermediate state in the presence of God as well as to our final destiny in a renewed heaven and earth. It is worth noting that the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, LXX) constantly translated the Hebrew for ‘garden’ with ‘paradise’, so that God planted a ‘paradise’ in Eden for the first human in Gen 2.8. For anyone aware of this, Jesus’ promise to the thief is of the restoration of all things.

Jesus’ promise to the penitent thief holds not only for the immediate context when he reigns despite opposition, but right into eternity, when God has made all things new, when the redeemed live in the new creation and worship in the New Jerusalem.

For this is the climax of God’s reign in Jesus: that he will so rule over all things in goodness and love that they will be made new. Sin, suffering, and death will be no more. People will live in fully reconciled relationships with God and each other. There will be peace and justice.

This is where we’re heading as disciples of Jesus. This is our direction of travel. The destination sign on the bus says, ‘New Jerusalem.’ That’s why I said in the introduction that today is the climax of the Christian Year. For this is where the mission of Jesus is taking us.

And if that is the case, then we live accordingly now. We build our lives, relationships, and values based on what God will bring in under his benevolent rule. We don’t lord it over one another, because there is one Lord and Saviour who is over all of us. As the Colossians 1 reading today said, he is over all things and is head of the church.

Anyone who does try to lord it over others is not fit for the kingdom of God. That’s why many of our American friends have been protesting against Donald Trump at the ‘No Kings’ rallies – not merely to protect the American constitution but because Christians say Jesus is Lord, and when they see Trump not merely exercising authority but lording it over people and dismantling any accountability through Supreme Court decisions, that is contrary to the Gospel.

We may not face temptation on that level, but we can be enticed into acting as big fish in small ponds. The church is not the place to climb the greasy pole but to kneel and serve, because Jesus is Lord, and will be for all eternity.

Conclusion

Sometimes, I like to talk about the Local Preacher whom my church youth group adored. Alfred John Evill was born in 1902 and was therefore a toddler when the Welsh Revival of 1904 happened. He preached like the revival was still going on.

He didn’t pick the most modern of hymns, but he was the most challenging preacher – which we loved. But he said one important thing about the fact that his sermons were challenging.

“I never challenge you without first challenging myself.”

Today’s sermon has been challenging. It has brought me up short as I wrote it, thinking about my willingness to practise suffering love, the areas where I fall short of acknowledging Jesus as Lord, and my commitment to serve.

May God grant me – and may God grant you, too – the grace to affirm in both words and deeds that Jesus is King.

[1] Methodist Worship Book, p560

0

The Fox and the Hen, Luke 13:31-35 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year C)

Luke 13:31-35

It’s very common in our road to see foxes. Mainly we see them of an evening, but it’s not unusual to see them brazenly strutting around in the daytime.

They are of course on the lookout for food, and this means we have to take extra precautions with putting out our food waste bins on ‘bin night’. It isn’t enough to lock the bin by pulling the handle forwards, because the foxes use their noses to flip the handle back and they can then open the bins, find food, and leave a mess. I know: I’ve twice had to clear up afterwards.

Instead, not only do we pull the handle forwards, we put the food bin on top of the regular black waste bin or blue recycling bin. The refuse collectors don’t like us doing that, because they have to move the food bin to empty the main bin, but it’s the only way to stop the foxes.

Thankfully, we aren’t a household that keeps chickens, or we would have much bigger problems to solve with the foxes.

Which brings us neatly to today’s passage, where Jesus describes Herod Antipas as a fox and compares himself to a hen. Is that relevant today when we see the actions of a vicious fox, Vladimir Putin, on the world stage? Perhaps. Let’s think about Herod the fox and Jesus the hen. And let’s ask what these images mean for our life and faith today.

Herod the fox

I think we need to remember the context. Although last week for the first Sunday in Lent preachers will have jumped back to Luke 4 and the temptations in the wilderness before Jesus’ public ministry began, we have to remember that before that we were part-way through that ministry in our readings. We had reached the Transfiguration, where Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about his departure which he was going to accomplish at Jerusalem – that is, his death and resurrection.

By now, Jesus has told his disciples that he is going to suffer and die at the hands of the establishment in Jerusalem, he has tapped a Jerusalem postcode into his sat-nav, and that’s where he’s heading. He’s on his way to betrayal, torture, Calvary, and a temporary stay in a tomb.

The Pharisees who come and speak to him are concerned for him. (Yes, there are well-intentioned Pharisees in the Bible.) But their reading of the politics is that Jesus won’t even make it to Jerusalem. Herod will get him before then.

‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’ (Verse 31b)

Jesus, make your escape, they say. They know what Herod is like.

So how does he respond?

32 He replied, ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

In calling Herod a fox he is not referring to the man’s cunning or intelligence but to his ‘malicious destructiveness’[1]. To Jesus, Herod is

a varmint in the Lord’s field, a murderer of God’s agents, a would-be disrupter of the divine economy[2]

Herod the fox murders God’s people, says Jesus. After all, he had cowardly agreed to the murder of Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist. He had a track record.

So shouldn’t Jesus get out of that territory? Well, he does move on, but not because he’s scared of Herod. He does so because he knows his destiny is to complete his work not on Herod’s turf but in Jerusalem. No prophet can die outside Jerusalem.

Jesus isn’t scared by Herod, but that doesn’t mean he won’t suffer. In the face of fear, Jesus sticks resolutely to his God-given task. He doesn’t compromise, he doesn’t back down, he doesn’t run away, he says, this is my purpose and no Herod in this world is going to knock me off course. And by staying on course he brings about the salvation of the world.

What are the things that might scare us off course as Christians? Is it mockery by our friends? Is it changes in the law of the land? Is it the church adopting a policy on something that deeply upsets our conscience?

Whatever it is, it’s time to rebuke the fox and keep going. It may be costly to do so, but God has called us to be disciples of Jesus and imitate his Son. But the example of his Son says that when we stay the course, however difficult it may be at times, the results are measured in blessings.

Jesus the hen

So who will rise to this task? Jesus issues a challenge to Jerusalem ahead of his arrival there, but how hopeful is he of a positive response?

34 ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

It doesn’t sound very promising, does it? The very people who longed for the Messiah have either not recognised him or they have rejected him, and so they are not gathered under his protective care. How dreadful their future will be.

It is no good soft-soaping this. It is no good pretending that everyone will make it into the kingdom of God. God loves all people but not everybody responds to that love, and thus they find themselves outside, in a desolate house to use Jesus’ image here, instead of under the caring love of God in Christ.

You see, the question isn’t what religion we are. It isn’t what nationality we are. It’s about whether we say yes to walking with Jesus.

So is there no hope for the Jews? Is this one of those passages that anti-Semitic racists can use against the Jews? I think of the Jewish lady I worked with in an office, who told me one day how when she was a child other children called her a ‘Christ killer.’ What a miracle that years later my friend Doreen found God’s love in Christ for herself.

Yet there is a hint in what Jesus says that God has not finished with them. If there were no hope, Jesus could just have ended with the words, ‘Look, your house is left to you desolate.’ But he doesn’t quite. His final words here are,

I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

There is always a hope of acknowledging Jesus. People who have once said ‘no’ to him can still be drawn back to him at a later date by the Holy Spirit and bow the knee to their Lord, saying ‘yes’ to him.

Could that be one of us? Have we relied on our religious upbringing or our regular attendance at church without ever having said ‘yes’ to Jesus? Have we never known the security of his saving love?

Or is it that there is someone dear to us who up until now has either consciously rejected Jesus or alternatively simply been completely apathetic about him? Who are those people we long to discover the love of God in Christ? A family member? A dear friend? Someone we’ve been praying for over a long period of time but where we have been tempted to give up? Let’s renew our prayers for them. It is still possible they will see the beauty and glory of Jesus and say ‘yes’ to him.

Conclusion

We’re only in this position of being able to say ‘yes’ to Jesus or pray that others do because Jesus didn’t allow Herod to knock him off course. He went through with his calling, costly as it was for him to do so.

So let’s make sure we don’t waste the opportunity – either by making our own response to Jesus or by continuing in prayer for others to do so.

[1] Ian Paul, Who is included in and excluded from the kingdom in Luke 13?

[2] Darr, Character Building, cited by Joel Green in Luke NICNT p536 and quoted by Paul, op. cit.

0

Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Good Shepherd

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

John 10:11-18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Good Friday Worship: The Signs of the Cross

APOLOGIES – the publication of the video is delayed due to a technical problem. It should be available a little later on Good Friday morning.

Mark 15:16-41

Everywhere around us we have signs. Among the most common are road signs. A red circle around the number ‘30’ tells us that the maximum speed limit is 30 mph.

It’s far better to have a sign like that than one which writes out the meaning longhand. Imagine if everywhere you drove, you saw signs with the message written in longhand: ‘You may not exceed 30 mph’ or ‘Roundabout ahead with six exits: two are for the A245, two are for the A320, and there are two minor roads as well.’ (Woking residents will know the roundabout to which I am referring!)

The signs work well because they convey the message as we travel along.

There are two signs at the heart of Mark’s account of the crucifixion. However, we might need to think about what they mean so that we can absorb their meaning as we travel through the story of the Passion. As we learn our road signs in the Highway Code, so we also need to learn our spiritual signs.

The first sign is the torn curtain:

38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 

Ah, but which curtain? You might not guess it from Mark’s language, but there were two curtains in the Jerusalem Temple. One at the innermost part. It separated off the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple. It was entered only once a year by the high priest on the Day of Atonement.

Christians have naturally thought Mark was referring to that curtain. It makes sense of Christian teaching about the atonement Jesus achieved on the Cross. But there is a problem. No-one could have seen that curtain being torn.

It’s more likely, then, that it’s the other curtain which was torn. This one separated the Court of Israel from the Court of Women. According to Josephus it was decorated with ‘a panorama of the heavens.’ And Mark uses the same word here for ‘torn’ that he uses at the baptism of Jesus when the heavens are torn open and God speaks from heaven.

So at the baptism of Christ, the heavenly dwelling of God is opened to humanity, and at his death the earthly dwelling of God is rent open.

This, then, is the sign: heaven is open to humanity, through the death of Jesus. All that stands in our way is torn apart. We no longer need to hide from God like Adam and Even did in the Garden of Eden. We don’t need to stay at a distance. Heaven is open.

Perhaps Good Friday is a day when the natural thing to do is to feel shame for our sins that put Christ on the Cross. But it’s a mistake to park there. The sign of the torn curtain beckons us on, and into the presence of the God of grace and mercy.

So why not come?

The second sign is the centurion’s confession:

39 And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’

This sign has been signposted before, at the beginning of the Gospel, like one of those road signs that tells you there are fifty more miles to Portsmouth. For the Gospel according to Mark begins with the words,

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God (1:1)

The Messiah and the Son of God. In chapter eight, Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah. Now in chapter fifteen, the Roman centurion confesses him as Son of God.

At one of his trials, the high priest has asked Jesus if he is ‘the Messiah, the Son of the Blessèd One’, those very titles Mark has set out at the beginning. When Jesus says he is, he is condemned as a blasphemer and the religious court says he is worthy of death (14:60-65).

What an irony. What the religious leadership condemns, a fisherman and a centurion welcome and wonder.

Just ponder that centurion. How many crucifixions had he been in charge of during his career? He knew what a death by crucifixion looked like. But there was something different about this prisoner. And it is seen in the manner of his death.

In fairness, Mark doesn’t tell us exactly what the difference is that the centurion notices, but there is something about Jesus even at the moment he cries out at his death that marks him out to this soldier as more than a mere mortal. He sees it. Simon Peter, for all his blunders and failures, has seen it. The people who should see it have heard it but rejected it, rather than wondered at it.

Today, Good Friday, let the immensity of the fact that the Son of God died in our place fill our hearts with wonder, amazement, and worship. Let it bring us to the foot of the Cross where we kneel in allegiance to him.

And there let us find that heaven is open to us, even us.

0

Sermon: People At The Cross And The Tomb – Pontius Pilate And Power

John 18:28-19:16

Our American friends have a term for it: Lame Duck President. When a President of the United States is impotent because the opposing political party dominates both Houses of Congress – the House of Representatives and the Senate – he is a lame duck President. He cannot do anything. He is at the mercy of his opponents and rivals.

Today, we think about the lame duck politician in the Passion of Jesus: Pontius Pilate. That may surprise you. Don’t we expect the Roman official in charge of Palestinian territory to be a strong and authoritative man? Indeed, I was once part of a play on Good Friday where I had to play Pilate, and the director made me play the part with some force to bring him alive.

However, history tells us a different story about Pilate. And it’s one that makes sense of his powerlessness in the face of the demands from that part of the wealthy religious establishment that wanted to keep its cosy relationship with Rome and thus benefit in terms of finances and power.

Pilate’s problem was this. He had committed several acts of antagonism against the Jewish faith. He set up Roman standards with graven images of the emperor in Jerusalem, an act regarded as idolatry. He may well have diverted money from the Temple treasury to build an aqueduct. There had been protests to Rome about him. He had to be careful not to cause further trouble, for fear of the Emperor Tiberius taking a dim view of him.

How strange, then, that this is the man who humanly has power and authority, and whose words count far more than anybody else’s in Palestine.

And who does he encounter here? Someone claiming to the the Son of God, yet who has been arrested and is at his mercy. Another character, fatally weakened by circumstances, it seems.

So it’s not surprising that Pilate and Jesus have a conversation about power and authority. Here in this episode we see a God’s-eye perspective on these issues.

The first of these issues is kingship. Pilate asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews (verse 33), and idea he’s clearly picked up from Jesus’ religious enemies (verses 34-35). Jesus makes his famous reply:

“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (Verse 36)

In showing that his followers have not been fighting, he exposes the lies of those who have claimed he is a political rival, and should be executed for that reason. However, his general statement, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, has been open to all sorts of poor interpretation. Jehovah’s Witnesses have taken it to mean a ban on getting involved in politics. Some Christians have seen it similarly, as restricting Jesus’ influence to personal and private matters. Thus you get the kind of Christian who behaves one way on a Sunday, and a completely different way in the office on a Monday. There are non-Christians who would like to think this were the Church’s position. When I once wrote as a minister in a local newspaper about a matter of local politics, I was criticised the next week on the letters page for bringing religion into politics. I was told to go back and concentrate on why the churches were declining today!

But Jesus cannot mean this. If he did, there is so much of the Bible we would have to jettison. The Old Testament prophets, for a start. The judges of early Israel. It doesn’t stand up.

No: Jesus’ kingdom being ‘not of this world’ is explained by his statement that his ‘kingdom is from another place’. It’s an issue of where his kingdom is from. The reign of Jesus is from heaven. Because he reigns from heaven, his kingdom covers everything, not just the personal and the private.

So politicians like Pilate, and anyone else who thinks they have ultimate authority or influence, need to hear the message of Jesus that what they do and say will be judged by him. Christians need to see that the public arena – politics, the media, entertainment and the arts – is a fit place for us to live and work with kingdom of God values. We complain about unchristian influences in these areas, but often the sad truth is that Christians have retreated from them and left a vacuum that has been filled by others. If Jesus’ kingdom comes from another place and the Pilates of this world are placed under him, then we need more politicians who are Christians, more artists and entertainers who are Christians and more communicators who are Christians.

And all of us need to realise that every area of life comes under the reign of the One whose ‘kingdom is from another place’. An old Christian adage says,

“If Jesus Christ is not Lord of all, then he is not Lord at all.”

Secondly, Jesus steers the conversation onto the subject of truth. When Pilate says, “You are a king, then!” Jesus replies:

“You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (Verse 37)

Pilate responds with his famous words, “What is truth?” (verse 38), but Francis Bacon was wrong to call him ‘jesting Pilate’ who ‘would not stay for an answer’. Pilate was not jesting. This was serious. This is serious. Truth is a serious matter in every sphere of life, but especially when it comes to power and authority.

Why? People in power and authority – whether we’re talking about governments, multinational corporations or the media – want to control access to information and filter what you might hear as being true. It’s especially prevalent today, but it has always been the case. They will use claims about the truth to bolster their own power, and to exclude from power those they consider undesirable. No wonder Pilate is confused about what truth is: he has probably spent much of his career managing people’s perceptions of the truth.

Into this fallen landscape where truth is halved or turned on its head, Jesus says,

“The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (Verse 37)

How different is Jesus’ approach to truth! He does not browbeat people with the truth, he does not manipulate the truth, he does not force the truth on people. He testifies to the truth. A testimony is there to be accepted or rejected. Jesus knows who will accept his testimony to the truth: ‘everyone on the side of truth’. He’s not running a General Election campaign. He’s not advertising, nor is he cajoling. He’s presenting the truth, and simply waiting for those who will respond, because the Holy Spirit leads them to do so.

It’s not a recipé for success, is it? If Jesus were a politician, how would he ever get elected? If he were a marketing man, how would he sell his product?

And there’s the issue: the Jesus approach to truth is the opposite of the way people in power and authority try to use truth. No psychological techniques to persuade people, he relies on the Holy Spirit to do the persuading. It’s quite precarious, isn’t it?

It’s all rather impractical, heads in the cloud stuff for those who feel they have to use truth to get their own way. The kingdom of God will never win an election on Planet Earth. Jesus is not a product to be sold, but a Saviour who looks for a response of love and a Lord who seeks willing obedience.

So let us never as the church seek to coerce people with the truth; rather, like Jesus, let us testify to the truth and rely on the Holy Spirit to show people the truth. Of course, like Jesus shortly after this conversation, we may end up on a cross for our troubles. But that place of suffering witness to the truth is a more powerful place to win converts than a bludgeoning attitude to truth.

Thirdly and finally, we move to the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate after the flogging, when Pilate is trying to make one last desperate attempt to save Jesus’ life, even though he is in this politically weak position where he is afraid of the religious leaders (verse 8) who say he will be seen as no friend of Caesar (verse 12). It’s a dialogue about power.

Despite his fear, Pilate reminds Jesus that he has the judicial power to free him or crucify him (verse 10). He still wants to think he’s Mister Big Shot. He has to big himself up. “Look at me!” he seems to say to Jesus.

But is Jesus impressed? No.

“You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” (Verse 11)

That’s his reply. Pilate, you couldn’t talk like this unless my Father had allowed this. You are weak and passive, and so you bear some responsibility for what’s about to happen, even if Caiaphas is worse, because he initiated and planned the plot that brought me here.

In other words, divine sovereignty and human responsibility sit together, one over the other. Pilate’s power is not absolute: it is to be exercised under divine sovereignty. Pilate does not lose any responsibility for his actions, even though God in his sovereignty has permitted the betrayal of Jesus.

What does this combination of the sovereignty of God and human responsibility mean for the exercise of power? It means that everyone who exercises power is accountable to God. The world holds politicians accountable to the electorate, but Christians hold them accountable to God. When Christians hold positions of responsibility, we are accountable, not only to those who put us there but also to God. We remember the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Roman centurion whose servant was at the point of death. That centurion understood true faith when he said to Jesus,

“For I myself am a man under authority, with solders under me.” (Luke 17:8)

He got to give orders because he was a centurion, but only because he was under authority.

So it is with us. We may be entrusted with power or responsibility. It may be small-scale and private, it may be large-scale and public. But whatever it is, God has allowed us to have that measure of authority. And within his permitting us to take that up, we are accountable to him as well as whoever humanly appointed us.

In the end, Pilate chooses accountability not to God but to the mob, so that he can save his political neck. The temptation is there for all of us who exercise power or authority. Will we seek to make the decisions that please God, or is there some hidden impure motive that drives us towards compromised policies?

Indeed, what choices will we make in relation to power and authority? Will we choose to live all of life under the Lordship of Christ and his kingdom? Will we witness to the truth, rather than use it as a weapon? And will we always remember that we are accountable to God for the choices and decisions we make when we are entrusted with responsibility?

In our story, one man thought he was powerful, but was fatally weakened, and he made the wrong choices. But the other man, who came chained as a prisoner, apparently at the mercy of the other, lived with the greatest freedom and authority of all.

Will we make godly choices about power today?

6

Sermon: Nicodemus

I’m preaching from the Lectionary this week at my second church, and am following the Gospel reading.

John 3:1-17

Who was the only Irishman in the Bible?

Nick O’Demus.

Sorry! I blame Graham Kendrick. I once heard him tell that joke at a concert.

Here, in John chapter three, Nicodemus makes his entry into the story of Jesus. We know that near the end of our reading we hear possibly the most famous verse in the entire Bible:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (Verse 16)

And so we assume this is a story about whether and how people to come to faith. Which I think is about right. I’m not about to spring any surprises on you in that respect today. So let’s plunge into this familiar text and see what we learn about the journey of faith. However long we have been Christians, I pray we appreciate the elements of true Christian faith more deeply as we reflect on this passage.

Firstly, we observe that Nicodemus ‘came to Jesus by night’ (verse 2). Now you may think that’s just a casual memory of their meeting, preserved for us by John from whoever learned that fact. But in John’s Gospel there is symbolism behind a lot of the literal details. For example, after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus tells people he is the Bread of Life.

And when it comes to ‘the night’, we can be sure John uses this both literally and symbolically. A classic example would be when Judas Iscariot leaves the Last Supper to betray Jesus: John then says, ‘And it was night.’ You realise he doesn’t just mean the time of day, it is spiritually dark when Judas goes off.

What I want to suggest is this: that when Nicodemus arrives ‘by night’, it is also spiritually dark. Not in the sense of betrayal; rather, this is a man who is ‘in the dark’ spiritually about Jesus. He comes in utter sincerity to enquire of Jesus. When he opens by saying, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God’ (verse 2), there is no reason to suppose he is anything other than a seeker after truth.

We see this from the way Jesus responds, He does not write him off or call him a hypocrite. Instead, he explains spiritual truth to him, about the need to be ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’. But when Nicodemus just doesn’t understand – he says, ‘How can these things be?’ (verse 9) – Jesus replies, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?’ (verse 10) Clearly, Jesus perceives him to be ‘in the dark’. Truly, he has come ‘by night’. Nicodemus, teacher of Israel’s faith, is in spiritual darkness.

Is he so unlike some of the people in our churches? I think of the church steward who prayed with me before a Good Friday morning service, in which he referred to the Cross of Christ as a disaster. I wouldn’t have minded if he were referring to a sorrow that our sins led to Christ dying for us, but he seemed to think the whole thing was a mistake. Surely that steward came ‘by night’.

But whichever other people I think of, the person I most think of as having come ‘by night’ is myself. Growing up in a Christian home – in fact, my sister worked out that she and I were fifth generation, same congregation – I picked up all the wrong signals about what Christian faith was. I heard people asked whether they were Christians, and their reply was, ‘I’m trying to be a Christian.’ It all depended on them, and their efforts. No wonder that I, the keen mathematician, I expressed my understanding of Christianity in terms of an equation: Christianity equals believing in God plus doing good things. I was completely confused when a teenage Baptist friend took me to a youth event at his church and someone greeted me, saying, ‘Am I shaking hands with a born-again Christian?’ I hadn’t heard that language, but assuming I was a Christian, I offered my hand. I could see my friend Andy looking on with doubt.

Finally, it was the confirmation service, specifically the promises and professions of faith, in the old Methodist Service Book that brought me up short. The first question asked whether I repented of my sins. The second asked me whether I put my trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. And the third question – only after the question of faith and trust – asked me whether I would obey Christ and serve him in the world.

So because of my own experience, I am never surprised to meet people in our churches who come ‘by night’, who think they know Jesus and faith, but don’t. Let’s all make sure this morning that we’re not in the dark.

All this mention of being ‘born again’ leads me into the second element to consider about Nicodemus. That second element is the prominence Jesus gives to the Holy Spirit. We talk generally about God, and we refer to Jesus, but Jesus himself draws attention to the work of the Spirit in bringing us to new birth:

Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. (Verse 5)

Here’s the point: while we are right to emphasise the importance of personal decisions to follow Christ and our free will to decide whether to do so or not, it still remains the fact that none of that would be possible unless the Holy Spirit had not already been working in our lives to reveal Jesus Christ and his Gospel to us.

That fact has a number of implications for us. One is that it takes the pressure off us in our witness for Christ. Sometimes we think that we have to get our witness just right for him, answering every question and doubt that our friends have. We don’t. Instead, we discharge our responsibility to be a witness to Christ in word and deed, but we rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to our friends. We do what we can, as obediently as we can, but then we leave it and pray.

Another implication is that the prime rôle of the Holy Spirit punctures our pride. We cannot claim that by our cleverness or good deeds we worked out the importance of responding to Jesus Christ. Of course, the fact of needing the Cross should do this, but when we realise that we cannot come to Christ unaided, then we can only respond and live humbly. Our pride must go. It is another reminder that we are completely dependent upon the grace of God in order to know his love and walk in his ways. The superiority complex that some outside the Church detect in us is something we have to leave behind, because we could not find faith without the Holy Spirit.

One other implication: Jesus says something else about the centrality of the Holy Spirit’s work in the life of faith. In verse 8 he says,

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

You expect him to continue something like this: ‘So it is with the Spirit.’ But he says something else instead:

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (Italics mine)

The sovereign, unpredictable work of the Spirit is taken for granted. But it initiates us into a life of openness to where the wind of the Spirit blows us. Any notion of safety, predictability or comfort comes into question when the Holy Spirit leads your life. Yet that is what many of us settle for. But the Holy Spirit not only takes the initiative in making Christ known to us and keeping us humble, the Spirit then takes us on a wild journey of faith. The life of faith is one where Jesus says, ‘Follow me,’ and we don’t know where that will lead. I venture to suggest that churches which implement things like five-year visions and targets have very little sense of the blustery gale of the Spirit.

Some of the Celtic saints took this very literally. They set out in their coracles on the open sea, deciding they would trust that wherever the wind blew them, that was where God wanted them to go. We may not take things as literally as that, but the challenge is there: are we willing to let the wind of the Spirit blow us to new places in the life of faith, following Jesus?

But where is the Holy Spirit taking us in leading us out of darkness on the wild journey of faith? The answer comes in the third and final reflection. Our journey out of the night takes us on a strange journey to an unexpected place. It takes us to somewhere that Jesus, the Son of Man, will be lifted up (verse 14). Now ‘lifting up’ sounds like an exalted place, it perhaps sounds like a throne for a king. And in one sense it is.

But ‘lifted up’ is more of that symbolic language in John. There is more to it than meets the eye. Later in the Gospel, in chapter twelve, we discover that John uses it to indicate a place where Jesus was physically lifted from the ground. The Cross. This is the central location for the journey of faith.

For one thing, we see this in the fact that this is where God brings us to faith through Christ. It is when he is lifted up ‘that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (verse 15). We have already noticed how our need of the Spirit’s work makes us humbly dependent upon God’s grace: here is further evidence. We rely on the fact that God gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life (verse 16). Any message that downplays God’s reconciliation of us through the Cross of Christ is not the Christian message.

But the Spirit blows us to a strange place. A place of suffering and rejection. Yet here, in the plans of God, we find forgiveness, healing and acceptance. Here is where God pledges his commitment to us, and where we commit ourselves to him in response to his self-giving love in Christ.

But the eternal life promised there is not merely a ticket for heaven. In John’s Gospel, eternal life doesn’t wait. It starts now. When Jesus prays in chapter seventeen, he says, ‘Eternal life is knowing you’ (my italics). So if the Cross gives us eternal life, it shapes our ‘now’ as well as our future. The gift of eternal life is not only received through the death of Christ, the Cross also gives shape to the relationship of eternal life with God that we have since begun. That life of eternity is one marked by dying – we die to ourselves by rejecting self-indulgence to put Christ and others first, and we are willing to pay the price of following Jesus in a society where it is not and never will be popular.

This, then, in summary, is the life of faith. It is the call out of darkness to follow the wind of the Spirit who leads us to Christ and then on the wild journey of faith that is based on the Cross, where we find forgiveness and the shape of our new, eternal life.

But whatever happened to Nicodemus? He shows up twice more in John’s Gospel. In chapter seven, he defends Jesus against the criticisms his fellow Pharisees levelled. That was a brave thing to do. In chapter nineteen, he accompanies Joseph of Arimathea, the secret disciple who asks Pilate to give him the body of Jesus. Nicodemus helps with anointing the body for burial. Again, what would the other Pharisees have thought of him?

For me, these hints point towards the thought that while Nicodemus may have been in the dark when he met Jesus in chapter three, ultimately he was willing to live the life of faith.

Our question is whether we will.

7

Sermon: Reasons For Self-Denial

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Have you given up anything for Lent? Some of my friends have denied themselves the usual chocolate. Another has started an annual practice of giving up Facebook.

But if you had asked this of my wife some years ago, she would have given you a strange look. She came to faith and had her early Christian formation in a Baptist church. When she met me, she found the practices of the Methodist Church strange. I must admit that as someone who has been in Methodism since the womb, I still find it strange!

And one practice Debbie had never encountered before was Lent. The day she asked me what Lent was, I couldn’t believe I was hearing what she said. Surely everybody knew what Lent was? It’s been part of my background all my life! Indeed, except for when Easter Day occurs on the very latest day in the year that it can, my birthday always falls within Lent. Thankfully, I’m allowed to feast on my birthday – according to my rules, anyway!

Now the reading from Philippians seems a good one for Lent. Not that the earliest Christians practised it, but it is a passage that explores the importance of self-discipline. Now while Debbie’s home church was lower than low – calling baptism and Holy Communion ordinances, not sacraments – I’m sure they too would have endorsed the importance of self-discipline in the Christian life. And at Lent or any other time, that is a critical part of our discipleship. It’s also – as we shall see – an area where we can be a counter-cultural witness in our world today.

Implicit in Paul’s teaching here are various core Christian reasons which provide the foundations for living a life of self-discipline to the glory of God. It’s those beliefs I want to explore today.

We begin at the Cross. Christians always have to begin at the Cross, and Paul does so here.

For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. (Verse 18)

Paul sees that a root cause of self-indulgence is not taking the Cross seriously. The Cross is not merely the place where I am forgiven – so that I can keep living however I like and then return for the next batch of forgiveness. The Cross is the model for our discipleship. What Paul teaches here is consistent with Jesus telling aspiring disciples to deny themselves, take up the Cross and follow him.

Christianity, then, is less about what I can get and more about what I can give. So much of our conversation, even in the Church, is peppered with the assumptions of consumerism. Does this church suit me? Did the worship feed me? Does it have what I need? It’s very me-centred. But the Cross says we have to take a different approach. And disciplines of self-denial and self-discipline are those which call us back to the Cross. They are not preventing ourselves becoming fat, they are about tuning ourselves into the wavelength of the Cross.

So a week ago, when there was a news story reporting the development of a new low-fat chocolate bar, where the fat particles are replaced with water, air or gels, the Daily Telegraph was wrong to call it the ‘Chocolate bar that can be eaten during Lent’. The point of self-denial isn’t about losing weight, it’s about a sign that we will walk the way of the Cross. As one person put it,

Lent is supposed to be concerned with spiritual discipline and self-denial, not a handy way of losing a bit of weight. If the new low-fat chocolate tastes as good as an old-fashioned one but doesn’t pile on the pounds, then where’s the self-denial?

So we approach Lenten disciplines of self-denial not as some kind of belated New Year’s Resolution to get ourselves in shape; we embrace them as a sign that we accept the Cross will shape the way we live.

The second Christian building-block in Paul’s teaching is worship. Hear verse 19 again:

Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.

‘Their god is their belly.’ Who do we worship when we are self-indulgent? Ourselves. This comment of Paul’s tests what we truly believe worship to be, because it’s a question of allegiance. Does my stomach deserve my ultimate allegiance? I need to feed it, but when it becomes my god, something has gone badly wrong.

This, then, is about how we understand worship. Much as I enjoy worship with a band, featuring a lot of contemporary songs, and other people love their hymns, how dangerous it is when we end up worshipping worship. And we forget what worship is. The main New Testament word translated ‘worship’ means ‘to move towards and kiss’. However, the ‘kiss’ envisaged is the ‘kiss of homage’, like that offered to a monarch, and even still kept in a symbolic and ceremonial way in our society when a new Prime Minister or bishop is appointed. They have to go to ‘the Palace’ to ‘kiss the hands’ of the sovereign.

Worship is not in the first place about the good feelings and the positive experiences. It is about declaring our allegiance to Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord or Lords. When we deny ourselves as a spiritual discipline, we do so not to torment ourselves but to affirm that God’s will comes first in our lives. We are to indulge his will, not our appetites. We ‘do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’, and so our worship is seen by taking God’s word seriously and putting it into practice as a priority. When we do that, our god is not our belly. Instead, we give ourselves in devotion and worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As we come to our third and final foundation, you could say this is a question of past, present and future. A past event – the Cross – shapes our behaviour now. Our present activity – of worship – needs to be rightly directed to God. So thirdly and finally, that leaves a future component – the kingdom of God.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (Verses 20-21)

Jesus is coming, says Paul, and our minds are set on him rather than ‘earthly things’ (the worship point again). But Paul goes further: what Jesus will do when he comes also leads us to consider our behaviour now. When Paul says, ‘He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory’, he is making a reference to the Resurrection. Jesus’ own ‘body of humiliation’ was transformed into a ‘body of glory’ in the Resurrection. You will remember that the risen Jesus was identifiably the same man who had been crucified (once the disciples’ eyes had been opened), but his body was also somehow different (remember how he appeared in their midst in a locked room, and how he disappeared from sight after the meal at the end of the Emmaus Road journey).

So, says Paul, we are in for transformation, too. When Jesus comes again and renews heaven and earth, he will raise us up and renew our bodies, just as his was. This will be an expression of his reign in his kingdom, for he will do it ‘by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself’ (verse 21b).

If you’ve followed me thus far, one thing you will understand is that our bodies matter to God. They are important to him. The great future of God’s kingdom is a physical one. The idea often trumpeted that our body is just a shell and that the real person is the invisible soul simply doesn’t match the New Testament’s teaching. Our bodies are part of God’s good creation. Yes, they are imperfect and they decay (what Paul calls here the ‘body of humiliation’) but God does not intend to discard them, he will renew them at the resurrection of the dead.

What does all this have to do with our Lent theme of self-denial? For one thing, it reminds us that self-denial is not about self-hatred. It is about self-discipline, and that’s a whole lot different. When we deny ourselves, we are not doing so in order to torture ourselves, like Filipino Christians being nailed to crosses as acts of devotion. It is more that we are training our body for better use in the service of God. It is why in 1 Corinthians 9 Paul uses the image of an athlete training to compete in the ancient Olympics. So too our self-denial is an act of training: we are getting ready for the Great Games themselves in the Kingdom of God.

In other words, self-denial is a positive action. It is about love for God and his ways. It is part of building for God’s kingdom.

In fact, it is something we practise in other areas of life. I remember one particular aspect of our marriage preparation. We sat in the lounge of the manse where the minister friend who was to marry us lived. I recall how awkward he felt about having to ask some of the standard questions to two people he knew. I was one of his circuit colleagues!

One question in particular stuck with me. he talked about the promises in the marriage service where the man and the woman say they will honour one another with their bodies. Now I guess many couples think that when they say, ‘With my body I thee worship’ or some modern equivalent, it is really a coy, veiled reference to sex. But our friend had a different take. He looked at me and said,

“Dave, how are you going to look after your body for Debbie’s sake?”

Well, as someone who has put on a stone in weight since marriage, it may well be I haven’t honoured that as well as I should have done!

But perhaps the point stands. And perhaps it helps us see that while we naturally accept we would deny ourselves for our loved ones, how much more we might do so for the love of our God?

In conclusion, I can’t tell anyone whether they should give up anything for Lent and if so, what. But I can invite us all to examine ourselves and ask, is my life being conformed to the Cross or are there areas where I need to deny myself in order to make that more true? I can invite us to look at who or what we worship, to see whether our priorities need correcting by self-denial. And I can put before us all the hope of resurrection to enquire whether we need to deny ourselves out of love for God and his ways, by building for his kingdom.

2

Sermon: Jesus Of The Transfiguration

Luke 9:28-36

A neighbour of ours three doors down periodically changes her photo on Facebook. For a long time it was a snap of her with the rock singer Jon Bon Jovi. Then it became a picture of her with the Hollywood actor Johnny Depp. Michelle looks very happy and relaxed with them. They look pretty happy with her. It does rather help the matter that Michelle is quite glamorous!

Me, I’m not so sure I’d look as cool and laid back with a famous person as she does. Not that I’m terribly interested in handsome male rock stars or actors; I just have to fend off Debbie’s regular ribbing because I once commented how pretty one of the teachers at our children’s school is!

However, as I said, I don’t think I’d be as relaxed as Michelle. I think if I met a hero, or a famous beautiful woman, I think I would be a blubbering mess. How journalists keep their cool to interview well-known people, I don’t know.

All of which makes me rather like Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration. When he offers to make three dwellings – one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah – Luke comments that he didn’t know what he was saying (verse 33). He’s overwhelmed, and he says something stupid. He’d like to preserve the moment or turn it into something he knows and can cope with – the three dwelling places he proposes are reminiscent of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

But he’s missed the significance of the event as a result of his blubbering, and needs correction. That takes him into the terrifying experience in the cloud, where he hears the frightening, correcting voice of God: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (Verse 35) Don’t get blubbery about Moses and Elijah: listen to Jesus!

And I want to take that as an entry point into thinking about the Transfiguration today. It’s a traditional reading for the last Sunday before Lent, and I want us to look at how it shows Jesus as being superior to Moses and Elijah.

Firstly, Jesus’ superiority to Moses. So you book your dream holiday. You pay the deposit. You renew your passports. A couple of months before going, you pay the balance. A week before the off, you return to the travel agent to pick up your tickets and your currency. A day or two beforehand, you pack your luggage. Everything is ready for your departure.

And the Transfiguration is about a departure – especially in the connection with Moses. When Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, we read

They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Verse 31)

His departure. Why the Moses connection? Because there’s an Old Testament book called ‘Departure’. It’s just that we know it by its Greek name: Exodus. The story of Moses leading God’s people to freedom from Egypt. When Luke writes about Jesus’ departure here, it is in the Greek his exodos. Moses’ departure was a liberation, Jesus’ forthcoming ‘departure’ from Jerusalem will be a liberation, too. But because Jesus is superior to Moses, his liberation will be superior, too.

If it’s Jesus’ departure from Jerusalem, then clearly we’re talking about his death, resurrection and ascension. That departure brings liberation. Jesus has been pointing the way to his future suffering and has said that disciples need to take up their crosses and follow him. Now we begin to understand that what is coming is a freedom event. The Cross will bring freedom. Jesus’ departure in his death is not a tragic event, as I once heard a Methodist church steward call it in the vestry before a Good Friday service. It is sacrificial love for the blessing of the world. Yes, it is agony and injustice. But it is also true heroism.

Now if this is the case, then we have to see the Transfiguration as more than we have often interpreted it. We know that the disciples come back down from the mountain to the challenges of everyday life. Hence we say that you can’t live on ‘mountain-top experiences’ all the time, you have to get on with ordinary living again. But if the Transfiguration points to Jesus’ departure at the Cross, it isn’t about coming down from a ‘high’ to face the mundane and the routine again. Rather, it’s about Jesus being strengthened to face his coming trial.

So if Jesus is being strengthened to face the trial of the Cross here, perhaps this event is similar to one or two others in the Gospels. It might be like the powerful spiritual experience he had at his baptism with the Holy Spirit coming down on him like a dove and – again – a voice from heaven affirming him, immediately before the Spirit leads him to the wilderness to fast and conquer temptation. It might be like the way he was mysteriously strengthened in the Garden of Gethsemane as he wrestled with his forthcoming betrayal and suffering. No wonder we read this on the last Sunday before Lent.

Isn’t it wonderful, then, that Jesus needed to be strengthened before he faced trials, including the greatest of all? And if that’s the case, then perhaps we might interpret our own ‘mountain-top experiences’ differently. They may not simply  be a boost before we get back to the grind; they may be God’s way of equipping us for whatever difficulties are coming our way, particularly those where we end up in a painful place because of our faith. Perhaps God has a blessing for us in Christ that will give us the fortitude to face our trials, or perhaps we can look back at problematic times in our lives and see that before then God prepared us with a blessing. He may have given us our own mini-transfigurations. Not in the sense of exalting who we are – he only does that for Jesus – but in empowering and encouraging us.

Secondly, Jesus’ superiority to Elijah. How does Elijah connect with Jesus’ departure? The Moses connection is quite easy to see when you think of the word ‘exodus’, but it’s less easy to see why Elijah should be hanging out with Jesus now, and the particular way in which Jesus is superior to him.

However, there is a link between Jesus’ departure at Jerusalem and Elijah, and it goes like this. For Jews, Elijah was the great prophet of the end-time deliverance. He was the one who was expected to appear before God’s Messiah. You may recall there was a hoo-hah in the Gospels as to whether John the Baptist was Elijah come back from the dead to precede the Messiah. All this means that Elijah was the figure of hope. He signified to Jewish minds that God would make all things right, just and whole in his kingdom. Hence the theme of hope.

That may well have been why Peter almost thoughtlessly suggested the building of three booths, like the Feast of Tabernacles, as I said, because that festival was also known as the Feast of Ingathering, and looked forward to the fullness of God’s kingdom on earth. Peter’s mistake was just to see Jesus as an equal with Moses and Elijah.

But the voice from heaven says, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ (verse 35), because Jesus is superior even to Elijah. So we must infer that Jesus brings a superior hope at his departure.

I suggest we find that in his resurrection and ascension. Jesus will be raised physically from the dead. His body will be restored to him in a new way. Jesus’ resurrection body is the beginning of God’s new creation. God will make all things new, and he begins with his own Son. Elijah might be a sign or symbol of hope, but Jesus is more than that: his own resurrection body embodies our hope, even guarantees our hope of a new heaven and a new earth.

So death may and will come, but it doesn’t get the last laugh. God does. We wait in heaven, in what looks from earth like the sleep of death, but one day the Great Surprise will happen when God raises us from the dead and renews his creation. Elijah can teach us much, but only the Son of God can teach us all this. The Christian who dies trusting in Christ does so in peace, because Jesus fills her with hope in ways no-one else can.

And then there’s the ascension, Jesus’ final bodily departure from Jerusalem, reminiscent of the way Elijah left this world yet – again – superior to it. He ascends to the Father’s right hand, where he will reign until everything has been put under his feet. This is the part of hope that sustains us until God makes all things new, when the new Jerusalem descends and all creation is renewed.

It’s easy to lose hope and think that God is not reigning in heaven when we see evil in the world, in the church and in ourselves. No wonder I read yesterday that John Stott apparently once said,

The Christian’s chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.

But the Ascension reminds us that Jesus is reigning, even while rebellion takes place against his rule. Battles may be won or lost, but in the final analysis Christ is on the throne. To say that Christ is not reigning because there is still sin in the world would be like saying there cannot be a government in power because crime is still being committed.

In conclusion, then, Jesus at the Transfiguration offers us awesome hope. The liberation of the Cross, the hope in the Resurrection of God’s new creation and the assurance of his reign through the Ascension. Moses and Elijah may have been good, but Jesus outranks them everywhere.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, ‘Any study of Christ must begin in silence.’ No wonder we read that

When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. (Verse 36)

Sometimes I’m all for the response to a sermon being in words and deeds after the service. Today, maybe like Peter, James and John, our best response might just be awed silence at the majesty of Christ.

2

Sermon: How Many Times Do I Have To Tell You?

Mark 9:30-37

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

It’s a familiar cry of exasperation from parents to their children. No matter how many times you have asked them to do something – or, more likely, not to do something – it just doesn’t sink in.

It isn’t limited to things not sinking in with children. We might lose our rag and say the same to another adult: “How many times do I have to tell you?” Did the other person not hear? Or did they not listen? Do they not care? Are they dense?

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

Jesus could have said that to his disciples. The fact that he got frustrated and said things like, “Do you still not understand?” gives me hope when I, his very imperfect follower, feel I need to repeat a theme in a sermon.

This passage falls into the “How many times do I have to tell you?” category. It is the second of three ‘passion predictions’ in Mark’s Gospel – passages where Jesus prophesies his forthcoming betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection. Last week’s Lectionary gave us the first prediction.

That first passion prediction last week was followed by the first misunderstanding of the disciples – when Peter told Jesus the Messiah shouldn’t suffer and Jesus retorted, “Get behind me, Satan.” So too this second prediction is followed by a second misunderstanding. So you see there is a similar pattern to this week’s reading, compared with last Sunday’s.

But of course the content isn’t entirely parallel. I thought we’d look at this week’s prediction and this week’s misunderstanding in a way that compares and contrasts with the first prediction and the first misunderstanding from last week. By saying ‘compare and contrast’ I do not mean this to be like an exam essay question! In fact, rather than this being a dry exercise in theoretical Bible study, I believe it will speak to us about discipleship. After all, that’s what Mark does throughout his Gospel.

Firstly, at greater length, the Prediction.
(i) The location and the journey are important factors in this prediction of Jesus’ passion:

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it (verse 30).

It’s the last reference to Galilee, the former centre of Jesus’ operations, until the Resurrection. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem now. His focus is resolutely on the Father’s will in facing the Cross. The suffering he is about to prophesy again is no accident or coincidence. He is committed to the Father’s will, whatever the cost.

Yes, a terrible struggle over this awaits him in Gethsemane, but the discipleship Jesus models for us is one far removed from that which we often see in churches today. To listen to some churchgoers you might think religion was only about what was in it for them – the blessings and the benefits. It’s like consumerism: what’s in it for me? But Jesus’ attitude is, what’s in it for the Father? He will do the right thing, whether it benefits him or not. He is determined to go the right way, whether that means popularity or pain. Not for him the courting of votes; rather, a fixation on the will of God, whatever it costs.

This is underlined by the fact that the journey is secret: ‘He did not want anyone to know it’ (verse 30b). Why? Secrets usually require good reasons. This last week we booked a secret journey for the children. They won’t know about it until we get underway. If they discover what it is, they’ll go hyper. So we have to keep it a secret.

And I’m not going to tell you either what it is!

But Jesus keeps his journey and his movements secret for a good reason:

for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ (Verse 31)

Here’s one time he doesn’t want to do crowds. He is here to spend private time with his disciples, focussing their minds on this central truth of his life and ministry, the one thing they must grasp, which they misunderstood earlier and will do so again now: “How many times must I tell you?”

And here he ups the ante in this second passion prediction. Like the first time, he tells them that he must suffer, be killed and be raised from the dead. However, he changes one important detail. In chapter 8, he concentrates on the murderous role of the Jewish leadership. He shocks the disciples not only with the news of a suffering Messiah, but with the prediction that the religious leaders themselves will be responsible for his death. He leaves a warning for later generations that those of us who count ourselves faithful may well end up as the enemies of God.

But there is a twist in this second prediction. No longer is the blame placed merely on the Jewish authorities, it is placed on the whole human race:

‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ (Verse 31b)

You can’t pin later Christian anti-Semitism on Jesus. Everyone – ‘human hands’ – is responsible for his execution. Whatever the savage truth of religious guilt is, the bottom line Jesus gives us is that his death is due to the sins of the whole world.

But more than that, he is ‘betrayed into human hands’. We probably associate that word ‘betrayed’ with Judas Iscariot, but it means ‘handed over’. In a sense, that is what Judas did. But you could also say that God handed Jesus over. Biblical writers sometimes used a form of Greek grammar to allude to God doing something without actually naming him[1]. If so, then although human beings are not absolved from their responsibility for executing Jesus, it stresses the idea that Jesus died not only because of the sins of the world, he died for the sins of the world. It is in God’s plan. It is the fulfilment of Isaiah 53, the prophecy of the Suffering Servant.

And that’s remarkable when you factor in who Mark’s first readers probably were. The likeliest theory is that they were Roman Christians facing persecution under the Emperor Nero. Mark is telling them that their Jesus was not only crucified by sinful human beings – that would make sense to them, given the suffering they were undergoing – but also for those same sinners. Not only does the Gospel bring the good news of sins forgiven for us, it brings the challenge that if Jesus forgives us, he offers the same to our enemies, and that must change the way we regard those who cause trouble for us.

Jesus, then, in this prophecy of his Passion, is showing how committed he is to the painful but necessary plan of the Father that will lead him to the Cross. He is doing so, because that path will take him not only into the firing line of all sinners where he will die as a consequence of their sins, he will also die for their (and our) sins. It is the message at the heart of the Good News. It took some establishing with his disciples. It still does with us, at times. But once we know this is true, then it can come out of its secret lair and be unleashed on the world with a message of forgiveness and forgiving for all.

Secondly, more briefly, the Misunderstanding. And again, we’re back to “How many times must I tell you?” Wouldn’t you think that just after Jesus has been talking about humiliation and suffering the last thing his disciples should be talking about is, ‘Who is the greatest?’? And this will be something the disciples again find incredibly hard to accept. For when it comes to the third passion prediction (10:35-45), the context is James and John eyeing up the best seats at the top table in the kingdom of God! Maybe the call to humility is something we find hard to grasp, too. We might prefer our place in the limelight.

What we can’t doubt is that Mark portrays this as highly important teaching by Jesus. It takes place in ‘the house’ (Peter’s house, possibly) in Capernaum. When Jesus teaches the insiders from among his following in a private location in Mark’s Gospel, it’s usually something significant. The call to humility certainly isn’t a passing minor aspect of Jesus’ doctrines. It’s a central one in response to the way of the Cross.

So no wonder Jesus shames the disciples into a silence of guilt and shame when he asks them what they were talking about on the road, and they keep quiet (verses 33-34). They are in the same boat as the Pharisees when faced with the truth of God. Hard hearts, and the silent shame of guilt.

Yet in terms of their culture, the disciples’ attitude is hardly surprising:

Rabbinic writings frequently comment on the seating order in Paradise, for example, and argue that the just would sit nearer to the throne of God than even the angels. Earthly orders of seating at worship and meals, or authority within the community, or dealings with inferiors or superiors were seen as preparation for the eternal order to come.[2]

It’s not so very far from our obsessions with class and status, is it? But Jesus says, “How many times must I tell you?”

So that’s what he does. He tells them again – and not for the last time. Put yourselves last, not first, he says (verse 35). Be the servant of all, he continues (verse 35). And as someone once said, it’s all right being a servant until you are treated like one. With sentiments some of us might guiltily recognise, the Greek philosopher Plato said,

“How can a man be happy when he has to serve someone?”[3]

A relative of mine told his children, “Work hard so that you are the one giving the orders, not taking the orders.” In a sense, I know what he meant, because he wanted his children to fulfil their potential and do well in their careers. He didn’t want them to end up failing to meet their potential as a result of laziness. But – Jesus says, put yourself last in the queue (which isn’t a British ‘After you – no, after you, I insist’) and be a servant.

To drive home his point, he enacts his message, drawing a small child to himself (verse 36). He doesn’t call his disciples here to behave in childlike ways, he calls them to welcome one like a child.

The point is that children held a very low status in first century Palestinian society:

We are mistaken if we imagine that Greek and Jewish society extolled the virtues of childhood as do modern societies in general. Societies with high infant mortality rates and great demand for human labour cannot afford to be sentimental about infants and youth. In Judaism, children and women were largely auxiliary members of society whose connection to the social mainstream depended on men (either as fathers or husbands). Children, in particular, were thought of as “not having arrived.” They were good illustrations of “the very last” (v. 35).[4]

So the call is not to be like the child but like Jesus. Be like Jesus, who embraces the last and the least of society. If we walk the way to the Cross with Jesus who dies due to the sin of the world and for the sin of the world, if we have received his forgiveness and are forgiving others, then we shall also reject worldly obsessions with status and position.  Our priority will be to put ourselves with those who matter least in our society. It’s neither attractive nor glamorous to our normal instincts and preferences. But it’s where the Jesus of the Cross calls us.

The question is, how many times will he have to tell us?

[1] The ‘divine passive’ voice.

[2] James R Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p286.

[3] Op. cit., p287.

[4] Op. cit., p287f.

6

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑