Living As A People Of Blessing, 2 Kings 5:1-27 (Ordinary 14 Year C)

2 Kings 5:1-27

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.

July 6, 2025 0

Principles of Giving (2 Corinthians 9:6-15)

2 Corinthians 9:6-15

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.

June 22, 2025 1

Epiphany and Covenant Service 2025: The Magi (Matthew 2:1-12)

This is a revised version of a sermon I preached six years ago but which is not on the blog. The text that follows is how I preached it in 2019 and does not exactly conform to the video, because I paraphrased and added some material:

Matthew 2:1-12

Rumour has it that the Nativity Play was cancelled at Parliament this Christmas.

Why? Apparently, they couldn’t find three wise men.

OK, that’s a silly Internet joke I saw during the festive season, along with the cartoon where three wise women bring practical gifts such as a casserole instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But I love the story of the Magi, and with Covenant Sunday falling this year on Epiphany, the feast where the wider Christian Church throughout the world and down through history celebrates the appearing of the Messiah to the Gentiles, we have a story that also says much to the Covenant theme of commitment to Christ.

Here, then, are three aspects of the Magi and their coming that speak to the question of our commitment to Christ.

Firstly, the Magi were Gentiles.

Yes, I know that’s stating the obvious, but it’s important. Matthew is the most Jewish of all the four Gospels, but no Jew comes to worship the infant Christ in his Gospel, only the Magi from the east – perhaps modern-day Iraq.

The Magi represent all that is wrong in spiritual practice in the eyes of faithful Jews. They were astrologers, and astrology began in ancient Babylon. When Israel was taken captive to Babylon, astrology was a common habit of the surrounding culture. In the parts of Isaiah that relate to that part of Israel’s history, astrology is condemned and ridiculed. It is not the way to find truth and purpose in life. For the Jew, that could only be found by following the one true God – as it should for us, too, and which incidentally is why no Christian should devote time to their horoscope.

It is these unsound, unclean people that come in the highly Jewish Gospel according to Matthew and worship the infant Christ. Matthew is telling us that the Gospel, while originating with the Jews, is for the whole world. It’s no coincidence that Matthew ends his Gospel with the so-called Great Commission, where the risen Jesus sends his followers to the whole world with the call to discipleship.

Therefore the first challenge I want to bring from the story of the Magi this morning to us on Covenant Sunday is our call to be bearers of the Gospel to all people, including those who are not remotely like us. Who are the people who to us are unclean or unsound? Who are the people whose lifestyles we would instinctively condemn? Christ lived and died for them, too. Who are the people with whom we would not naturally associate, the people we wouldn’t mix with at a social gathering? Again, Christ lived and died for them.

I’ve noticed that one of the most contentious issues among residents of Byfleet has to do with what happens when travellers come and pitch up on land in the village. I understand some of that reaction, given the mess they often leave and the inconvenience they cause. But one of the great areas of numerical growth in Christianity in the UK these days is among travellers and gypsies. Largely, the Gospel was originally taken to them by our Pentecostal friends. Now there are indigenous gypsy congregations and Christian conventions. We might not want to have too much to do with them. But God loves them and has reached out to them through other Christians.

So I’d like us to consider this Covenant Sunday whether there are any people we might naturally think are unsavoury, but who need God’s love in Christ to be shown to them. Does anyone occur to you?

Secondly, the Magi decided to go.

The Magi go on their long and arduous journey, and when the biblical scholars tell them and Herod that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, they are still the only ones who go. Those who apparently know their Scriptures do nothing.

Christian commitment involves hearing the call of God and doing something about it. This the Magi demonstrate in spades. They don’t even know the Scriptures, but they follow the call as they have heard it the best they can. The strange sign of the star, the biblical reference from the prophet Micah to Bethlehem, and finally the warning in the dream not to return to Herod. In all these ways they show the characteristic of true disciples: they hear and they go.

I sometimes fear that we in the modern church are rather like the biblical scholars whom Herod called. We have heard and read the Christian message over and over again down years and decades, but do we always allow it to have a challenging or transforming effect on us? Do we hear the Bible read and then move on? Do we just read it and then close it?

I may have told you before the story of the Argentinean pastor who preached on the same text every week for a year.

‘Pastor, when you are you going to preach on something different?’ asked one church member.

‘When you start obeying this passage,’ replied the pastor.

Something like that can be our problem. We are fed a diet of weekly sermons, we think we know the Bible and our faith quite well, but how much have we let it change us?

Yet along come the Magi and for all their learning in other areas they are simple when it comes to matters of faith. God shows them what to do, and off they go.

I believe that sometimes it’s the newer and spiritually younger Christians who come along, get hold of something basic about the faith, and run with it in ways that really the experienced Christians might have done.

One example of this would be the Addlestone (now Runnymede) Food Bank. The person who had the vision for this was a middle-aged woman who had only recently found faith through an Alpha Course, but she quickly grasped that following Jesus meant caring about the poor. Her professional background was as a stockbroker. She was used to managing accounts containing many millions of pounds. She used her managerial and entrepreneurial skills in the service of God’s kingdom to sell the vision of the food bank to the churches, to start it up, organise, and run it, before being snapped up by the Trussell Trust for a national rôle with them. As I say, she was young in the faith, but she heard the voice of God and ran with it.

What more might we do if we allowed ourselves to be that bit less jaded about all the things we have heard over and over again in the Scriptures and in the preaching of the word?

More specifically, is there one particular thing where you know God has been giving you a little poke for a long time? Wouldn’t the Covenant Service be a great time finally to say ‘yes’ to him, ‘I’ll do it’?

Thirdly and finally, the Magi decided to give.

So yes, here we’re onto the gold, frankincense and myrrh. Not a casserole dish in sight.

The popular idea is that gold is for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh to mark death. It’s very appealing, it fits with what comes later in Jesus’ ministry, but Matthew makes no such connections. This interpretation first arose in the second century AD, courtesy of the church leader Irenaeus.

As the New Testament scholar Dr Ian Paul says [in the article linked above],

In the narrative, they are simply extravagant gifts fit for the true ‘king of the Jews’.

And it’s as simple as that. The ‘king of the Jews’ who will come to be seen in Matthew as the king of all creation is worthy of extravagant giving. The gifts presented are worth a lot of money and come on the back of the immense giving of time and energy the magi have put in to come this great distance and pay homage to Jesus.

I wonder whether as experienced Christians our whole approach to giving becomes jaded. The giving of our time and energy can feel no different from a job or from involvement in a social activity or a hobby. The giving of our money can seem like little more than a subscription to a favourite cause, like just another standing order or direct debit from our current account.

Does it take the passion of newer Christians to get us in touch again with what giving could be for disciples of Jesus? Younger Christians are often passionate and inelegant in their worship and their giving. We may look down on their uncouth offering. We may give them a withering look or damn them with faint praise. We may do something similar not just with new Christians but with new churches.

But rather than resort to dressing up cynicism in spiritual language, we might better ask how the giving aspect of our own discipleship might be freshened up. Maybe in our spiritual lives we are tired and worn out. So perhaps that means we need a renewed encounter with Jesus himself.

And surely the God of love and mercy wants to refresh our dry Christian lives. He would love to give us a new vision of his Son through the work of his Holy Spirit in our lives. He would love to bring us to the feet of Jesus again. For there we encounter the One whose whole existence is of self-giving love. He loved us enough to give up heaven for human life – and humble, poor, obscure human life at that. He loved us enough to walk the way of the Cross so that our woundedness might be healed, our sins forgiven, and the power of dark forces broken. He loves us even now so much that he longs to give eternal life and spiritual gifts and blessings.

Yes, when we encounter God the Giver in Jesus Christ, we shall surely be inspired into a renewal of our own giving.

What I’d like to note as we conclude is that in twelve short verses where Matthew tells the story vividly but concisely, the Magi who leave by dodging Herod are men who have been changed from how they were at the beginning of the account. They arrived through the dubious offices of astrology. But they left, having listened to Scripture, having met Jesus, and having listened to God in a dream.

So are we open on this Covenant Sunday to being changed, too? Who are our Gentiles who need the Good News? Are we just sermon-tasters of theoretical Bible students, or are we like the Magi ‘going’ – that is, putting what we have heard into action? And have we encountered Jesus the Giver, who stirs up the extravagant giving of our hearts?

Friends, we too need to be changed. May we be open this Covenant Service and this New Year to the transforming power of Christ through his Holy Spirit.

January 5, 2025 0

Making A Choice About Jesus, John 6:1-21 (Ordinary 17 Year B)

John 6:1-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All he can see is the problem.

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

Meanwhile, all along, Jesus knows the divine possibilities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

¹⁴After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ ¹⁵Jesus, 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.

July 28, 2024 0

Being A Blessing

At a recent all age worship service, we were looking at what the Book of Proverbs says about riches. At the end of our ‘AAW’, we like to give the congregation a take-away to remind them of the theme. This time, one of our team suggested we give everybody a small amount of money – 50p – and invite them to use it in a Christian way. If people were badly off and needed it for themselves, they could keep it. However, we hoped that many would do some good with it. Hopefully we’ll hear some good stories in due course.

Well, one vicar in North Yorkshire has done the same thing on a much larger scale. I don’t often say the words, ‘Here is an inspiring story in the Daily Mail’, but on this occasion read this and enjoy.

November 8, 2012 1

Tag: generosity