Tag: hope

Resurrection People: Restructuring Imagination Luke 24:13-35 (Easter 3 Year C)

Luke 24:13-35

How do you see the world? For me, it’s through a pair of glasses.

In my case, the menu for a new pair of glasses contains a number of elements. The lenses are varifocal, so I can have distance vision through the top, I can read through the lower part, and I can do middle distance vision such as computer work through the middle. Sometimes I need an astigmatism correction. Then there are the helpful additions such as anti-reflective coatings and anti-scratch, since I rely on them everywhere except bed and the shower.

But there’s one other element I always pay for. I am a blue-eyed boy – literally – and like all blue-eyed people I am more sensitive to bright light. In my case, I’m particularly sensitive to things like bright sunlight. And so I have photochromic lenses, the ones that darken in bright light.

Now one of the things about photochromic lenses is that whether you have them in their grey version or their brown, they make the colours you see more saturated. If I take off my glasses, the world looks rather washed out in comparison to the way I am used to seeing it.

I even process my photos according to this way of seeing the world. Their colours are brighter and punchier than other photographers would make them.

What about Cleopas and his companion (who may well have been his wife and may have been called Mary)? How did they see the world? Well, they had been seeing it through the lens of believing that Jesus, whom they took to be a prophet (verse 19), ‘was the one who was going to redeem Israel’ (verse 21), but he has been crucified by the authorities (verse 20) so that’s all gone by the board. And now they are confused by reports from women friends that his body is no longer in the tomb (verses 22-24).

They don’t know how to see the world anymore. And that’s a bleak place to be.

All their hopes for this miracle worker from Nazareth had come to a climax when he had ridden into Jerusalem a week earlier signalling himself to be the Messiah, and acclaimed like a new King David, yes, surely he would set Israel free from the Romans and she would no longer be an exile in her own land.

And that hope, that imagined future, that vision of how things were to be, came crashing down in a matter of days. No wonder they’re despondent.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to see life through a vision that appears good and honourable, but which lets us down. It might be about our aspirations for our career, our family, or our children, only for work or a family member to take a wrong turn. I wouldn’t be the first minister to enter this calling with a vision for renewed and growing churches, only to be disappointed.

But the encounter that Cleopas and Mary have on the Emmaus Road with Jesus gives them a new way of seeing life. It’s a vision that won’t let them down. It’s a vision that will sustain them through joy and sorrow. It’s a vision that will inspire them as disciples of Jesus.

Firstly, we see life beating death. The ultimate enemy of the human race and indeed of all beings is conquered. We believe the gospel promise that Christ’s conquest of death in the middle of history guarantees ours at the end of history.

For Christianity, the essence of death is separation. The separation of the deceased from the living; the separation of the soul from the body. The essence of resurrection is reunion: the reunion of the soul with a new body animated by the Spirit of God, and the reunion of those previously parted by death.

That’s why at the funeral of a Christian we have this mixture of grief and hope, not just grief. We grieve our separation from the deceased, but we anticipate resurrection where we will be reunited and our bodies healed as the Spirit of God gives life to them. When we commit that person’s body at the funeral to be cremated or buried ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life’, this is what we are anticipating. Not just life after death, but a a new quality of life after death.

In this life, it means we face the darkest of challenges with hope. Not that we go rushing after death and martyrdom, but we know that sickness, injustice, and tyranny will not have the final word.

So we don’t become cavalier about Covid, because this life God has given us is precious, but we do know that at its worst it cannot wreak  ultimate destruction.

And right now our Ukrainian Christian brothers and sisters do not become reckless about their lives for the same reason, but they face the shameless violence of Vladimir Putin in the knowledge he cannot ultimately win. Either the events of this life or the resurrection of the dead will mean final defeat for  account to Almighty God for his deeds.

So that’s our first new way of seeing that the resurrection brings, and it’s utterly transformational: we see life and death in a new way.

Secondly, we see hope beating despair.

In 1984, a painter named Gottfried Helnwein created a piece of art called ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams.’ It depicts four famous people in a diner. Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart are a flirtatious couple, James Dean is another customer, and Elvis Presley is the bartender. The theme is ‘emptiness’, because all four could have been said to have died senseless deaths: Presley from alcohol and prescription drugs, Bogart from alcohol, Monroe from drugs, and Dean from a tragic motoring accident. If the sort of dreams I described earlier have let you down and you feel empty, then the victory of hope over despair in the resurrection is for you.

We’ve talked a lot about the need for hope in our society over the last couple of years in the wake of the Covid pandemic. To a large extent millions of people have put their hope in science, and we are grateful for the remarkable work on vaccines. I certainly am: I am sure my recent bout of Covid would have been far worse without my three vaccinations.

Yet the hope our society has clung to in the face of the virus, while good, has not been ultimate hope. For that we need the resurrection, which shows that even death, the strongest of all the forces arrayed against us, does not have the final word.

And whether it’s Covid assailing us or the visions and dreams we’ve lived by letting us down, the only ultimate antidote to the despair they bring is the hope of the resurrection.

As I said earlier, I have known broken dreams as a minister. Church life has not generally become what I hoped and prayed it would. I guess my dreams were about some form of religious ‘success’, but of course that is not guaranteed to us and it is therefore not the solid hope that the resurrection is. Indeed, we might say that putting our hope in any vision and dream that is less than the resurrection is some kind of idol.

So what has kept me going when the experience of my calling has been dark? One Bible verse. It’s a verse that Tom Wright keeps coming back to in his wonderful book ‘Surprised By Hope’, and it’s the final verse of the Apostle Paul’s great chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. The climax of his argument about the resurrection is to say this:

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The resurrection means that our labour in the Lord is not in vain. In the eternal economy of God, all that we do in the Lord’s service counts. We may not be able to see how it does right now, but the resurrection means those acts of faithfulness are not wasted. They are invisible building blocks in the cause of God’s kingdom.

So the resurrection says to us, keep going! Keep doing the Christian thing. One day we will see what God has built with it.

Thirdly and finally, we see the kingdom of God beating the empires of this world.

When God made Jesus’ body new in the resurrection, it was the sign that one day he would make all things new. It was the promise of the new creation, the new creation we begin to experience in ourselves when God begins to make our lives new when we come to him. And it climaxes in the great promise of Revelation 21 that God is making a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem at the centre.

So that is where all this is heading. A new creation where there will no longer be any suffering. There will be no sickness, there will be no sin, whether personal immorality or social injustice. Relationships will be whole. There will be harmony among people. Everyone will have enough. This is the new order promised by the resurrection.

But what are we supposed to do? Some Christians particularly of past generations would have simply seen us as rather passively waiting for it to come about at the end of time. No wonder Christians were accused of ‘pie in the sky when you die.’ That is not the way.

No, this great vision of the fulness of God’s coming kingdom that we see in the resurrection inspires us to act now. Of course the kingdom of God has not yet come in all its completeness, but it is coming. It is on the way. Jesus said it had arrived with his coming.

And this is why it’s important to keep doing the faithful stuff, as I said in the last point. Each prayer for healing, each act of care for the sick, each action in support of transforming the lot of the poor, each act of reconciliation, each deed of compassion, each drawing of someone into the love of Christ is all part of the coming kingdom and a pointer to it.

It’s the resurrection and all that it promises that is our inspiration to live this way.

So – like Cleopas and Mary – may we allow the resurrection to change the way we see life. May we then live by that vision – where life beats death, hope beats despair, and the kingdom of God conquers the empires of this world.  

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Palm Sunday (Sixth Sunday in Lent): Worship In The WIlderness – A surprising Journey

Israel longed for the homecoming of God to Jerusalem. Jesus fulfilled this hope on Palm Sunday, but not in the ways Israel expected. His journey into Jerusalem holds surprises for us, too. That’s what I explore this week.

Isaiah 35:1-10

Have you ever anticipated a homecoming? Perhaps it was your oldest child coming home after their first term at university. Maybe it was a reunion with a long-lost friend.

If you have, then you probably imagined what it would be like. But then the person arrives, and they look different. Your son home from university has grown his hair long. Your daughter has arrived home with a tattoo. The friend you haven’t seen for years has aged badly.

Somehow, homecomings do not always turn out how we imagine they will.

Israel was longing for the homecoming of her God to Jerusalem. We read that in Isaiah 35. But when it happens, as Jesus enters Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, it isn’t entirely in the form they had popularly imagined from their interpretations of the prophetic hope.

It is a surprising homecoming at the end of this wilderness journey we have been exploring through Lent.

Let’s look at the elements of God’s homecoming in Isaiah 35 and see where the surprises lay in the light of Palm Sunday.

The first element is joy:

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom;
    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
    the splendour of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
    the splendour of our God.

The joy is so unconfined that even the inanimate parts of creation seem to shout with gladness. Poetically, creation sings. It is renewed.

The New Testament takes up this theme when it fills out the Old Testament prophecies about a new creation. Before that time, we see creation groaning in expectation, but we look forward to a day when, as Augustine of Hippo put it, every part of creation will mediate the presence of God to us. The homecoming of God is not just about personal salvation, it’s about the renewal of all creation. This is something to shout, sing, and celebrate!

But where is the surprise on Palm Sunday? Isn’t it in the failure of the religious establishment to welcome this and join in? They tell Jesus to silence the children who are singing praises, but Jesus says that if their mouths are shut, then even the stones will cry out.

How easy it is for our meanness and jealousy to close our own mouths to the praise of God and to close our hearts and minds to seeing and rejoicing in the fulfilment of his purposes. For that is what many of the religious leaders of Jesus’s day did.

Has a mean spirit silenced our praise? Has our jealousy of what another Christian can offer stunted our faith? It’s time to repent of these unworthy attitudes. They rip churches apart, and they suffocate our faith.

The second element is hope:

3 Strengthen the feeble hands,
    steady the knees that give way;
4 say to those with fearful hearts,
    ‘Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
    he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
    he will come to save you.’

Think how Israel struggled for hope in the face of Roman occupation. To them, it was like being in exile despite being in their own land. So they looked forward to the day when God would come and right these wrongs, and his Messiah would boot the Romans out, leaving Israel to live in peace within her own borders.

Where’s the surprise? Well, the Christian hope does include the righting of all wrongs and the judgment of the wicked and the unrepentant. No-one in the Bible talked more about Hell as a place of punishment than Jesus.

But the difference is this. Jesus postponed the judgment. It wasn’t to be now, but at the end of time. When he preached at Nazareth in Luke chapter 4, he stopped his reading from Isaiah 61 before the verses about judgment.

So when Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he adopts instead the prophecy of Zechariah, by entering on a donkey, not a war horse. His gift of hope comes in a peaceful manner, not a warlike one. When he receives the cries from the crowd of ‘Hosanna’ (which loosely  means, ‘O God, save us’) that opportunity for salvation is not just for Israel. When he dies on the Cross, a convicted thief and a Roman centurion will confess faith in him. The hope is offered both to Israel, and to Israel’s enemies.

And that must make us think about how we frame our hope in Christ. Do we see that he also offers hope through his saving love at the Cross to the people we don’t like? Are there people whom we would rather God just zapped with a thunderbolt, but who are also candidates for hope, according to Jesus?

The third element is healing:

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,
    and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
    and streams in the desert.
7 The burning sand will become a pool,
    the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
    grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

In these verses we see both the kinds of personal healings that Jesus himself performed (curing the blind and the lame) and also the healing of creation, where even inhospitable places like the wilderness become beautifully inhabitable, and safe instead of being places of danger.

One thing we might dwell upon is how some Christians favour physical healing and others favour the work of the Church to heal the wider creation. However, neither Isaiah nor Jesus give us a choice in this. We are called to both. The Christian with the healing ministry may need to learn about climate change, and the Christian politician may need to pray for the sick.

But there’s another surprise here. Strictly it doesn’t come on Palm Sunday, but what we’ve said in the point about hope being offered not just to Israel but to her enemies might make us think further on into Holy Week. Remember when Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane after Judas betrayed him. Then remember how Simon Peter lashed out with a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. What did Jesus do? He healed the servant, even though that servant was part of the group that was arresting him and about to take him away to certain torture and death.

So the surprise here for God’s people in God’s homecoming is the call to bless all the broken people and all of broken creation, even including the enemies of God. The healing mandate brought by Jesus encompasses a call to love our enemies as well as those for whom we feel an affinity.

Who is God calling me to bless this week?

The fourth and final element is holiness:

8 And a highway will be there;
    it will be called the Way of Holiness;
    it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
    wicked fools will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there,
    nor any ravenous beast;
    they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
10     and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
    everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
    and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

God makes his homecoming on a particular road. It is called the Way of Holiness. Israel rejoices that ‘The unclean will not journey on it’: they can’t have any Romans or even native sinners joining in this celebratory march to Jerusalem.

But the surprise here is that God’s people cannot simply look down their self-righteous noses at those they consider unworthy to be on the Highway of the Lord. The call to holiness is a call for all of us to shape up. It’s a call that reminds us that the only way we can march to Zion with Jesus is if we too take the Way of Holiness.

And as Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the event we often call ‘The Triumphal Entry’, we need to remember that his greatest triumph is to come at the Cross and the tomb. Jesus took that journey, doing what was right. It led him to Calvary, but then to the vacating of his grave.

If we want to walk with Jesus, it is on this road, the Way of Holiness. We shall slip up from time to time, but the basic question is whether this is the direction we are willing to take or whether we have deluded ourselves that we can take a different route to glory. The Cross to which Jesus was headed was not only for our forgiveness, but it was also to make us more like Christ.

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Fifth Sunday in Lent: Worship In The WIlderness – A Truth-Speaking Journey

This week’s passage – Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones vision – isn’t a traditional Lent reading, but you could say it is a vision of wilderness conditions. And so I use this week to explore how God brings hope and life in the midst of crisis and death.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The concept of the wilderness is used in more than one way in the Bible. Sometimes it’s literal, sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes it’s negative, sometimes positive. Sometimes it’s about sin, sometimes it’s about drawing near to God with no distractions.

Perhaps in a temperate climate like the one we’re used to in Britain, it’s natural to gravitate to the negative connotations of the wilderness. And that’s what Ezekiel 37 gives us in this vision of a valley filled with dry bones. It’s a place of death – although it’s also a place which God visits with hope.

The kind of death it symbolises is set out for us in verse 11:

11 Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.”

It’s the death of hope. Israel is in exile in Babylon, far from her homeland. Back in Jerusalem, the city has been sacked and the Temple, their most cherished sign of God’s presence with them, has been destroyed.

Our hope is gone; we are cut off.

I am beginning to sense that the longer the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the more there are Christians and churches feeling something similar to this. The continuing financial losses are heightening the crisis some churches face. The Canadian pastor Carey Nieuwhof, whom I often quote, has said, ‘Crisis is an accelerator,’ and the crisis of coronavirus has certainly accelerated critical questions about some of our churches. Issues we might have expected to face in ten years’ time we are suddenly facing today.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me if some Christians today say similar words to those of Israel in Ezekiel 37:11: our hope is gone; we are cut off.

So in what ways does God bring hope to this wilderness valley of death? And how do we respond if we are to receive his life?

I thought I was going to share two things with you, but it’s turned into three:

Firstly, notice how Ezekiel addresses God:

‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ (verse 3b)

This is the first thing to remember: that God is sovereign. It may feel like social forces are sweeping away things that we cherish and that everything is out of control, but for all this, Ezekiel still addresses God as ‘Sovereign Lord’.

What does it mean, though? The popular Christian cliché is to say, ‘God is in control,’ but I wouldn’t put it like that. It implies God as a micro-manager who direct every minute action. It may be that that is somewhat along the lines of what some of my Calvinist Christian friends believe, but I don’t believe that is true to the Scriptures or true to life.

No: we have to account for a God who is sovereign and for certain exercise of free will by human beings, subject to our limits. It would be fair to say that God has more free will than us, but we still need an understanding of God’s sovereignty that does not obliterate free will and human responsibility, a conception of divine sovereignty that allows both for the sense of purpose and the sense of randomness in the universe.

I think we are moving in the right direction when, rather than saying ‘God is in control,’ we say, ‘God is in charge.’ In the United Kingdom, the Queen is in charge, but not everybody obeys the laws passed by her Government. Nevertheless, she is still sovereign over this kingdom. You could make similar appropriate analogies for different forms of government in other countries.

What Ezekiel is confessing is that God is still in charge, even though Israel is sinful and Babylon is cruel. He can and will exercise more free will than the apparently powerful Babylonians, and that is grounds for hope. In the long term, that will lead to Israel being set free and returning to her land.

Similarly for us, we recognise that God is still in charge, even though COVID-19 has caused carnage and churches and other institutions are in crisis. Yes, some churches will close. Perhaps we see them as casualties of war in the conflict between good and evil. But Jesus promised that he would build his church, and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it[i]. That may constitute our long term hope.

Secondly, notice the emphasis on the word of God. Three times, Ezekiel is told to prophesy (verse 4, 9, 12). On the first and third occasions the call is to bring God’s word to his desolate people. When they hear from God, hope begins to take shape. The bones start to come together (verse 7) and they hear the promise of new life with a return to their homeland (verses 12-14).

The word of God brings hope. It is not simply a message that disappears into thin air. Instead, it has an effect on the hearers. It leads to hope and life.

This is what we need, too: a word from God that stirs hope and new life in us. The very worst thing is when we do not hear God and when God is not speaking to us, as the prophet Amos said:

‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord,
    ‘when I will send a famine through the land –
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.[ii]

But that is rare. If we are to discover hope in our crisis then we need to hear God for ourselves. How might we do so?

The most important way in which we get used to what the voice of God sounds like is to soak ourselves in the Scriptures. A daily, disciplined engagement with the Bible where we both read the words and listen for God speaking to us through them. There is no more a substitute for this in the Christian life than there is for eating regular meals in ordinary, physical life.

When we get a good sense for what God’s message is like, we can then listen for and test today’s claims to prophecy. Where are the people in the Christian community who manifestly live closely to God, and who when have an atmosphere of heaven around them when they speak? Who are the people who bring a fresh word, full of energy, that is consistent with and grows out of what we know about God’s voice from the Bible?

Of course, their words must be tested. Uncritical acceptance is not on the agenda.

But we need to tune in to God if we are to hear his word of hope and life. I have a particular favourite radio station I like to listen to in the car. However, it’s very easy round here to drive in and out of its signal range. If I want to hear it well, I may need to drive closer to the transmitter.

It’s just as easy to drive away from the presence and the voice of God. Each one of us needs to take those steps to tune into the sound of God’s voice in the Scriptures and draw close to him. Then we may hear the message of hope and life he has for us in our day.

Some are suggesting that what God is saying is that the pandemic is like a Great Pause in the world, and that it is like a racing car’s pit-stop where the tyres are changed so that it can accelerate out of the pit lane back into the race. And therefore we are being called to use this time of pause to get right with God, draw near to him, and be prepared not for a ‘return to normal’ but to an acceleration of God’s purposes.[iii]

Does that chime with you as you soak yourself in the word of God? Is that a word of hope and life? Test it and see.

Thirdly and finally, look at all the stress on the breath of God. The bones come together, but there is no life. They need breath.

9 Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”’ 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army.

Breath – also wind, or spirit. In New Testament terms, this is a prophecy that calls on the Holy Spirit to come and fill the people of God.

Ultimately, to have hope we need the very life of God in us. Just as God breathed life into human beings in the creation story of Genesis 1, so also for the people of God to come alive and be filled with hope we need God to breathe his Holy Spirit into us.

And so Ezekiel prophesies for the breath of God to come from the four winds, just as the ancient prayer commonly used at ordination services says, ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ – ‘Come, Holy Spirit’.

Some don’t like that language, because they believe the Spirit of God is everywhere, and there is some truth in that. But at the same time what brings death to us is our living without the Spirit, and we remember how there are biblical stories about the glory of the Lord moving on from the disobedient. So there is justification for us to pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’

Hope comes from the life and presence of God. Lasting, eternal hope is not something human beings can engineer. That’s why we need to pray with fervour, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’

Everything I’m saying today is about being God-centred. Our hope rests on his sovereignty, his word, and his Spirit. If we want to come out of the dry, hot death of the wilderness into fresh new life and hope then the only way to do is by actively depending on our God in these ways.

[i] Matthew 16:18

[ii] Amos 8:11

[iii] Jarrod Cooper, The Divine Reset. See also this video interview: https://premierchristianmedia.co.uk/16DQ-79OQD-68XW34-4DUIQ7-1/c.aspx

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Fourth Sunday In Lent: Worship In the Wilderness – A sacrificial Journey

I’m back from my week off. This Sunday, the fourth in Lent, is also observed as Mothering Sunday, but the theme in our series is ‘A Sacrificial Journey’ and uses Isaiah’s passage about the Suffering Servant.

If you’d like some worship material on the third Sunday in Lent from this series, I know other churches are using this material and a quick search of YouTube or Google should find you something.

In the meantime, here is this week’s video and then the text of the talk.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

We come this week to one of the most extraordinary passages in the Old Testament. I can understand why many Christians view this as a direct prophecy of Jesus’ death for the sins of the world. It is the last of the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ in Isaiah. It is clear that Jesus used these as models for his ministry. And while many Jews could easily have seen the earlier Servant Songs as ones fulfilled by a prophet, this one blows the doors off that with its talk of a human being (as opposed to an animal sacrifice) taking the sins of the world. Whatever it meant at the time – and it must have meant something to its first hearers – it’s hard not to see its ultimate fulfilment in the life and death of Jesus.

And in fact that’s my first observation here: the Suffering Servant goes against the surrounding culture. Here is not the victorious warrior Messiah that Israel came to believe in. Nor is this the mighty military commander in which Babylon placed so much trust. (This prophecy belongs to the time when Israel was toward the end of her exile in Babylon.)

And nor does it sit comfortably with our culture in some ways. Due to our Christian heritage we may have come to recognise and even applaud those who give at great cost, even the cost of their own lives for the sake of others. In the last year we might think of NHS staff who put themselves at great risk for COVID-19 sufferers, caught the disease themselves, and died. However, even that is slightly different from Christian understandings of vicarious suffering, and we’ll come onto that in a little while.

No, the way in which this challenges our culture is early on in the passage, with the descriptions of Jesus’ appearance:

his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness (52:14b, c)

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (53:2c, d)

The Suffering Servant (ultimately Jesus himself) would not fit into today’s glamorous celebrity culture. The media operators would tell him he had a face for radio, not TV.

There are sections of the Christian church where it seems important for their leaders to be photogenic. All this shows is a surrender to our shallow culture. It’s no coincidence how in those churches the attractive pastors sometimes seem to think they can take advantage of this, and a scandal ensues.

But before we get smug, we should realise how we cave in to this vacuous approach as well. I have certainly known circuits where people openly went more to church when there was a good-looking preacher. And I don’t say that out of sour grapes because the preacher in question wasn’t me! It genuinely concerns me. How prepared are we to get beyond style and appearance to substance?

My second observation, though, is this: the Suffering Servant comes alongside the culture.

Really? Yes, because despite what I’ve just said Jesus still has compassion for a sinful and suffering world.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. (53:3a, b)

‘A man of suffering, and familiar with pain.’ In older translations we may know the words ‘A man of suffering’ as ‘A man of sorrows’, as in the great hymn, ‘Man of Sorrows.’

Jesus, the man who enjoyed dinner parties and weddings became the man of suffering and sorrows. He always knew it would be so. He identified with human sin and suffering right through to an ignominious and tortuous death on the Cross.

Before I met and married Debbie, some of you know I had a broken engagement. When that happened, two friends of mine turned up on my doorstep one lunchtime and said they were taking me out to lunch. It turned out that one of them had also had a broken engagement before she met her husband. That identification and experience meant more to me than those who simply, like Job’s comforters, came up with their clever theological explanations of the hurt I was feeling.

When we suffer, Jesus, the very Son of God, knows. That’s a basis for comfort. When the world suffers, Jesus knows. That’s a basis for commending him to others.

And with him, it is more than ‘I understand what you’re going through,’ because Jesus the Suffering Servant has come through the worst of suffering to resurrection.

In our world there has been a lot of talk about the need for hope over the last year. We have placed our hope in science, and of course we are being blessed by the fruits of scientific labour in the vaccination programme. We rightly laud the scientific teams, the companies, and the universities that have produced the vaccines.

But ultimately our hope isn’t in anything human like science. It’s in the Suffering Servant risen from the dead. Science is a gift of God, but it isn’t itself divine. It will do a lot of wonderful things for us, but it can’t always save us.

On the other hand, if as we believe Jesus went through that unimaginable suffering and was raised from death, then faith in him gives us an indestructible hope. What a message we have for a troubled world!

My third and final observation is that the Suffering Servant transforms the culture.

4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Israel knew where her transgressions and iniquities had landed her: in exile in Babylon. And she had no peace with God. Away from Jerusalem and the Temple which gave their lives meaning and significance, they were in a place of despair.

There is a sense in which all people are in exile from God’s presence due to our transgressions and iniquities. Some like to pretend it’s not true. Others just don’t realise. But Jesus the Suffering Servant invites us to hear the voice of his Father calling the prodigals home, because Jesus in his death has dealt with that which has sent us away from the Father’s presence.

It is what Martin Luther called ‘the divine exchange’. In terms of this passage, Jesus takes our pain, suffering, punishment, and affliction, and we receive his peace and healing. Why would anyone turn down an exchange like that?

More than once I have heard a psychiatrist say that if only their patients or clients could know they were forgiven, then many beds would be released on psychiatric wards. What Jesus offers through his suffering is totally and utterly transforming.

Imagine if that were extended across our society and we were no longer a culture where we talked about other people’s ‘unforgivable’ actions. Imagine our politics and our media having healthy disagreements without having to demonise the other side. Imagine a world where those who make honest failures are not turned into social pariahs or media villains. Imagine a nation where a broken and hurting royal family didn’t have to deal with their differences and pain through television interviews and press releases. Imagine more marriages staying together, because the forgiveness of one spouse prompts change in the other.

All this and more is why I say that Jesus the Suffering Servant can transform a culture. It begins with the forgiveness he brings us through his suffering, and as we receive that we offer it to others not just as a message but in our own actions.

This is the journey of Jesus that we mark during Lent. It’s a suffering journey. But it’s one which brings substance, hope, and transformation to the world.

How are we going to travel on that journey with him?

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Video and Text Of Sermon: Third Sunday Of Advent, Hope-Filled Anticipation

Here’s the video of this week’s act of worship, followed by the text of the sermon.

Matthew 11:2-11

From time to time, I have told you little episodes from the bigger story of how God led me to an Anglican theological college in Bristol when I was exploring what my sense of calling was.

A significant part of that story concerns the fact that in those days we were still in the time of educational grants for further education. My Local Education Authority turned me down for a grant.

I lodged an appeal against that decision. The college gave me a deadline to guarantee to them that I had the funds for my first year.

Forty-eight hours before their deadline expired, I learned that I had lost my appeal.

Forty-eight hours to go, and no money. Of course, I had been saving every month, but on its own it was nothing like enough for tuition and accommodation.

You can imagine that in that situation I started to wonder whether I was called to college after all. I had a collection of all sorts of notes of Bible verses, things trusted friends had said to me, and passages from books that had jumped out at me, which collectively pointed the same way.

But now it was all collapsing. Like I said, forty-eight hours to go and no money.

I’m sure you can see some similarities with the story of John the Baptist here.

He has been so sure of his calling. He has preached his heart out, without fear or favour. He has heralded his cousin Jesus as the Messiah.

But no longer. He’s in prison. Soon he will be executed. And so our reading begins,

2 When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples 3 to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’

Note how two things here conspire to lead to John’s sense of doubt. One is that he’s in prison. The other is that he asks these questions ‘When … he heard about the deeds of the Messiah’. It’s as if what he hears Jesus is up to doesn’t fit with his ideas of the Messiah’s job description.

You wouldn’t think that someone with John the Baptist’s calling would be so full of doubts, but he is. The negative circumstances push in on him and create doubt.

Does that in any way sound familiar? Are there bad events in your life that have had an effect on your faith? The loss of a job which had seemed so right for you. An early bereavement. A child going off the rails. A significant injustice. A beloved church leader falling into serious sin. A great dream for your life manifestly not coming to fruition.

If you are struggling in some way like that this Advent, then consider with me what Jesus offers in this passage in response to John the Baptist’s dark night of the soul.

Two things. Firstly, focus on Jesus.

How does Jesus respond to John’s disciples when they come to him with their leader’s questions?

4 Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.’

Look at what I’m doing, says Jesus. I’m fulfilling prophecy. This is straight from Isaiah 35, which is the Old Testament Lectionary reading paired with this Gospel reading.

Listen to Isaiah:

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,
    and the mute tongue shout for joy.

It corresponds closely with what Jesus describes himself doing here, and other parts of what Jesus says here show him fulfilling parts of Isaiah 61.

And if you started singing ‘O for a thousand tongues’ when I read those words from Isaiah 35, then bonus points for you, because these were part of Charles Wesley’s inspiration for that hymn.

Now these were probably not the verses John the Baptist had in mind for his cousin Jesus. He had described his cousin in quite fierce terms at times, and he might have wanted to go just before the healing of the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the mute in Isaiah 35:5-6 to the preceding two verses where the hearers are told not to worry, because their God will come with vengeance.

And John might have expected Jesus to go beyond the part of Isaiah 61 about proclaiming the good news to the poor to subsequent verses that talk about the day of vengeance of our God.

But as we know, Jesus postpones the talk of vengeance to the Last Judgment. It is there in his teaching, but he is clear that his incarnation, which we celebrate at Christmas, is about coming with the offer of salvation.

I don’t know, but maybe John could have done with a bit of vengeance as he sat in the dungeon of Herod Antipas. Perhaps it was easy to lapse into that way of thinking given the popular expectation of a military Messiah.

But sometimes what helps us when we are in our metaphorical dungeon is to be able to see a different part of Jesus’ character or ministry. Essentially, that’s what Jesus does here. Roughly speaking, he says to the disciples of John, look at the evidence and see that I’ve come to bring the promised salvation. That’s what my advent is about.

There is always more to Jesus than we have fully appreciated. The part of Jesus’ ministry to which he refers the disciples of John may not be what helps when we are in darkness because a loved one has not been healed. At those times it may be the way Jesus embraced human suffering himself that brings light to our darkness. Or the wonder of the Resurrection may be what brings us hope when we walk in the valley of the shadow of death.

More Jesus is always a good thing. We might want to read the Gospels more fully. We might find that a trusted Christian friend leads us to the aspect of Jesus that we need to lift us during our troubles.

The late Dr W E Sangster, the famous minister at Westminster Central Hall, once wrote that the Gospel is like a many-faceted diamond. We need to find the facet that shines the Good News into our particular situation.

We could adapt that very slightly and say that Jesus too is a many-faceted diamond, and that we simply need to find the facet of his Person and Work that shines his light into our situation.

Secondly, focus on Jesus’ estimation of you.

7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind? 8 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. 9 Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written:

‘“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way before you.”

11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Undoubtedly in Jesus’ eyes, John the Baptist was the one prophesied by Malachi to be like Elijah come again as the forerunner to the Messiah, or the messenger in Isaiah who prepares the way. In other words, he was someone who had a profoundly important rôle in God’s plans.

Yet matched with that greatness was the humility of his standing, where even the least in the kingdom of God was greater. John was familiar with the humility needed, for as he had said of Jesus, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’

In other words, John was exactly who he thought he was before his crisis of faith. His call remains. God’s estimation of him remains.

How might this apply to us? I don’t know the calling of every individual who watches this video. I can’t even tell who watches it, only the overall numbers who do so.

But what I can say about all of you is that what hasn’t changed even when you had a crisis of faith, even when you doubted the very goodness of God, is that you remain beloved of him. You are still made in his image, carrying special dignity and responsibility for him in the world. You are still one for whom Jesus Christ came, lived, died, and rose again, that the barrier of sin between you and God might be removed and you be usefully employed in the service of his kingdom. You remain one whom your God will never forsake.

Your circumstances may make you question God’s love and God’s purposes for you. But remember that even Jesus expressed a sense of God-forsakenness on the Cross, and what could be darker than that? Yet his Faither brought him through that, using the Cross for good, and vindicating him in the Resurrection. Wait through your night for the dawn that God will bring.

The Christian writer Ann Voskamp says,

Christ-followers do more than believe some things are true, they trust that SomeOne is here.

She goes on to say,

This is a heart-broken planet, but this is not a forsaken planet. …

What electrifies all the dark is that Emmanuel is with us, and the current of His love holds the power to transform the darkest parts of our story into light.

His Withness heals all this brokenness.

May that be our hope this Advent and Christmas.

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Sermon: Affirming Hope In Conflict

Conflict (Chess)
Conflict (Chess II) by Cristian V on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Ephesians 4:15-16

You may know the story of a question set in a training examination for police recruits:

‘You are on the beat and you see two dogs fighting. The dogs knock a baby out of its pram, causing a car to swerve off the road, smashing into a grocer’s shop. A pedestrian is severely injured, but during the confusion a woman’s bag is snatched, a crowd of onlookers chase after the thief and, in the huge build-up of traffic, the ambulance is blocked from the victim of the crash.

‘State, in order of priority, your course of action.’

One recruit wrote, ‘Take off uniform and mingle with crowd.’[1]

Which direction do you walk in when there is conflict? Do you walk towards it, or do you – like the police recruit – behave like Jesus really said, ‘Go out into the world, shut up and keep your heads down’[2]?

Perhaps you want to avoid conflict, because you see the potential it has to be destructive. And so our theme this week is about how we can affirm hope in conflict. Because if we come through conflict healthily, it can be constructive, it can result in growth.

So how can we approach conflict in hope?

Firstly, we can have a hopeful attitude to conflict by looking to our future goal. Hope is about what the future will hold, so if we can envisage a future goal and work towards it through conflict, that will help.

And – surprise, surprise – Paul has that in mind in Ephesians 4. It’s about unity, one of the things we fear will be a casualty of conflict. He starts the chapter with the fact that God has already given us unity in Christ, and he looks for us to maintain and build that unity. So the unity that is already given is present in all the ‘one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all’ language (verses 4-6), but he also calls us to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’ (verse 3, italics mine). By the end of the passage, he is talking about us as one body, where every part does its work together in love (verses 15-16).

Our goal, then, is unity. We have been given and entrusted a basic unity of the Spirit in Christ, but it is our duty to live out the unity we have been given.

What does that mean for us when conflict arises? It means we engage in the humility, gentleness and patience that Paul writes about (verse 2). None of these qualities is about compromising our convictions – humility doesn’t simply mean lying down, rolling over and saying to the other person, “Well of course I was wrong, you are right.” It does mean we bring a certain attitude of heart and mind to the discussion, where we value the worth of the person we disagree with, where we do not shoot them down on the assumption that we are always right and they are always wrong. It means we treat those we disagree with as people who – like us – are made in the image of God, and so should be treated with dignity, love and respect, however much we may genuinely believe they are in the wrong. If we only see conflict as a battle to win, we shall end up with disunity. But if our goal is to resolve our differences honestly and become more united, then we shall bring humility, gentleness and patience to the table. Again, this does not mean we walk away from conflict or pretend it isn’t happening, because those strategies just perpetuate the open wound. But we hold our convictions with a Christ-like heart.

So – to those of you whose natural instinct is to charge into conflict aggressively, I say – by all means don’t duck the conflict, but do take a step back before you get involved in order to check your heart. Please make sure you are entering the fray with humility, gentleness and patience.

And to those of you who find conflict stressful and who would rather duck out, I say – your gifts are needed in order to heal the tensions. You do not need to be afraid of voicing your beliefs, there is an important place for those who would put their point across quietly. We need to hear you, too, and remember that assertiveness is not about being belligerent, it is simply about being able to state your position, your desires and your needs. That truly can be done in a Christ-like way.

There is a second future goal in Ephesians 4, and it is maturity. Listen again to the final three verses of the reading, and note the references to growing up:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

From infants to a mature body. That is our goal. How often is it that among a group of people who are physically grown up, the level of behaviour when it comes to working through conflict is nothing less than childish? Too often I have come across actions in churches by adults that amount to more than “It’s my ball, I’m taking it home and you’re not playing.”

So what makes for maturity, according to Paul? His answer would appear to be, getting stuck into Christian service. Tracing back the few verses before these, maturity in the church comes from his people learning to serve, and that’s what leaders are about. Immaturity comes when people just say, “Feed me, feed me, I’m not being fed,” and they complain and spread disgruntlement. It’s no good treating Sunday morning as once-a-week spiritual feeding station, then just going away until next week. That’s a consumer mentality that thinks everything we like must be laid on for us, and we should get something for what we pay. Such an attitude knows little or nothing of the Gospel, and it therefore causes strife in the church by its moaning and bleating.

If we are to be hopeful, then, about conflict, we shall see that one of the ways we can become a more mature, grown-up fellowship is by committing ourselves to serve Christ by serving one another and serving the world. That way, we become less me-centred and more God-centred and other-centred. This takes us away from the complaining state of mind that inevitably follows from a mentality that expects everything in the church to be provided on a plate for me. Too often, the problems we deal with are caused when someone moans that the church in some way let her down, when she has not been cultivating an attitude of service herself.

You see, we are not just shaped as people by what we think: we are shaped by our desires and by our actions. And even if we do not currently desire to serve, we should begin serving, because eventually such action will affect our desires and our attitudes towards others.

Thirdly and finally, although I have touched on some practical action as we have considered how our hopes shape us, there is a particular course of action to which Paul calls us to aspire in our desire to grow into maturity. And yes, it comes in those words of his that have become a hackneyed expression in Christian circles: speaking the truth in love (verse 15). This, he says, helps us grow.

But ‘speaking the truth in love’ is difficult. Some of us are better at truth than love, and so we go up to someone and offer ‘a word in love’, which turns out to be cover for negative criticism. Others of us are better at love than truth, and we use love as a justification to avoid a conflict when one is actually needed.

How, then, can we break the impasse? Let me offer a suggestion. While the context and other uses of the word almost certainly refer to ‘speaking the truth in love’, the literal translation here is, ‘truthing in love’[3]. In general, there is not simply an obligation upon Christians simply to speak the truth but to live the truth. Some of our problems are caused by barstool Prime Ministers who love to criticise but do little to live out the Gospel. We need fewer pontificators and more practitioners. When we are devoted to practising the Gospel life – to ‘truthing in love’ – our hearts become softened by grace. We are aware of how much we need the mercy of God, and this affects the way we approach others.

Naturally, it will also bring us into greater connection with the holiness of God, and this will alert us to many things that are wrong with the church and the world. But before that happens, the holiness of God will expose what is wrong with us.

Equally, for those of us who are too nervous to confront an issue and prefer to pretend it’s not a problem at all, living the truth leads us into a greater courage so that we can bring problems out of the darkness into the light where they can be dealt with healthily.

Unity, maturity, truthing in love – yes, we do actually have cause for hope in the face of conflict.

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Living With Broken Dreams

Taking my iPod for a walk the other morning after dropping the kids off at school, this great old song came on:

For one so young at the time, it was such a mature song, and I began to think about the disappointments that crush our dreams:

  • You dreamed of a long and happy retirement, but your spouse was struck down by a terminal cancer
  • You thought your work was going to change the world, but instead you clung on for retirement
  • Your children’s choices in adulthood broke your heart
  • You longed for children, but none came along
  • You expected to marry, but either the right person never came along, or they did and they were a disappointment, or they left you for someone else
  • You wanted to be a church leader, but the church didn’t share your conviction
  • Your heart ached for reconciliation with your family after those dark early years, but it never came and the parent who so let you down died before it could be resolved

Parents, teachers and church leaders all encourage children, teenagers and young converts to dream big dreams. “You can change the world!” Years later, many of those former young people are sat among the shards of shattered hopes. We could live differently.

We could sing the cynical words of ‘Always look on the  bright side of life’, – you know, ‘Life’s a pice of sh*t when you look at it’ – as the best an atheist, nihilist world can offer.

But I can’t accept that. Wouldn’t it be better to live with that Christian balance of Cross and Resurrection? The disciples thought their dreams had been destroyed at Calvary. ‘We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel,’ said one on the Emmaus Road. The discovery of an empty tomb and witnessing the One who blessed and broke bread changed everything.

A sermon I preached about three years ago and which you can find here on this blog was built on some personal experience of walking through such dashed dreams and darkened hopes. It was based on the last verse of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s great chapter about the Resurrection. His conclusion is not to sit tight and look forward to heaven, but to keep on striving, because ‘in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’ The God who will make all things new – even new heavens and a new earth – will make something good out of broken dreams.

Perhaps we can therefore encourage young people to dream differently. Dream on; dream about God’s kingdom purposes, which cannot be thwarted, even if he takes us on a detour to get there.

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How To Nurture Hope

Jason Clark posts an email on leadership by Steve Bagi, ‘Hope … where can I get some?’ Bagi lists ten ways to build hope, and they’re good.

I’d like to see him reflect more on the problem ministers have of being surrounded by people with little hope – not necessarily the naysayers in the congregation but also those facing various pastoral crises and difficulties. I’d also like him to take personality traits and perhaps medical predispositions to depressive tendencies into account. (And while writing this post, WordPress suggested Trait Theory as a tag: I’ve not looked into that.)

Nevertheless, I like the thought of surrounding yourself with people of hope (#3). It reminds me of the effect of having fellowship with Christians of strong faith.

I have hope in the face of a problem when it is in an area of my competence. I may not know the solution immediately, but I feel sure we shall discover it.

Prayer needs conversion to the mode of hope, too, at times. When we do not know what to do and we pray, an important component is the attitude we bring to prayer. Do we have hope that in coming before God in prayer, we shall eventually be led to the right decisions or actions?

What nurtures hope for you?

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Sermon: Sustained By The Risen Lord

Revelation 1:4-8

What did you think when you heard there was to be a reading from Revelation in the service? Many Christians switch off. Revelation is regarded as the book for the weirdoes and extremists. It is full of strange language and has been the basis for all sorts of bizarre beliefs.

But Revelation is a book worth rescuing. It is written in the way it is, because it was addressed to persecuted Christians in the late first century. For them, it made sense to communicate in an unusual style that they understood, and maybe the Roman authorities didn’t. To such Christians, the news that Jesus, crucified  by the Roman authorities, had risen from the dead and was reigning, was the very best of good news. Hence Revelation begins with this big vision of the risen Jesus.

What does that do for us? We cannot claim we are being persecuted for our faith, although certain aspects of legislation and public opinion have certainly moved against us, and that is making some Christians nervous, especially as the General Election approaches. It may be that we end up further out on the margins due to our faith, and if it does, this reminder of our risen Lord will sustain us as we seek to follow him.

How does it do that?

Firstly, we have confidence based on who Jesus is. According to John, Jesus is

the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth (verse 5).

Taking those three descriptions in turn, we have each time something to fortify us in our witness if the going gets tough in society for us.

Jesus is ‘the faithful witness’. He was faithful in his witness to the kingdom of God. He was faithful, even to the point of death. Remember that the Greek word for ‘witness’ in the New Testament is the one from which we derive our word ‘martyr’. Jesus’ own life, then, showed that faithfully following the call of God is costly. It may even cost our lives, when we peaceably but firmly stand for God’s message. The early Christians, then, who faced persecution, knew they were walking in the way of their Master.

What, then, of when we face opposition? We too are called to be ‘faithful witnesses’. We hold resolutely to our faith, even when it is thought stupid, irrational or even morally wrong. We refuse to compromise. But we do not do so in some militant, aggressive way. We recognise that difficulties may come our way, including from those in political power. Jesus has not withdrawn his call to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow him. Do you face something tough in your life because of your faith? Jesus is calling you to do what he did, to follow in his footsteps. It should not surprise us as Christians that this happens.

Is that depressing? If it is, that is where the next description of Jesus comes in. He is ‘the firstborn of the dead’. Jesus’ faithful witness led to the Cross. But it didn’t end there. He vacated the tomb when he was raised from the dead. Thus we have hope as faithful witnesses. Our witness may be costly, but evil will not have the final word. God will have that: he will vindicate his people in the resurrection and the judgment. As God raised Jesus from the dead to new life, so he will also raise us. This is our hope.

But not only is Jesus the first to be raised from death, promising the same for us in God’s great future, his title of ‘firstborn’ of the dead indicates his sovereignty. The firstborn of a king inherits the throne. Jesus is not simply back from the dead, he is reigning. So those who think they are in charge and controlling everything are mistaken. Fatally mistaken, you would have to say. The risen Lord has been given ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matthew 28:18).

And that is what leads to the third ascription: Jesus is ‘the ruler of the kings of the earth’. Who are these pretenders who think they control the destiny of an obscure religious sect two thousand years ago? They are not the ultimate rulers they think they are. They are subject to Jesus himself. If they do not submit to his rule now, they will be brought to justice. Again, it is part of the vindication God promises to his faithful people.

But more than that, it has a particular application for us during this General Election campaign. Whenever a politician proposes policies that go against the will of God or seek to marginalise his church, let us remember who rules over the kings of the earth – Jesus does. Any time one of our political leaders comes over all messianic is a time to remember that Jesus rules over the kings of the earth. Any time they start to promise heaven and earth is also a time to remember that Jesus reigns over the rulers of the earth. And any time we as an electorate look to our politicians and expect them to bring in the kingdom of God is also an occasion to recall that Jesus is king over all creation, and every human ruler must submit to him.

So this is who Jesus is. He is the faithful witness, who shows Christians that fidelity to God may well be costly, even to the point of death. However, he is also the firstborn of the dead, showing the resurrection hope of vindication in which the faithful share. And he is the ruler of the kings of the earth, to whom even the most unjust rulers will have to answer. In these respects, when we know who Jesus is, he truly is our hope when Christians are marginalised, pressurised or even persecuted.

Secondly, we have confidence based on what Jesus does. Now I will admit that a distinction between ‘who Jesus is’ and ‘what Jesus does’ is artificial, because we know who someone is by what they do. But I use the distinction between who Jesus is and what Jesus does in this sermon to match up with the different ways in which our text uses language.

And I say ‘what Jesus does’, because I want to draw attention to a series of verbs in verses 5 and 6. Sorry if this sounds like an English lesson! Here they are:

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. (Verses 5b-6)

He loves us, he freed us and he made us. These three assertions also give us confidence in all manner of situations, including the times we are under pressure for our faith.

Firstly, ‘he loves us’. I remember a friend telling me that nothing gave her greater security in life than knowing that her husband wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Forty or so years later, they are still together, and the husband gave up promotions in his career to stay at an ordinary rank so he could care for his wife, who has suffered persistently from mental illness. But even in her periodically fragile state, the wife knows she is loved, and it does her the power of good.

It’s similar with Jesus. He loves us. He is committed to us. He has no intention of letting us go. His hold on us is stronger than our hold on him. He has loved us with an everlasting love, from creation through the Incarnation, the Cross and Resurrection to the present day and beyond. Whatever we face, he loves us and is with us.

More specifically, the second thing Jesus has done in this reading is that he has ‘freed us’ – ‘freed us from our sins by his blood’. Here is the most decisive example of Jesus’ committed love for us. What we most need is to be freed from our sins, for they bind us. His death on the Cross loosens the chain and we walk free in forgiveness. The Cross is not only the example Jesus sets of being the ‘faithful witness’ I talked about earlier, it is also the greatest sign of God’s love, because it took God substituting himself for us in Christ to break the curse of sin.

This isn’t just someone saying he loves us; this is someone proving it in the most costly of deeds. If that is how we are loved in Christ, we can be all the more sure of God’s commitment to us through thick and thin. We may not always be accepted by the world, but if Jesus does this much for us, he is not about to give up on us when life gets sticky.

The final example John gives of what Jesus does for us is that he has ‘made us’. Made us what? He has ‘made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father’. His love which extends as far as redemption through the Cross does not finish there. We are not simply forgiven and then wait around on a platform with our ticket for heaven. Christ’s redeeming love has a purpose: it is to make us into something now. Whatever the world thinks of us, Jesus has made us with a purpose, to be a kingdom of priests, serving God the Father.

What does that mean? For starters, it means that we all have a special dignity in that Jesus has given us a purpose in life. Rejection and mockery from the world is contrasted by acceptance and purposefulness from God. As a kingdom, we have a royal standing in the eyes of God. Those whom the world despises have immense status in the eyes of God. Whatever the world sometimes thinks of us and however we appear to the world, we are in fact royalty in disguise.

But what is the purpose? We are priests, John says. Each one of us represents people to God in prayer and represents God to people in word and deed. We may bring the needs of anyone to the merciful presence of God. While we might especially do that for our sisters and brothers in Christ, we have the privilege also of doing that for those outside the family of God. Debbie and I offer to pray for people in the school community going through troubles. Lots of Christians do things like that. We don’t simply pray secretly behind people’s backs, though – we ask if we may.

Furthermore, we have a particularly special trick up our sleeves: we can pray for our enemies. When oppressed, the true Christian response is not to lash out. It is to pray for them. It heaps burning coals on them, but does not bind us up as bitterness does when we refuse to forgive.

Then on the other side of the priestly rôle, we represent God to the world. We do this in our words and matching deeds. Whether the world likes us or not, we are priests to them. Whether they accept what we offer is up to them, but divinely appointed priests is what we are. So the world cannot do without us! The purpose Jesus gives us in making us all priests not only gives us personal dignity, it gives us a vital rôle to play in the world.

In conclusion, if we are struggling because we are being pushed to the margins of society, Jesus has good news for us. By what he is and by what he does, he gives us confidence, purpose and dignity. He gives us the inner resources to sustain us in the face of apathy or hostility. No wonder this little passage leads to a doxology from John: ‘to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen’ (verse 6). May his goodness to us lead us also to doxology.

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Sermon For Sunday Week: In Christ Alone My Hope Is Found

Tomorrow (Saturday) I begin a week’s leave to spend half term with Debbie and the children. I have just finished writing my sermon for Sunday week, when I return to duty. Here it is.

Revelation 21:1-8

All around me I find people struggling for hope. For some, it is the economic uncertainties of the recession. Will they have a job? Can they pay their mortgage? For others, it is the onset of serious or potentially terminal illness. I think of two families I know where a child has cancer. Or people wonder what legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren from the environmental devastation our greed has caused.

And of course, I find it in the church. I think of one church facing an imminent decision about possible closure, and another where the signs are not promising for ten years’ time.

I’ve come to the conclusion that our problem is that we conceive of hope wrongly. This is all hope based on circumstances, or on what people do. It’s an uncertain hope: “I hope that such-and-such will happen.” Such-and-such may or may not happen.

Christian hope is different. Let me introduce it this way. A couple of weeks ago, Debbie and I went to a concert by the worship leader and hymn writer Stuart Townend. We sang his hymn ‘In Christ Alone’, and it’s easy to slip past the profundity of that first line: ‘In Christ alone my hope is found.’ The Christian hope is in God. Our hope is in God in Christ.

So to our passage from Revelation. We’re familiar with it at funerals, where its words bring comfort, and that’s good. But there is so much more it can offer us. Why? Well, if you want a bunch of people who needed Christ-shaped hope, the first readers of Revelation would be good candidates. Facing persecution in the AD 90s under the Roman emperor Domitian, they saw loved ones arrested, tortured and killed. Our troubles look small fry in comparison. The vivid pictures that John gave them form a Christ-shaped hope. I believe we need a Christ-shaped hope to fit a Christ-shaped hole in our lives. Come with me as we explore this. Let it strengthen us for whatever we are facing.

Firstly, there is hope for creation. Whenever we go on holiday, an important item on my check list for packing is books. This year, I packed three but only got through one. Last year, I took a couple and only managed one. You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson this year, wouldn’t you? But you’ll perhaps remember I never want to be caught short of reading material!

And the book I read on holiday last year was one that has helped a lot of people rethink their understanding of Christian hope. It is called ‘Surprised By Hope’ and was written by Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham. One of the most important slogans in the book is this: ‘Heaven is not the end of the world.’

Got that? Heaven is not the end of the world. We frequently speak about the Christian hope after death as being the hope of going to heaven to be with the Lord. That is true as far as it goes. But the Bible talks about so much more. The biblical story doesn’t end with heaven: it ends here with ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. In some way that Revelation doesn’t explain, heaven and earth will be renewed. 2 Peter speaks about the destruction of the earth, but again followed by a new earth where righteousness will reign.

Our hope is not to be disembodied spirits floating somewhere in space, it is physical. God is interested in the physical and the material. He made it and he will redeem it. Just as God will not simply leave the dead in Christ in heaven but will raise them to life with new bodies, as he did with his Son, so he will also bring in a new creation.

What does that mean for us? It gives us hope for creation. Since God cares about his physical creation, so do we. Christians should be at the forefront of concern for the environment. We shouldn’t be like some Christians who say that the human race was put in charge of the earth and we can do whatever we like with it. That’s wrong. It’s God’s world, and we look after it as his stewards. One day he will renew it.

Debbie and I are no experts on green issues, but we see it as our duty to encourage Rebekah and Mark in a responsible attitude to the creation – not in a negative, hectoring way, but by filling them with a sense of wonder. Every now and again, we visit a country park near Basildon and Pitsea called the Wat Tyler Country Park. There are plenty of the usual attractions for children there, but there is one place we always visit when we go there. The RSPB has a place there, and we take the children to that so they may gain more of a sense of wonder about wildlife. It does help that Rebekah fancies herself as a young Doctor Doolittle anyway, but Mark enjoys the activities, too – I recall him coming out once, very proud of the wormery he had made!

As adults, we know this is serious stuff. You may well be aware of the forthcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit. At the time I prepared this sermon, European Union leaders were in deadlock about how to take further steps in reducing climate damage. So I’ve done my little bit of lobbying. Various organisations make it easy to do this, especially if you are online. I use something called Superbadger from TEAR Fund on Facebook. Recently, I have sent a couple of emails to Gordon Brown, asking him to continue his efforts in this area. So have thousands of others.

But let’s remember, this is about hope. The fact that God will replace the current heavens and earth with a new one means that whether we succeed or fail in our efforts, the purposes of God will not be thwarted. We put ourselves in harmony with his purposes when we care for creation. Done with the right spirit, creation care is for Christians an act of worship, and a sign of God’s hope.

Secondly, there is hope for humanity. The holy city, the new (there’s that word again) Jerusalem, comes down out of heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband (verse 2). Mention of the bride makes me think about the Church, the Bride of Christ, rather than a literal city. This speaks of the redeemed community.

The hope for humanity is a simple one: God dwelling in the midst of the redeemed community, for the voice from the throne says,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them …’ (verse 3)

You may think me odd, but this puts me in mind of Magnus Magnusson on old editions of Mastermind. This is one of those “I’ve started, so I’ll finish” moments. Why? Let me render part of verse 3 more literally: ‘See, the tabernacle of God is among mortals. He will tabernacle with them …’

Perhaps you remember the tabernacle, the ‘portable sign of God’s presence’ in the Old Testament. Holding that in your mind, go back with me to John chapter 1, where we read of Jesus, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among them’ – or, more literally, ‘The Word became flesh and tabernacled among them.’

So here in Revelation 21, God’s purposes in John 1 are fulfilled. What God started in Jesus, he will finish. The mission of Jesus will be fulfilled. God will dwell with ‘his peoples’ – and note it’s ‘peoples’ not ‘people’. The Bride of Christ will be composed from every tribe, tongue and nation under heaven, a vision that must be anathema to Nick Griffin and the British National Party. How distorted is their attempted takeover of Christian language. In Christ, people are reconciled to God and to one another. It’s a sign of hope for a divided and troubled world. Be clear about one thing: the extinction of the Church is not on God’s agenda. Rather, it has a vivid, glorious, multi-coloured future in God’s new creation.

What is our part in this now? If God’s mission to dwell in the midst of reconciled peoples was expressed in Christ dwelling in the midst of the human race, then we are called to something similar. For Jesus said, ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’. Therefore, just as Jesus dwelt in the midst of those he came to reconcile to the Father and each other, so must we. No religious ghettos. No spiritual escapism, where we run inside our castle, pull up the drawbridge and be relieved that we can worship without the distractions of the world. No more the increasingly futile approaches to mission that wait for ‘them’ to come and meet ‘us’ in our comfort zone. Instead, as the Father sent Jesus, so he sends us. Our sharing in God’s hope for humanity means we choose not to engross ourselves in church-filled lives but live out God’s love in the midst of the world, where we are needed. For now, I’ll limit myself to these words from Henri Nouwen:

More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.

Thirdly and finally, our passage has hope for the individual. I want to consider those famous words from verse 4 that make this reading so apposite at a funeral:

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’

To those who first read Revelation or had it read to them, these words had immense impact. Remember ,they were facing hideous persecution. Tears, death, mourning, crying and pain frequently soundtracked their lives. How they longed for it to pass. How they, the suffering ones, longed for justice – which is surely why Revelation takes delight in the downfall of the wicked.

So this constitutes the good news of God’s hope for individuals. Whatever we struggle with in this life will be abolished in the new creation. Be it sickness or injustice, its days are numbered. One day, God will call time on all that corrupts the beauty of his creation and will restore all things. Indeed, this is so important that when the voice from the throne says in verse 5, ‘See, I am making all things new’, this is at most only the third or fourth time God himself is reported as speaking directly in Revelation[1]. Not only that, God has given an advance sign of his promise to do all this in the Resurrection of Jesus. The Resurrection constituted amongst other things – the healing and transformation of a body traumatised to the point of death, and God’s vindication of his Son in the face of those who condemned and executed him. The Resurrection is healing and justice. We look forward to both of those in full measure when God’s new creation comes. The Resurrection guarantees our hope in God’s healing and justice.

But meanwhile – what do we do? Shall we lie down and allow pain and wickedness to walk all over us and others? By no means! We pray for healing, we campaign for the oppressed and we accompany the suffering – for that is what we must do if, like Jesus, we are to dwell in the midst of the world, with all its pain. Sometimes, we shall see victories and rejoice. At other times, it will seem like evil has won the day. But when it does, with Christian hope we can laugh at the darkness, for whatever battles it wins, God’s hope means the war is lost. Whatever discouragements we have, our certain hope in God means we need never completely lose heart. We have a vision of hope to fortify us, and the Resurrection to guarantee it.

In conclusion, let me take you back to that Stuart Townend concert I mentioned near the beginning. He introduced another of his famous hymns, his version of the Twenty-Third Psalm, ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’. He talked about how loved that psalm is by millions, both inside and outside the Church for its sense of comfort.

However, he said we needed to do something with that comfort, and that was why he wrote the chorus with its words,

And I will trust in You alone.
And I will trust in You alone,
For Your endless mercy follows me,
Your goodness will lead me home.

If we are comforted, then we need to trust, he said. And I think it’s the same with the Christian hope, which we find ‘In Christ alone’. We may be encouraged by the prospect of God’s hope for creation with its new heaven and new earth. We may find succour in the hope for humanity found in the God who dwells in the midst of peoples reconciled to him and to one another. We may be comforted by the thought that one day, sickness and injustice will finally be completely conquered when all – like Christ – are raised from the dead.

But we need to trust. And that means action. Action in creation that is consistent with God’s purposes of renewal. Action in the church, as we dwell in the midst of the world to offer reconciliation in Christ. And action for the sick and oppressed, as we anticipate the fulfilment of their hope in Christ.

Let us be strengthened in God’s hope. And let that hope propel us to trusting action.

[1] Robert H Mounce, The Book of Revelation, p373.

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