A Sermon for Remembrance Sunday: God’s Manifesto (Revelation 22:1-5)

Remembrance Day Free Stock Photo – courtesy Public Domain Photos. Creative Commons Licence 1.0 Universal.

I don’t know whether congregations dread certain Sundays of the year, but I can tell you for sure that preachers do. Remembrance Sunday is one of them. Being planned on this day is the preaching equivalent of what football fans call a ‘hospital pass’: the ball is played to you, but you know an opponent will clatter into you.

For this is a day when whatever you say, there is a high likelihood someone will disagree passionately with you afterwards. You can upset the pacifists and the patriots. Once, as a young minister after I had tried to expound the Beatitudes on this day, a highly opinionated church steward dismissed my efforts by saying, “There’s only one thing to say on Remembrance Sunday, and that is that war is pointless.”

And fundamentally, today is a civic and political day rather than a Christian festival. So you can always upset people politically. You might take the opposite view to someone. Or just saying anything political will annoy those who think the church should stay out of politics.

Well, the Gospel does have political implications, because Jesus is Lord of all creation, and that includes the political sphere. So, we will have something to say about moral and ethical issues. We will have something to say about political leaders who flagrantly contradict God’s Law.

But what we will not do is come up with particular political policies. Those are rightly the realm of the politicians, political advisers, and civil servants with their different rôles to come up with.

What we preachers will do is paint the broad brush-strokes of God’s love, God’s will, and God’s good plans for creation, so that we may live accordingly.

And that, for me, is where our reading from Revelation 22 comes in. Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the Good News.’ Well, here is part of John’s vision about the fulness of God’s kingdom. These verses tell us where we are headed and the kind of society the kingdom of God will be. Therefore, they guide us in how we live today in anticipation of that time. They indicate how we are to live in the midst of a world that contains hatred and violence, pointing instead to God’s kingdom.

That’s why they form something of a manifesto for Christians on Remembrance Sunday.

Firstly, life:

¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ^2a down the middle of the great street of the city.

This part of the vision is inspired by Ezekiel 47, where the prophet sees water coming out from the temple of God and coursing through the land, bringing life in its waters and on its banks wherever it flows. True life and the renewal of the world come from God.

It is not just physical life, but life in every sense, given by God who is Spirit, for in the New Testament the water of life is a way of speaking about the Holy Spirit.

If we want a world and a community where life in all its fulness comes, then we remember that is the promise of Jesus. It is one of his gifts. It can be received from him. He said, ‘I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.’ The trouble with the church, as one preacher said, is that we think Jesus said, ‘I have come that they might have meetings, and have them more abundantly.’

Life in all its beauty and fulness is on offer from God. If you give your life over to Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit, then what you should expect is not to become some spiritual robot, but rather to become more fully human than you’ve ever been. You can expect all your gifts, talents, and passions to flourish like never before, because you are connected to the Source of all life, and all that is good.

It’s significant that in the Roman Empire, if a waterway flowed through the middle of a city like the river of the water of life does here in the New Jerusalem, it wouldn’t be a river. It would be an open sewer.[1] Do not look to the empires of this world for life, be those empires political systems, economic powers, or military might. Of themselves, they will only lead you to the open sewer.

Instead, the Christian God Manifesto is life: life in all its beauty and richness, available through Christ and empowered by the Spirit.

Let’s offer that. And let’s live like it’s true.

Secondly, healing:

^2b On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Now I know that taken literally this is a bizarre image, seemingly describing one tree that stands on both banks of a river. But remember this is a vision. Treat it a little bit like dream language.

And let me point you again to the river of the water of life in Ezekiel 47. Everywhere it goes, as I said, life flourishes in its waters and on the banks. That happens here with the tree of life that we first met in the Bible in the Garden of Eden.

Biblically, the tree of life was taken to represent God’s wisdom, in verses about wisdom such as Proverbs 3:18, which says,

She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.

But God’s wisdom, although always available, has been scorned. Now, however, as the water of life does its work in the New Jerusalem, it flourishes. In the kingdom of God, the wisdom of God prevails over the foolishness of the world.

Is it not the foolishness of the world that has so often led us to wars and conflict? But in the kingdom, God’s wisdom puts a stop to that.

For whereas in Ezekiel, the tree of life healed God’s people, now says John, the tree of life is for the healing of the nations. The Gospel offer of God’s wisdom is a universal offer. Come and find healing and peace in Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

Oh, to be sure I’m not being simplistic and saying, be converted and everything will be fine. It’s not just a case of being forgiven. For in response to the healing of God’s forgiving love in Christ we need his wisdom to live differently. It needs to be lived out.

And there is our challenge. For too often the world looks at the church and does not see a community that has been healed by the wisdom of God. Rather, it sees one full of foolishness and in-fighting. They see us easily duped by politicians, from American evangelicals falling for Donald Trump to British mainstream churches, where every social pronouncement skews in a left-wing direction. They see us fighting too, tearing one another apart at times.

So to offer this second strand of the God Manifesto, we have some changing to do.

Thirdly, restoration:

³ No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

No more curse? John’s vision is sending us back to the Garden of Eden again, only this time not to the beauty of the Tree of Life, but to the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin.

For God tells them that sin leads to a curse over every part of life. The link between humans and the rest of creation is damaged. The joy of childbirth is infected with pain. The beauty of the male-female relationship is damaged by male domination. The realm of work becomes one of frustration rather than fulfilment. Life ends in the dust of death. Is this the beauty of creation? No.

But in the New Jerusalem, ‘No longer will be there be any curse.’ All that is broken is put right. Relationships are restored. The abuse of power is replaced by the spirit of serving one another. What once seemed futile is now worthwhile.

This, then, is another element of the God Manifesto: a thorough-going restoration that applies across the whole of creation from the physical world itself to human relationships. This is God’s vision. This is what we proclaim.

And therefore it is also what we as the Church are called to live out as a sign of that coming kingdom. We are here to nurture reconciled relationships. We are here to treat the earth with kindness. We are here to alleviate pain and to bring meaning to our everyday work.

Most of all, we are here to say that this all flows from a restored relationship with God, where not only are our sins forgiven, we then with gratitude shall live to serve Jesus Christ, who redeemed us. To repeat the second half of verse 3:

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

As with every element of this God Manifesto that proclaims a different and contrary reality to that of war and destruction, this is something the church needs both to preach and to live. If we truly believe what we say we believe, then our calling is to live it and thereby show the world by our actions that it is true.

Conclusion

There is so much more I would love to say about these verses. But here is how I want to draw this vision to a conclusion.

It’s common today when talking about what is right or wrong to say, ‘Make sure you are on the right side of history.’ It’s a dodgy saying that assumes everything in the world is becoming increasingly better from a moral point of view, even though it’s self-evident that things are getting both better and worse.

But there is a God way of being on the right side of history, and it is to embrace this vision. It is to say, here in Revelation we have the blueprint of God’s eternal destiny for all those who will say ‘yes’ to him in Christ.

If we want to be part of God’s eternal Manifesto of life, healing, and restoration, then we need to do two things. We need to ‘publish abroad’ these truths in the church and in the world. And we need to live out their truth in our lives as a witness.

[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC), p359.

November 9, 2025 0

Mission On The Margins, Luke 17:11-19 (Ordinary 28 Year C)

Luke 17:11-19

On the day I first met Debbie face to face, I walked into her house to find her playing Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album. She was a fan of his music, and about a year after we married she took me to see him live in Hyde Park.

It was probably the worst concert I’ve ever attended, and we walked out on it.

Admittedly, Debbie too was feeling queasy, and the next morning we learned why: our first child was on the way.

If you know Meat Loaf’s songs, you’ll be familiar with one called ‘Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad.’ It’s not a very flattering lyric that he sings about a girl:

I want you, I need you,
But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you.
Now don’t be sad,
‘Cos two out of three ain’t bad. (Jim Steinman, 1977)

The last time I preached on this passage three years ago, I took inspiration from that song title and called the sermon ‘One Out Of Ten Ain’t Bad.’

This time (and there is some crossover with last time) I have been particularly struck by the geographical background, and what that teaches us about Christian mission.

Firstly, Jesus goes to the margins:

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. (Verse 11)

Here’s the thing. Jerusalem is in the south. Galilee is in the north. There is more than one route Jesus could take. He doesn’t have to go near Samaria, but he does.

This is the border not only in a geographical sense but also in a spiritual sense. For the Jews regarded the Samaritans of their day as heretics. What they believed was unsound. But Jesus goes near them. And of course, that is emphasised by the fact that one of the ten lepers was a Samaritan.

And maybe this is a little unusual for Jesus. When he meets the Syrophoenician woman in Matthew 15, he tells her he was only sent to ‘the lost sheep of Israel.’ His mission is mainly to Israel. It will extend from there after his ascension.

The only comparable incident is in John 4, where he meets the Samaritan woman at the well. And the similarity there extends in that geographically Jesus didn’t need to go that way.

So, this is a deliberate decision by Jesus to go to the margins. Even if his primary call is to be with Israel, the People of God, he will from time to time loiter with missional intent among those whose beliefs are dubious.

Who are the people on the margins for us where we can demonstrate God’s love, as Jesus does here? For some of us, it’s easy to mingle among people on the margins. We have people in our families who don’t share our faith. We have neighbours. We have work colleagues.

But some of us spend so much time among the People of God that we need to take deliberate steps to mingle with others. It’s not healthy to make the church the be-all and end-all of our social lives. I know how easy that would be for me. I could spend all my time just going from one church meeting to another, if I wanted, as if Jesus had actually said (in the words of the late Gerald Coates), ‘I have come that they might have meetings, and have them more abundantly.’

For me, it has to be intentional to spend time with people outside the church. My main way of doing this is by being a member of the local camera club. It’s my hope that I can build friendships there, demonstrate God’s love by how I relate to people, and then when the time is right say something about my faith.

Can each of us ask ourselves, where is my margin between people of faith and those who don’t see life like me? What am I doing to cultivate these relationships? What can I do in those relationships and situations to show the love of God? Can I begin praying regularly for these people, that there might be an opportunity to introduce them to God’s love in Jesus?

Secondly – and related to this – Jesus works publicly:

¹² As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance ¹³ and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’

¹⁴ When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.

All the action happens in public. They are on the outskirts of a village. Jesus responds publicly. And perhaps most significantly of all, he tells them to go to the priests.

As you may well know, in that society, for a leper to be allowed back into mainstream society, a priest had to verify they were healed. This was an ancient form of infection control. You could not risk someone coming back into the village when they could still infect others.

In other words, what Jesus did in healing the ten could be verified. And there was no shame in seeking that verification. It contrasts hugely with some of the more extreme characters in Christian healing who pray for the sick and tell them to throw their pills away before the healing has been confirmed. Allegedly, this is supposed to be an act of faith, but in reality, there are people who have flushed away their medication, only to find they were not healed in the first place.

I’m not suggesting any of us would do something so reckless, foolish, and dangerous. But I am saying that Jesus’ example here is consistent with his own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when he tells his disciples to let their light shine before others.

We don’t need to be afraid of accountability. Let the world see what we do and evaluate it. How else can it be a testimony to God’s love? It has to be seen.

Christian witness must be in the public arena. For too long, we have treated the church like a fortress, rushed back inside it, and pulled up the drawbridge to isolate ourselves from the world.

But that achieves nothing. In fact, it leads to the further decline of the church. We need to be known in society for what we do in love for people.

Some of this happens on a large scale, way beyond small local churches, when we set up Christian schools that serve the community, or when major charities do substantial work. But should we not also ask, what are we known for as a church in this locality? We certainly have a history of blessing this village, and it’s good to keep coming back to that question. Whatever good we may have done in the past, what are we doing today outside these walls to bear witness to a God who loves the people of this village dearly that his Son Jesus Christ died for them?

Over the years, I’ve seen this in everything from a Christian GP surgery where we were patients, and which took on the difficult patients that other surgeries refused to sign on, to the outreaches to the lonely that Haslemere Methodist Church engages in. What would it be here?

Thirdly and finally, Jesus engages in cross-cultural evangelism:

¹⁵ One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶ He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷ Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸ Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ ¹⁹ Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’

Some people look at this and say, oh look! A Samaritan has faith! This is a sign that God accepts people of all religions!

And this is frankly bunk. The faith Jesus commends is one that kneels at his feet and thanks him. The faith the Samaritan has exercised is in Jesus.

This is the end game for our mission, that people find faith in Jesus and confess him as Lord. We still offer love without any strings attached. We do not make our love conditional on people listening to the Gospel. But it is always our hope and our prayer that the witness of our loving acts will sooner or later lead people to put their faith in Jesus.

If anything, the story’s rebuke for existing believers is not about failing to accept that others can have faith, it is about the failure to thank God for his blessings. Yet when someone encounters Jesus for the first time like the Samaritan leper it is quite possible that his love will bowl them over and will lead to an affirmation of faith.

I have told some of you the story of how an Iranian political refugee started coming to one of my churches. He had had to escape from Iran so quickly he left behind his wife and young son – and also not knowing that his wife was pregnant with their second boy.

After a year or so with us, he asked to be baptised. I convened a meeting with him and the church member who had particularly come alongside him. Being aware that he was applying for leave to remain in the UK and that some refugees had spuriously gone through baptism to get that status, we questioned him closely about why he wanted to be baptised.

He told us about how he had never encountered teaching like that of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. He told us that he saw Christianity treating women far better than Islam did. And then he told us a story.

‘Do you remember,’ he asked me, ‘when I asked you to pray for my baby boy back in Iran? Do you remember my wife had said he was ill, but the doctors could not make him better? And do you remember I asked you to pray for him?’

I did indeed remember. It had been a brief, matter-of-fact conversation at the coffee table after morning worship.

‘Did I tell you,’ he continued, ‘that after you prayed, my little boy got better?’

‘No, you didn’t tell me that,’ I replied with my jaw dropping. It had just been a short, simple, quiet prayer. Nothing dramatic.

‘So I know now that Jesus is real,’ he said, ‘and I want to follow him.’

We baptised him on Easter Day.

In conclusion, let me challenge you to cross some boundaries. Remember that in Jesus’ day Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans. What a good job Jesus ignored that custom.

Go and bless people across the boundaries.

And be prepared, when the opportunity comes, to tell them what your faith in Jesus means to you.

Because you don’t know just how much the Holy Spirit will use your witness.

October 12, 2025 0

Watching You, Watching Me: Jesus and the Pharisees at Dinner, Luke 14:1-14 (Ordinary 22 Year C)

Luke 14:1-14

Surveillance Society - Halsted and Division Edition (C) Seth Anderson on Flickr, CC Licence 2.0

We live in what some have called ‘the surveillance society.’ Everywhere you go, you are on camera. Never mind the old ‘Smile, you’re on Candid Camera’ TV catchphrase, in our society you can hardly move without being captured on CCTV.

Not only that, we have the increasing use of video doorbells. We fitted one at the manse soon after coming, because we discovered that on our estate parcels left by delivery companies were frequently stolen from doorsteps. We also had to deal with a stalker.

At the beginning of our reading, we hear this:

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. (Verse 1)

Jesus was being carefully watched by the Pharisees and other religious leaders. He was under suspicion. They wanted to clock any incriminating move.

But the shock of the story is that in fact Jesus was also watching them. Listen again to verse 7:

When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable.

When he noticed. It’s a two-way mirror. It’s a dose of their own medicine, to mix the metaphors.

What does Jesus notice? I’m going to divide up the story into three to answer that question. Spoiler alert: we’re going to see how Jesus’ values clash with those of his society, and also with ours.

Firstly, the sick man:

This week’s Lectionary doesn’t include verses 2 to 6. Perhaps it’s because last week’s Gospel reading also included Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath. There are certainly some similarities with last week’s episode where Jesus healed a crippled woman in the synagogue. Jesus provokes confrontation with the religious establishment and the way he asks them a question about what constitutes work on the Sabbath what constitutes good deeds is very similar. So perhaps the compilers of the Lectionary thought that if they included this story this week congregations would end up with two similar sermons on consecutive Sundays.

However, these are not the only two examples of Jesus healing on the Sabbath in Luke’s Gospel. There is another one in chapter 6, for example. And while there are clear similarities, this week’s story has at least one unique application, and it’s to do with how the ancient world interpreted the medical condition he had.

The NIV says he was ‘suffering from abnormal swelling of his body’ (verse 2). Other translations use the old word ‘dropsy.’ It’s an excess of fluid that indicates something else is wrong. A few years ago, I went to the doctor because my legs were swelling. The first thing the GP did was send me for a blood test to make sure I didn’t have an issue with my heart, because congestive heart failure can cause this. So can kidney disease.[i] In my case, it was nothing so disturbing, but rather a side-effect from a blood pressure tablet, and I just needed a different drug.

But the ancients saw those with dropsy as people who had insatiable thirst, and metaphorically as those who were greedy, loved money, and were rapacious[ii]. And which group of people was accused of these very sins in Luke’s Gospel? Oh yes: the Pharisees[iii], the very people who are condemning Jesus’ action of healing.

Hence, when Jesus heals the man of his abnormal swelling, he is not just continuing his war on those who interpret God’s commands in a cruel way, he is also putting them on notice about their greed. He has noticed this too about them.

Are we in danger of crossing a line from enjoying good things that God has provided to being greedy? We so often go along with our consumer society and get sucked into the idea that we need to fill our lives with more stuff. Could there be a surprising, maybe shocking message in the reading for us today that in the eyes of Jesus we are bloated, and that we need his healing? Is this something that any of us needs to pray about and act on?

Secondly, the wedding invitation:

In verses 7 to 11, Jesus imagines invitations to a wedding being sent out and people jostling for position at the banquet to be seen as having more honour and prestige. He has noticed it at the meal he is attending. Like I said, it’s not just the Pharisees doing the watching, Jesus is watching them.

This is an attitude that will be familiar to us. Were you ever in a work situation where someone was doing their best to ingratiate themselves with senior leadership to get promotion? Back in the days when I did a more conventional job, I saw that. There was an ambitious man who discovered that he shared a love of cricket with the office manager, and he used that to curry favour. It certainly got him one promotion.

We sometimes see attitudes like this in the church. Somebody wants to be a big fish in a small pond. But it goes against the teaching of Jesus.

And he tells his hearers to take the lowest place at the banquet. The host may invite them to move up to a more honoured seat, and that is better than the humiliation of having thought too highly or themselves and having had to be relegated. In a culture where issues of honour and shame were prominent, this was radical teaching from Jesus.

Even then, some people manipulate Jesus’ teaching here. Some of what masquerades as ‘servant leadership’ in the church is actually a way of exercising influence and gaining power through the back door.

But if we follow Jesus, we shall be content with the seat to which he appoints us. If he puts us in a prominent position, all well and good – although we shall have to guard ourselves against pride. If we remain in an obscure or insignificant place, that is fine, too. After all, Jesus himself in taking on human flesh took the nature of a servant[iv].

In my early years as a minister, I had a couple of incidents where people foresaw me rising to positions of prominence in the church world. Not least was the time when I ended up as a seminar speaker at Spring Harvest, and one or two people said that I would then be among the movers and shakers of the evangelical world. It never happened. I have remained an obscure minister, and over the years have learned to be content with that.

When it comes down to it, no Christian can be seeking to make a name for themselves. That is not consistent with the call to humility and servanthood that Jesus makes. The only fame we seek is the fame of Jesus. And we let Jesus appoint the places where he wants us to do that.

Thirdly, the dinner invitation:

In the final part of the reading, verses 12 to 14, Jesus asks his listeners to imagine themselves not as the recipients of an invitation but as the givers of one. Who will you invite to dinner, he asks? And in one sweeping move he undermines the entire social fabric within which his hearers are happily living. Is it just to have a go at them, and enjoy seeing them squirm? I’m sure they did, but Jesus’ real concern here is for the poor and the excluded.

It’s almost topical. This week, we’ve heard the news that the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has declined his invitation to the banquet the King will be hosting next month for Donald Trump’s state visit in protest at Trump’s apparent support for the Israeli government’s state-sanctioned violence in Gaza. Davy even said that as a Christian this was something he prayed about before confirming his decision.

But if Ed Davey’s decision is a negative one as a protest, what we have from Jesus here is a positive step on behalf of the poor. First of all, he blows away all the conventional wisdom of his day about patronage, mutual back-scratching, and reciprocal arrangements so that people can engage in social climbing. It’s not the way of the Christian, he says. I wonder whether it says anything to today’s practices. What would it say, for example, to the way people today go along to ‘networking’ events to promote themselves?

No, says Jesus, invite people who can’t offer you an invitation back. Don’t see this as a way of getting something in return. There’s nothing particularly Christian about that. The Christian approach is to be a giver, whether or not people give back to us.

I mean, doesn’t this model the Gospel and God’s giving to us? What God gives to us in his grace and mercy, forgiving our sins, wiping the slate clean, and giving us a fresh start is way beyond what we can offer back to him. ‘What shall we offer our good Lord, poor nothings for his boundless grace?’ as the hymn puts it.

I want to challenge us all to consider this question: who can I bless this week who cannot necessarily bless me back? Who, among the poor, excluded, and marginalised in our society can I give to or serve?

We refer today to the idea of ‘paying forward’: when someone has given to us and we cannot give back, we give to someone else instead. It would be within the spirit of what Jesus teaches here for us to ‘pay forward’ the grace, mercy, and love we have received from him to others as a sign of our gratitude to him.

So, why not look for an opportunity this week? And come back next Sunday to tell your friends what happened.

Conclusion

The Pharisees were watching Jesus. Unbeknown to them, Jesus was watching them. He called them to replace greed with kindness, pride with humble service, and social climbing with giving.

And surely Jesus is watching us, too. He is longing to see us display these qualities as a witness to him.

What will he see us do this week?

[i] Joel B Green, The Gospel Of Luke (NICNT), p546.

[ii] Op. cit., p547.

[iii] Luke 11:37-44 and 16:14.

[iv] Philippians 2:7.

August 31, 2025 0

The Answer Should Be Jesus But It Sounds Like A Squirrel, Luke 13:10-17 (Ordinary 21 Year C)

Luke 13:10-17

You’ve probably heard the story about the preacher who begins a children’s address by asking, ‘What’s grey, furry, has a tail, and runs up trees?’

After an embarrassed silence, one of the children says, ‘I know the answer should be Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me.’

The answer should be Jesus. Well, in today’s reading the answer definitely is Jesus. He is the central figure in the story. Everything revolves around his interactions with people and their responses to him.

Firstly, Jesus and the crippled woman:

There is widespread agreement that the physiological condition the woman was suffering from was ankylosing spondylitis, which is an arthritic condition affecting the vertebrae. It leads to curvature of the spine and an inability to flex the joints. The condition is well-known today – I’m sure you know or have seen people with it – and to this day is still incurable.

But what about all that ‘spirit’ and ‘Satan’ language attached to it? The NIV says the woman was ‘crippled by a spirit’ (verse 11), and other translations say, ‘a spirit of weakness.’ Then, when Jesus argues with the synagogue ruler, he says that Satan had kept her bound for the eighteen years she had had the condition (verse 16).

So is Jesus performing an exorcism here? Was the woman possessed? No. Luke doesn’t use that language. There is no ‘casting out’ or ‘delivering’. Jesus puts his hands on her (verse 13), which doesn’t usually happen in an exorcism.

What is this language, then? It is a recognition that the whole of creation is disordered due to sin. Not that the woman’s ill-health is a result of her personal sin, but that everything in creation is broken and needs healing and restoring. God’s mission in Jesus is to put the whole world to rights. It is why the mission of God’s kingdom that Jesus announces includes so many things: the forgiveness of sins, the healing of sickness, good news for the poor, releasing people from evil spirits, and so on.

It is therefore understandable that when the woman is healed, Jesus says to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity’ (verse 12). No wonder she straightens up and praises God (verse 13).

Here we find the mission that the church is called to continue. If you want to know what we are about, it is this. We are called to set people free from all the brokenness in creation. We bring people to faith in Jesus through the forgiveness of their sins. We bring healing and restoration in every sense: physically, emotionally, relationally, socially, and spiritually. And all in the Name of Jesus.

We are not a religious social club, set up for us to enjoy the Sunday meetings, and perhaps the midweek ones too if we’re keen. We are not on mission just to fill church jobs so that the institution can continue.

We are here to proclaim the kingdom of God, where Jesus is on the throne, and his will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We are here to proclaim that kingdom so that more people, like the crippled woman, will praise God as they experience this good news.

Or maybe you are here today as one of those who in one way or another has been crippled in the brokenness of our world. Then may it be that here in this community you find the Jesus who can straighten you and make you whole.

Secondly, Jesus and the synagogue leader:

When I went to my first appointment as a probationer minister, it wasn’t long before some people sidled up to me quietly and asked me rather hesitatingly a question that began with the words, ‘Do you drink?’ I thought the sentence would be completed with ‘Do you drink alcohol?’ but in fact it was ‘Do you drink tea?’ It turned out that not only was my predecessor teetotal, he also did not drink tea or coffee. Well, I say he was teetotal: there was one occasion when he accidentally and unknowingly ate trifle that had sherry in it and then asked for seconds.

Being teetotal was for many years an ‘identity marker’ for a high number of Methodists. If you knew one thing about Methodists, it was generally that they didn’t drink.

The dispute between Jesus and the synagogue leader is a power battle. It centres on two things. One is about identity markers to show who are truly God’s people. For in Jesus’ day, Sabbath observance was one such marker of a true Jew. The synagogue leader clearly thinks this is under threat, and so he accuses Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by healing the woman.

Shabbat (Sabbath) — Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 2.5

But Jesus’ words and actions show that you have to go beyond wooden interpretations of the Scripture to find the true identity markers of God’s people. There is something wrong with coming up with an understanding of Scripture that prevents God’s people from doing good.

Jesus still believed in the Sabbath, but not in this crude, wooden way. If you asked him about an identity marker for God’s people, he would talk about loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbour as ourselves. The identity marker is that we love God and love people.

All of which means there is another battle going on here between Jesus and the synagogue leader. It’s about who is the authoritative interpreter of Holy Scripture. Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of someone who is happy to see animals set free from their tethering on the Sabbath, but who is not happy to see a woman set free from infirmity to take her full place among the People of God at worship again.

It’s worth asking what our identity markers are, and how we have interpreted the Bible to come to those conclusions. What are we known for, and why? Are we known as hypocrites, or as people who love?

The Christian church has a particular problem with this in our society, not least due to all the sex abuse scandals. Only this last week we’ve seen the conviction of Chris Brain, the former leader of the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield. Most men outside the church think that clergy are either child sex abusers or ripping off the flock financially.

It’s an urgent task for us as Christians to make sure we are known as those who love God and love people. How are we doing that? How are we going to do that? It’s why I often encourage church members to pray a simple prayer each day: ‘Lord, who can I bless today?’

But that prayer is also worth extending corporately to the church. What if we asked together at our committees and other meetings, ‘Who can we bless as a church?’

Let’s make sure we share the same identity markers of God’s People as those Jesus advocated: loving God and loving people.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus and the congregation:

When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. (Verse 17)

The crowd is on their feet, cheering. ‘Go, Jesus!’ It’s like he’s scored a goal and the stadium has erupted.

What does it mean for us today to take delight in the wonderful things Jesus does? It is about more than being the Jesus Fan Club. We are the supporters of Jesus, I suppose, but we are more than that.

When we take delight in the wonderful things Jesus does, we erupt in praise and worship. The best hymns and songs of worship are those that describe the amazing things God has done in Christ. It’s like the disciples on the day of Pentecost, when the assembled crowd of many nations observes, ‘We hear them declaring the mighty deeds of God in our own tongues.’

Courtesy StockCake, CC Licence 1.0 (Public Domain)

Declaring the mighty deeds of God. That is the Christian calling in a nutshell. Declaring the mighty deeds of God is both praise and mission. In worship, we tell God of our delight in his marvellous works. In mission, we declare those works to the world.

Let us dwell on the wonderful things Jesus has done and is doing. Let us rejoice in what he did two thousand years ago, from healing a crippled woman to dying on the Cross for our sins. Let us also rejoice in what he is still doing today. Who here knows that Jesus has done something special for them? Have you shared it with any of your church family here?

I am sure there will be some of you here today who know that in the last seven days since we gathered together for worship, Jesus has done something for you. It might be big, it might be small. If you haven’t already told someone since arriving this morning, then I encourage you to mention it as you chat with your friends over tea and coffee after the service.

Don’t be shy about this! We are family. We accept one another. We love to hear each other’s good news. And what could be better than to talk about the work of God in our lives and celebrate together.

Why do this? Well, for one thing it has an effect upon the atmosphere here. Imagine what it would be like for a stranger or a newcomer to walk into a community that was full of joy because of what God has done.

For another, if we know God has done something for us then that can be an encouragement to others. There will be people among us who are struggling or discouraged, and for whom it could be a tonic to hear that God has not retired but is still active.

Further, talking together about our delight in what Jesus has done is good practice for those times when we take a bit of courage to tell our friends and family outside the church about our faith.

And most important of all, should not God receive the glory due to his Name for all his amazing works?

I love the story in the Old Testament where the Temple is dedicated, and the cloud of God’s glory comes in such overwhelming power that the priests cannot even remain standing to do their duties. What would it be like if our joy and thanksgiving for the work of God were so tangible that a visitor would spontaneously say, ‘Truly God is among you?’

August 24, 2025 1

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

The Good News Covenant, Luke 4:14-21 (Ordinary 3 Epiphany 3)

No video this week: on Friday afternoon, while working on this sermon, a workman’s van crashed into our kitchen wall, causing structural damage to our manse.

No-one was hurt. But it does mean I’ve got behind. Anyway, here’s the text of this week’s sermon.

Luke 4:14-21

How did you hear about the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963? I am too young to remember how we heard the news in the UK, but I imagine people heard on the next available TV news bulletin.

But I do know how I heard about the death of Princess Diana in August 1997. I came downstairs that Sunday morning, and as was my habit I turned on the BBC breakfast news. There was the rolling coverage provided by 24-hour news services.

And I remember how I heard about the death of the Queen in 2023. Debbie and I were sitting in a branch of Pizza Express, waiting for a meal before going to a concert. A news alert flashed up on my phone.

How did people hear major news in the Roman Empire two thousand years ago? A messenger would come to their town or village and make a public announcement, probably in somewhere like the marketplace. I guess they were a little bit like town criers. They would tell the people that there was a new Emperor on the throne in Rome, or that Rome’s legions had won a great victory against an enemy.

And do you know what they called their proclamations? You do. ‘Good News.’

So when the New Testament speaks about Good News it takes over this model and gives it a refit according to the life and ministry of Jesus. It would be something like this:

‘Good News! There is a new king on the throne of the universe. His name is Jesus. He has conquered sin and death not with violence but by his own suffering love and death. And God has vindicated him by raising him from the dead.’

Jesus speaks of ‘Good News’ in Luke 4, and – to state the obvious – he is by definition doing so before his death and resurrection. But he is telling his hearers about the nature of the kingdom he is inaugurating, including what it is like to live under his reign and by implication what it requires of its citizens.

Therefore, what we are considering today is both the offer Jesus makes to us by his grace and the call he makes on us in response.

Firstly, good news to the poor:

I find that Christians go into battle with each other on this one. What is good news to the poor? Is it that we evangelise them? Or is it that we campaign politically for them?

I think the answer is ‘yes.’ In other words, I don’t see this as an either/or choice.

But we need to understand who people in Jesus’ world would have understood as ‘the poor.’ Certainly, it included the economically poor, but it also it also included those who had no status or honour in society. So we’re not only talking about the destitute, we’re talking about women, children, lepers, Gentiles, prostitutes, and so on.

And by making a list like that, you will I am sure be saying to yourself, that sounds pretty much like the main constituency Jesus served. He brought the Good News that there was a new king on the throne of the universe to these people, and they welcomed it. This king was for them. They could be citizens of his kingdom. God’s love was offered freely to them in word and deed by Jesus, and they too could enter the kingdom by repentance and faith, just like anyone else.

The early church clearly followed up on this. When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he observes that not many of them were of high rank. And after the apostolic age, we find former slaves becoming bishops in the church.

For John Wesley, it all kicked off on 1^st April 1739, when, at the urging of George Whitefield, he preached for the first time in the open air to the miners of Kingswood, between Bath and Bristol. The Good News was for them, he realised. And he would later become concerned about their social needs as well.

If we are to take the mission of God seriously today, we must put this front and centre, because Jesus did. Yet in this country, church historians say that the Christian church has not seriously taken the Gospel to the poor since the Industrial Revolution. John Wesley was probably the last person to do this on a significant scale.

I am not saying that we are doing nothing in this respect. I am sure some of the people who come to ‘Connect’ fall into the categories I am talking about. As we give a welcome and acceptance to them, we need to find the right ways and times to share the Good News with them.

And I am aware that this town is very much divided into two halves. But at the same time, it is a town with Marks and Spencer’s at one end and Waitrose at the other. This is the only church I have served where the hand gel provided to the minister before handling bread and wine at communion comes from M and S!

So allow me to flag this up, because in this area it would be easy for us to lose sight of this important strand of Jesus’ teaching. There are few things more dangerous for Christians than getting comfortable.

Secondly, freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind:

What did Jesus mean by quoting this from Isaiah? Clearly, ‘freedom for the prisoners’ didn’t mean he went around the jails of Palestine opening prison doors and letting the convicts out. It has more to do with him pronouncing freedom from the guilt of sin in the offer of forgiveness, freedom from the power of sin in his casting out of demons, and freedom from being sinned against by standing for justice and also enabling people to forgive wrongdoers.

Recovery of sight for the blind is a little more straightforward, given the healing miracles Jesus performed.

But a lot of that might sound a little distant to us. The church limits the number of people who exercise a deliverance ministry because it needs all sorts of safeguards and protections built in. Most of us don’t have a healing ministry, either. I only know for sure of two occasions in my life when I have prayed for someone to be healed and they were. Not that I want to discourage anyone from praying for healing, though: I’m just saying that only a few Christians have an ongoing ministry of healing.

So what can we take from this? Plenty, actually. We may not all be evangelists, but we are all witnesses who are called to share our faith in word and in deed with people beyond the Christian community. That’s why we’re beginning the Personal Evangelism course tomorrow morning. This is a chance for us to find ways of being able to speak about our faith gently to others. How else are people going to find faith and the Good News of God’s forgiveness in Christ? I encourage you to sign up!

It’s also about our example. When we are wronged, the world will look at how we respond. When terrible things happen, our culture is full of language about certain actions and crimes being ‘unforgivable.’ And while I obviously wish no harm on anyone, our neighbours will be watching us when we suffer wrongly. If they see forgiveness in us, or at the very least a working towards forgiveness, you can be sure it will make an impression.

Further, we can be involved socially in campaigns for those who have suffered wrongs. Yes, this includes our fellow Christians who are persecuted around the world, but we should not limit ourselves to our spiritual kith and kin. Anyone who is an unjust victim, even if it is someone we don’t agree with, is someone for whom Jesus wants freedom. In fact, standing up for those we disagree with can itself be a powerful witness.

As for the recovery of sight for the blind, apart from the question of physical healing there is the matter of those who are spiritually blind. Jesus spoke truth to the wilfully blind, such as many of the religious leaders of his day. He also spoke truth to reveal God’s love to those he was calling out of darkness.

Therefore, we can do two things. We can pray that blind hearts and minds be opened to the truth of God’s Good News. And we can also be the ones who share that truth, backed by prayer.

Thirdly and finally, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour:

All the talk of releasing and setting free is brought together in the talk of ‘the year of the Lord’s favour.’ And that language is the language of the Old Testament Jubilee. The Jubilee Year, which in the Law of Mosese was to occur once every fifty years. And in that year debts were forgiven, slaves were set free, and land was returned to its original owners. Whether Israel ever truly observed it is debatable, but here Jesus says it’s coming in with his kingdom and so it’s a sign not only of how to live now but also of the age to come. It is a manifesto for how the community of God’s kingdom will be and how his people are to live now.

The forgiveness of debts was financial. What a test of discipleship to hone in on how attached we are to our money. Will we always stand on our rights, demanding what is ours, or will we forgive a debt?

I saw that demonstrated by my father when I was still living at home in my early twenties. I had a friend who was an only child and an orphan. His father had been killed in a car crash when he was eight, and then when he was fifteen, just before our mock O-Levels, his mother died of cancer. Then in his early twenties he had a broken engagement. With few relatives, he came to live with us for a couple of weeks while he tried to get himself together again.

But in that time he just expected my mother to do his laundry and cook for him, and he never offered any money towards his keep. After he left to go back to his home, we had a family conference over dinner. What were we going to do about his debt to us?

And my father simply said, ‘We’re going to put it down to God’s account.’

And we know Jesus builds that into the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us. Yes, of course it’s a vivid metaphor for the forgiveness of sins and our forgiveness of those who sin against us, but we should never let that fact obscure the challenge of the literal words.

There is much more I could say about the Jubilee. I could talk about our attachment to the land, which may have implications for our national and international politics. I could mention the ongoing problem of slavery that still exists in our world, and which you might encounter in the staff at the local car wash or nail bar.

But I don’t have time to go into that. I’ll just say that the way we are willing to forgive and release people, money, land, and possessions will be a powerful witness in our world that frequently talks of things being ‘unforgivable’.

The Jubilee was part of God’s covenant with Israel. He had delivered them from Egypt, and this was part of their response of grateful obedience to him. In the renewal of our covenant with God, we are called to a similar response, as we also are in bringing good news to the poor along with freedom and sight to people.

In our commitment this morning, may these be formed as our continuing participation in God’s mission. For then we will be proclaimers of Good News today.

January 26, 2025 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

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

Acts 3:1-26

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So firstly, salvation is physical:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, salvation is economic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirdly and finally, salvation is spiritual:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 9, 2024 0

Holy Week Meditations 2024: Isaiah’s Servant Songs (2) Isaiah 49:1-7

Session 2
Isaiah 49:1-7

Yesterday, I said that in each of the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ we had to determine who the particular servant was, because it isn’t always the same each time. So yesterday in chapter 42, the servant was Israel, but as well as thinking what the text meant for Israel, we looked at it as applying to Jesus, who perfectly fulfilled the prophecies, and then what it meant for us.

Today, the Servant is clearly the prophet himself. I am not going to say Isaiah, because chapters 40 onwards clearly come from a time two centuries after Isaiah himself lived – although in many ways they carry on Isaiah’s themes. Isaiah prophesied in the eighth century BC, when the people of Judah were still in their own land under a king. Chapters 40 to 55, however, come from the time of the Babylonian exile – perhaps ten to twenty years before God’s people start to go back home.

So our first lens today is the prophet. We shall keep Jesus and ourselves as the second and third lenses through which we view the text.

Yesterday, we looked at commitment, call, and covenant: the mutual commitment between God and his servant, the call God gives the servant, and the covenant whereby God doesn’t give up on a servant who has failed.

Today’s reading is about a crisis in the calling of the servant. Today, I also have three ‘C’s: call, crisis, and cure. We begin by going back to the servant’s original call (which is not quite the same as yesterday, because this is about the prophet, not the people), then the nature of the crisis that engulfed him, and finally the way God brings a cure for that crisis.

Firstly, the call:
Listen to the call of the prophet in verses 1 to 3:

¹Listen to me, you islands;
    hear this, you distant nations:
before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
²He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
    and concealed me in his quiver.
³He said to me, ‘You are my servant,
    Israel, in whom I will display my splendour.’

The prophet’s call was no small, accidental thing, nor was it a coincidence. God had planned it from before his birth, just as he did with Jeremiah. God had prepared the prophet and his words to be effective – ‘like a sharpened sword’ and ‘a polished arrow.’ God had protected the prophet until the right time – ‘in the shadow of his hand he hid me’ and ‘concealed me in his quiver.’ Planned, prepared, protected: three ‘P’s this time! God had gone ahead and done all this before the prophet got to respond to the call with his ‘Yes.’

With his Servant and Son Jesus God also went ahead and prepared him and prepared the way for him to be born ‘when the time was right’, as Paul says in Galatians. There were plans, there were prophecies. People were prepared for their part. All this enabled Jesus to fulfil his call.

And God also goes ahead of us, preparing us and our circumstances for his call upon our lives. As a number of you know, when I thought God was calling me to something but I didn’t know what, I ended up studying Theology at an Anglican theological college. When the calling more clearly became one to pastoral ministry, I didn’t know whether to stay in my native Methodism or go over into the Church of England, for which I was seeing a very good advert.

In the end, I went to see a pastor friend who was neither Methodist nor Anglican. I needed someone neutral! When I explained my predicament, Colin said to me that he was a pastor in his tradition because it was the one in which he had been raised and found faith. And if I believed in the providence of God, then could I see my upbringing as an accident? For this reason and other logical arguments that he added, I offered for the ministry in the tradition in which I too had been raised. And here I am.

How do you look at the way God has prepared and ordered aspects of your life as being ways in which he has laid the foundations for your particular calling to be his servant?

Secondly, the crisis:
Despite all this, the prophet, who knows he has been called to be God’s servant, has a crisis of faith. Or perhaps we should call it a crisis of confidence or a crisis of fruitlessness. It comes in verse 4:

But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due to me is in the Lord’s hand,
and my reward is with my God.’

It’s all been a waste of time. I’ve achieved nothing. What’s the point? That’s what he’s saying. Never assume that people who hold lofty callings from God just lurch from one triumph to another victory. And if they tell you they do, you have my permission to disbelieve them. A crisis in the calling to serve God is a common thing.

Later this week, we shall doubtless think about Jesus’ own crisis of confidence in his calling. It happened in Gethsemane. Father, if it is possible, please take this cup of suffering away from me. I know what it is going to involve, and I shudder. Yet not my will but yours be done.

I would guess that most or all of us at some point have had a crisis of confidence in God and in what we are meant to be doing for him. It is not just people like me who live with depression who get those feelings that it’s all pointless and we have wasted our lives.

And when we go through those dark seasons, I commend the Psalms. Some people don’t like the rather bleak and harrowing language that some of the Psalmists use. It’s not very nice, neat, and middle class, is it? But the Psalms give us explicit permission to be open and honest with God, red-raw even. As someone once said, ‘Most of the Bible speaks to us, but the Psalms speak for us.’

For when we have our crises, God is the safest place we can go. We can batter our fists on his chest, but we only ever do that while he is holding us in his arms. We are about to see in the third point that he does not have words of condemnation for his servant who is facing his crisis of confidence.

So let’s move on and hear that.

Thirdly, the cure:
The prophet has just said that things are not going well, and God’s response is compassionate, just not in the way we might expect. Is it to give him time off to rest, as he did when Elijah was stressed, running for his life from Jezebel? No: it’s very different. Hear again verses 5 and 6:

⁵And now the Lord says –
    he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
    and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honoured in the eyes of the Lord
    and my God has been my strength –
⁶he says:
‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’

God says, don’t put yourself down, because I rate you so highly – ‘honoured in the eyes of the Lord’, even. In fact, although you may not have confidence right now, I have every confidence in you. So much so that I am going to entrust you with even more. I so believe in what you can do with me that no longer is your calling simply to bring my people back to the Promised Land, I’m also commissioning you to reflect my light to all the nations. It’s not so much the adding of a burden as a vote of divine confidence.

Did that happen with Jesus? Well, possibly. Before the Cross his main mission was to God’s people, the Jews. Yes, he commended the faith of the Roman centurion and of the Syrophoenician woman, but he said his main focus was ‘The lost sheep of Israel.’ However, after the Resurrection, he commissions his disciples to take the Gospel of the Kingdom to Jerusalem, Judea, and all the ends of the earth.

Could it be that God might say and do something along those lines with us when we have our crises? Dare we believe that God believes in us more than we believe in ourselves? For he knows better than we do what we can accomplish when he equips us with his Spirit.

I’ll finish with some words of Graham Kendrick that I like. He once said, ‘When the odds get too big, I just remember that me plus God equals an invincible minority.’

March 26, 2024 1

One Out Of Ten Ain’t Bad, Luke 17:11-19 (Ordinary 28 Year C)

Luke 17:11-19

On the day when we first suspected Debbie might be pregnant with our first child we were on leave and in Hyde Park, attending a concert by an artist she had wanted to see for a long time, the now-deceased Meat Loaf.

I won’t detain you with my thoughts about that concert, which weren’t very flattering, but of course he performed a number of songs from his famous ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album. Songs with lyrics such as

I want you, I need you
But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you
Now don’t be sad
‘Cos two out of three ain’t bad.[1]

I guess Meat Loaf did better than Jesus here. Two out of three, 66.6%, versus one out of ten, 10 %. One out of then ain’t bad? Maybe that’s something to remember when we worry about lack of response to the Gospel.

But what I mainly want to explore today is what this story tells us about the ministry of Jesus and how we respond to it.

Firstly, the compassion of Jesus crosses boundaries.

There are two ways in which the compassion of Jesus crosses boundaries. As the lepers cry out, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us,’ his heart is roused to compassion.

The first boundary is one of distance. You will notice the lepers cried out – because they were not that near him. Why? Because it was socially prescribed that lepers stayed away from the rest of the population. So they have to shout. Think about all the COVID-19 measures of the last two years, especially before there were any vaccines: keeping two metres apart, the scandal of insufficient personal protective equipment for hospital staff, and so on. These were all required to keep us as safe a distance as possible from transmitting the virus to one another.

Now imagine you had to live with such restrictions for the whole of your life. Imagine too that you had to live outside the boundary of your town, where your only company was with your fellow sufferers. Think about the effect that would have on you – emotionally, socially, and in other ways. The compassion of Jesus crosses that.

The second boundary is about the distance created by geographical borders. We read here that Jesus was travelling ‘along the border between Samarian and Galilee’ (verse 11). Is it so surprising, then, to hear later in the story that one of the lepers is a Samaritan?

It is our task as the church to carry on the compassion of Jesus today. How tempting it is for us to keep it within the boundaries of the church family, with people we know, where we usually feel safe, and where we hope and expect people will support us.

Now that is a rose-tinted view of the church – some of the most virulent criticisms, character assassinations, and use of defamatory language have come inside church circles.

We need to be ready to cross boundaries with Christian compassion, just as Jesus did. To be like him we must take risks and demonstrate his compassion not just in the church but in the world also.

That’s why our Baptist friends are starting a course to help people face and overcome financial difficulties. That’s why our Anglican friends have run bereavement ministries, as well as their community fridge that helps prevent food going to landfill. That’s why one Saturday morning a month you can see ‘Healing On The Streets’ based in our high street, offering prayer for people. That’s why we run the clothes bank.

But just because things are happening doesn’t mean we can be complacent. We cannot sit and think, well so-and-so and so-and-so are operating something from our church, we don’t need to get involved. We do!

Do we already know someone or a group of people outside the church who need the compassion of Jesus? Or is his Holy Spirit drawing us to care for others?

Jesus went into the broken places to meet broken people with the love of God. Is that what we are doing?

Secondly, the ministry of Jesus is to the whole person.

How does Jesus heal? Here there is no laying on of hands, nor does he speak to the illness and rebuke it. All he says is, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests’ (verse 14). The healing happens while they are on their way to the priests.

For one thing, the mere fact of physical healing by Jesus puts paid to the idea that we should confine ourselves to what is ‘spiritual’ and not concern ourselves with physical or material matters. It’s a criticism levelled at the church when we get involved in politics or when we have to spend time on practicalities.

But we cannot divorce the physical or the social from the spiritual. They are all inter-linked. Christians speak of human existence being a ‘psychosomatic unity’ – that is, soul and body are bound together in the one human person.

The mere act of healing shows Jesus’ concern for all that he created. It is a concern he calls us to share.

And why does he send the lepers to the priests? You may know that in that society the priests were the ones who could declare someone cured from leprosy. If they did so declare, then a sufferer’s social isolation as I described in the first point was over. No longer would they suffer socially and emotionally by being cut off from human contact. They could embrace their family again and experience the healing power of touch. They could take their place in society again. They could have the dignity of earning a living once more. They could share in worship with others as they had done before.

The healing of Jesus is physical and social as well as spiritual. Thus our expression of his ministry in the world today needs to be similar.

Of course, we have to be careful not simply to be another social agency. We need to find ways to show why we are showing God’s love in material and social ways. We need to express the reason for the hope that is in us, as the New Testament puts it.

I’m not suggesting we only give material and social help on condition of people hearing a gospel presentation – I have heard of churches that do that and it’s a form of manipulation. But I am saying that there should be something about the way we freely offer the love and mercy of God to all and sundry, regardless of whether they share our faith or not, that should end up prompting questions about why we might do such a thing.

One place where we have an opportunity for that is at our annual Christmas party for elderly and lonely people. We have always offered that event free of charge, and people have often wanted to give a donation towards the costs. How easy it would be for us to say to our guests on that afternoon, there is a reason we offer this for free, and it is to do with the God we believe in. We believe he freely offers his love to us: we don’t pay our way into heaven. We could leave people thinking about the Gospel on that Sunday afternoon.

Thirdly, faith in Jesus needs to be active.

To be scrupulously fair, you could say that all ten lepers put their faith into action, because they all obey Jesus’ command to go and show themselves to the priests. In that their healing comes.

But as we heard, only one returned praising God to Jesus. And that one was not a Jew but a Samaritan (verses 15-16) – someone with decidedly dodgy theological convictions in the view of typical Jews. He had God and where and how to worship God all wrong. Yet he is held up by Jesus as the exemplar of faith (verses 17-19).

So what is the difference between the Samaritan and the nine Jews? Surely it’s gratitude. That’s why the Samaritan returns. The other nine have got what they want out of Jesus and off they go.

How easy it is for us to treat faith in Jesus like the nine Jewish ex-lepers with their conventional, ‘correct’ beliefs about God. If we are not careful, we end up using faith to get what we want or need out of it without bowing at the feet of Jesus as the heretical Samaritan did.

An obvious area where this manifests is in those people who complain after a morning service that they never got much out of it. They came to get, not to give. Worship is a giving experience.

The same people and others will complain that they are not being fed spiritually. Yet what are they doing to feed themselves? Yes, the shepherd is meant to feed the sheep, but in the process the sheep themselves learn how to feed. But some people in our churches just want everything put on a plate for them. It’s selfish and un-Christlike.

Instead, a true active faith like that of the healed Samaritan is one that is characterised by gratitude. When we know what Jesus Christ has done for us the faithful response is gratitude. Gratitude seen in our commitment to regular worship. Gratitude in nurturing our own personal connection with him in prayer. Gratitude in recognising that as he laid down his life for us so the fitting response is to lay ours down for him. And that is why a ‘take, take, take’ attitude is so unworthy of the Christian.

But the grateful faith of someone who lays down their life for the One who died for them will not stay in splendid isolation in the church but cross boundaries with the love of God for others.

That same laid-down life in gratitude will show that love of God in physical, material, and social ways, all because of the spiritual connection with Christ.

Are we among the nine out of ten? Or are we the one out of ten?

October 9, 2022 1

Tag: healing