Before we read from the Bible, I need to explain the background to what we’re going to hear. The Apostle Paul and his companion Silas have been preaching in a city called Philippi, but they kept getting interrupted by a very disturbed young woman. She was a fortune-teller, but she was also a slave, and so her owners made a lot of money out of her. They exploited her.
Image courtesy Picryl. Public Domain.
So Paul cast the spirit out of the young woman that enabled her to tell fortunes, and that angered her owners, who lost a lot of money, because they could no longer exploit her. In revenge, they got Paul and Silas locked up in the local prison, and that’s where we pick up the story.
Now I’ve read that story largely because we read near the end that the jailer found faith, but on the basis of his faith not only he was baptised, but so was his entire household – although it must also be admitted that Paul and Silas spoke the word to the whole household.
Image courtesy StockCake. Public Domain.
And today, we shall baptise [name] on the basis of [the child’s parent]’s faith. One day, [name] will have to decide for himself whether to follow Jesus.
So what does this faith look like? Well, it’s a lifetime commitment, but let me pick out two important elements from the story.
The first is belief:
Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (verse 31)
What does it mean to ‘believe in the Lord Jesus’? It’s not simply that we believe he exists, although the historical evidence for that is extremely strong. No: we believe certain things about Jesus, and we then trust him with our lives.
We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again from the dead to give us new life.
Some people say that they think they are good people and that will get them into eternal life with God when they die. But none of us is good enough to meet God’s perfect standards. We all fall short. Those failures need to be forgiven.
And the thing about forgiveness is this: it hurts and it is costly. I think of a time when I was still living with my parents. A friend of mine had a broken engagement. He needed somewhere to stay while getting over it, and we invited him in. He stayed for two weeks. But he never helped with anything around the house. He seemed to expect my Mum to cook for him and do his washing. When he left, he didn’t offer any money towards all that my parents had shelled out while he was with us.
Image courtesy Picryl. Public Domain.
We had a family conference about this. I’ll never forget my Dad’s words. “We’ll put this down to God’s account.” To forgive my friend involved my parents absorbing that debt. It cost them.
Similarly, Jesus dying on the Cross shows us that it cost God to forgive our sins.
So I invite you this morning to realise that is the cost God has paid for you to be forgiven. Will you believe it? And will you then trust Jesus with your life?
The second thing that faith involves is action:
At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized.
The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household. (Verses 33-34)
The jailer does engage in good deeds, but they are not what earn him salvation. Instead, his action is a matter of gratitude.
We are so grateful that God has loved us so much it has cost him the death of his Son, that we respond. And we do so by putting our faith into action.
Yes, that gratitude is certainly shown in worship, but it is also shown in the world. The jailer tends to the wounds of Paul and Silas, who had been beaten and flogged before they were thrown into prison (verses 22-24).
Food drive for homeless. Wikimedia Commons. CC 4.0
So if we are grateful for all that God has done for us in Jesus, who are the wounded people we can serve and show his love? Perhaps we can think of this a little bit like the idea today of ‘paying it forward.’ Where and how can I pay it forward, because God has shown so much love to me?
The jailer didn’t have to look too far and neither do we. You will have a neighbour who needs some practical help. You will find organisations where you live that that work and campaign on behalf of those in the most desperate need, either in this country or abroad.
Conclusion
This is the faith into which we baptise [name] this morning. One that urges him to believe that Jesus died for his sins, and to trust his life to him. One that shows gratitude for God’s love in our actions, especially in the service of those in most need.
But do you know what will make the most sense of this faith to [name]? It will be when those of us in the church and in his family live out that faith ourselves before his eyes.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Verse 1)
What is faith? Silly atheists will tell you that it’s believing in something that cannot be true. They tell you they don’t have faith at all, they rely on facts. But of course, they do have faith – they have faith in human reason. And while human reason is a good gift of God, it is corrupted by human sin. That’s why good things like science have also given us bad things such as nuclear weapons and instruments of torture.
So what is faith? It’s a combination of two things: belief and trust. It’s the belief in certain things being true about God, and that leads to the trust that we put in God. So we believe that Jesus died for our sins and God raised him from the dead and declared him to be Lord. We then trust him as Saviour and Lord with the direction of our lives.
This is something we practise in everyday life. We get to know certain things about a person, and when we know them well enough to believe they are trustworthy, we then trust them. We might believe in the qualifications an electrician has and then trust them to repair our lights. We might believe in a romantic partner’s love for us and then enter into marriage with them. Both these illustrations are examples of faith that is made up of belief and trust.
The definition of faith our reading begins with is more on the ‘trust’ end. It assumes we already know things about God. Then, in the light of that, we trust:
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Given what we know and believe to be true about God, we can be confident in our hope and sure about what we do not see.
Again, what do we know about God as revealed in Jesus? We know this is a God who even gave up his only Son for us. We know that Jesus suffered to the uttermost with us and will be alongside us in the darkest moments of life. We know that God said ‘Yes’ to all Jesus did on the Cross by raising him from the dead. We know that as God made the body of Jesus new, so he will one day make new the whole of creation.
This is the God we believe in. This is why we can have certainty about our future hope: we have seen this God in action. We know he has good plans.
And so we trust him. We trust our entire lives over to him. Even though walking with him will sometimes be difficult and painful, we know he has good purposes in mind for us and the whole world. We may not be able to see where he is leading us, but he has done enough for us to believe he is trustworthy. Therefore, we say ‘Yes’ to him.
So that’s my first point. What is faith? It is believing we know enough about God in Christ to trust ourselves to him.
What faith does
Here we’re specifically going to look at the example of Abraham in the text. We don’t know how much he knew about God, nor even how he got to know God in the first place. But we do know that he believed enough to trust God when he heard him speak to him.
8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
If you know God loves you, if you know he has your best interests at heart, and if you know that the best thing in all creation is the kingdom of God, then what do you do when God asks something of you?
Many of us say, ‘No.’ I knew someone in my home circuit who said, ‘Whenever I think God is calling me to something, I always say ‘No,’ because if it is him, he will ask me again.’
However, some of us say no, because we would rather stay comfortable, and we know that God’s call to obey him with trusting faith may lead us into situations that take us away from that comfort we crave.
Certainly, that happened in the Bible, and it definitely happened to Abraham. We just read that he obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going, and he ended up making his home like a stranger in a foreign country, even though that place would be part of the Promised Land for God’s people.
It has happened to me in following God’s call in the ministry. I wouldn’t even be in the ministry in the first place if I had limited myself only to comfortable circumstances. And when I first went to visit the circuit that would be my second appointment, I can still remember how disheartened I felt as I drove down a hill into the area. I saw how dirty and run-down the place was. Later, I would regularly walk along pavements that were covered in discarded cigarette butts and other litter.
But had I not gone, I would have missed out on serving with some amazing Christians across a variety of churches and denominations. I would not have made some lifelong friends, many of whom still live there.
And of course, it is where I was living when I met Debbie – not that she came from there. It is where we married and where we had our children.
We need to be careful about saying ‘No’ to God when he calls us to trust him and obey in faith. If we’re seeking clarification of his will, like the friend of mine I mentioned, I guess that’s fine.
But when it comes down to it, if we are people of faith and God has spoken to us about something he wants us to do, we need to say ‘Yes’, even if it’s daunting. God will be with us when we trust him and set out as Abraham did. There may indeed be some struggles ahead of us when we go, but Jesus knows what it is like to walk a dark road. He will never leave us or forsake us.
I wonder if there’s anyone here who is being prodded by the Holy Spirit. Is he prompting you to do something or go somewhere? I challenge you to say ‘Yes’ and then see God at work as you trust him in faith.
What faith sees
Believing and trusting isn’t always easy, as I’ve suggested. But there is something that keeps us going forward and drives us on. It is what faith sees. It is the vision faith gives us. Abraham had it. So did others. We can, too.
What is it?
10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
…
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.
Even if God leads us to a place where we are not comfortable, faith tells us this is not the last stop on the journey. Faith holds before us the vision that God is making all things new, that a new creation is coming, with new heavens and a new earth. And God’s people will dwell in the New Jerusalem, the new holy city, in all its glory and splendour.
This is not just about where we go after we die. This is about what God is building in his kingdom. This vision shows us the ultimate purposes of God. We believe this by faith. We set out in trust in that direction, building for it ourselves, by what we do in our lives.
Has God led you into somewhere or something that is troubling or challenging? Be assured that it is not the last stop on the journey.
When we are in that disheartening situation, it is easy for us to look back to when times were better, but what God says to us is, don’t look back, look forward. Look forward to his great future with solid hope. As verses 15 and 16 say,
15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
We often talk about our future hope in terms of what Jesus promises in John 14 when he tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them. But in these verses, the promise is much bigger than that. Not only will Jesus prepare a place for us, God is preparing a whole city for his people. Wow! We might not like the place where we are today, but one day we shall be in the City of God. That is what we look forward to by faith.
So if we are discouraged, if we wonder why on earth God has allowed us to be in some dispiriting location or circumstance, let us lift up our eyes. I know I need to do that at times, so I am preaching to myself here every bit as much as I am preaching to you.
Yes, let us lift up our eyes. Let us say, Lord, all those years ago I learned what you were like, and I believed you. And I have stepped out in trusting faith with you. It may not be great right now, but I am going to lift my vision and see something of that future hope, the City of God.
And if for you things are good right now, then I would still encourage you to lift your eyes and dwell on the future hope. For that new creation, that New Jerusalem, is the template for what we do now by faith. It shows us what we are building for. It informs our decisions and our actions now.
For all of us, let us believe. Trust. Act. And hope.
When I decided I wanted to learn photography, I asked my Dad to take me to his favourite camera shop in London. There, we met a remarkable salesman who had had one hand amputated. Think about that: how do you manipulate something like a camera without one hand? He did.
He sold me a rudimentary 35mm SLR camera. The idea was that I needed to learn the basics first before I ever considered a more complicated beast. That’s what I did.
I even had to repeat the exercise when I moved from 35mm film to digital.
The nature of Paul’s thanksgiving for the Colossians is that they have learned the basics. Now they can go deeper.
What are the basics?
we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people (verse 4)
Faith in Jesus and love for his people. Faith and love. These come from the gospel and the hope it gives us (verses 5-8).
Now it’s time to build on the basics and go deeper in their faith. Specifically, he wants them to know God’s will (verse 9) so they
may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way (verse 10).
I’d like us to look at these next steps for the Colossians today. If the basics are in place for us – that we have faith in Jesus Christ for salvation and we love God’s people – then what qualities are our next steps? Paul lists four:
Firstly, good works:
bearing fruit in every good work (verse 10)
We know that good works don’t earn us salvation. That is a free gift of God that we receive by putting our faith in Jesus and his death for us on the Cross.
Instead, good works in the Christian life are a grateful response to God, once we know salvation by faith in Jesus. As I’ve said before, remember that God only gave the Ten Commandments to Israel after he had saved them from Egypt. It’s similar for us.
How might we approach this, then? We have just completed the Bible Society’s study course on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the final session on Thursday, we were challenged as part of our mission to pray a prayer every morning: ‘Lord, who can I bless in your name today?’ I think that would be a helpful approach in knowing at least some of the good deeds God is calling us to do as our thankful response to salvation.
I have encouraged other people to consider the question: how can I make a difference for good in the world? It might be through pursuing a particular career. It might be in other ways. We might seek to live less extravagantly and give more to those who are doing things we aren’t able to do. This might involve our support for organisations working to transform things in the developing world, for example. Or we might cut back our own spending in order to give to those who are bringing positive change for those in poverty in the UK. Where can we make a difference for good in our deeds and in our giving?
Another way to approach this is found in a favourite quote of mine. It comes from the American Christian writer Frederick Buechner, when he was writing on the subject of vocation. Now you may hear me say the word ‘vocation’ and think, this doesn’t apply to me, I’ve retired from paid work. But vocation is about everything we are called to do and to be in response to God’s love.
So here are Buechner’s words:
Your vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.
In other words, is there something you are passionate about that can be set to the purpose of making a difference in the world?
Secondly, knowing God:
growing in the knowledge of God (verse 10)
Now before anybody gets worried, I’m not suggesting we all need to go off and study for a Theology degree! I enjoyed the two I took, but they’re not for everyone.
We do however all as Christians need to know more about God’s character, God’s plans, and what God loves. If we know God more in these ways, we shall want to love God more deeply. It seems strange to me that some Christians just want to stop at the bare minimum knowledge of God. Surely, given all he has done for us in Christ, we would want to know more about him and his amazing love.
And that’s why I’m always banging on about not simply coming to worship on Sunday, although that’s a good start. It’s why we need to read the Bible daily for ourselves and also meet with others to study it so that we can learn from each other. I was so pleased that everyone who filled in a feedback form at the end of our Romans course was looking in one form or another for us to keep meeting and looking at the Bible together. That’s encouraging.
It’s why we need to pray regularly, because prayer is not just us talking to God, it’s about waiting and listening to him.
Also, sometimes we get to know God better merely by doing what he says, even when we don’t understand it. Because in the doing of his will we get to know him better. Jesus said,
Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7:17)
So – how are we getting to know God better?
Thirdly, endurance:
being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (verse 11)
Often when we read words like ‘strengthened’, ‘power’, and ‘might’ in the New Testament, we think it’s going to be about the dramatic or miracle-working power of the Holy Spirit, and I’m not about to poo-poo that.
But here, Paul prays that God will strengthen the Colossians so they ‘may have great endurance and patience.’
We need those qualities in the Christian life. To follow Jesus is not a spectacular 100-metre sprint, it is the endurance of the marathon. And over the marathon course of our lives, there will be ups and downs, joys and sorrows, peaks and troughs. The early Christians got to realise that quickly, through their experiences of suffering and persecution. Many – if not the majority – of Christians around the world today are familiar with this, too.
When we are finding it tough to follow Jesus, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. Sometimes, that will be an individual experience. God will give us an inner resilience that we didn’t know we had – perhaps because we didn’t have it before – and he will help us to keep on keeping on, even if it is just tenaciously putting one foot in front of the other, or living day to day or even hour to hour.
Sometimes, God will strengthen our endurance through the help of our sister and brother Christians. I had a couple in one church who underwent five bereavements in a year. Both of them lost both of their parents, and a beloved uncle died as well.
The wife of the couple said, ‘At times like these I find it hard to pray. But I am encouraged to know that the church family is praying for me when I can’t pray.’
Is life and faith difficult for us at present? Let us ask God to strengthen us in patience and endurance, just as Paul asked God to do that for the Colossians.
Fourthly, joyful thanksgiving:
and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light (verse 12)
This is remarkable, coming straight after the prayer to have the strength to endure. If our situation is such that we need the gifts of patience and endurance, then presumably life is not easy. And if that’s the case, how are we going to give ‘joyful thanks to the Father’?
Paul says it’s all because it’s a response to what God has done for us. Paul tells the Colossians it’s all because the Father
has qualified [them] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.
It’s a case of remembering and rehearsing all the wonderful things God has already done for us, and all the amazing things he is promising to do for us. When we ponder these things in our hearts and minds, isn’t ‘joyful thanksgiving’ the natural reaction?
On Thursday morning, I paid my monthly visit to a local Christian care home. In alternate months, I either lead devotions for the residents and staff, or I bring Holy Communion. This time, it was a Holy Communion month.
So, I led a short service in the lounge, and then Deborah and I took the bread and wine to those residents who had not been able to make it to the service. We offered the elements in each room where someone was, because all the residents are Christians.
Entering one room, we found a lady who had lost most of her sight and a lot of her hearing. But in her adversity, this beautiful saint had still found a way to give thanks and praise to her God. She had an A4 notepad and a Sharpie pen. In her large handwriting (due to her sight loss) she was writing out on one sheet after another the opening verses of her favourite hymns. This was how she expressed her devotion despite her limitations. She presented me with a sheet on which she had written the first verse of ‘Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing.’
That lady’s witness was a challenge to me.
How is each one of us growing in our faith? Are our good works making a difference? Are we growing closer to God? Do we know his strength enabling us to endure in faith even in difficulty? Do our hearts leap with joyful praise?
We have every good reason:
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? The words of the Psalmist have echoed throughout history. Most Christians live as the minority in their society. We have had to cope with a transition from being the majority culture to being the minority, seen in so many ways and not least the way recent decisions in Parliament trampled on the sanctity of life.
But the problem goes back to before the Psalmist. In today’s passage, we have a young Israelite girl taken captive by raiders from Aram (verse 2). It’s not the full exile of many centuries later, but it still poses the question of how to live out your faith as a good witness when your beliefs are not the dominant ones. Even those still living in the Promised Land know the threat of the King of Aram and his army, as the King of Israel makes clear by the fear he displays when he assumes his opposite number wants to pick a quarrel with him (verse 7).
The story of Naaman’s healing shows several Gospel values we would do well to emulate in our witness. Sometimes they are displayed by God’s people, sometimes by those receiving blessing, and sometimes they are the opposite of the behaviour that is condemned in the passage.
Firstly, love
Don’t you think the attitude of the young girl in forced slavery is remarkable? Separated from her parents, much like the dreaded ICE officers are doing to immigrants in the USA at present, surely she is living in fear.
And what does she do? She loves her enemy. She shows concern for Naaman’s condition and knows how he might be healed. No resentment gets in the way. Instead, she blesses a man who doubtless was significant in causing her plight.
In the later history of God’s people, when many had been taken into exile in Babylon, and the Psalmist had voiced their feelings with those words with which I began, ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’, the prophet Jeremiah had an answer for them. In his famous letter to the exiles in chapter 29 of his prophecy, he tells them to ‘seek the welfare of the city to which they have been taken’. It’s similar. And people notice it.
To whom can we show love, despite the fact that they may be opposed to our most cherished beliefs and values? It may be a family member who has rejected the way we brought them up. It may be a political representative who stands for a party or policies that we believe are harmful to us and to others.
Think of the ways in which our society is becoming more divided and ask where we can show love to all parties. The algorithms of social media promote the viewing of content that is negative and causes anger, thus contributing to division and even violence. We have seen the consequences at the ballot box and on the streets. Imagine what we could do if we brought love into those situations.
Secondly, grace
The King of Aram thinks that Naaman’s healing can be bought. He tries to buy favour with his opposite number in Israel by sending Naaman with ten talents of silver (that’s about 340 kilograms), six thousand shekels of gold (around 69 kilos), and ten sets of clothing (verse 5). It’s so over the top that the King of Israel thinks it’s a trick to provoke conflict.
It’s a common attitude. We think we can buy the favour and blessing of God. Some of us do it by trying to be good enough (whatever that is) in our lives. Some of us try, in the words of Kate Bush, to ‘make a deal with God.’
But it doesn’t work. God rejects these approaches. He gives freely to the undeserving. We cannot make ourselves deserving of his blessing, but he still gives. And here he heals way before Naaman professes any faith in him. It is undiluted grace.
It is our calling to be grace-bearers in the world, even to those opposed to us. It’s very easy for us to call down fire and brimstone on the enemies of God, and we are altogether rather too practised in the art of cursing others, but God in Christ calls us to a different approach. The Christ who prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing’ is our Lord. It may go against the grain for us, but how else are people going to be opened to the possibilities of redemption?
You may want to write to your MP. It may be something you feel passionately about, and you may think the MP is likely to disagree with you. Write with grace. Bless them. Tell them you are praying for them. So many Christians write letters and emails to their MPs in such a hostile spirit that we have a pretty terrible reputation in Parliament. Speak grace. Build a relationship, if you can. You never know what opportunities that might create in the long run.
Thirdly, humility
I see this in two ways in the reading, and it’s all to do with the central encounter between Elisha and Naaman. For Elisha’s part, he does not have to come out to Naaman and do something spectacular that will build his brand or his platform, as we would say today. He just sends his messenger with the instructions Naaman needs (verse 10). It’s not about show. Elisha only cares about the exalting of the name of the Lord, not the exalting of his own name. If that means staying in the shadows, then fine.
For Naaman’s part, he must put aside his pride to wash himself in the waters of the Jordan, not in the apparently superior rivers of Abana and Pharpar in Damascus (verse 12).
Humility in pointing to our God and not to ourselves, and humility in that we must put aside our pride to meet with the one true God. That is central. What else could be our response when the Gospel is about grace and mercy?
It is not that we want to do the exaggerated ‘very ‘umble’ Uriah Heep-type routine, nor is it that we want to dress up low self-esteem in some ‘I am a worm’ attitude, but it is to say that we want to deflect all the glory from ourselves to where it belongs.
You may recall Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian of ‘The Hiding Place’ fame. She and her sister Betsy were imprisoned by the Nazis for hiding Jews as an expression of their faith. Betsy died in the concentration camp. After the war, Corrie exercised a remarkable ministry of compassion and reconciliation at no small cost to herself.
After she had given a talk or a sermon at an event, she would often have people come up to her and thank her for what she said. How did she handle the compliments? She said she thought of them as like a bouquet of flowers. She would smell the beautiful scent and then say, ‘These are really for you, Lord.’
Is that an attitude we can cultivate? A humility that gives glory to God?
Fourthly, thanksgiving
After he is healed, Naaman wants to offer Elisha a gift. But the prophet declines it. This is not about him. It was God who healed Naaman (verses 15-16).
But Naaman still wants to show his gratitude, and he wants to do so by transferring his allegiance to the Lord who had healed him. He does so, following the pagan belief of many cultures in Old Testament times, that the gods were limited to certain geographical areas, and so he asks to take some of the Promised Land home with him to the land where the idol Rimmon (whom he now probably realises is a false god) is worshipped (verses 17-18).
The measure of a true response to a genuine encounter with the Lord is simply this: thanksgiving. Remember when Jesus healed ten lepers, and just one returned to give thanks. That was the one who truly knew and appreciated what Jesus had done for him.
There are a couple of sides to this for us. For one, while we shall be unconditionally blessing people with grace and love in all humility, we shall be praying that some will respond with thanksgiving and encounter God in Christ. Our blessing is never conditional upon a person responding in a particular way, but it is a witness, and we put prayer behind that witness that people will respond in thanksgiving to God.
The other side for us is that we ourselves, as those who have already discovered the God of grace and love in Jesus Christ, are seen to be thankful people, too. At the graduation service for our son on Wednesday, the Dean spoke on Paul’s words in Colossians 3, ‘And be thankful.’ She quoted the famous words of Dag Hammarskjöld:
For all that has been, thank you. For all that is to come, yes!
How revolutionary would a thankful lifestyle be in an acquisitive society?
Fifthly, generosity
So the last part of the story is the dark episode that ends it, one that we often don’t read. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, is scandalised that his master lets Naaman go without him leaving a gift. He says these chilling words to himself:
“My master was too easy on Naaman, this Aramean, by not accepting from him what he brought. As surely as the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him.” (verse 20)
‘My master was too easy on Naaman.’ Here is someone who does not understand grace. ‘I will run after him and get something from him.’ It’s all about getting, not giving. As such, his character is contrary to the God he supposedly serves. He is a precursor of the TV evangelists and other scammers, determined to make money out of those who have a need.
But God is a generous giver, not a taker. God gave out of love in creation. God gave his only begotten Son for the salvation of the world. God gave the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus. Gave, gave, gave. God is generous.
I am not about to suggest that we are like Gehazi. He became diseased in body because he was diseased in spirit. But I do ask the question, what are we known for in society? Although we are called to speak out against wrongdoing, are we primarily known as those who are negative? Think again of those letters to MPs. Or are we known as those who positively give to society, who overflow with generosity to those in need and for the well-being of our towns, our cultures, and our nations?
By the grace of God, may it be that we are not a Gehazi, who grasp for ourselves, but a servant girl who knows how to love, an Elisha who humbly lives in and by the grace of God, and a Naaman, who by thanksgiving grows in grace.
Surely such a people will have an impact for Christ on their culture.
There is a certain cluster of topics that a minister can preach on and will know they are likely to provoke guilt feelings in the congregation. One is evangelism: which of us truly is a good witness to Christ? Another is prayer: can any of us say we pray enough, or are close to God?
And another is today’s subject: giving. How easy it is for a preacher to lay the guilt on thick when it comes to money. You may have had someone use emotional manipulation to obtain greater giving from you, either in the church or in the world. You may have been sucked in by the consumerism of our culture. If I had wanted to do that here, I would have preached this sermon before our annual Gift Day, not after – as is the case.
In our reading, Paul is not talking about regular giving. He is organising a collection among the early churches to support those in Jerusalem who are suffering from a famine. What he’s promoting here is closer to the one-off gifts we make when a natural disaster hits somewhere in the world, and the Disasters Emergency Committee springs into action with TV adverts.
One or two of you will say, so why don’t you go to the Old Testament teaching about tithes and offerings, then? Isn’t that about regular giving? If we did a series of sermons on the subject, I would cover it. But at this point I will just say that tithes and offerings are more complicated than some Christians think. Translating them to our situation is not that straightforward.
But in today’s passage, even though it is about one-off gifts, Paul goes back to basic Christian principles about giving to make his appeal here. Those same basic principles should be at the foundation of all our decisions about giving. So let’s explore them.
Firstly, Generosity
6 Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
Now this is a verse that has been abused by some Christian leaders. They have made false promises to congregations on the basis of this verse that if they give a lot of money, then God will bless them with a lot of money. They have appealed to the base instinct that wants to get rich and said, if you want to be wealthy then ‘sow a seed’ – usually into that preacher’s ministry. Sure enough, the preacher then gets enough money to fly everywhere in a private jet, while those who give find no improvement in their financial position and may even be driven into poverty. I think there is a special place in Hell for such preachers.
But there is still an important principle here, and that is the call for the Christian to have a generous character. There is only one way to develop a generous character, and that is to be generous.
We have good reason for doing this: we follow a generous God. I shall have more to say about that in a few minutes, but for now let’s note that Paul ends this passage on that note:
15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
God’s indescribable gift is Jesus! How generous was God in giving up his only begotten Son to take on human flesh and die and rise again for the salvation of the world? We seek to give generously, because we love and serve a God who is the supreme generous giver.
What kind of earthly parent would ask, how little can I get away with giving to my children? We know instead that loving parents give to their children at their own expense. This is what God has done for us. This is why we are called to be generous givers.
So a question we need to ask of ourselves when assessing our giving to the church is not, ‘How little can I get away with?’ but ‘How much from my income and in my circumstances would constitute generous giving?’
Remember: this is about the growth of Christian character. Do I desire to be like our generous God?
Secondly, Cheerfulness
7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
‘God loves a cheerful giver.’ The late American Baptist preacher and sociologist Tony Campolo put this verse into practice. When driving on a toll road and coming up to the toll booth, he would wind his window down, give money to the clerk on duty, and say to them, ‘This is for me, and also for my friend in the car behind.’ Then, as he drove away, he would watch in his rear view mirror the ensuing conversation between the toll clerk and the next driver. You’ve guessed: Campolo didn’t know the driver behind him from Adam, but he took joy in his giving.
Your trivia fact for this week is that the Greek word translated in English as ‘cheerful’ is hilaros, from which we get our word ‘hilarious’. Does God love a hilarious giver? Why not? Tony Campolo had much hilarity in paying for the driver behind him. And is not God full of joy and hilarity?
So I’m very much trying to avoid making this sermon one of those gloomy ones that load more and more guilt on people. As I said at the beginning, the moment people hear the sermon is on this subject, the risk of ladling guilt on people is high.
And I hope you heard that in Paul’s language, much as he wants the Corinthians to give generously, there is no emotional manipulation here: the decision on how much to give should not be made ‘reluctantly or under compulsion’.
What if Christians are reluctant to give? When [my predecessor] John Illsley began his ministry in Sheffield, the local Anglican vicar was Robert Warren. He was in charge of a massive church with several satellite congregations across Sheffield: St Thomas, Crookes. They saw four-figure attendances on Sundays, and due to their growth had held several appeals to support more building. Warren said in a book that if people did not want to give, the answer was not to make them feel guilty. Rather, it was to give more grace. It is when we truly understand how gracious and merciful God has been to us in Christ that we shall want to give. Then it will be a freewill decision, and it will be joyful.
Thirdly, Trust
8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written:
‘They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures for ever.’
10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
Giving is an act of trust. I confess that for a long time I had trouble believing in a God who was a generous Father. My human father certainly showed me love, but my upbringing was one where for the most part my parents didn’t have it easy financially. I would always be the child in the class at school who received the cheapest Christmas presents. I overheard conversations between Mum and Dad about how they were going to manage their money.
But I learned an amazing lesson about the generous Father I could trust when I wanted to go to theological college and explore what God’s call on my life was. It was near the end of the days of student grants, not student loans, and the college that accepted me did not qualify for mandatory grants. My Local Education Authority took that as reason to deny me a grant.
The college told me I needed to guarantee my funding for the first year, and I appealed against the refusal to give me a grant. Forty-eight hours before the deadline the college gave me, I still hadn’t heard about my appeal. Phoning up, I was told, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Faulkner, there is a letter in the post saying we have rejected your appeal.’
It was at this late juncture that people suddenly started giving me money. My parents rediscovered a long-forgotten savings account. A student who was taking a year out between Sixth Form and college to work and save money for a car felt prompted to give that money to me. That student’s boyfriend also felt prompted to give me some funds. As did two elderly ladies at church, one of whom wrote the most moving letter in which she said, ‘It seems like God is calling you to trust him to meet your needs. He will meet ours, too.’
The next Sunday evening I was preaching at another church in our circuit. I preached on ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and said that God had met my needs for college. In fact, I only had three-quarters, but I didn’t tell them that.
After the service, a middle-aged single man invited me back to his flat for coffee. As we sat in his living room, he explained that he had planned a three-week holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie. But his auntie had since died, and he no longer felt like going. He had already exchanged his sterling currency for New Zealand dollars, but since doing so their dollar had been devalued. Holding onto the money in the hope that the dollar’s value would improve, in fact it kept declining. Now this money was just annoying him. Would I like to take this annoyance off his hands?
Before I could say anything, he had thrown some plastic Thomas Cook envelopes into my lap. I can still remember the precise amount. 2310 NZ dollars. My Dad worked for NatWest and got me a staff rate of exchange: £742.31. Our friend had originally exchanged £1000 – and we’re talking a few decades ago now!
God blesses us, not so that we can financially keep up with the Joneses, but so that we can bless others. Let us trust him.
Conclusion, Thanksgiving
11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. 14 And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Originally, I wanted to make a whole fourth point about thanksgiving, but time is not on my side and so I just want to emphasise that thanksgiving is the desired result of true Christian giving. The recipients of our generosity will thank God (verse 11). Their thanksgiving will overflow (verse 12). God will be praised, because people will see us living out our faith (verse 13) as we respond to his grace (verse 14). And as I noted earlier, this is all rooted in our thanksgiving for God’s giving to us (verse 15).
If thanksgiving is at the heart of our giving, then this is about worship. Our giving is not a subscription to a club or even fund-raising: that is why in a service, I refer to the offering, not the collection.
By the grace of God, may we learn to give as an act of worship.
(This is a second consecutive repeat sermon from six years ago – sorry about that, but the week has been thoroughly disrupted by loss of landline and broadband for five days. I’m really not sure the words ‘BT’ and ‘Business’ belong together in the expression ‘BT Business Contract’!)
Every time the England football team has qualified for a major tournament since 1996, that songs – ‘Three Lions’ – is dusted down and sung again.
There is a sense of ‘coming home’ when Mary visits her older cousin Elizabeth. It’s not immediately obvious in English translations of the Bible, but there are allusions in this story to 2 Samuel 6:2-19, where King David and his men bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. Just as the ark of the covenant was the portable sign of God’s presence among his people, so now in the Incarnation Jesus will be ‘the portable presence of God’, if that doesn’t sound too irreverent. And just as David danced before the ark of the covenant, so the infant John leaps in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. The prophetic voice in Israel has been silent since Malachi four hundred years earlier, but now God is at work. Like that sentence in ‘The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe’, ‘Aslan is on the move.’
So what happens when God is on the move? Blessing – that’s what happens. Mary is blessed. Her baby is blessed. Elizabeth is blessed – she says she is ‘favoured’, which is a word that explains what blessing is. And surely her leaping, dancing baby is also blessed.
What blessings appear when God comes home to his people?
For Elizabeth’s unborn baby John, it is the blessing of joy. He leaps in the womb (verse 41) and Elizabeth says he ‘leaped for joy’ (verse 44). Why would John leap for joy?
Remember what their relationship will be. They are cousins, but John will be born first and he will herald the coming of his cousin Jesus, the Messiah. John will be the forerunner. He will be the compère, introducing the main event. He will be the best man to the bridegroom. In adult life, nothing will give John greater joy than the advent of Jesus. He will be filled with joy to announce that the Messiah is coming. He will not be interested in promoting himself; instead, his passion will be to introduce Jesus, and then get out of the way so that all the spotlight can fall on his cousin.
Our joy too is to announce the presence of Jesus. For in him, God has come to be with all who will follow him. We are not left alone, for the One called Immanuel, God with us, is here. We have no interest in promoting ourselves, only in highlighting Jesus, for he is our joy and nothing gives us greater joy than to see people recognise him, acknowledge him, and celebrate his love.
Remember what I said that the infant John leaping in his mother’s womb is a New Testament parallel to King David leaping and dancing for joy before the ark of the covenant, the Old Testament sign of God’s presence, being restored to the midst of God’s people. Does anything give us more joy than to know that in Christ God is present? We are not left alone. We are not deserted. Even in the silence, God is here.
So let us be joyful this Christmas. We rightly query the self-indulgence of society at Christmas, and the excessive celebration of – well, what, exactly? But if anyone has reason for joy at Christmas it is the Christian.
That said, being truly joyful in this season can be difficult. There are so many pressures and things to do that if we are not careful, we get so run down that we are unable to celebrate. I know that is true of me as a minister, with all the extra services, and I can remember the time my daughter asked me how grumpy I was going to be this Christmas.
But I also know I am not alone in that experience. It is widespread. How ironic that the loudest voice I have heard in the last year or two urging people to simplify Christmas in order to make it better has been the television and internet money saving expert, Martin Lewis. What’s the irony in Martin Lewis urging people to simplify Christmas in order to enjoy it more? He isn’t a Christian. He’s Jewish.
Can we find space again this year to be filled with joy at the coming of our Lord?
For Elizabeth herself, the blessing of God coming home to his people is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
God not only comes near to Elizabeth, God comes right into Elizabeth’s life. It is a sign of what is to come. The coming of God will not end with the departure of Jesus but will continue in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Now the coming of the Holy Spirit can lead to all sorts of gifts in God’s people. What do we see in Elizabeth? Let’s read on:
42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Elizabeth’s gift is to ‘recognises blessedness’[1]. In other words, the Holy Spirit enables Elizabeth to recognise what God is doing, to notice where God is bestowing favour. So when God comes close to Elizabeth and fills her with the Holy Spirit, she receives the ability to discern what God is doing, and then to welcome it and live accordingly.
Now when you state the work of the Holy Spirit like that, isn’t that something we long for and desperately need? Isn’t it critical for us too to be able to discern what God is doing and respond appropriately? In today’s church we often lurch from one thing to another, trying this trick or that technique in order to see things turn around, but I rarely hear people say, let us seek God to know what God is doing. It’s as if we can solve the problems of the church by human ingenuity and technology. And we can’t. Not only that, God won’t let us, because if things turned for the better that way we would end up glorifying ourselves, telling ourselves what clever folk we are, rather than bringing praise to God.
Remember that in Elizabeth and Mary’s day things were bad. As I said in the introduction, it had been four hundred years since God had spoken through the prophet Malachi. God’s people were not even free in their own land, they were under the occupying force of Rome. They weren’t truly it at home: they saw themselves as being in exile, similar to when they had been carted off to Babylon in the sixth century BC. The people of God in their day were looking around for ways to turn the situation around, just as we are with the aging and declining numbers of the church.
But unlike the leaders of her day, Elizabeth realised that the problem was a spiritual issue. When God drew near, she was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to see what God was doing. Surely her blessing is a lesson for us. As we long to find a way forward today, it won’t do to follow the fads and fashions. We need instead to pray, ‘God, come close to us. Holy Spirit, fill us with the presence and wisdom of God.’ Should not this be our posture in response to the plight we find ourselves in – prayer rather than conferences and committees?
Finally, Mary: what is her blessing when God comes near? It is the gift of faith. For as the discerning Elizabeth recognises,
45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her!
We need to pause and reflect on just how remarkable Mary’s faith was. Unlike our society, to fall pregnant outside marriage was shameful. And while the imposition of the death penalty by stoning was by no means certain, the ending of her betrothal by divorce and social shaming and ostracization were sure bets. In the face of this, Mary believes her Lord.
Think also about Mary’s age. Marriages were arranged soon after girls reached puberty, and the young men were just a few years older, but not much. Mary is therefore probably about thirteen or fourteen when she learns of her unusual supernatural pregnancy. At that tender age, Mary believes her Lord. In a society where older people were respected and younger people weren’t, Mary is the one who is the example of faith.
The fact that God has moved close to Mary in sending Gabriel to announce the birth and in the Holy Spirit overshadowing her to cause the pregnancy has put Mary in touch with the great tradition of faith in which she stands. She
places herself squarely in solidarity with all God’s people and recognises in her own experience the establishing at least in principle of all that the faith of God’s people had encouraged them someday to expect from God.[2]
It all comes alive in Mary. The great stories of faith and trust in the past, long dormant in the four-hundred-year silence of God, are seen now in a young teenage girl.
And if we feel remote from God and the great heroes of faith, then one thing we can surely do is petition God to draw near to us that our faith might be ignited and we display faith that puts us too clearly within our great spiritual heritage. We might stop banging on about the greatness of the Wesleys and begin instead to emulate them.
But let’s notice too that Mary’s faith is not some vague, general belief. Elizabeth defines it as ‘she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her’. Often that is the challenge of faith. God makes many promises to us in the Scriptures and either they seem hard to believe (as was surely the case for Mary with her pregnancy) or we are left waiting a long time for God to come through on what he has promised.
But Mary stood firm. God had spoken. Yes, she sought clarification from Gabriel, but unlike Zechariah she did not lapse into unbelief. It is symbolic, surely, that when Zechariah expresses unbelief he is struck dumb, because he had nothing worthwhile to say, whereas Mary, who asks questions but still believes can hurry rejoicing to her cousin’s house and pour out her praise in the hymn we call the Magnificat (verses 46-55).
Maybe it’s easier when we sense the nearness of God to stand firm. But whether we currently feel God to be close to us or not, are there divine promises where we are still waiting to see the fulfilment? Is God asking us to wait trustingly to see what he will do?
We might be facing the temptation to wobble in our faith. If we do, remember how the children of Israel wobbled at the Red Sea when they felt trapped between the waters and Pharaoh’s army. And remember what Moses said to them: ‘Stand still and you will see the deliverance of the Lord.’ Where is God calling us to stand still and see his deliverance, like Mary?
So this Christmas, as we tell the two-thousand-year-old story of God coming to his people in human flesh, may it not be another act of going through the motions. May it be a time when we sense God drawing near to us and filling us with joy. May we sense God’s nearness as he pours out his Spirit on us and we discern what he is doing, so that we may respond and join in. And may the closeness of God’s presence strengthen our faith so that we may believe his promises and stand firm to see his deliverance.
When I started school, it was quickly apparent that I had an aptitude for Maths. Doing sums, learning my tables and all that came naturally to me. I just seemed to understand it.
But what I couldn’t understand was why the other children in my class didn’t get it. In my young naïveté I thought that what was natural to me was normal for everyone.
It took me a long time to realise that Maths is a ‘Marmite subject.’ To me, there is a beauty and an elegance to numbers, and I am of course immensely proud that this is what our son is studying at university. But now I realise that others don’t have that same flair – although they have talents I can only dream of possessing.
Nevertheless, for all the ways in which as adults we understand that people have different gifts, we still hit those moments in our lives when we feel like banging our head against a brick wall when we can’t get someone to understand something that it as clear as daylight to us.
And in our reading, Jesus knows that the members of the crowd are like that when it comes to spiritual matters. They ask the wrong questions, betraying their wrong desires, because they just don’t ‘get’ the life of the Spirit.
But rather than getting frustrated, Jesus knows what the blockages are. He knows that their grumbling (verse 41) and their failure to understand that he is so much more than the son of Joseph and Mary (verse 42) betrays the truth that they have no spiritual life.
But he knows how people come into the life of the Spirit, and we can be grateful that he explains it to us, because that’s what today’s reading is mainly about. So when we encounter friends and family members who seem to be caught in a spiritual log jam, not understanding what we desperately want them to know, the insights of Jesus here can help us.
The first requirement of the spiritual life is to be drawn by the Father.
Jesus says,
44 ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.
Nobody can come to faith in Jesus unless God the Father first draws them.
Does this mean that God only draws certain people, and leaves others to damnation, as John Calvin believed? No. It simply means that the initiative rests with God. Coming to faith is not a mere human act. We cannot know God unless God first reveals himself to us.
Why is that? Because we are cut off from him by sin. Our sinful nature and our sinful actions are a barrier between us and God. Because of them, we can never reach him on our own. We can never stand in his presence of our own right, because we cannot and do not match his perfection.
Thankfully, God has always reached out first to humankind. He sent patriarchs, judges, prophets, and finally his only begotten Son, who bridged the chasm between heaven and us by being both fully human and completely divine, and by dying for our sins on the Cross.
So where does that leave us when we have unbelieving friends and relatives? The answer is that it takes us to the place of prayer. No breakthrough happens in the spiritual life except it be underpinned by prayer. Don’t worry in the first instances about how you are going to convince your loved one about Jesus – although it is always good to be prepared with an explanation for the hope we have in us, as the Apostle Peter said (1 Peter 3:15).
Leave the arguments aside at this point. If life in the Spirit requires God to make the first move towards someone, then the application for us is to pray that he will indeed do that in the life of the person for whom we are praying. Let it be our prayer that God will reveal himself to him or her. Let us make that a simple daily prayer: ‘Lord, reveal yourself to [name].’
But be prepared to be in it for the long haul. The spiritual breakthrough may take years. In today’s climate where there is much ignorance and rejection of Christian faith, there may be a lot of barriers for God to break down in order to make himself known to those we love. Someone recently described our task today as what he called ‘low tide evangelism.’ The tide is a long way out, and for the waters of the Spirit to be back on the beach, lapping over those there, will take longer.
So be willing to be persistent. Be resilient in prayer. Be disciplined in regularly praying that simple prayer for God to reveal himself to those you care about.
The second requirement of the spiritual life is to hear the Father.
Jesus says,
45 It is written in the Prophets: “They will all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.
God revealing himself to people will involve him speaking to them. He speaks so that there can be a response. God makes himself known, but then makes clear what needs to happen.
When I look back at my own coming to faith, I see something like this. I grew up in the church, but I mistakenly imbibed what we call a ‘legalistic’ view of religion. That is, I thought Christianity was about keeping the rules and being good – never realising that no-one could be good enough and we needed the Cross of Christ. God showed up in my life at a confirmation class, where the promises and professions of faith in the 1975 Methodist Service Book spoke to me about what was required. That was the point at which faith in Jesus came alive in me.
There are more dramatic stories of God revealing himself and then speaking to people. Some of them come from the Muslim world, where it can be virtually impossible for Christians to speak openly about their faith to Muslims, because they would be arrested, tortured, and executed. Yet there is story upon story coming out of that context of Muslims on a spiritual search who find that Jesus appears to them in a dream, and he shows himself to be the answer to all their yearnings, and so much more than the prophet that the Qu’ran says he is.
For most people, of course, it doesn’t tend to be that intense, it’s more often a quieter experience. But at the heart of it is God revealing himself and speaking to people. In a church context, it may be through a preacher’s words in a sermon. It may be that God uses a conversation with a Christian friend. But one way or another, entry to the life of the Spirit requires that God both shows up in someone’s life and then speaks to them, so that they know how to respond.
What is the application for us here? For one, it stretches out that regular, disciplined praying I have already commended for the ones we love who don’t yet share our faith. Our prayer becomes not only ‘Lord, reveal yourself to [name]’ but, ‘Lord, reveal yourself to [name] and speak to them.’
It’s also about praying that our lives will speak of Christ. Some years ago at a conference, I heard a pastor speak about a lady who came to faith in Christ and joined his church. Her husband didn’t believe, and so she took to leaving out Christian literature on the coffee table, pointing out the Christian actors in TV shows, and incessantly playing Cliff Richard CDs.
It drove the husband mad, and he actually went to see the pastor to ask if he could do something about his wife.
So the pastor spoke to the wife and urged her to lay aside her rather manipulative approach. ‘Let your life speak of Christ,’ he advised her. ‘Ask yourself how Jesus would treat your husband, and do that.’
A while later, the husband asked to see the pastor again. ‘What did you say to my wife?’ The pastor explained.
‘That’s a Jesus I’d like to get to know,’ said the husband.
Only after these first two requirements of God revealing himself and speaking comes the third requirement, which is to believe in Jesus.
Jesus says,
46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
Jesus is the One sent by the Father. Jesus is the only One who has seen the Father. If we want to know what the Father is like, we look at Jesus. He makes him known. Hence why it’s Jesus who appears in these dreams of Muslims that I mentioned.
And therefore, the appropriate response to the Father’s revelation and speech is to believe in Jesus.
But what does that involve? It’s not simply believing in Jesus’ existence. The crowd believed he existed!
This is where all the talk of Jesus being ‘The bread of life’ (verse 48), ‘The bread that comes down from heaven’ in contrast to the manna in the wilderness’ (verses 49-50), and ‘The living bread that came down from heaven’ (verse 51) comes in.
For just as we need physical bread to sustain mortal life, so we need ‘The bread of life’ to sustain eternal life. It is Jesus, and the gift of his life, that sustains us spiritually.
All this comes down to being in relationship with Jesus. It means talking with him. We call that prayer. It means listening to what he has to say to us, certainly in the dialogue of prayer but supremely in the Scriptures. It means doing what he asks of us, because we want to please him. Just as Jesus himself told the tempter in the wilderness that we do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, so, because Jesus himself is divine, we are sustained by his words.
So, what does this mean in terms of our praying for our friends and family members who do not yet know Jesus? Alongside praying that God will reveal himself to them and speak to them, we pray that they may be so captivated by Jesus that they want to enter into a lifetime – well, eternal, actually – relationship with him.
We do not content ourselves with explaining things away by saying, oh, they may not believe but they are good people with good values. That doesn’t bring eternal life. Sure, we may be proud of some of their achievements, but the bottom line is faith in Jesus.
And yes, that may well make some of our praying painful to us. I can’t pretend otherwise. That’s true for me in my praying for others. But Jesus gave his life that we may have eternal life with him – not just when we die, but as a quality of life now, even in the midst of this mortal life. If Jesus was willing to do that, surely we can bear some pain in prayer?
Surely, if we are motivated by God’s love for our friends and relatives, we shall pray for God to reveal himself to them, for God to speak to them, and we shall pray with passion that they may have such an encounter with Jesus that they want to follow him.
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.
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.
It’s a thrill for parents when their child starts speaking. It’s less of a thrill when that child learns the word ‘Why.’ Every question becomes, ‘Why?’
As a child, I was certainly fond of asking ‘Why?’ Not only the dreaded ‘Why do I have to do this thing you are telling me to do?’ but also ‘Why’ in terms of wanting explanations for the way things worked in the world. I know I was persistent on that last kind of question, because my parents bought me a subscription to a children’s magazine called ‘Tell Me Why.’ You can still find old copies on eBay. It comes under eBay’s category of ‘Antiquarian Collectibles’, such is my age now.
As I read the familiar resurrection story from Luke, I realised that one of the questions I wanted to ask of this passage was ‘Why?’ Why did Jesus appear on this occasion to the disciples? What was this resurrection appearance about?
Going over the text, I came up with three answers to that question: why did the risen Jesus appear to the disciples on this occasion? I realised too that the reasons why Jesus appeared to the disciples here are also reasons that are relevant to us.
Firstly, the Risen Jesus brings peace:
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’
These last couple of weeks I could have done with a dose of ‘Peace be with you’ from Jesus. Straight after Holy Week to Easter Day in which I preached or spoke eight times in eight days, I walked into a legal crisis over the text of my book, which I have had to remove from sale.
Then I had serious warning messages flash up on my car dashboard. An investigation by the dealer found that it needs repairs costing over £2000. The fault is something that the manufacturer should have put on the list for last year’s annual service but failed to do so. They are now trying to wriggle out of responsibility on a technicality.
Yes, I could have done with some peace from Jesus.
The one bright part was that I had to submit some blood pressure readings this week to the pharmacist at the doctors’ surgery, and he described my results as ‘gold standard’, so Debbie said that in fact I clearly haven’t had enough stress!
Now on the one hand ‘Peace be with you’ is a fairly standard Jewish greeting. When I flew to and from the Holy Land on El Al Airlines in 1989, every message over the plane’s PA from the pilot or cabin crew always began with ‘Shalom and good evening.’
But here, the disciples really need peace:
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.
A ghost: something not of God. So fear is natural. It’s equally possible to be fearful in the presence of God’s almighty power – which the Resurrection indicates.
The way in which Jesus leads the disciples to peace is basically to reassure them: ‘It’s me. You don’t need to be afraid. You know me.’
It was good news for the disciples then, and it is good news for Jesus’ disciples today. The Resurrection says, don’t stay at a distance from Jesus in your relationship with him.
Do you ever feel nervous about drawing near to Jesus? Here’s a secret: I do. My current devotional pattern comes in two parts. Earlier in the day, I have a reflection on a Bible passage, then at night I ponder how the day has gone in the light of Scripture. I find something to rejoice in, and something to confess. When I keep confessing the same sins and failures regularly, I can tell you I don’t want to draw near to Jesus. But what astonishes me is the way my devotional takes me every day to assurances of forgiveness in the Bible. It’s as if every evening Jesus is saying to me, don’t be afraid, don’t stay at a distance, the best thing you can do is draw near to me.
What about you? Where is the Risen Jesus saying ‘Peace be with you’ to you?
Secondly, the Risen Jesus brings proof:
When people invite others over for dinner, the hosts will usually ask in advance if there is anything they cannot eat or dislike. When people ask Debbie and me that question, they will find out that I am allergic to artichokes and dislike roast pork and gammon. Debbie will say that she cannot face fish or mushrooms. Whenever we go out to a pub or a restaurant for a meal, it is a standing joke that I will order fish to make up for not having it at home. If belly pork is on the menu, you can guarantee Debbie will be tempted.
I take great comfort in the Resurrection narratives, because there (including the one we read today) I learn that Jesus likes to eat fish. In John 21, he cooks a fish breakfast for the disciples after their overnight fishing trip. Here, he shows them his wounds and eats some fish to eat as proof that he is bodily to calm their fears and assuage their doubts (verses 38-43).
Now you may say that what was proof for the disciples two thousand years ago is not proof for us. But it is very strong historical evidence. We do not need to doubt the bodily Resurrection of Jesus.
I never tire of emphasising that the Resurrection is bodily. On Easter Day, I told Midhurst how that was a sign that God is renewing his material creation, and that’s why as Christians we care about things like healing, social justice, and the climate.
Today, I want to say that it also means we don’t need to doubt Jesus but trust in him. It’s why we sing lustily on Easter Day,
We can trust Jesus because he has conquered sin and death in the Resurrection.
I know we will doubt him still from time to time. I do. But when I doubt, I always come back to the Resurrection. It’s real. It’s true. It’s bodily. It’s what makes life worthwhile. I hold onto that in my dark times. Or perhaps more accurately, that’s what holds onto me.
I don’t know what all your doubts and struggles are. Feel free to talk with me about them, if that would help. I simply invite you to remember that the bodily Resurrection is true, and so Jesus can be trusted.
I mean, the Risen Jesus must be trustworthy. He eats fish!
Thirdly and finally, the Risen Jesus brings purpose:
The Risen Jesus has brought good news for the disciples: fear replaced by peace and doubts replaced by proof. Now they can draw near to Jesus and trust him.
But if it’s good news for them it’s also good news for the world. And Jesus the Teacher gives his class of disciples a lesson. He recaps how he had told them he would die and rise again as the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in her Scriptures (verse 44). Then he explains how this was rooted in those Scriptures (verses 45-46) – not so much proof texts, scholars suspect, as allusions to the whole story of Israel as Stephen would tell it before his martyrdom and passages like the Servant Songs, especially the Suffering Servant in Isaiah[2].
Israel’s vocation was to be a light to the nations. Jesus had fulfilled that. Now his disciples had to be the light of the world, taking this good news of peace and trust in Jesus from Jerusalem to the world (verses 47-49).
And in our day, that’s what we continue – being light in the world with the good news of Jesus.
But often we struggle with this vocation. If we have other events in our lives that are good news, we have no problem with sharing: the birth of a child or grandchild, a new job, exam success, a family wedding. We will tell our friends without any problems.
We are more reticent about the good news of Jesus. Has it become stale for us? Are we nervous about the response we shall receive? Are we worried about being a Bible-basher? There are many reasons why we may hold back.
Jesus knows that even though his disciples ‘are witnesses of these things’ (verse 48) they are not ready. They need to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit (verse 49).
We don’t have to wait for the Holy Spirit like they did, but this is a reminder to us that the key to fulfilling our purpose as witnesses is the power of the Spirit. We pray that the Holy Spirit will work through us so that we reflect the light of Jesus in the world. We also pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the right time to speak about Jesus, and the right way to talk about him. We further pray that the Spirit will give us courage when we find that difficult.
There’s a catchphrase from the movie and stage musical Mrs Doubtfire, where the title character repeats the words, ‘Help is on the way.’ That’s what Jesus promises his disciples at the end of this reading. Yes, his offer of peace enables us to draw near to him and not remain fearful of him. Yes, his proofs and evidence of his Resurrection enable us to trust him rather than doubt him. And yes, we are called to share this light with the world, which we may find daunting.
But help is on the way, because Easter will connect us to Pentecost.
[1] Edmond Budry (1854-1932), translated by Richard Birch Hoyle (1875-1939): Thine be the glory.
Big Circumstance 