Paul’s Favourite Church 4: Shining Like Stars (Philippians 2:12-30)

Philippians 2:12-30

I’ve talked before about how my late father was an amateur astronomer, and how he shared his love of the subject with me as a child. I never picked up his level of interest, but he was understandably proud of one of my sister’s boys who went on to study astrophysics as part of his first degree.

But I still have fond memories of gazing up into a clear night sky with him, while he pointed out various constellations, and the names of the stars.

When my daughter as a teenager started asking me the same questions when we were walking home at night from her youth club, I installed an app on my phone that we could point to the sky and it would show us what all the stars and constellations were.

And recently my wife has been noticing these heavenly objects when we have been out on late night dog walks. So for her birthday I bought her a planisphere, a printed resource that helps you identify the planets and the stars.

I still get a thrill – and a poignant memory – when I see Orion or The Plough. I often think of Psalm 8 and get a sense of wonder and even of worship:

³When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
⁴what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

In today’s passage Paul doesn’t call us to gaze in wonder at the stars but figuratively to emulate them:

Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky (verse 15b)

In the world, our calling is to shine like stars in a dark sky. We are to be those points of light in the darkness. Rather than just moan about all the darkness around us, we get on with shining with the light of Christ.

We do this, says Paul, under his call to

continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.

God has saved us for a purpose. He has made us new. Now we live out that newness of life – but not on our own, because God is at work in us to make it possible. And this will make us like shining stars in the darkness of the world.

So what qualities does Paul say will enable the Philippians to shine like stars in their dark world? I think we’ll find that things haven’t changed that much.

Firstly, kindness:

¹⁴Do everything without grumbling or arguing, ¹⁵so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’

Well, that should be a shoo-in, shouldn’t it? Don’t grumble or argue.

Unfortunately, it isn’t in some churches. It is more widespread than some of us would like to believe, especially when we tell ourselves that our churches are friendly and welcoming.

Now I freely admit that as a minister I am sensitive to this one, because we church leaders are often the target of the grumbling, when people don’t like what we do or what we don’t do. You may know the old joke where the question is: ‘What’s the favourite Sunday lunch in a Christian household?’ The answer? ‘Roast preacher.’

And I also know that some of this grumbling comes our way because in these days of declining and aging congregations, people pin massive hopes on a new minister being the one to turn around the losses. Which is why at one previous circuit welcome service I quoted the famous line from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian: ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy.’ The job of Messiah was taken two thousand years ago.

I’m also sensitive to this, though, not for the barbs thrown at people like me, but because in my position I hear the stories of those who have left a church, having been wounded by cruel words and actions. Do you know the damage caused by a harsh word in church?

More positively, did you notice just how highly Paul rates the idea of avoiding grumbling and arguing? He says it contributes to us being ‘blameless and pure.’ So often when we think about what makes us blameless and pure we think about the avoidance of certain ‘big’ sins, not least those involving sexual impurity. And I’m certainly not denying that these things are important.

But here, Paul says that if we want to be ‘blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation’’, then saying no to grumbling and arguing in the church is also part of this.

And doing this also makes us shine: we become ‘without fault in a warped and crooked generation’. A Christian community that chooses kindness over harshness will stand out in society. Indeed, we shine like stars in the dark sky.

When we are among our friends outside the church, can we truly say that the congregation we belong to is such a wonderful place of kindness and care, where people are not ripped apart by the words of others but rather are built up? Wouldn’t it be great if our churches were known in their communities as the places where people receive kindness?

Secondly, faithfulness:

Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky ¹⁶as you hold firmly to the word of life.

Faithfulness – to the Gospel: ‘hold firmly to the word of life.’ This isn’t just an internal thing in the church, by the way: it’s also outward-facing, since it can also be translated, ‘hold out the word of life.’ In the church and in the world, we are called to hold faithfully to the Gospel, because that will make us shine like stars in the dark sky.

For too long now, we have heard church leaders say that we should adapt our message to the society we live in, because parts of it are unacceptable today. But the moment we just make Christianity like a religious version of the wider culture, then there is no longer any reason to join the church. Why join something that is just like how you are already, anyway? There is no point.

No: the only hope for the church to be like shining stars in the dark sky is if we keep to the Gospel, even and especially where it differs from the culture in which we live.

And if you don’t believe me, then listen to the respected historian Tom Holland. He has been on quite a journey in his thinking and in his life. In 2016, he wrote,

It took me a long time to realise my morals are not Greek or Roman, but thoroughly, and proudly, Christian.

He realised that we owe the good things in our society to our Christian foundations and began an excursion into the message of Christianity.

Recently, he has publicly urged churches to ‘keep Christianity weird’, and to ‘preach the weird stuff’. All those crucial values we cherish actually have their basis in the weird stuff of Christianity like the miraculous, not least the resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Jesus.

The church leaders and members who trumpet how the resurrection is just a way of saying someone stays in our memory, or that the ascension is a fairy-tale and the second coming is science fiction are not doing the church any good at all. They are doing the church a grave dis-service. They are removing all power from the Gospel and leaving it like a limp lettuce leaf.

If anyone comes into your church’s pulpit and starts preaching this stuff, do not just dismiss it and say, ‘It’s interesting to hear diverse opinions’, or ‘Let’s live with contradictory convictions.’ No! See them for what they are: wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Let’s stay faithful to the Gospel in all its weirdness: that’s where the power to transform lives is.

Thirdly, service:

Here I’m thinking of what Paul says at the end of the reading about Timothy and Epaphroditus. Paul says that Timothy will be concerned for the Philippians’ welfare, that he doesn’t spend his time on his own interests, and he has a track record of serving (verses 20-22). Epaphroditus, who didn’t enjoy good health, almost died for the Gospel and risked his life to help Paul (verses 26-30).

It’s not enough to be ‘nice’, which might be what you would think had Paul stopped after his admonition to avoid grumbling and arguing. A faith based on Jesus, who suffered and died on the Cross, cannot be reduced to ‘niceness.’ Timothy and Epaphroditus, with their modelling of selflessness and sacrifice, show such a faith in action.

People like Timothy and Epaphroditus are true Christian heroes. These are the kind of people we rightly celebrate. We write books about them. We use them as sermon illustrations! They are exceptional.

But why are they exceptional? Isn’t their example simply what should be the Christian norm? Aren’t their lives of service, sacrifice, and risk-taking the natural consequences of Jesus’ teaching and example?

And if they are, then why aren’t more of us like them?

Is it that it’s easier and more comfortable to opt for niceness rather than sacrificial servanthood? Have we bought into ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ but not the rest of him? Are we keen to scoop up the blessings of faith while not taking the responsibilities and the challenges?

Jesus certainly shone like a star in the dark sky, and so as we work out our own salvation, that is going to involve beginning to imitate him. That’s what Timothy and Epaphroditus did. They found ways to imitate Christ, and in doing so they shone brightly.

So I wonder in what ways Jesus is calling us to imitate him? Who are we being called to serve, as Timothy did? For whom are we being called to take risks, as Epaphroditus did?

And let’s remember that both of these men had their frailties. We read explicitly here that Epaphroditus had his health issues. We read in other New Testament Epistles that Timothy was timid. These were not people who were somehow genetically wired to be heroes. They had the same imperfections and weaknesses that we have.

Much as we might like to believe otherwise, the New Testament doesn’t have two categories of Christians: the ordinary ones, for whom a fairly modest standard of lifestyle is required, and the keen ones, who are held to higher standards, and in whose reflected glory we can bask. Jesus never made divisions like that.

The call to kindness, to faithfulness to the Gospel, and to sacrificial service is for all of us. Do we want to shine like stars in the dark sky? Or do we want our light to be snuffed out?

October 13, 2024 0

New Series: Paul’s Favourite Church; 1. Christians Under Construction (Philippians 1:1-11)

Philippians 1:1-11

How do you choose a church? Some of us don’t: we grow up in it. My sister and I were fifth generation, same congregation.

Others of us move into an area and look for a new church. We may consider the denomination, the style of worship, or the theological outlook. We may look for one that has good children’s ministry. North American research has suggested that on that continent the number one consideration is the quality of the preaching.

But these options weren’t available in the early decades of Christianity. You came to faith and you joined the local group of believers in your city, who probably met in one of the larger Roman houses owned by a wealthy member of the congregation, and that was that.

Yet for an apostle like Paul, travelling from place to place planting new churches and overseeing them, there was an opportunity to see which churches were doing better. And while you might argue he shouldn’t have had favourites, the warmth of his letter to the Philippians contrasts strongly with the way he has to speak to some of the other churches, such as the Galatians and the Corinthians.

This doesn’t mean the Philippians were perfect: we shall encounter some issues they had as we explore the letter. But it does mean we can get an idea of what made them so attractive to Paul. And that may help us as we seek to be an appealing and attractive congregation today. Listen to his warm words in verses 7 and 8 to get a sense of his feelings for them:

⁷It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. ⁸God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

In the surrounding verses, we hear of his joy, his confidence, and his aspirations for the Philippians. When we hear the substance of his joy, confidence, and aspirations we get a sense of why he loved them so much. From that we can ponder whether we have these lovable traits, too.

So firstly, why is Paul joyful?

³I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now

He is joyful, because the Philippians are in partnership with him in the gospel. In what ways have they done this?

We know from later in the letter that they have sent gifts via a courier named Epaphroditus to help Paul in need. That might be financial support, or that might be material provisions, especially because he is dictating this letter from prison. In those days, friends and family of the prisoner had to supply their everyday needs, such as food.

We also know that two women in the congregation called Euodia and Syntyche and a man named Clement have been missionaries or evangelists alongside Paul.

Partnership in the gospel is not just a matter of words but of deeds for the Philippians. They have raised money – not just generally for charity, but specifically for the work of the gospel. And they have sent people to be part of God’s mission. They have skin in the game.

In what ways do we go into partnership in the gospel? Take the question of raising funds. Many churches are good at doing that for charities, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I am saying it’s not the same as funding the spread of the gospel. Many churches are also good at raising money for Christian organisations that provide disaster relief or other support to the poor, and that is good, because it is a way of demonstrating the gospel. It’s part of sharing the love of God in our deeds.

But in my experience of Methodist churches, raising money and practical support for the spread of the gospel in word is far rarer. In what ways can we get behind those whose call it is to urge people to come to faith in Christ? We seem to forget that unless we support evangelism, there will be no church. The church is always just one generation away from extinction.

There are many organisations we could support. Some specialise in bringing the gospel to students. I know someone who runs a network out of Southampton for women sharing the gospel with other women. Some groups specialise in rural areas, others in our cities, and so on.

And what about releasing some of our people for this work? Who are the folk in our congregations who talk naturally and easily about their faith in Jesus? Are these the individuals we should be encouraging and supporting to pursue a calling more specifically?

Imagine the joy this would bring to the wider church and to church leaders if we were explicit in our partnership in the gospel.

Secondly, why is Paul confident?

⁶being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

I will be open with you: this is one of my favourite verses in the Bible. It’s why I entitled this sermon ‘Christians Under Construction.’ ‘He who began a good work in you will complete it.’ Replace the roadworks sign that says, ‘Danger, men at work’ with ‘Danger, God at work’!

Or to put it another way, this is a time of year when I, who do not watch much television, set the Sky box to record three consecutive Monday night shows on BBC2. Because Monday night becomes brainy quiz night. Only Connect, Mastermind, and University Challenge. I don’t care that I can only answer a few of the questions: I like being stretched.

And there in the middle is the famous catchphrase from Mastermind: ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish.’ This, says Paul, is what God has promised the Philippian Christians. And this, says Paul, is the basis of his confidence. He has seen enough to be confident that God will see things through in their lives. He will complete the work of what John Wesley called ‘Christian Perfection.’

The Philippians are indeed Christians under construction. They are not the finished article. Paul is well aware of that. Again, later in the epistle we shall come across some of their failures and foibles. But Paul sees that bit by bit, God’s Holy Spirit is doing the work of transformation. Slowly, they are being remade in the image of Christ. Paul is confident God will see his project in them through to completion. This is an attractive feature of the Philippian church.

And yes, this work is all of God, but it takes a co-operation with the Holy Spirit for it to happen. This speaks well of the Philippian Christians. They are committed to seeing God’s transforming work happen in their lives.

We too will be an appealing community of God’s kingdom if the same is true of us. I am sure many of us can look back on our lives and tell stories about how God has done a makeover in our lives – something the late great Christian philosopher Dallas Willard called ‘The renovation of the heart.’ I’m sure if we take a moment to reflect we can each identify an example in our lives.

But here’s the thing: so often, such testimonies are accounts of what happened in the past. Do we also have a testimony in the present of God’s renewing work?

This means we cannot be complacent Christians. By all means let us rightly rejoice in what God has already done in our lives. But let us also be committed to hearing the still, small voice of the Spirit whispering to us about the next item on God’s agenda of change for us. And let us also encourage one another when we see signs of God being at work in our brothers and sisters.

Thirdly and finally, what are Paul’s aspirations?

⁹And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, ¹⁰so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

I suppose you could say that Paul’s aspirations are, ‘I like what I’ve already seen in you Philippians, now I pray that God does more.’ It’s the kind of prayer that follows through on his joy that they partner in the gospel and his confidence that God hasn’t stopped working in their lives.

But here Paul gets a little more specific about how he would love to see God continue to work among these people. It goes roughly like this: if you love God more that means you will know God more, which means you will know God’s will better, and then you will want to do that will. That seems to be the sequence he envisages: love God more – know God better – know God’s will – do God’s will.

My guess is that the Philippians share Paul’s aspirations for them, even if they can’t articulate them like he does. They want a deeper love and knowledge of God, so that they may know and do his will. That is what they are living for. That is what Paul longs to see fulfilled in them.

But in the modern church when we meet some people like this, it scares us. We think they are freaks or extremists. The late A W Tozer once said something to the effect that if someone with a normal New Testament commitment to Christ walked into one of our churches, we would treat them as if their spiritual temperature were a fever, when the reality is that we are spiritually cold.

Now of course there are some Christians who are genuinely extreme or unbalanced, who have an unhealthy intensity. Such people make me feel uncomfortable, because something doesn’t seem quite right with them. They may be sincere, but I am not sure about how healthily they are expressing their faith.

But I can’t dismiss every Christian who makes me feel uncomfortable in the same way. Sometimes, if I am honest, there are others who leave me with an uneasy feeling because their love for Christ is so wholehearted that it shows me up as being trivial and half-hearted. I don’t like that, and it’s easier to besmirch their faith than ask myself awkward questions about the depth of my commitment to Christ.

What if we made it our aspiration for ourselves and one another that together by the grace of God we would pursue a wholesome wholeheartedness for Christ, and rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us?

Conclusion

No wonder Paul loves the Philippian church. They partner with him in the gospel. They know God is at work in their lives. They are passionate to see more of that. What an encouragement they must have been to him as he spent time in a jail in Rome.

Imperfect as we are, still under construction as we are – just like the Philippians – what can we learn from them that we too might be attractive witnesses for Christ?

September 1, 2024 0

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

Acts 4:1-31

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

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

Which brings us to the conclusion of our reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they can’t. Peter says,

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

And later we read,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 16, 2024 0

Good News For Short People, Luke 19:1-10 (Ordinary 31 Year C)

Luke 19:1-10

This week we have seen a short, wealthy man find his way into 10 Downing Street. How fitting that our Gospel reading today is one where a short, wealthy man wants to find his way into God’s kingdom.

Most of us have known the story of Zaccheus since childhood. We heard it at Sunday School. We sang songs based on it where Jesus invited himself for tea at Zaccheus’ house. All this despite there being no evidence whatsoever of tea-drinking anywhere in the Bible.

I want to ask a simple question of this story. It’s a question we could regularly deploy in our reflection on Bible passages. Here it is:

What is the Good News for Zaccheus?

I want to reflect on two areas where we see that Jesus is Good News for Zaccheus.

Firstly, I want to speak about Good News for the Rich.

Just to say those words will wind up some people. Good news for the rich? Really? It’s the poor who need good news.

And besides, Jesus said in Luke 4 he came to bring good news to the poor, not the rich. Not only that, Jesus told the rich in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-26) that the rich have already received their comfort.

Furthermore, this was prophesied while Jesus was still in the womb. At that point she sang the song we know so well as The Magnificat. It includes the line, ‘He has sent the rich away empty’ (Luke 1:53).

So how can there be good news for the rich? The good news is for the poor and there is only bad news for the rich.

The answer is this. You have to define what you mean by good news. The Good News which is the Gospel is not a good news that tells someone everything about the way they live is fine. In fact, it’s rather different.

‘Good news’ for a citizen of the Roman Empire meant hearing a herald come to their town or village with a proclamation either that there was a new Emperor on the throne or that Rome’s armies had won a great victory.

The Good News of the Gospel Christianises that. It is the proclamation that there is a new king on the throne of the universe, and that his name is Jesus. And furthermore, he has won the greatest of all battles by conquering sin, suffering, and death at the Cross.

That is Good News for everyone, including the rich. However, I will concede that it is challenging good News for the wealthy. If the rich are going to acknowledge that Jesus is on the throne of the universe then the good news for them will include some rethinking of financial habits.

And if you had gained your wealth by morally dubious means as Zaccheus had, then the Good News of Jesus’ reign was more challenging.

We know Zaccheus was corrupt, and there was little way out of being corrupt if you are a tax collector, due to the way the Romans managed the system. The tax collectors were given a target by Rome of how much tax they had to raise in their district. But the tax collectors had to gather their own income from the taxation, too, and so they charged residents over and above the amount Rome had set for them, otherwise they and their family would starve. So you can imagine that those tax collectors who wanted, shall we say, a somewhat comfortable life charged a higher taxation that those who were content with a more modest lifestyle.

But regardless of income, tax collectors would have been treated as ‘sinners’ because their very work meant they were collaborators with the occupying Roman armies. Indeed, that’s the scandal of what Jesus does for the crowd here:

‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’ (Verse 7)

Somehow Jesus knew that just railing against Zaccheus for his sin wouldn’t melt his heart. The tax collector already knew he was a sinner, not only in the sight of the crowd, but of God. He knew what he was doing was wrong. It’s rather like going into a prison with the Christian message: you don’t need to tell the prisoners they are guilty, they are only too conscious of that fact. It is Jesus’ act of grace in seeking out hospitality from such an unpopular man that makes the difference.

Now Zaccheus can address his sin and show that his repentance is real by matching it with transformed actions. He offers half of his possessions and to repay what he has cheated fourfold – and fourfold was

the penalty for those who have stolen animals[1].

In addition, Zaccheus addresses Jesus as ‘Lord.’ He is a changed man.

This helps us with how we proclaim the good news to the wealthy today. How will they respond to the Good News that Jesus is on the throne and that he has conquered evil? Can we model to them the grace that leads to their conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit?

And it also challenges us, as it did Zaccheus. Do we own money or possessions that are not rightfully ours? What would Jesus, the king of the kingdom, say to us about those things?

Secondly, this story is about Good News for the Shamed.

Zaccheus has to climb a sycamore-fig tree in order to see Jesus (verse 4) and we assume the only reason he did that is the one Luke tells us about, namely that he was ‘short’ (verse 3).

All that is true, but here is something I discovered this week about sycamore-fig trees. The nature of their leaves is such that if a man climbed up into them, he would most likely be well-hidden. Jesus literally had ‘to seek and save the lost’ (verse 10).

Combine this with the way that Zaccheus runs ahead of the crowd on the route out of Jericho, anticipating Jesus’ route, where he is surely trying to put some distance between himself and the crowd who will hate him, then we can see an important truth. Zaccheus wanted to stay hidden.

And why was that? Surely it was an issue of shame – the shame he felt for his way of life.

But Jesus can see the man whose shame hides him and puts him at a distance from others. He sees through and brings the word of grace:

‘Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.’ (Verse 5)

Shame makes us run away from others. It makes us hide from them. Like Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden of Eden, shame even makes us want to hide from God. But for those who are shamed by their lives Jesus reaches out to restore them.

From my experience as a minister, there are stories I could tell you about the shameful things people have confessed to me. Often, they have been people who were among the most loved and respected church members in a congregation, but they held a dark secret.

Now of course I cannot share any specific stories with you, because they were shared with me in confidence. I’ll just say, think of the sins the church routinely says are very bad, and I’ve probably heard them confessed by Christians. But it has been my privilege to tell these people that there is indeed a God who forgives them, restores them, and welcomes them back to the heart of his family.

That is what Zaccheus found with Jesus, who calls him ‘a son of Abraham’ (verse 9) – a member of the family, the people of God, not an outcast.

So from this let me offer a couple of encouragements to you. One is to emphasise this word of hope to any of you who are carrying the burden of shame. If there is something from your past that means you are secretly weighed down by shame, I want to encourage you to talk to someone like a minister, so that you can hear the reassurance of God’s forgiving love in Jesus Christ for you. The only reason I say a minister is not because we have special powers but because in all but the most exceptional circumstances we are required to keep confidential what you share with us.

Shame, however, is not just for those who carry guilt. Some of us carry shame for things that have been done to us. This is particularly true of abused people, of whom there are many in our churches and society. Let someone like a pastor reassure you in confidence that Jesus wipes away the false shame of being sinned against.

My other encouragement is to say that this is good news for the world. People may not talk about sin as much as they did, but they certainly talk about shame. That Jesus offers a way home to God for those who experience shame would be good news for many in our world.

Sadly, sometimes these people think the church is the last body to help them because they expect to hear little more than condemnation from us. But what if in our friendships with people outside the church we can speak and demonstrate a message where Jesus says to people today, ‘I must stay at your house today’?

So this wonderful story gives us both a challenge and an encouragement. The Good News that Jesus is on the throne of the universe is a challenge for us to respond and put our lives in harmony with his kingdom ways.

And the Good News that this King Jesus wipes away all the effects of shame through his victory over all sin and suffering at the Cross means liberation for us and for all who will hear and embrace it.

All that remains is for us to put these things into practice, both in our own lives and in our witness to others.

[1] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-calls-zacchaeus-in-luke-19/; also see Exodus 22:1 and 2 Samuel 12:6.

October 30, 2022 0

Jesus In Love Divides Us, Luke 12:49-56 (Ordinary 20 Year C 2022)

Luke 12:49-56

On the home page of the British Methodist Church you can currently find these words displayed prominently:

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

And I’d like to ask the author of those words whether they had read today’s Gospel passage. Because the best we can say for such words is, they are a half-truth.

With a certain sense of alarm at certain trends in our church and elsewhere, I have mischievously entitled today’s sermon ‘Jesus In Love Divides Us.’ And yes, that is a play on the report about sexuality that was called ‘God In Love Unites Us’ – a title that portrayed an utterly forlorn hope.

Fire on earth. Not peace but division, says Jesus here.

And perhaps the stark things Jesus says in our passage today are all the more shocking when you go back to the early chapters of Luke’s Gospel. When he is born in Bethlehem, the angels proclaim peace. When Jesus preaches at Nazareth, he says he has good news for the poor.

Yet here is Jesus not so much preaching good news as bad news! What do we make of it?

Firstly, Jesus is preparing his disciples for rejection.

Don’t misunderstand me, Jesus is good news. In his own Person he embodies God’s Kingdom. He brings the forgiveness of sins. He gives value to people who are treated as worthless by society. He brings ultimate purpose to life. He conquers death. Even Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak haven’t promised those things!

But – not everyone accepts that message, and not everyone likes it. We know the reaction of many leaders in society to Jesus when he was on earth. Was he popular with them? Largely, no. He was a threat to them. They plotted against him. They colluded to have him put on a Cross.

And Jesus warned his followers that similar things could and would happen to them. In this passage his ‘baptism’ may well be his baptism of suffering at the Cross. The division of families is because some will follow Jesus and others will not. Sometimes in church circles we make the family into an idol, but Jesus says following him is more important. It is not that we deliberately break up families as some religious cults do, but it is to say that deciding about Jesus is an unavoidably divisive thing, and pain may come our way.

Now when we ask why people are rejecting Jesus, we sometimes get into the question of what is wrong with the church. And to some extent we should think about that. There can be things about us that give people a bad impression of Jesus, and we need to address them. I have said much about this in the past.

But we must also see that people reject Jesus because his ways are a challenge to their self-centred living. I was reading a discussion about a magazine article where twelve church leaders had been asked how we respond to continued church decline. Basically, all of them in their different ways berated the church for what was wrong with it.

But one person said this:

I don’t think there is a problem with the church. The issue is with a self-righteous, materialistic society that has turned its back on God and is largely only interested in spirituality in a flesh-centred, personal-development sort of way. What we need to do is stay faithful to Christ through this difficult and challenging time.

I wouldn’t say there’s no problem with the church, but I would say let’s be realistic about how much rejection of Christianity there is in our culture. People sometimes disguise it with high-handed moral words, but in a lot of cases, the reason people say no to Jesus is because they don’t want to give up control of their lives to him. They are much happier in a me-centred world, but as we know, Jesus won’t allow that.

Although we see heart-warming stories of kindness and love in our society too, we are generally surrounded by people whose major life decisions are about themselves and their personal happiness, rather than the serving and self-giving love of Jesus and his kingdom. So we should not be surprised when our Jesus message and our faith is rejected.

So if you have done all you can to be faithful but are still not seeing things turn for the better, then understand that at times in history the church goes through phases like this. It’s a tough thing to say and it’s far from an excuse to be casual. Because what we need to do is ask ourselves, are we being faithful to Jesus and his teaching? If we are, then we are doing the right thing, and we leave the consequences to God.

Secondly, Jesus is preaching a bigger Gospel.

Let’s go back to that slogan on the Methodist website:

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

I said that at best it was a half-truth. What’s right with it and what’s wrong with it?

What’s right with it is that God’s love is offered to us without us deserving it, and before we ever made any attempt to love God ourselves. ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,’ said Paul in Romans 5. God makes the first move in salvation. It all comes from him. Salvation is not of our making. It’s not something we deserve or earn.

But what’s wrong with the statement? Well, think about how Jesus himself proclaimed what the Gospel writers call the ‘good news’. His good news message was ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’ There is good news that doesn’t emanate from us or rely on us. The good news in first century terms is that God is on the throne, not Caesar. In our terms it is that God is on the throne, not Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden, or anyone else you care to name.

But because the only wise and compassionate God is on the throne of the universe, we need to make a response. Because God reigns over all, we need to respond by aligning our lives with his will. That’s why Jesus said to the first disciples, ‘Follow me.’ Are you going to go my way, asks Jesus? We have a choice to make.

In our tradition, John Wesley started a movement that stressed how the Gospel was available to all people, and he welcomed enquirers. But he distinguished between those who were exploring the faith and those who were committed to Christ.

So when we sing hymns like ‘Let Us Build A House’ where each verse ends with a rousing line, ‘All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place,’ we must remember that is true for people exploring the faith. But when it comes to responding to the welcoming love of God, there is a commitment to be made that involves offering the whole of our lives. Anything less than that misrepresents the message of Jesus.

In all our talk of being inclusive, we must never lose sight of this challenge. It’s the old adage that I’ve often quoted before: God love us just as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us as we are.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is warning about the implications of the Gospel.

What is all that talk about interpreting the signs of the times? Why does Jesus say to the crowds they are good at weather forecasts but not at understanding the times in which they live?

Well, it’s not the first time he’s accused the crowds of just wanting a sign. Now, he says, there is a sign before you but you don’t understand it. Yet you need to.

The sign they can’t see or interpret is that of the divisions that Jesus brings. He is the real deal. He is all that he claimed to be. He is all that the religious leaders feared he was, and for which they hated him. It’s no good thinking he’s just another teacher. Nor is it enough to think he is a prophet.

In other words, as Hughie Green used to say all those years ago, it’s make your mind up time. How we react to Jesus is critical. We cannot ignore him. We cannot patronise him by saying what a nice chap he was. We cannot say he was a great teacher – and then not follow his teaching. The sign that Jesus in love divides us points us to the fact that we must respond one way or the other to Jesus.

How do we respond positively to him? By turning from our selfish ways – and that’s a lifelong task – and following him. That following him will involve so much more than an hour on Sunday. It will mean learning from him as his apprentices and putting what we learn into practice. It will mean self-denial rather than the self-fulfilment that the world (and some of the church!) preaches.

It takes all that we are and all that we have. Allying ourselves with Jesus is not a hobby or a consumer decision. It is life and death, nothing less.

And among those who do not share our willingness to say yes to Jesus will be those who will reject us, as we noted in the first point. We should not be surprised. Our enthusiasm to be inclusive must always be tempered by this.

So – back to where we began.

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

Really? These words can never be a full statement of the good news. They might be the beginning, but we must never forget the challenge that Jesus brings and the cost it entails as we are divided into those who will follow him and those who will not.

And while we count the cost of discipleship, perhaps someone will have a word with the Methodist media team.

August 14, 2022 0

Remembrance Sunday: The Healing of the Nations, Revelation 22:1-5 (Ordinary 33, Year B)

Revelation 22:1-5

When I was a child, the Dam Busters movie came to the local cinema and my Dad – who had loved his National Service in the RAF – took me to see it. To me as a boy, Barnes Wallis, who invented and trialled the ‘bouncing bomb’ not far from here at Brooklands, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, and the crew members of Bomber Command were surely national heroes. This Remembrance Sunday, only one member of Bomber Command is still alive – Squadron Leader ‘Johnny’ Johnson, who is about to celebrate his one hundredth birthday.

Heroes. As a youngster, I didn’t really consider the complex moral questions about the bombing of the Ruhr Valley and whether Christians could view it as justified under the Just War Theory of St Augustine, who said that in a just war you could only target those who were actively involved in the enemy’s war effort.

But I suspect that whatever stance we take on war, a lot of us do childlike thinking about it. As a teenager I was to embrace pacifism, but some would say that is naïve idealism. It can be equally naïve to assume that bombing your enemies into oblivion makes everything right.

And Christians will never totally agree on issues of war. I’m not going to try to take on that hopeless task today.

But I do want us to use this Lectionary reading from Revelation 22 to show us what God’s glorious vision of the future in his new creation is like, because that gives us a good idea of his will, and it therefore points to some of the things we can hope for and live by now as we prepare for the full coming of his kingdom.

Firstly, in the New Creation there is life:

We hear about the ‘water of life’ coming from God and the Lamb (verse 1), just as in Ezekiel the water flowed from the Temple, the place of God’s presence. And we read about the ‘tree of life’ (verse 2), which you will remember from the Garden of Eden, so here Eden is restored but supersized.

So this is life that comes only from God (the water of life) and it is immortal life (Adam would have lived forever had he eaten from the tree of life in Eden). This is eternal life. This is the gift of God. This is the life we receive when we respond to the grace of God in Jesus Christ and find forgiveness of sins and new purpose in following Christ and turning away from sin.

It is this life, the gift of God, which stands in contrast to the death we witness in the world and which is at the forefront of our thinking on Remembrance Sunday. The ways of God are life, not death.

And it is not just physical death but spiritual death which the life of God opposes and replaces. To stay wilfully apart from God is to choose eternal death.

Therefore, one thing we might remember on Remembrance Sunday is the importance of the Gospel. Yes, we join with the rest of our society in commemorating the war dead and the sacrifices that millions made, but as Christians we go further. We say that there is an antidote to the ways of hatred, mistrust, and violence that lead to war, and that is in Jesus Christ and him only.

So one thing we learn from Revelation 22 is that in the church we need to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is the proclamation of the Gospel. What a tragedy it is that other things get in the way. The other day a minister who is retiring next year told me how he sincerely hoped that in his final year of active ministry he would be able to concentrate on preaching and teaching rather than on GDPR, accounts, property, and all the other governance issues.

But not only that, this is a reminder to all of us in the church that we have our part to play in sharing the Good News of Jesus among those we know. It isn’t that we are all preachers – thank goodness we’re not – and it isn’t that we’re all called to go door-to-door or button-hole people in the street. But it remains the call to all of us to talk naturally in conversations about the difference Jesus has made in our lives.

If on Remembrance Sunday we want to see a better world, then it is incumbent upon those of us who believe a better world is coming to share that Good News with the world.

Secondly, in the New Creation there is healing:

We read that ‘the leaves of the tree [of life] are for the healing of the nations’ (verse 2) and that is then explained with the words, ‘No longer will there be any curse’ (verse 3).

The curse on the nations is healed in the New Creation. What does that mean? It means that the curse of Eden is reversed. In the pictorial language of early Genesis, it was the sin of Adam and Eve that led to a widespread curse on humanity. It was a wide-ranging curse. It not only adversely affected our relationship with God, our relationships with each other were cursed, so was our relationship with work, with children, and with the whole of creation. All of life was under a curse. What was previously blessèd became cursed.

But no more. Through the Cross and Resurrection God reverses the curse. We can know him. We can have good relationships. We can find purpose at work. We can bless and restore creation – something that is surely on our minds as the COP26 conference ends. All these are God’s gifts of healing in Christ. They are partial in this life, but they will be complete in the New Creation.

Now this is important in following on from my first point. Because there are those who will say that it isn’t enough to preach the Gospel, and that it doesn’t bring about the wider transformation in society. They will point to things like the dreadful genocide in Rwanda back in 1994 and point out that Rwanda was a heavily evangelised nation with a high proportion of confessing Christians. Indeed, in certain parts of the Christian world it was celebrated as a great example of evangelism and revival. People spoke about the ‘East African Revival.’ Yet many of these Christians participated in the terrible massacres.

The problem with Rwanda is that a narrow Gospel was proclaimed, one that only called converts to a personal, perhaps even private, piety. We need the call to conversion, but it needs to be a call to an entirely converted life. Because the message that the whole curse is lifted in the New Creation and that healing has come is a message that applies right across life – not just to personal and private issues like relationships, but also to public and social areas, such as work.

So what we cannot do as Christians is truncate the Gospel. Some truncate it by the sort of narrow private piety I’ve just described – ‘Come to Jesus, and let him put your personal life in order.’ Others truncate the Gospel but omitting the call to conversion and simply proclaiming that God loves social justice. But the healing of the nations from the curse of the Fall means we need to declare and to live out the healing from the curse in every sphere of life.

As we seek a better world than the one that we live in, let alone the ones that provoked world wars, our calling as Christians is to proclaim the Gospel in all its fulness and to live as an example of that all-encompassing Gospel which brings healing and restoration to every broken part of life.

This will therefore not only be in our spoken message, but in our lifestyles, and in what we offer the world. Too often churches are filled with toxic behaviour, and when that happens it’s a denial of the Gospel and it’s a denial of opportunity to the world to know the beauty of God’s healing love.

Instead, let’s be people who know that the life of the Gospel brings healing and let’s show that.

Thirdly, in the New Creation there is light:

There will be no more night, we read in verse 5. At this time of year when the clocks have gone back and the nights have drawn in, that sounds like Good News to me!

The other day on Twitter, someone parodied the old Simon and Garfunkel song ‘The Sound of Silence’ by writing these words:

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Why are you here? It’s 4 pm.

Not that I want things to be like New York, ‘The city that never sleeps’, having stayed in an hôtel there on Broadway where you could hear traffic noise and be assaulted by neon advertising 24/7.

But light instead of darkness. No more the darkness of sin, because my guilt has been wiped away. No more the darkness of continual sin, because the Holy Spirit has helped us to live differently. And no more the darkness caused by the sins others have inflicted on us, because God in Christ has healed us and helped us to forgive.

All those things that have brought darkness in this life will no longer cast shadows over us and suck life out of us. We shall know the beauty of God’s light.

How does he do this? There might be a clue in the preceding verse:

⁴They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

God’s name on our foreheads. Do you remember when as a child you had to write your name on everything you owned, and when you had name tags sewn into your clothes? God puts his name on us and says, ‘You belong to me.’ What could be more reassuring and restorative than that? We belong to him. His name is upon us. This can carry us through the darkest times: we are Christ’s.

We may not be facing a world war today, but where could we apply this? You’ve heard me talk about the fact that depression has had quite an effect on my family, and so you may not be surprised to know that I’m concerned by the increase in mental health issues since COVID-19 hit and I believe the church can offer something to the world alongside all the necessary medical resources.

And there is an encouraging growth in Christian resources for use in the church and the community to help with this. I’m looking at one called Kintsugi Hope. Whether it’s the right resource I don’t know yet, but the word ‘kintsugi’ is Japanese for a way of restoring broken pottery by painting it with seams of gold and thus making it more beautiful.

Whether that particular path is the right way forward for us or not, we have here a wonderful picture in these five verses from Revelation about how the fulness of the Gospel hope in the New Creation is the cure for the sickness that the world faces with when we think of the events that led to the establishment of Remembrance Sunday and its continuation. We also recognise that war is far from the only way in which there is brokenness, sickness, and darkness in our world.

We are people of hope. Jesus brings life, healing, and light. One day his new world will be flooded with these things. In the meantime, it’s our call to participate in his work by proclaiming the Gospel, by living and advocating healed lives, and by showing the world how Christ’s light overcomes the darkness.

Remembrance Sunday, then, reminds the church of our unfinished task.

November 14, 2021 0

Leaders of the Opposition – dealing with resistance to the Gospel (Mark 6:1-13)

Mark 6:1-13

Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? I know plenty of people of both persuasions.

As some of you have heard me say before, I come from a family which has a history of depression, so you can imagine there can be quite a bit of half-empty in the Faulkners.

But I also have friends who are entrepreneurs and who can find opportunities even in a crisis. I think of one particular friend whose business collapsed when the first COVID-19 lockdown happened, but he saw new and different opportunities in the changed circumstances, and soon he had invented two brand new businesses plus a new expression of an old business.

Both incidents in our reading today contain the possibility or the reality of difficulty for the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t get anywhere when he returns to his home town (verse 5), and he warns the disciples that they may have to shake the dust off their feet against those who refuse to listen to them (verse 11). In both cases the narrative teaches us important things about following Jesus’ call to mission.

Firstly, let’s consider Jesus at Nazareth.

⁵He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few people who were ill and heal them.

Only a few people were healed, Jesus? Goodness me, we’d settle for that! It would be an improvement for us, unlike you!

So what’s going on? We have the corrosive acids of cynicism and unbelief. Cynicism from a crowd who think they know all about Jesus when actually they don’t. They think he’s still the carpenter’s son. They take offence – he can’t be any better than us! (Verses 2-3)

Unbelief? Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith (verse 6), but it follows on from their cynicism. If they’re refusing to believe Jesus is anything more than just local lad made good, they will not have the openness to have faith in him and thus receive the blessings he has for them. What a contrast from the many times Jesus says to some individuals, ‘Your faith has made you well.’

If even Jesus can have this experience of running up against a spiritual brick wall in people then at least let that help us take heart when we are attempting to share our faith and no-one wants to know. How we would love them to respond! We might even be desperate for a response! But it isn’t in our hands.

Some of this is about recognising the rôle of free will and of accepting that we cannot force a response. We have to ask ourselves whether we have been truly faithful to the Gospel, because that’s our task.

None of this should stop us praying for the Holy Spirit to be at work. If people are going to respond to Jesus then the Spirit needs to be at work in them before we even open our mouths. This is where John Wesley famously believed in what he called ‘prevenient grace’, where the word ‘prevenient’ is made up of ‘pre’ (i.e., going before something or someone) and ‘venir’, the French verb ‘to come’. The Holy Spirit comes first. Before we even get into the nitty gritty of reaching out to people with the love of God in our words and our deeds we need to pray that the Spirit of God will go ahead of us.

So when we are in mission mode, our task is fidelity to the Gospel. We leave the response to the people’s free will, but we pray that the Holy Spirit will get to them before us and prepare their hearts, otherwise no positive response to Jesus is possible.

But I think before we leave this first of the two episodes we need to reflect on the story in a different way. When I realised that as I said Jesus’ hearers ‘think they know all about Jesus when actually they don’t’ a nasty chill went up my spine.

Because I thought that could describe us.

We think we know all about Jesus, and like them we rarely if ever see him working any miracles among us. Could it be that we’ve deceived ourselves and we don’t know Jesus as well as we think?

Sadly, I think that’s possible. I listen to some Christians describe their understanding of Jesus and it’s very limited, if not downright partial. They just take on the bits of Jesus that they like and they discard the rest in much the same way that we put leftovers from dinner in the food recycling bin.

So as well as encouraging us to be faithful in sharing the Gospel and leaving the results to God while praying for his Spirit to be at work, I also want to issue a challenge today. How many of us have become complacent about Jesus? How many of us have remained with little more than a Sunday School image of him? How many of us go on seriously engaging with Jesus as portrayed in the four Gospels? How many of us are willing to let Jesus reshape our image of him instead of us persistently making him in our image?

It’s imperative we let Jesus challenge us into appreciating a more fully orbed understanding of him, because we can’t afford to proclaim a fantasy Jesus to the world. And praying to a fantasy Jesus will get us nowhere: we certainly won’t see any miracles.

Secondly, let’s consider the disciples on mission.

Humanly, it seems surprising that Jesus entrusts his mission to his disciples at this point. As one scholar says,

Heretofore they have impeded Jesus’ mission (1:36-39), become exasperated with him (2:23-25), and even opposed him (3:21). Their perception of Jesus has been – and will continue to be – marked by misunderstanding (8:14-21).[1]

Fancy Jesus choosing a motley crew like that and entrusting them with his mission! But that’s exactly what he does. This bunch of incompetents is sent out by Jesus to the nearby villages with his message in word and deed.

The Christian church still does similarly crazy things at time, often with young people. My first ever trip abroad was to Norway with a project of the European Methodist Youth Council where young people got used to mission by becoming missionaries in a foreign land during the school holidays.

Later, I would be involved with a Youth For Christ centre where the team spearheading our outreach was drawn entirely from young people in their late teens and their twenties who were taking gap years to offer themselves to the church.

As you can imagine, many of these people (me included) were rough around the edges, but God used us.

What excuse, then, do those of us have who have served Christ for many decades?

And it’s the real thing, too, not a trial run. The simplicity of their sending is similar to the simplicity with which the Israelites had to leave Egypt. This is therefore like a new Exodus. That makes it highly significant in a Jewish context. The clueless disciples get a central role in Jesus’ kingdom mission.

But – just like Jesus – they may encounter difficulty:

¹¹And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’

That’s quite a sign, to shake the dust off their feet against those who don’t believe:

This is a searing indictment since Jews travelling outside Palestine were required to shake themselves free of dust when returning home lest they pollute the holy land.[2]

In other words, if people rejected the message, treat them like they are heathens, even if they are Jews living in the Holy Land!

Jesus prepares them for the worst, just as he has suffered rejection at Nazareth. Don’t waste your time with such people, he says, move on to where it will be more fruitful.

Local Preachers and ministers might identify a little bit with the disciples here: we have all known congregations that have been resistant to our preaching of the word. I think there are serious questions about whether the denomination should pour resources into such churches.

In that sense, those we send out on mission should be able to know that they can move on from the places of resistance and opposition to those where the Holy Spirit is at work with the prevenient grace we talked about earlier. I once heard about an Anglican curate who had a terrible time in his first parish. On the day he moved out, he drove to the edge of the parish boundary, took off the socks he was wearing, and threw them down as a sign of shaking the dust off his feet against those who had mistreated him.

All that said, the disciples with their half-baked faith see amazing results.

So – let’s by all means anticipate possible opposition or resistance to the Gospel, but let’s leave things in the hands of the Holy Spirit to work miracles in people’s hearts and minds, and let’s also be willing to walk away from those who are hostile to our faith and go somewhere fruitful.

[1] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p177f.

[2] Edwards, p181.

July 4, 2021 0

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

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Number three first principle is the new creation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 13, 2021 0

Zooming In On The Ministry Of Jesus

Here’s this week’s video worship. I discovered some good music this week for the confession, Lord’s Prayer, and blessing.

As usual, the text of the message is below the video.

Mark 1:14-20

Many of you know that I’m an amateur photographer. When I want to make a photo of an object that is a long distance away and I can’t physically get close to it, I use a zoom telephoto lens. I have two such lenses.

This first lens will go from making things about one and a half times larger than we naturally see them to about four times. This second lens is my monster and will make objects look between about four and ten times larger than our normal field of vision.

Our reading today is like the experience of zooming in closer on Jesus’ ministry. Here, he begins his public ministry, and we get to see him laying out the fundamentals of that ministry. In a week where we’ve seen the inauguration of a new American President, and where like many new Presidents, Joe Biden has set out his plans for his first hundred days in office to show what he hopes to be the important threads of his presidency, so here we see Jesus setting out the essential elements of his ministry.

Firstly, we see the context. This is the wide view.

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee

Something is lost in the NIV’s translation here. It’s OK to translate the opening words as ‘After John was put in prison’, and we know from later in Mark that he was imprisoned. But a strict translation would say, ‘After John was handed over’. He has been handed over (or betrayed, possibly) to the henchmen of Herod Antipas.

One or two things flow from this. John has done his work of preparation. Now the stage is set for Jesus. Just as he has been handed over, so he hands over the public ministry to Jesus.

But also, the language of handing over will reappear in Mark and the other Gospels. For in Gethsemane, Jesus too will be handed over.

And so too may some of the first readers of this Gospel. It’s likely that Mark wrote his Gospel for Christians suffering under the persecution of Nero in Rome in the mid-sixties.

So the wide context of John handing over to Jesus is that the shadow of suffering for one’s faith is cast across the landscape. It’s present here near the beginning of the Gospel, and it doesn’t go away. With our comfortable life in the West we often don’t see this shadow, but millions of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world will recognise this, and we have a duty to stand up for them.

Secondly, we see the theme of Jesus’ ministry.

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [Italics mine.]

‘Good news’ here is a technical term. The Greek used here is the same as where the Septuagint, the famous Greek translation of what we call the Old Testament, speaks about reports of victory coming from a battlefield[i]. Similarly, when a Roman herald came to a town or village in the empire and said he was proclaiming good news, it was usually the news that Rome’s armies had won a great victory somewhere.

So when Jesus comes to herald ‘the good news of God’, it is a public announcement that God himself has won a great victory. The ordinary people will have received such an announcement with great joy.

But of course they will be disappointed. They will discover that Jesus does not herald a God who wins great battles by the force of his armies. No legions of angels appear to dispatch the hated Romans.

Instead, this Gospel which begins with the shadow of suffering introduces us to a God who wins his victories in completely different ways. He wins them not with violence but with compassion, as seen in the healing miracles of Jesus.

And he wins the greatest victory of all through suffering, as Jesus goes to the Cross, which becomes not a place of defeat but of triumph.

What an amazing message this is for those living under the shadow of unjust suffering as those Christians in Rome did. It is the same for those who suffer for the name of Christ today.

And what a confounding message for those in our day who cannot accept God unless he deals with pain and suffering in their prescribed ways. Loud and clear comes the message from the throne of the universe, ‘I do not do things your way. Learn what I am like and how I achieve the ultimate conquest.’

Thirdly, we get closer still to the action as we hear the content of Jesus’ ministry.

¹⁵ ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’

The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. You bet it has. When Jesus says the kingdom of God has come near he means it has come close in a spatial sense. It’s close in physical distance rather than being close in time.

And that’s because the kingdom comes in and with him. So his arrival makes the kingdom near. And thus the time really has come. When God’s kingdom comes this close, it’s time to do something. This is the hinge of history.

In Jesus God is acting in kingly power. And while it’s good news, that God is doing this, it’s also why the necessary response is ‘Repent and believe the good news’.

Why? Plenty of people say they believe in Jesus. They believe he existed and they have a warm regard for him. But if we truly want to believe in him then we have to accept what he says here, which is that no belief in him exists without first being preceded by repentance.

And that’s because believing in Jesus requires conforming to the ways of God’s kingdom. Yes, God coming and acting in kingly power is good news for his people, but it isn’t as simple as booting out the enemies of God’s people. It also means God’s people need to polish up their act.

I wonder whether the Holy Spirit is prompting any of us in this way? ‘You say you believe in Jesus, well great – but are you conforming your life more and more to his ways and his pattern?’

Fourthly and finally, we zoom right in on the ministry of Jesus in the calling of the first disciples.

¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.
¹⁹ When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. ²⁰ Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Simon, Andrew, James, and John have missed out on the opportunity to be disciples of a rabbi. Those chances went to the bright lads. So they’ve gone off into their family businesses.

But here comes a second chance, and it’s a surprising one. Normally, a young Jewish man would ask a rabbi if he could apprentice himself to him. It wasn’t the done thing for a rabbi to come and call people to be his followers. But Jesus did that.

And the call was different in another way[ii]. The usual pattern was for a disciple to say that they were following Torah (the Jewish Law). They didn’t say they were following a person, not even an eminent rabbi. But Jesus is different. He’s on a different plane from the normal rabbis. To follow him is to follow the law of God, for he is the instigator of it.

Further, this was not to be some academic call to learn Torah and its meaning. It was a call to service: ‘I will send you out to fish for people.’ Thus, it’s possible for Jesus to issue this kind of call to anyone. No qualifications are needed.

And even more than this, it was a call to fellowship, for Jesus creates the beginnings of a community here. This is not an isolated individual call. This is about the making of a new community. Jesus calls all his people to that, too, for he is making us into a sign to the world of how human community is meant to be as he makes all things new. That’s why we have to dispense with all the ways in the church that we carry on as if we are just a club or a social organisation. Our destiny is far greater than such trivia.

So this is where we get to when we zoom in on the ministry of Jesus. In the shadow of suffering, God wins a great victory. Jesus calls us to a belief in him that requires aligning ourselves with his purposes. It involves loyalty to him, a commitment to service, and the building of a new community.

Is that what we are about in our churches? It needs to be, if we care about the kingdom of God.

[i] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p24, discussing the meaning of ‘gospel’ in 1:1.

[ii] What follows is based on Edwards, pp49-51.

January 24, 2021 0

Video Sermon: How and Why Should We Keep the Ten Commandments Today?

So this week we get to Mount Sinai and God gives the Ten Commandments. Find the reading at Exodus 20:1-20.

But how do we regard these laws in a post-Christian society? And how should Christians approach ancient Jewish laws from the perspective of the Gospel? How should we live in the light of them today?

These are the questions behind this week’s talk. I hope you find it helpful.

October 4, 2020 0

Tag: Gospel

Paul’s Favourite Church 4: Shining Like Stars (Philippians 2:12-30)

New Series: Paul’s Favourite Church; 1. Christians Under Construction (Philippians 1:1-11)

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

Good News For Short People, Luke 19:1-10 (Ordinary 31 Year C)

Jesus In Love Divides Us, Luke 12:49-56 (Ordinary 20 Year C 2022)

Remembrance Sunday: The Healing of the Nations, Revelation 22:1-5 (Ordinary 33, Year B)

Leaders of the Opposition – dealing with resistance to the Gospel (Mark 6:1-13)

Zooming In On The Ministry Of Jesus

Video Sermon: How and Why Should We Keep the Ten Commandments Today?

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