Tag: Jesus

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.

0

Holy Week Meditations: Jesus Under Question. By What Authority? (1/3)

Introduction

We are going to look at three stories that fall early in the Holy Week narrative in Luke’s Gospel, all of them in chapter 20, where Jesus is questioned by the authorities. Sometimes we read these stories in isolation, but it’s important to see that they occur in Holy Week, because they are all part of the authorities ramping up the pressure on Jesus. They are all part of the campaign that leads to the Cross. 

And within that context of the opposition during Holy Week, there is one theme we must bear in mind, and that is the Temple. All of the questioning finds its source in those who run the Temple. You will remember that when Jesus is put on trial, he is accused of saying, ‘Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.’ 

Well, later in Holy Week Jesus did indeed prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. It was not an act he was going to accomplish, though: his prophecies relate to the destruction that the Roman legions would execute in AD 70, when they put down the Jewish revolt. 

And we also remember that when Jesus said, ‘Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days,’ he was referring to his own body. For in New Testament terms, Jesus himself is the true temple. The temple was reckoned by Jews to be the place where heaven and earth met. Jesus, being fully divine and fully human, encapsulated that in his own being. In Jesus, heaven and earth met. Hence, he was the true temple. Moreover, his death would replace the Jerusalem temple’s sacrificial system. Again, he was the true temple. He was coming to replace the existing one. 

Jesus, then, is a threat to all who constitute the Jerusalem temple authorities. They may not know all that I have just described, but they know enough to realise that this popular preacher is a hazard to all their vested interests. He must be stopped. 

But this isn’t just a private spat between Jesus and the authorities. It is set in the context of Jesus teaching the people. They are listening to him when the temple authorities turn up and interrupt. In between the three episodes we are going to look at, Jesus addresses the people with his counter-arguments, including a parable that shows up the authorities for just who they are before God. The people represent Israel. Will they follow the Messiah? Or will the temple leaders undermine their faith in Jesus?

So with all that background laid out, let’s look at the first of these three stories where the temple leaders put Jesus under question. 

Luke 20:1-8

The challenge

How ironic it is that the authorities turn up just as Jesus is teaching and ‘proclaiming the good news’. Is it that Jesus is good news and they are bad news? Why would they want to put a stop to someone who proclaims good news? What does this say about them? The contrast is set up at the outset. 

But even the ‘good news’ would have been threatening to them. Remember that ‘good news’ was something proclaimed in the Roman Empire by a ‘herald’ (the Greek word for which became a New Testament word for a preacher or evangelist) who travelled to different towns telling the population there of some wonderful event. ‘There is a new emperor on the throne in Rome!’ ‘Rome’s army has won a great victory!’

When Jesus proclaims the good news it’s all that and more. There is indeed a new king on the throne – not in Rome but in heaven, ruling the universe. After his death and resurrection, the early church will proclaim that as good news, too, because God will have won a great victory, not by killing but by suffering. 

If Jesus is proclaiming good news of a new king, then no wonder the New Testament tells us elsewhere that he was announcing the good news of the kingdom of God. This would have been a challenge for the temple leaders who, although they were not appointed by Rome, certainly had their security in office guaranteed by Rome, just so long as they played along. If there is a different king on the throne, then that Roman backing is undermined. Is it any wonder they don’t like the good news of Jesus?

And so they come along and they try to undermine Jesus on the basis of the location, namely the temple. It’s their territory. This is where they have authority. To ask Jesus, ‘By what authority’ he does these things and who gave him such authority, they are saying, look, this is our patch, we are the ones in charge here. You are the outsider. You haven’t been properly authorised and appointed. So what gives you any right to say or do any of that stuff, especially here? 

I guess it might work if you were dealing with a mere mortal. But Jesus knows where his authority comes from, and so do readers of Luke’s Gospel. Luke has told us that Jesus was conceived under the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit has descended on him like a dove at his baptism, and the voice of his Father from heaven has affirmed him as his beloved Son. Jesus has laid out his manifesto under the anointing of the Spirit in the synagogue at Nazareth. And then a ministry has followed where all of this has been demonstrated. By what authority? Do the temple leaders really want to know the answer to that question? 

By what authority? It’s still a dangerous question today. We hope and pray that those in leadership in the church today are those who have the authority of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives and that also this is what the church has discerned in the selection and appointment process. Is it always true, though? Sometimes we come up with our own criteria that may sound good and faithful, but then in practice we may not sense the work of the Spirit. We who lead sometimes end up going through the motions rather than relying on divine authority. It’s not really enough for us to fall back on saying, well I was appointed or ordained by the church if we are not attentive to the Holy Spirit.

But Jesus has no such worries. His knowledge of where his authority comes from and who he is in relationship to the Father gives him a security that leads to the boldness of his ministry. He is the Beloved Son, always full of the Spirit. That’s potent. 

So is this how Jesus will respond, by setting out his credentials? Not a bit of it.

The response

It’s very rare that Jesus responds to a question, even a friendly one, with an answer. Often, he replies – as here – with another question. While there is truth in the old slogan ‘Jesus is the answer’ it’s every bit as true that ‘Jesus is the question.’ At least, here and in other places Jesus is the questioner. 

Even though later in Holy Week at his trials he will often be silent, here Jesus goes on the offensive with his question. He is still in the business of exposing unrepentant sin, and that is what he does by throwing a question about authority back at his opponents. 

And moreover – remember that the ordinary people are present in the scene – Jesus picks on an issue of authority that will chime with them, not with the temple leaders. 

That issue is John the Baptist. When Jesus asks, ‘John’s baptism – was it from heaven, or of human origin?’ it’s about more than just John’s baptism. Those two words are like an abbreviation for the whole of John’s ministry. This is a question about the entire authority behind John’s ministry: was it from God, or was it merely human? 

That makes it a huge question. John was a barometer for how people responded to the divine purposes of redemption. Not only that, but he was widely regarded as a prophet. And further, he was depicted as the one who would come before the Messiah, according to Malachi’s image of a returned Elijah heralding God’s anointed. Where you stood on the authority of John really mattered. 

And in particular, the link between John and Jesus meant that if you endorsed John’s divine authority, you endorsed that of Jesus, too. But if you denied John’s spiritual legitimacy, you not only denied Jesus, you also lost the people who was listening to Jesus, who certainly thought John was a prophet. 

Checkmate? Very possibly. That’s certainly how the religious leaders react. They don’t know what to say. They realise that any answer they give to Jesus’ conundrum puts them in a bad situation. At this stage, Jesus is too popular with the ordinary people and so they can’t alienate the crowds by denying the legitimacy of John’s ministry. But if they take the other option, then the logical conclusion is that they should end up following Jesus, and that is out of the question. He is the thorn in their side that they want rid of. 

Jesus wins this round. What was he trying to achieve? Is this an exercise in saving his own skin that succeeds here but will fail later in the week? Regular observers might suppose so. But the readers of the Gospel know, and the disciples should know, that he had prophesied his betrayal, suffering, and death. He is heading towards that destiny, even if the utter horror of it has not hit him yet in the way it will in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Yet if he knows that the Cross is his destiny, why even bother to debate and outwit the temple hierarchy? Surely it is because wickedness must be exposed by the truth, whatever the cost. Think of how Jeremiah was called to a ministry where it was his calling repeatedly to remind Israel of God’s truth, even though in the short term they were not going to obey. It was still important for there to be a faithful witness to the truth in the face of evil. The people of Jeremiah’s day were without excuse. Those who exercised power during Jesus’ ministry would now also have no excuse before God for their words, attitudes, and actions. 

Does this make us think of situations today where Christians need to witness faithfully to God’s truth in opposition to great evil, and to do so at the risk of paying a great cost? Might that even happen in the USA under Donald Trump’s presidency? 

What about the leaders? They are embarrassed before the people. Their stature and authority before the ordinary Jews has been fundamentally undermined by Jesus. He had made a laughingstock of them. It is almost like the way a satirist uses ridicule to expose the wickedness of a politician and to imply that things should be better than they are. 

Are they going to take this defeat lying down? No. With their hearts hardened by their own choice to the searing moral critique given by Jesus, they are going to defend their position and their interests against all opposition, not least this upstart from up north in Nazareth. 

We haven’t heard the last of them. They will be back. 

Questions for reflection

In what ways today is the Good News of Jesus a threat to the powerful?

Is there any way in which the Good News has been a threat to you? How have you responded?

What makes you recognise the authority of Jesus?

How do you react when the teaching of Jesus shows you to be in the wrong?

What would be a Christian way of handling power today?

0

Prepared For Mission, Luke 5:1-11 (Ordinary 5 Year C)

Luke 5:1-11

Before I was a minister and before I studied Theology, I worked in Social Security. It was, as I have sometimes said, one way of seeing life. I can recall a number of stories from those days which are, shall we say, a little too colourful for the delicate ears of some Christian congregations -notwithstanding other barriers such as the Official Secrets Act.

But suffice to say that in that work I encountered people with chaotic lives, in desperate circumstances, as well as the occasional chancer. I also represented colleagues to their bosses when their personal lives were affecting their work.

Just from that general outline I am sure you can guess that I had some formative experiences that were useful preparation for when I became a minister, even though I had no sense of such a call at the time.

Our story from Luke today is one where Jesus tells Simon that his experience as a business partner in a fishing co-operative will stand him in good stead for a life as a disciple and an apostle.

There is a sermon to be preached on this passage about just how much God values our everyday work, but I will save that for another time. For today, I want to look at the aspects here that prepared Simon for what was to come. Even though we are not fishermen (although I don’t know if anyone has angling as a hobby!) there are elements of Simon’s story that speak to us as well.

Firstly, obedience:

4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’

5 Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’

Simon, James, and John are experienced fishermen. They know what they are doing. That they are washing their nets after a night-time fishing trip tells us exactly what kind of nets they are using. They were called ‘trammel nets’. They were made of linen, were visible to fish in daylight hours and hence why they went fishing at night, and they would be cleaned the next morning[1]. All this is known from historians of the day and confirms that they were conducting their trade according to the best knowledge and practices known then.

But here comes this crazy carpenter – what does he know about fishing? – and he gives them instructions which make no sense to these experienced professionals. It’s daylight, and the fish will see the nets. No way will any fish be caught.

‘But because you say so, I will let down the nets,’ says Simon. Because this is more than a crazy carpenter. This is Jesus, the Expected One, the Hoped-For One, the Messiah himself. And so, even though their friends in other fishing co-operatives based on the lake will think they are mad, they set sail again. They head for the deep water. They let down their nets. And – oh my.

The call of the Christian disciple is to follow Jesus and do what he tells us, even when it seems scarcely credible. He sends us out into deep water, too – into situations that are deeper than we have ever encountered before, circumstances we would resist embracing because they seem too fraught with danger.

It’s something of a threat to our desire for a quiet, comfortable life, isn’t it? But why does it surprise us? Isn’t so much of what Jesus calls us to do the very opposite of conventional expectations? We are to forgive, not hate. We are to give, not take. It’s utterly consistent for Jesus to call us to do unexpected things in his service.

Perhaps what we need to do is to ask him to give us a dream for our lives that is so big and so deep that it can only be fulfilled by relying on him.

Sometimes we hear talk about having ‘smart goals’, where the letters of the word ‘smart’ stand for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and targeted. But in the light of this, I want to ask, ‘Achievable by whom? By us? Or by Jesus?’ Because the latter are the goals that fix our Christian obedience.

Secondly, fellowship:

In verse 7, the people working alongside Simon in the boat are called his ‘partners.’ It’s a word that denotes business partners, which makes sense.

But by verse 9, they are no longer ‘partners’ but ‘companions’. The Greek word has changed, and while this word could denote the members of a fishing co-operative, it ‘is capable of much wider nuances’[2] and is related to the word ‘koinonia’, which is often translated with that glorious Christian word ‘fellowship.’ In the work of catching the abundant haul of fish, partners become a fellowship.

And fellowship is central to the life of Christian discipleship. We do not follow Jesus alone, but together in a body. We cannot do it alone. We need the power of the Holy Spirit, and the encouragement of our brothers and sisters.

But this word ‘fellowship’ is open to much misunderstanding, because we have seriously devalued its meaning. To listen to the way some churches conceive of fellowship, you would think it was little more than talking together. ‘Join us after the service for fellowship over tea and coffee.’ It is so much deeper than that.

Strictly, the word means, ‘what we have in common.’ Luke shows us what that meant for the early church in the first chapters of his second volume, the book we call The Acts of the Apostles. The first believers are sharing in fellowship by the end of chapter two. We find that it means they shared their very lives together, including their possessions. They had Jesus Christ in common, and they shared all they were and all they had in common, too.

When we think of the partners becoming a fellowship in Luke 5, it is reminiscent of Paul writing to the Christians in Philippi and giving thanks for their ‘fellowship in the Gospel.’ In other words, they had shared together in the hard work of the Gospel, just as Simon, James, and John, along with their partners, had shared together in the hard work of hauling those full nets into the boats.

The work of the Gospel can be tough, but Jesus has given us each other to do that work in common, supporting and helping one another. We do not need to be alone in the work. Indeed, we should not be alone. We were not designed that way. God always intended that we support our brothers and our sisters in all the ways we share the Gospel in the world. We may be on the frontline with them. We may be supporting them with prayer and financial giving. And together, we haul in the heavy nets.

I think it would be helpful if each one of us asked, with whom am I in fellowship in the Gospel? Who do I know who can support me as I bear witness to Jesus in the world with my words, my deeds, and my character?

One strategy would be for three of you to gather together as a ‘prayer triplet’, regularly praying each other’s spheres of influence. Such a group would meet regularly, review how everybody is getting on, hold one another to account, and be a source of encouragement. This is real fellowship: it’s so much more than chatting over tea and coffee!

Thirdly, grace:

Simon witnesses the amazing catch of fish and is overcome with the sense that this must be a demonstration of God’s holy power. There seems no other explanation for him being astonished to the point of him saying to Jesus, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’ (verse 8) In the presence of such holiness, he knows himself unworthy.

But of course, Jesus will not have that. For as well as holiness, he has grace. Don’t go away, Simon, come closer. I have a commission for you: ‘Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.’ (verse 10)

And that gracious invitation and call leads Simon, James, and John to leave behind their business (just as it is thriving!) and everything else to follow Jesus (verse 11).

Which of us has not echoed the words of Simon, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinner’? It may be that we witnessed the awesomeness of God’s power in some way. It may be that we are only too aware of our sins and failures: can he really forgive us again? And if he does, surely there is no way he can use me? Or it may just be a sense of our utter inadequacy in the face of Jesus’ blazing purity and beauty of character. We are unworthy. We are not heroes of the faith. What would God want with us?

And yet, and yet. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ says Jesus, ‘I still have work for you to do.’

There is a legend told of Jesus returning to heaven at the Ascension and being welcomed by the angels, who congratulate him on all he has achieved.

Then one angel says, ‘But Lord, what is the next stage of your great plan of salvation?’

Jesus replies, ‘I have left it in the hands of a small group of my followers.’

‘But Master,’ counters the angel, ‘what will you do if they mess things up? What will your plan be then?’

‘I have no other plan,’ says Jesus.

And that’s the plan. His plan is us – sinners that we are.

So if spiritually we are down in the gutter right now, it’s time to hear the good news that Jesus is still calling us. He still has work for us to do in building for his kingdom. He still has people for us to reach with his love. We may be the ideal people to speak and show his love to certain folk.

Let us allow Jesus to wipe us clean with his grace so that we can embrace again his call on our lives. And let’s set out in fresh obedience to him that we may see him do new wonders in our day. And let us do it not as lone rangers but in fellowship with others.

[1] Joel B Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT), p232.

[2] Op. cit., p234 n27.

0

A Loving Friendship With Jesus, John 15:9-17 (Easter 6 2024)

John 15:9-17

In those sadly increasingly rare times when I get to prepare a couple for marriage, one thing I impress upon them is that the success of their relationship will depend on the effort that both of them put in.

I say this, because we so often hear quotations in the media from famous couples who are breaking up, saying things like, ‘Marriage didn’t work for us.’ And it’s nonsense. Marriage is not some separate entity like a car that might malfunction. Nor do we say it in other parts of life. When a friendship ends, we are usually more honest and say, ‘We fell out with each other.’

Now why put this up front in this sermon? Because our Bible passage is about the relationship we have with Jesus and the effort required to maintain it.

Yet putting it as starkly as that will set off the alarm for some Christians. Effort to maintain our relationship with Jesus? Whatever happened to God’s grace? Don’t we depend entirely on God’s grace for all good things?

Well, yes we do, and no, I am not about to preach a religion where good works earn our salvation. In that sense, grace is certainly opposed to good works. But what I want to emphasise today was caught in the words of the late great Christian philosopher Dallas Willard, when he said that while grace is opposed to good works, it is not opposed to effort.

In other words, this is not about effort in order to be saved, but effort in response to being saved.

Jesus speaks about this in the two ways here in which he describes our relationship with him: love and friendship.

Firstly, love:

9 ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

God’s love comes first, before any love we give. We do not love in order to be loved by God: we love because God in Christ loves us first. That’s why Jesus says here, ‘Remain in my love.’ What we do is only ever in response to what God has done for us. Our love does not earn favour with God. We love because God has already favoured us with his love. I often like to say that our love for Jesus is an act of gratitude.

So that may clear up one puzzle here, about our motivation to love Jesus. But it isn’t the only conundrum. It sounds strange to our ears to hear Jesus saying that the way to remain in his love is to keep his commands. In our day and age, we are used to the idea that a relationship of love is a relationship between two equals. So the days of a bride promised to obey the bridegroom in her wedding vows are ones we have left behind. In our marriage service, both bride and groom make the same vows to each other.[1]

We should freely admit that our relationship with Jesus is not a relationship of equals. He is Lord. We are his disciples. Yet despite that, love stretches across the gap. His lofty divine status does not stop him from loving us. Indeed, it is his very nature, for God is love.

We do see examples of this in smaller ways in other parts of life. I remember a church member who was the boss of an engineering company. Any time one of his staff was ill, and particularly if they were in hospital, he took time to visit them. He would enquire whether there was anything the employee’s family needed. He was not checking up on them; he was in a small way imitating Jesus.

And therefore since we are under the authority of Jesus it isn’t out of place for obedience to his commands to be the way in which we show our response of love to him. He has the right as Lord to command us, but his commands are characterised by his love for us. Therefore it is only fitting that our response of love is to do what he commands.

I could put it another way, although this may sound like a slightly diluted version of what Jesus says, and it’s simply to say that if we love someone then we want to do what pleases them. If we love Jesus, because of his great love for us, then we shall want to please him. You could say that of a relationship between equals, as well as our unequal relationship with Jesus.

However we express it, our response of loving obedience constitutes remaining in his love, because this is what we do on our side of the relationship in order to maintain it and keep it strong.

We move on to the second dimension of the relationship, namely friendship:

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve read verse 13 for both love and friendship. It’s the verse that acts like a hinge in the passage, for it mentions love and friendship, it talks about love for friends:

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

Jesus has loved us into friendship. It’s still the unequal relationship, but the friendship crosses that. And it’s still the case that what maintains the relationship from our side is obedience, because on his side Jesus still has the right to command certain things of us, yet he does so from a posture of friendship, not authoritarianism. And on our side, we want to please our friend Jesus by doing what he wants. It’s not a shallow, matey friendship: it’s much deeper than that.

And that ‘hinge verse’ shows us just how deep. It’s a friendship where our love for one another is such that one would lay down his life for his friends. Of course, the primary reference here is to Jesus going to the Cross to die for his friends and for all who would become his friends. In his case, the laying down of his life accomplishes things that no other sacrificial death ever did or ever will.

But at the same time it is also a model and an example for us of what friendship looks like. It’s more than drinks together in the pub after work. It’s more than what passes for fellowship in many a church. It’s a willingness to lay down our lives, if that’s what our friends – or even our Great Friend – need.

Yet this deep, loving friendship is not wholly described by this solemn obligation. It is also described in the amazing privilege that Jesus grants to us because he has called us friends:

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 

He gives us an inside track on the will and the purposes of God. He does not simply give us commands to follow: if obeying his commands was all there was on our side of the relationship, then we would be mere servants. But no. We are friends. He lets us in on his Father’s business. It is possible for us to know what God wants of us and of his creation.

Now of course, some Christians take this to silly extremes. I remember hearing one preacher castigating those ‘who claim to have had more words from the Lord before breakfast than Billy Graham had in a lifetime.’ I think of those who reduce the will of God to trivia – although I concede there will be the odd occasion when it’s right to pray for a parking place.

But there are others among us who act as if we don’t know the will of God and we can’t possibly know the will of God. And that is a sad state of affairs, which misses the beautiful gift Jesus offers us here, arising out of our relationship with him as friends.

There is a middle ground to be struck between those who think we should know every fine detail of our lives from God and those who don’t think we can hear anything from him.

Jesus has let us in on God’s overall plans for creation and his specific plans of salvation for the human race. He has let us in on his commands to follow so that we remain in his love. But within that overall revealing of his Father’s business he often leaves us to apply it specifically. He does not micro-manage us.

For example, I have seen too many Christians get over-wrought about finding a marriage partner. For most of us, Jesus and the apostles simply give us God’s general will in this area, and leave us to apply it. Only in a few rare cases, usually where someone has a particularly tricky calling in life anyway, do I believe God has just one particular person in mind for us. The rest of us can choose – just so long as we remain within the general will of God. That is one way in which divine sovereignty and human freedom hold together.

And all this leads us to the concluding verses:

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: love each other.

Jesus reminds us that it all starts with him, not us, so it cannot be that we earn his love. He always makes the first move, and anything we do is in response to his love and friendship for us.

And we live out that response to his love and friendship in the church and in the world – bearing fruit and loving one another. These are the signs that we have a loving friendship with Jesus.

[1] “But what about ‘Wives, submit to your husbands’?” some will object. In Ephesians 5 where Paul says this, he also calls husbands to love their wives like Christ loves the Church – that is, by being willing to die for them. In other words, Paul calls both spouses to radical self-giving, but in different language.

0

Advent, The Prologue and Relationships: 1, Jesus and the Father (John 1:1-18)

Introduction to series

For Advent this year, I want to explore one of the great Bible passages – the one that above all talks about ‘The Mystery of the Incarnation’, as it is often called in carol services.

It’s the passage we more widely call ‘The Prologue’ – but people of a certain generation must not think about Frankie Howerd and Up Pompeii when I say that!

It’s The Prologue to the Gospel According to John, the first eighteen verses of the wonderful Fourth Gospel, in which the evangelist introduces many of the themes of his Gospel in the context of Jesus’ birth.

There are so many ways we could explore this passage, for there are so many riches there. A friend of mine wrote his PhD on it, and I could easily imagine preaching every Sunday for a year on these verses.

But I’m going to resist that temptation! This is just an Advent series. And one way of exploring the Prologue over the four Sundays of Advent is to take a particular strand in it about Jesus’ relationships. So we shall look first of all at Jesus’ relationship with the Father, and in other weeks at his relationships with Moses, John the Baptist, and human beings generally.

John 1:1-18

I am not the most avid television watcher, but I did set our satellite box to record Monday night’s quiz programmes on BBC2 – Only Connect, Mastermind, and the one that goes right back to my childhood, University Challenge. That was something we used to watch as a family on Sunday lunchtimes – that and Thunderbirds.

For some reason, I still remember one starter question from an early series: ‘Which two books of the Bible begin with the same three words in English?’

Now, leaving aside the awkward issue of differing translations, the answer they wanted was Genesis and John’s Gospel, both starting with the words, ‘In the beginning.’

And that’s where we’re going today – to the beginning, to that relationship between Jesus and the Father that existed before creation and led to creation. I follow those scholars who say that the inner relationships of the Trinity are demonstrated in their actions towards human beings and the world. In the case of the Incarnation, they tell us something about why Jesus came, and that’s what we’re going to explore today.

Firstly, unity:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 

Note those words ‘with God’, ‘was God’, and ‘with God in the beginning.’ The Word, that is, Jesus, and the Father are united in fellowship and very nature. Theirs is a perfect and pure unity of relationship. They are one in heart, mind, and spirit.

It is this inner experience of unity that Jesus comes to bring at the Incarnation. It is the knowledge that human relationships with God, each other, and creation are broken that leads him to come. This is not what was intended. Humankind was made in the image of God, the One God in Three Persons who is unity, but sin has distorted and destroyed that.

So when Jesus comes, his is a mission of reconciliation. He wants human beings at one with the Godhead again. He wants human beings reconciled to each other. He wants the alienation of human beings from the creation healed.

To bring this unity will involve a great cost. It will take him from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the manger to the Cross. It makes me think of a Graham Kendrick Christmas song, ‘Thorns in the straw’, where he imagines Mary seeing the thorns for Jesus’ crown of thorns in the straw of the manger.

Therefore as Christians we remember our need to draw ever closer to our God, as we receive the forgiveness of our sins. We remember our need to work for unity with one another, putting right our broken relationships, and finding reconciliation with each other. We remember that our reconciliation with one another is one of the deeds that witnesses to our preaching about reconciliation with God.

And we remember our calling to bind up the wounds of the creation – not out of the desperation many have over things like climate change, but in the Christian hope of the God who is making all things new.

Let us remember this Advent that the unity of Father and Son leads to Jesus’ mission to bring unity. And just as that was costly for him, let us be prepared to pay a cost to proclaim and demonstrate Christ’s nature and message of unity to the world.

Secondly, love:

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 

Jesus is the Father’s agent in creation. But what has that got to do with love?

Let me ask you a question that the famous twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth asked: was it necessary for God to create?

Barth answered that question with a ‘Yes’, and so do I. Here’s why. It’s certainly true that love between people can be personal and exclusive, but it is never private. If two people love each other exclusively but it never touches others for good, how is it so very different from mutual self-indulgence?

Take marriage as an example. The most common way in which a married couple express this love is when they are able to have children. Their personal and exclusive love naturally reaches out in a creative act and they sacrificially love their children.

Of course, I know that many couples don’t want children immediately and others cannot have children at all. So one of the things I do when I prepare a couple for marriage is I challenge them to show the love they have wonderfully discovered between themselves in service of others. Can they do something in their community? Is there a cause they could support?

I think something like that has happened on a cosmic, spiritual scale in the Godhead. Such is the love between the members of the Trinity that it has to be expressed beyond them. The Father creates through the Son and in the power of the Spirit. A universe is created beyond the Godhead for the Godhead to love.

And it is out of this love at the heart of God that Jesus comes in the Incarnation. Seeing the brokenness and lack of unity that I talked about in the first point, it is his very nature of love that brings him to earth. Remember that most basic of all statements about God in the Bible: ‘God is love.’

What I’m talking about here is what Christina Rossetti wrote about in one of her Christmas carols:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, Love divine;
worship we our Jesus:
but wherewith for sacred sign?

There it is: Jesus comes in love because the very nature of the Godhead is love.

And Rossetti also tells us what the only fitting response is:

Love shall be our token,
love be yours and love be mine,
love to God and all the world,
love for plea and gift and sign.[1]

If the Incarnation is about the love at the heart of the Godhead coming to us in Jesus, then our response is ‘love to God and all the world’ – love God and love our neighbour, as Jesus was to say the two greatest commandments were. Even the new commandment he gave was about love: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

Howard Thurman, who was a great influence on Martin Luther King, wrote a short poem called ‘The Work of Christmas.’ It says this:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

Thirdly and finally, light:

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

At the heart of God’s life is light: purity, wholeness, righteousness, hope. But we have a world of darkness: sin, brokenness, injustice, despair. So when Jesus brings very inner character of God to Earth in the incarnation, he comes as light, the light of the world who ‘stepped down into darkness’[2].

Wherever we experience darkness, Jesus comes to shed his light. It may be the darkness when we know ourselves to be a moral failure, but the light of Jesus’ seventy-times-seven forgiving love draws us back to him again.

It may be the wounds we carry through life that leave us with low self-worth or even a sense of self-loathing, but the hope found in Jesus gives us strength to carry on.

It may be that a particular issue of injustice in the world affects us and we get involved with campaigning but nothing seems to change for the better. I listened to a talk recently by a Christian journalist whose life work it is to expose corruption in the church, but she has suffered attacks and false accusations from parts of the Christian community for her work. She has been tempted to give up, but the light of Jesus keeps her persevering for justice in the darkness.

Or maybe it’s bereavement. Six years ago when my father died, I said that a light had gone out of my life. He had modelled for me so much of what it meant to live with integrity as a Christian man in the world. Yes, he was just two months shy of his ninetieth birthday. Yes, Alzheimer’s Disease had taken his true personality before death took his body, and you could say it was a merciful release. But you know what grief is like. The logical answers don’t remove the pain.

Dad died on 1st August. It was not until Advent that year and reading John 1 that I felt a sense of hope. It was verse 5: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ that made sense of things for me. Jesus gave just enough light in the darkness to take me forward in hope.

Let us begin this Advent with a sense of hope. The relationship between Jesus and his Father may seem like hi-falutin’ brain-bending stuff, but at its heart are characteristics that stretch out from the inner life of God to us through the Incarnation of Jesus. Let that unity, love, and light give us strength and hope.

[1] Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) in Singing The Faith #210.

[2] Tim Hughes, op. cit., #175.

0

Engagement, Not Attendance, Matthew 10:24-39 (Ordinary 12 Year A)

Matthew 10:24-39

Let me begin with an observation from a wise church leader:

If you want to grow the church, don’t concentrate on church attendance.

Does that shock you? Don’t we want to grow numbers at church?

Let me give you a fuller version of the quote:

If you want to grow the church, concentrate on engagement, not attendance.

The point is this: anyone can attend church, and that’s fine: all are welcome. But that doesn’t make them a Christian. What Jesus said was, ‘Follow me.’ That’s more than attendance. We don’t merely seek more attendees or even church members. We seek more disciples of Jesus. People who will engage with him.

So it’s fitting that in today’s passage Jesus concentrates on discipleship. If we listen to him, we will know more of what call we put out to those whom we desire to be his followers and part of his family.

Firstly, discipleship is essentially imitation:

It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. (Verse 25a)

I hear those words and what comes into my mind is the old song from The Jungle Book, ‘Oo-be-do, I wanna be like you.’

In the culture of Jesus’ day, disciples were the students who learned from their teachers. But it wasn’t classroom knowledge. It was the kind of learning where the disciples learned from their masters how to live. They learned by imitating their teachers.

Some disciples of rabbis took this to extremes, and I could offend delicate sensibilities if I gave some examples. But the basic point was that a disciple wanted to learn how to live the godly life by imitating his rabbi.

The Christian tradition soon took this up. Not only did disciples follow Jesus, but the Apostle Paul would tell people to follow him insofar as he followed Christ.

In the late medieval era a Dutch-German Christian called Thomas a Kempis captured the spirit of this when he published a book entitled ‘The Imitation of Christ.’

That’s our priority: more people looking more like Jesus. We need to organise our priorities and our practices as a church around things that promote that. It means, for example, an emphasis on small groups – but not just ones that study the Bible and then close it. It means groups that look at how they are going to put into practice the teaching and example of Jesus, and the next week discuss how they got on.

Of course, we will all fail in imitating our teacher Jesus. But he has provided for the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross, and so we get back up, dust ourselves off, and go again.

It’s not enough for us simply to say that the Gospel is inclusive. If we say that God loves everyone but do not include the need to change, then that will never attract people, because they will think they can stay just the way they are. There is no need for Christian faith and the church on that basis.

But if we build on the fact that many people still have a warm regard for Jesus even if they are less positive about the church, then we have a real chance. We can say to people, ‘Come and see what it’s like to follow Jesus and be like him.’ That is a Gospel message. Just saying ‘All are welcome’ isn’t.

Secondly, discipleship is rooted in God’s love:

Jesus was loved – but not by all. The common people loved him, but the powerful generally didn’t. It earned him conflict, suffering, and eventually death.

If we are going to imitate Jesus then without us being provocative that is going to earn us opposition and pain at times. When bad times dominate, we may be tempted to despair. Is it worth it if the evil people come out on top?

So Jesus tells his disciples not to worry – God will expose the deeds of the wicked to the light. That’s why Jesus tells his followers not to be afraid of those who can kill the body, but not the soul (verses 26-28a).

Sure, there is a proper holy fear of God, but at the root of it all is a God who loves us so much more than anything else in all creation, sparrows included. We have a value to our heavenly Father (verses 28b-31).

And so just as Jesus’ security was in his Father’s love for him, our security as disciples is in the Father’s love for us.

There can be plenty of things to discourage us as Christian disciples. We are a minority. We are misunderstood. People reject us. Even family members take issue with us. It isn’t unusual for us to go through phases in life where we feel there isn’t much hope for all that is good, beautiful and right in the kingdom of God. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to chuck it all in and go along with the ways of the world?

To that experience, Jesus says,

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Is anyone here in a situation of discouragement or even despair about their life of faith? If you are, then Jesus says to you that his Father’s love for you has not changed. You are so valuable in his sight. After all, he made you in his own image. He knows you so well that he can count the hairs of your head – even if that gets progressively easier for him as time goes by!

You are loved. You are loved with the everlasting love of heaven. Whatever bad things happen to you in this life because you follow Jesus, nothing changes the fact that your heavenly Father loves you and that he will do justice in his time.

Remember: for the Christian, if the end is bad, then it’s not the end.

Thirdly and finally, discipleship is our priority:

Here I’m referring to what Jesus says about not bringing peace but a sword, how family members will be divided against each other, and how we must choose following him even above the desires of our families (verses 32-39).

This might get us worried. Is Jesus telling us to neglect our families? No, he isn’t. But he is telling us that because he is Lord our allegiance to him trumps everything else in life, even our families.

When we commit to Jesus Christ we are not joining a social club. We are not taking on a new leisure interest. We are reshaping our entire lives around him. This is not like taking out a monthly subscription to the new branch of PureGym.

And of course many of us already know the pain of divided families, where some of us are committed to Jesus Christ and other family members are not. Jesus reminds us here not to compromise our own commitment to him in order to appease our loved ones.

By implication, he also reminds us here not to make excuses for those relatives who do not follow him. Wishful thinking about their eternal destiny is just that: wishful thinking. God doesn’t suddenly lower the bar for someone just because they are related to us.

What should we do, then, when we are faced with this division in our families and perhaps our friends as well? We know Jesus doesn’t want us to back down on our commitment to him or to dilute it, and we also know we don’t want to be harsh.

I believe this should drive us to regular, sustained, and passionate prayer. Pray regularly for those loved ones who do not follow Jesus. If you can, pray every day for them. Prayer is what moves spiritual mountains. Prayer is what removes blockages in people’s lives.

The evangelist DL Moody prayed daily for one hundred of his friends to surrender their lives to Christ. During his lifetime, ninety-six did. The other four gave themselves to Christ at Moody’s funeral.

So keep up the praying. Don’t give up, and don’t compromise, because you’ll be surprised in the long term what God can do. Let your tears for your loved ones drive you to your knees for them.

Conclusion

It may seem a paradox, then, but according to Jesus the way to grow the church is not by lowering the bar but raising it, not by making entry easy but by being frank about how difficult and challenging the Christian life is.

Are we ready to embrace that challenge for ourselves, and to take it to the world?

0

You Are Not Alone: The Temptations Of Jesus, Matthew 4:1-11 (Lent 1 Year A 2023)

Matthew 4:1-11

So we begin Lent and our journey with Jesus to the Cross. When we get to the Cross, we are used to saying things such as, ‘Jesus died for us,’ and indeed he did.

But one thing we miss is that Jesus could only die for us because he lived for us. Yes, his death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins, as the New Testament says, but there is more to it than that. In his death and our faith in him, we are united to his life and the benefits of his life for us. He did not only die for us (as if everything up until Calvary was just filling in time), he also lived for us.

I think that’s important when we consider the temptations of Jesus. It’s important to say he was tempted for us. And that’s the way I want us to explore this oh-so-familiar story that we read in one of the Gospels on the First Sunday of Lent every year.

So here are three strands of the temptations story that help us because we are united with Christ:

Firstly, fellowship.

Most weeks when I prepare a service I have to choose the hymns before I have written the sermon or even know what direction I’m going in with the Bible passage. More often than not that works out all right, but I have to confess that this week we’re now going to be singing a hymn after the sermon that takes a completely different tack from what the passage says.

What we’ll be singing is the hymn ‘Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us.’ It imagines Jesus in the wilderness and the hymn-writer says,

lone and dreary, faint and weary,
through the desert thou didst go.

And that’s how I’d conceived Jesus’ wilderness experience – as a tough, solitary time.

However, then I began to read and consult scholars about the passage, and I’ve had to admit I was wrong. Ian Paul points out that Jesus wasn’t alone. At the beginning, the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness (verse 1), and at the end of the story ‘angels came and attended him’ (verse 11).

So if last week when we thought about the Transfiguration we sang the old 80s song ‘Weak In The Presence Of Beauty’ by Alison Moyet, this week we sing with Michael Jackson, ‘You Are Not Alone.’

Jesus was not alone in facing temptation. Neither are we, and that’s good news. It’s easy to feel that we are on our own when temptation comes, but it’s not the case that we are isolated. The Holy Spirit is with us to give us strength to do what is right. God’s angels are not far away to encourage us in the ways of the kingdom.

We may well feel alone when temptation comes, but that is all part of the lie. God’s Spirit is on hand to help us to say no to temptation and yes to Christ. It may be that all the noise and pressure of the temptation is there to stop us recognising God’s presence with us, but present he is.

Or it may of course be that really to our shame we want to give in to this particular temptation, and so we ignore the presence of the Holy Spirit with us in our hour of testing.

But God is there. He is our escape route. He is our strength in times of weakness.

When we are tempted, let’s look for God. He won’t abandon us.

Secondly, obedience.

I once heard a preacher declare as if it were blindingly obvious to everyone, ‘Of course Jesus was unable to sin,’ but I sat there thinking, well if that’s the case, the whole story of the temptations is pretty pointless!

I think the preacher’s error came from so wanting to defend the divinity of Jesus (which is a right and noble thing to do) that he forgot Jesus was fully human as well as fully God. And because Jesus took on sinful human flesh, it would have been possible for him to sin.

The Good News, though, is that he didn’t. Here at the temptations as at every stage of his life, Jesus, in the words of John Calvin, took sinful human flesh and turned it back to obedience to the Father.

You can’t miss the parallels between Jesus in the wilderness for forty days and Israel in the wilderness for forty years. But whereas Israel disobeyed and her life became futile, Jesus obeyed. He redeemed sinful human flesh by his obedience.

So when you and I find ourselves facing temptation, our union with Christ means that we have his obedience available to us. Before we resist the devil we submit to him and say, ‘Lord, give me the gift of your obedience.’

Our world doesn’t appreciate talk of obedience. It claims we are only answerable to ourselves and only need take others into account by ensuring we don’t hurt them. Obedience to anyone – let alone the Almighty – is out of date and repressive.

But you know what? Obedience to God is nothing of the sort. It is in fact the way we enter into true freedom. For true freedom is not the chance to do anything we like, but freedom to do what is right instead of being enslaved to sin. And as such, obedience to God is the most liberating of practices.

The expression, ‘Do what thou wilt’ is actually one of the cardinal tenets of Satanism. But ‘Do what God wills’ is the road to freedom. It may seem difficult, if not unattainable at times, but it is possible for the Christian because we are united with Christ and he gives us the gift of his obedience.

Thirdly, example.

The thing about the temptations story when it comes to us preachers is that it looks like an easy shoo-in for one of our favourite three-point sermons, one point for each temptation. And I’ve done that plenty of times over the years.

But while I’m still giving you three points this morning, I’m trying to show you the bigger picture. And so I want to think about all three temptations under this one heading about Jesus’ example. Because the temptations that the devil tries on Jesus come in some form to every generation. And Jesus’ example shows us how to rebut them.

So the devil tries to attack Jesus’ identity – who God says he is. God has just spoken from heaven at his baptism to say that Jesus is his beloved Son, and so the devil kicks off two of the temptations with the words ‘If you are the Son of God.’

Likewise to us he would love us to take on any identity except that of being beloved children of God. I could say that my identity is male heterosexual, a husband, a father, a Methodist minister, and a photographer, but these all pale into insignificance beside the fact that God loves me as his child. There is no more secure identity than that, and it’s important not to let the enemy to tempt us into skewing what our most fundamental identity is.

The devil wants Jesus to live by bread alone, just as much of our society, especially that influenced by atheists, wants us to believe that life is solely comprised of material things, that there is no soul or spirit, and unless something is material, it doesn’t exist. You and I know otherwise, and we cannot afford to compromise or forget that truth.

The devil wants Jesus to test God by jumping off the top of the Temple to certain death, and many people today say they will only accept the existence of God if he passes a test they set for him. It even comes in apparently heart-rending forms: ‘I will believe in God if he heals my auntie from cancer.’ Now it isn’t that God lacks compassion, but it is that allegiance to him must come first, whether he blesses us by fulfilling our requests and tests or not.

Finally, the devil comes out with his most naked temptation: you can have all the kingdoms of this world, Jesus, if you will only worship me. And this reminds us that we are all worshippers, whether we accept it or not. As Bob Dylan sang,

You’re gonna have to serve somebody
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

To what do we give our time, our affections, our money, and our energy? This will give us a good idea of who or what we worship. Those which are lesser than God may well be good things, but if they command our affection ahead of him then in our lives they are instruments of Satan.

Conclusion

Lent can be quite severe as we engage the spiritual discipline of warring against evil. But Jesus teaches us here not to lose heart, and to be encouraged.

For he is with us, and we can draw on his presence when we fight evil.

His obedience is available to us through our union with him so that we can conquer.

And his example shows us that what we face today is nothing new but rather simply old tricks given a new polish. They can be resisted in his name as he did, and we can live for the glory of his Name.

0

The Purpose of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:1-12 (Ordinary 4 Epiphany 4 Year A 2023)

Matthew 5:1-12

If ever I want to wind up a congregation about how long the sermon is going to be, I tell a story I’ve often used about the famous Puritan preacher Richard Baxter of Kidderminster. On one Sunday, he was heard saying in his sermon, “And sixty-fifthly …”

Now, I’ve never preached a sixty-five point sermon. Honest! A typical sermon of mine has three points. I know that’s a cliché to many, but psychologists have suggested we remember things in threes.

But today’s reading could tempt me to preach an eight-point sermon: one point for every beatitude. I did attempt that once as a young minister, preaching on Remembrance Sunday, where this reading is also set. Let’s just say it wasn’t one of my most successful sermons.

Actually, I think the Beatitudes are best served by a sermon series or by a weekly series in a Bible study group – one week for each Beatitude. That way we can get to grips with them.

Instead, this week what I want us to do is something we often miss by rushing into the Beatitudes at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. I shall say a little about the Beatitudes, but mainly I want us to think more widely about the purpose of the Sermon on the Mount. That should set us up well for the next couple of weeks, when we also have passages from the Sermon to reflect on, and I hope it will help us in the longer term on those occasions when we return to the Sermon on the Mount.

So my question for today is this: what is Jesus doing in the Sermon on the Mount?

Firstly, Jesus is showing his authority.

It is not an incidental detail when Matthew tells us that Jesus ‘went up on a mountainside’ (verse 1). Whenever Jesus goes up a mountain in Matthew’s Gospel, something important happens. Other examples include the Mount of Transfiguration in chapter 17 and the mountain where he gave the Great Commission after his Resurrection in chapter 28.

This repeated mountain pattern alerts his Jewish readers to something important. They remember that God gave the Law to Moses on a mountain – Mount Sinai. Here is a new Moses.

And then they remember that they were promised one greater than Moses would appear. For the Sermon on the Mount is the first of five big blocks into which Matthew divides Jesus’ teaching – just like the so-called ‘Five Books of Moses’: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

A new Moses, indeed one greater than Moses is here. He has special, if not unique authority. Therefore we cannot dismiss the teaching here as just ‘good advice.’ Nor can we dismiss it as unrealistic and other-worldly. We can’t say it’s idealistic nonsense that doesn’t apply in the real world. You could say it is the ideal ethics of the kingdom, but

It is the ideal ethics of the kingdom that its citizens must exemplify in advance.[1]

Jesus is bringing God’s new Law, the Law of his kingdom. This is meant to make us stand up on our feet and give it our full attention. Why? Because Jesus has the very authority of God.

Secondly, Jesus focusses his teaching on his disciples.

His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.

In the previous chapter he has called people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near (4:17). Now, he says, this is what the life of a repentant disciple looks like.

One experience preachers occasionally have at the door after the service is the person who comes up to us and says, “Thank you for your sermon this morning, that was meant for so-and-so. I hope she was paying attention!”

However, before we rush into saying that the teaching we find in the Sermon on the Mount is applicable to other people, maybe politicians for example, we need to remember that it is first and foremost addressed to those of us who claim to be disciples of Jesus, however imperfect we are.

In the Sermon on the Mount you and I get to take a good, hard look at ourselves and how we are getting on as followers of Jesus:

Jesus himself apparently expected full compliance with his teaching, not in the legalistic or ascetic ways he himself condemns, “but as signs of God’s kingdom.”[2]

In the Gospel narratives Jesus embraces those who humble themselves, acknowledging God’s right to rule, even if in practice they fall short of the goal of moral perfection.[3]

If we want to know how we are getting on as Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is a good barometer. If we are wondering what to do for Lent this year, maybe one good discipline would be to read through the Sermon in Matthew 5-7 in small chunks, reflecting on Jesus’ teaching, and bringing our findings to God in prayer.

Thirdly, Jesus teaches in full sight of the world.

Jesus teaches here outdoors as many rabbis of his day did, not confining his teaching to the synagogue. This is a way of life that is meant to be lived out in the world. It is not private piety.

And moreover, he knows the world is watching:

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside … (verse 1a, my italics)

There are a couple of things we can draw from this. One is what I’ve just said, namely that the world is watching the disciples of Jesus as they are taught. And you can be sure that if your friends or family know that you are a Christian, they are watching you, too.

Therefore, it’s all the more important that we engage with the teaching of Jesus. I know that the old cliché is kind of true when we say, ‘Christians aren’t perfect, they’re just forgiven’, but I want to take issue with that word ‘just.’ Yes, we are imperfect and we are forgiven, but we are more than that. We are people on a journey, growing in grace and faith. As Paul tells us in Philippians 1, God has begun a good work in us, and he is going to finish it. It’s like the catchphrase from Mastermind: ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish.’ And our neighbours are watching our progress.

The other thing about Jesus teaching in full sight of the world is that

He wanted both [the disciples and the crowd] to hear, calling both to decision.[4]

When Jesus teaches his message here, he is saying, “This is what the kingdom of God looks like. Are you up for it? Make a decision!” And when we live it out before the watching world, there is a sense in which we are doing the same. “This is what the kingdom of God looks like. This is God’s future. What are you going to do about Jesus?” Such faithful living is the beginning of our evangelism.

Fourthly and finally, Jesus begins the Sermon with encouragement.

That’s what the Beatitudes are – encouragement. They are encouragement for disciples of Jesus. The preamble to an ancient speech or letter, or the ‘proem’ as it was called, was often filled with encouragement for the hearers or recipients. You see the same in the way Paul begins most of his letters. Even when he’s cross with a church, he often starts by recounting blessings associated with them.

And so that’s why Jesus says ‘Blessèd’ eight times at the beginning. You are blessed – times eight! You are blessed as you live the life of a disciple. You may not always think you are blessed as you follow me, he says, but really and truly you are.

You are blessed in the work of the kingdom – when you long for righteousness and you make peace.

You are blessed in the attitudes of the kingdom – when you grow in meekness, mercy, and purity of heart.

You are even blessed in the suffering that comes from walking in the ways of the kingdom – when you are poor, grieving, or persecuted.

These conditions do not always look like what the world would call ‘blessèd’, but God is with his disciples there, he is growing their work and character, and he is promising them justice when the kingdom has fully come. In all these ways he encourages his people that they are on the right path. We simply need to take care that we are walking in these directions, and God will take care of the blessing.

So as we submit to the authority of Jesus by seeking to follow his challenging teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, we are helped by the Holy Spirit. And as we live out values such as the Beatitudes before the world, we shall be challenging that world about the need to respond to the call of Jesus.

[1] Craig Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A socio-rhetorical commentary, p161.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Op. cit., p161f.

[4] Op. cit., p165.

0

John The Baptist: The Marmite Minister Matthew 11:1-19 (Advent 3 Year A)

Matthew 11:1-19

I once succeeded a previous minister in an appointment who was described to me as a Marmite minister. In other words, he divided opinion and everyone had an opinion about him. You couldn’t sit on the fence. You were for or against. He had that effect on everyone.

And in a similar way, John the Baptist was a Marmite minister. You had to take sides over what he preached. Some of that will come out as we think about this week’s reading.

But to our surprise, this story shows us another side of him. The vulnerable, struggling side of his personality.

This means we’re going to divide up four things I want to say about this passage into two halves. In the first half we’re going to think about John’s response to Jesus, and here we’re going to see signs of the weaknesses with which he wrestled.

In the second half we’re going to examine two ways people respond to John, and there we’ll see the Marmite minister in all his glory.

Firstly, then, two ways in which John responded to Jesus.

The first response John makes to Jesus in our reading is doubt.

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?’

Doesn’t that seem astonishing? John has been preaching that the Messiah is coming and that people should prepare. We know from earlier in Matthew that he recognised his cousin Jesus as that Messiah by the way he saw himself as unworthy to baptise him (3:11-15). So why does he even need to send his disciples with this question?

I think the clue is found in the opening words of verse 2: ‘When John, who was in prison ….’ Things have gone wrong for John. This is not how he planned it. His fearsome preaching has got him in deep trouble with the political authorities. And of course, we know how it will end.

In such strained and stressed circumstances John begins to doubt. Does my imprisonment mean I got it wrong all along?

I have been in situations like that. Have you? Not in prison and likely to lose my life, but times when I thought I knew God’s will and then everything seemed to go wrong. I began to doubt.

One such occasion for me was before going to theological college. I have told you before some of the amazing stories of how God provided the money for me to go when I was denied a grant from my local authority and when I lost my appeal against the refusal of that grant.

Looking back, it is a wonderful story of God’s provision. But when I was at the in-between stage, with no grant and far from enough savings of my own, I too began to doubt.

It’s not that doubt is a good thing, but it is understandable. I follow the Christian thinker Os Guinness in saying that doubt is not the same as unbelief, because doubt is where our faith is in two minds and unbelief has no faith.

What a gift it is, then, to read Jesus’ response to the question:

 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.’

If you are struggling with doubt in your faith at present, bring your questions to Jesus. Ask him to resolve them. He loves to do so.

John’s second response to Jesus is very similar to doubt: it is disappointment. There is a note in his questioning of ‘This is not how it was meant to be. Israel was meant to turn back to her God when the Forerunner and then the Messiah came. Yes, some have certainly turned back, but there is still opposition. That’s why I’m in prison. How does that fit in the divine plan?’

Many people lose their faith when they feel God has disappointed them. They believe he has let them down at a crucial time in their lives. Someone they loved fell ill and died young. Their marriage broke up, or maybe they lost all hope of ever marrying in the first place. There can be many other things, too.

Jesus sends back that message detailing the great things he is doing, and also describes John to the crowd as a prophet and more than a prophet. But prophets are people who at least in part live with unfulfilled hopes as they proclaim what God wants to do. It is the tension of being a prophet that you declare that God will perform certain actions but you don’t always get to see them yourself.

So John must live with disappointment in the short term. It isn’t that the mission has failed, but it is that before the end of all things it is incomplete.

Jesus will disappoint us, too. We need that prophetic perspective that disappointments now are not the end of the story. They may be terrible things. But the story of God does not end in darkness. It ends in his victory.

Then we have two ways in which people responded to John.

The first of these is something I am going to call determination. I’ll pick out one verse to summarise this:

12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.

What do you make of a verse like that? If it’s any comfort to you, I remember this verse being singled out in New Testament Greek classes at college as being one of the very hardest to translate in the whole New Testament!

But let’s cut to the chase and say I believe this is about people who are very determined in their positive response to the message of John and then of Jesus.

One scholar puts it like this:

Jesus regularly borrowed images from his society and applied them in shocking ways, and thus may speak favourably here of spiritual warriors who were storming their way into God’s kingdom now. One second-century Jewish tradition praises those who passionately pursue the law by saying that God counts it as if they had ascended to heaven and taken the law forcibly, which the tradition regards as greater than having taken it peaceably. These were the people actively following Jesus, not simply waiting for the kingdom to come their way.[1]

So I simply want to ask: how are we showing determination and passion in our response to the kingdom of God? Has God given us a great zeal for some aspect of his kingdom work, and if so, are we pursuing it?

It could be that you want to see people find faith in Christ – so are you sharing your faith actively? It could be that you care passionately about the eradication of injustice in the world – so are you getting your hands dirty with that one? It could be that you long to see relationships healed and people reconciled – so are you putting in the quiet, patient, and resilient work behind the scenes which that needs?

Maybe it’s something else. But what is important is that we find how God wants us to respond to the Gospel in a determined and passionate way.

The second way in which people responded to John was by a decision.

Honestly, says Jesus, some of you can’t be pleased. You won’t dance to the music of the pipe and nor will you grieve when a dirge is sung. You don’t like John’s austere lifestyle and yet you condemn me when I enjoy a good party (verses 16-19). There is no pleasing some people.

And there is no pleasing such people because they want to make every excuse possible to avoid making a decision about the message first John and then later Jesus proclaim.

Ultimately, no-one can sit on the fence when it comes to John and to the One he preached about, Jesus himself. In fact, to sit on the fence is to choose against God’s kingdom.

John would say to us, if we’ve been putting off that decision about following the Messiah, it’s time to stop doing that now. It’s urgent and crucial, he says, that we make up our minds about Jesus.

Some of us cover up our refusal to get off the fence by manufacturing respectable churchgoing lives. We look for all the world like a dedicated follower of Jesus, but we are in fact using religious behaviour as a cover for our failure to declare for Christ.

And therefore I cannot finish my words today without putting out that challenge. Is anyone listening to this avoiding making that commitment to Jesus Christ that John urges us to do?

Remember, this is a Marmite matter: you have to decide one way or the other.

[1] Craig S Keener, The Gospel of Matthew, p340.

0

Sermon for Advent Sunday: The Ordinary Second Coming (Advent 1 Year A)

Matthew 24:36-44

A few months ago, Debbie and I went to the G Live venue in Guildford to see a concert by a band that had been popular in the 1970s, namely 10cc. Like many such bands today, there was only one original member left, the rest mainly having been replaced over the years by talented but not well-known session musicians.

They launched the concert with a track from one of their biggest albums, ‘The Original Soundtrack.’ It was a song called ‘The Second Sitting For The Last Supper.’ The lyrics mock the fact that Jesus has not returned, as he promised, and meanwhile the world continues to go to hell in a handcart.

Two thousand years and he ain’t come yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
The second sitting for the Last Supper[1]

And it may be that the doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus, which we traditionally mark on Advent Sunday, is one that has brought Christianity into disrepute. For one thing, we have proclaimed that Jesus is coming back but he hasn’t. For another, some Christians and some cults have predicted dates for his return, only to be proved wrong when the date passed. Further, it has been used to scare people into following Jesus, making them fearful disciples rather than full of love.

But for all of that, we shouldn’t throw it out. Misuse isn’t an argument for disuse; it’s an argument for right use.

And in fact, although the event is often hyped up by many, I want to focus in today on the ordinariness of the circumstances leading up to it.

So the first point I want to make today is about the lack of signs.

Many people who write or speak about the Second Coming will talk about all sorts of portents in the heavens or in earthly events. As a young Christian, I got caught up in all that. I remember enthusiastically talking about how I thought the Second Coming was close when I was a teenager, and cited writers who said that one sign of the lead-up would be a crisis in the Middle East.

Someone in my youth group quickly put me in my place. “There is always a crisis in the Middle East,” they said.

How else do you interpret Jesus saying,

36 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’?

If Jesus doesn’t know when he’s appearing again, how can he detail any signs? Yes, there are signs he speaks about earlier in this chapter, but they all relate to the coming fall of Jerusalem to Roman armies in AD 70. Remember that this whole conversation began when the disciples asked Jesus two questions rolled into one:

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’

‘When will this happen?’ is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, because Jesus had just mentioned it. Then the second question is about Jesus’ coming again and the end of the age, which is what Jesus begins to answer in today’s reading.

No signs. Don’t look for them. Don’t think that the time when you have to get your life together is when spectacular signs indicate that Jesus is going to return soon. It won’t be like that.

And that leads us to our second point: people will be living ordinary lives.

37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Life will just be continuing fairly normally. In the biblical story of the Flood, no-one has a clue except Noah about the disaster soon to befall the ancient world. So people just chug along as they always did.

Today, in a time of declining Christianity, at least in the West, fewer and fewer people therefore live with the expectation and hope we have. People go through the ordinary motions of life as best they can. For many, there is little more to life than that, even if they try on occasion to do something that feels good and worthwhile.

Debbie and I saw a version of that recently. We went to see the acclaimed musical play ‘Girl From The North Country.’ It features the songs of Bob Dylan, which was the attraction for me. They are given startling new arrangements and sung brilliantly by the cast. But the actual play in which they are set is bleak. It is a story of ordinary townsfolk in Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan’s hometown) in 1934 (a few years before Dylan was born – he doesn’t feature in the story). As we watch their lives unfold and then hear the summary at the end, we discover that most of them have lived and died in a sense of hopelessness.

When the play finished, there was thunderous applause. Several audience members gave the cast a standing ovation. And it was well done. But there was no hope, no redemption.

And today, that’s how many people live. They may be periodically happy, but there is little sense of hope other than a folk belief that when they die they think they will be reunited with their loved ones.

It will be into a world like that, painted in grey and flavoured with vanilla, that Jesus will come again.

But that day will come, says Jesus, and it will be like when an army invades and takes some people away:

40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

It’s not that the righteous will be taken away to heaven as in the questionable doctrine of ‘The Rapture’ which some Christians teach. Those who are taken away are those who are judged and found wanting. The righteous are left behind on the earth that God will renew.

So what is to be done to be among the righteous?

Well, that’s our third and final point: the way to prepare is to be watchful and ready.

42 ‘Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

But how can you be watchful and ready if there are no signs of Christ’s coming and that he’s just as likely to come again in the middle of ordinariness rather than in cataclysmic times?

Well, it all depends what Jesus means by ‘watch’ and ‘be ready.’ Watchfulness and readiness are images of the ethical quality of our lives in following Jesus.

In other words, if we want to be ready for the coming of Jesus, it’s simple. We need to get on with doing the right things. Some of that may look like the ordinariness of the people who will be caught out, hence Martin Luther’s famous quote,

‘If I knew Jesus was coming tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree and collect the rent.’

But it’s about doing everything that is consistent with being a disciple of Jesus. It’s about being a faithful servant of the Master, something Jesus goes on to speak about next.

So once more, there’s no need to be spectacular. There is no reason to engage in lurid speculation. The key to being ready for the coming of Jesus is a form of spiritual ordinariness. We read the Gospels to learn what Jesus wants of his disciples, and then that’s what we set our minds, hearts, and wills to doing.

We’ll still be shocked and surprised when he turns up, but we’ll be ready for life in the new heaven and new earth.

[1] Words and music: Lol Creme, Graham Gouldman, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart, published by Man-Ken Music, 1975.

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑