Tag: Lent

Journey To Jerusalem 5: The Blessings Of Unity, Psalm 133 (Lent 6 Palm Sunday)

Psalm 133

1 How good and pleasant it is

    when God’s people live together in unity!

‘God’s people’? If you know this psalm in older versions of the Bible you will know this verse as ‘How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.’ Strictly, that is an accurate translation. But today, with the concern for inclusive language, just to render it as ‘brothers’ would in the eyes of many exclude women. We want to get the same truth across in a different way. 

But the choice here of ‘God’s people’ as a modern substitute loses the emphasis on family. ‘Brothers and sisters’ would be better, maybe ‘siblings’, depending on your views about transgender and non-binary. 

Because it really is a miracle sometimes when brothers and sisters live together in unity! How many of you fell out with your sisters or brothers when you were young? My sister and I certainly did. It took growing and maturing, perhaps also along with a shared faith, to leave our childhood squabbles behind. 

You would hope, then, that in a church, a gathering of those who are brothers and sisters in the family of God, that there would be the mature love for one another as we are bound together in unity by the love of God in Christ. 

But you know and I know that it isn’t always true. Many churches are more like the childhood siblings engaging in petty arguments. People fall out with one another. They make disparaging remarks about someone behind their backs. Strong personalities clash and neither side backs down. Gossip. Negative comments are repeated without checking whether they are true. 

You may think this all sounds trivial. It isn’t. This immature and cavalier attitude to our unity destroys the church, because it undermines our very identity as those who are united in Christ. Habits like gossip are cancer in the church. 

What can we do about it? Jesus had a fair bit to say about how we handle our differences, and we could consider them some time. At one church in a past circuit I made it a rule that no-one could bring a complaint about someone to the Church Council if they had not already tried to talk it over with the person they were unhappy with. I did so, because someone drove a couple out of that church by orally attacking them at the Council without warning. 

But the Psalmist doesn’t offer solutions here. Instead, he (most likely it was a man in that society) offers a compelling vision of what unity among the believers looks like and accomplishes. There are two images he gives us that make us want to aspire to greater unity in the faith. They are the oil on Aaron’s beard and the dew on Mount Hermon. Put like that, they sound culturally alien to our world today. But it’s quite easy to see what the Psalmist is getting at, and as a result we can be inspired and challenged by the vision he puts before us. 

The oil on Aaron’s beard

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,

    running down on the beard,

running down on Aaron’s beard,

    down on the collar of his robe.

Aaron, the brother of Moses, and his male descendants were set aside to be the priests of Israel. For this they were anointed and consecrated with holy oil poured on their heads. Therefore, when the psalmist says that the unity of God’s family is like the oil on Aaron’s beard he is saying that unity is a priestly thing for the whole family of God. 

But what would it mean for us as the family of God to be priestly? Are we to offer sacrifices? Well, not in the sense of sacrifices for sin. They are all fulfilled, completed, and replaced by the death of Jesus on the Cross. We can, however, offer sacrifices of praise, according to the New Testament. 

That will also include making personal sacrifices for one another in Christian love. I saw that at my first theological college when a student from South East Asia lost her mother back at home and a bunch of students, who mostly didn’t have much money, rallied around to make sure she had her return air fare. I saw it in my last circuit when a Nepalese church member was made stateless and the church rallied around to make sure he could afford to apply for British citizenship. We even got that campaign into the local press and gained community support. 

But the other ongoing part of the priest’s life is prayer for the people of God. And that’s also where we as brothers and sisters in the family of God can be priestly together. It is our privilege to bring one another to God in prayer. 

Yes, of course we all have direct access to God in prayer through the Cross of Christ, and you might therefore wonder why we would ask someone else to pray for us. However, this is about mutual support as part of our unity in Christ. Sometimes there are other ordinary tasks in life that we can normally accomplish but where we need someone else’s help from time to time, especially if we are feeling weak. Prayer is no different.

This came home to me with some force in one pastoral situation at a former church. One lovely couple really did have what the late Queen once called an ‘annus horribilis’, a terrible year. In the space of twelve months, they both lost both of their parents, and then a beloved uncle also died. Five close bereavements in a year. Can you imagine the toll it took on them? 

In one conversation, the wife shared with me that this was a season where she found it hard to pray, but she was glad to be carried by the prayers of the church. That’s the oil on Aaron’s beard: a priestly ministry of prayer for one another that enhances our unity. 

One other comment on this theme is to point out that you will note I am talking about praying for other Christians, not praying against them. There are some Christians who default too quickly to the latter, effectively using prayer as a way of cursing their brothers and sisters. There are limited extreme circumstances where we might pray against the influence of a brother or sister Christian, but usually it is where they are damaging the unity of the church. 

I had one such instance early in my ministry where one of the church organists deliberately sided with a couple who were stirring trouble in the congregation. I learned that the organist and the husband in the couple were both Freemasons in the local lodge. They carried a greater loyalty to one another there than to the church. (There are other reasons to say that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity, not least the way it makes human merit rather than divine grace the way to salvation.)


Eventually, I was driven to extreme prayer about the organist and I prayed, ‘Lord, please either change him or move him. I’d far rather you changed him, but if he will not change then please move him.’ A week later, he and his wife put their house up for sale and a few months later they moved a hundred miles away. 

But as I say, prayers like that are the exception. Normally, the oil on Aaron’s beard means that we are blessing one another in prayer and thus deepening our unity together in Christ as his family. 

The dew of Hermon

3 It is as if the dew of Hermon

    were falling on Mount Zion.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing,

    even life for evermore.

It’s time for a bit of geography. Mount Hermon is in Lebanon, to the north of Israel. The climate is not quite as hot. Unlike peaks in the Holy Land, Mount Hermon is a place where snow can settle at the top. It thus generates cool water in a way unknown in the Promised Land. The dew on Mount Hermon is thus a symbol for being refreshed. 

There is a link, says the psalmist, between our unity as believers and experiencing a sense of refreshment in our lives. When we are one in Christ, we pull together, and we look out for one another. 

It’s something we have experienced in the last few weeks. Both ministry and life in general have been profoundly affected by the damage that was caused to the manse and the necessary measures while it has been repaired. Having had to live a distance away has not only meant the strange combination of doing more decamping than you would for a self-catering holiday but less than a full house move, the extra travel combined with road works and road closures to negotiate on our routes has made for getting in substantially later at night and leaving for meetings significantly earlier in the morning. You will not be surprised to know that one effect upon us of such an arrangement has been an increased tiredness. 

We have therefore been so glad when people in the churches and circuit have shown particular understanding of our situation. People have not asked more of us than they had to. Some specifically told us not to worry about certain regular commitments for the duration. These attitudes have refreshed us. They have helped us cope with a difficult situation. I can think of other appointments I’ve been in where people would still have wanted their pound of flesh out of me, regardless. 

And you know what? When members of the church family decide they are going to do things that refresh others it draws us closer together. The opposite pulls us apart. 

Therefore it’s worth us all pondering what we can do to refresh our brothers and sisters in the family of Jesus. Is there a way we can show understanding to someone in difficulty? Is there someone carrying a burden where we can take some of their load? Is there somebody having to cope with a challenging situation where a gesture of service would make a difference to them? 

Actually, let me suggest to you a simple prayer we can pray each day. In fact, this one goes wider than just refreshing our brothers and sisters in Christ: there are no boundaries to it. But it will bless the Body of Christ and engender deeper unity when applied there. The prayer is this:

Lord, please show me who I can bless today.

It’s really that simple. Imagine the effect if we all prayed that every day. Imagine what kind of a spiritual family we would become. 

Then put it together with the priestly actions indicated by the oil on Aaron’s beard where we are praying for each other and sacrificing for each other. Can you have a vision for the kind of community we would grow into? Can you envisage what it would be like for strangers to encounter a spiritual family like that? How might they react? 

Yes,

How good and pleasant it is

    when God’s people live together in unity!

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Journey To Jerusalem 2: How Worship Shapes Us, Psalm 122 (Lent 3)

Psalm 122

If you survey a group of Christians and ask them what the number one priority of the Christian life is, they will almost certainly answer, ‘worship.’ 

I personally would want to refine that answer a little: I would answer in terms of the description the crowd gave of the disciples at Pentecost, ‘We hear them declaring the mighty works of God,’ which to me seems to describe both worship and mission. 

But I get the basic point. Worship is a central activity of Christian faith. 

Worship was also central for ancient Israel. And with only three opportunities a year to travel to Jerusalem for the great feasts, they retained a sense of how special and awe-inspiring it was: 

1 I rejoiced with those who said to me,
  ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’

2 Our feet are standing
in your gates, Jerusalem.

What a contrast with our casual approach to worship that treats it as little more than a visit to the supermarket. “I don’t feel like going to church today, it’s raining, I’m tired, my friend isn’t going to be there, I don’t like the preacher, I bet it’s those horrible modern hymns,” and so on. 

So I believe the pilgrims of ancient Israel on their way to the Temple at Jerusalem have a lot to teach us about worship. Granted, our context is different. In New Testament terms, we are not to refer to church buildings as ‘the house of the Lord’ for two reasons. One is that the Gospels show us that Jesus is the new and true Temple, where heaven and earth meet in his divine and human natures. The other is that Paul tells us that we together are ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit,’ something the early church was able to express as they met in people’s homes. 

But for all those qualifications, my point remains: we have a lot to learn from ancient Israel about worship, and especially in this Psalm about how worship shapes us as disciples. 

Firstly, worship gives us a framework:

3 Jerusalem is built like a city
    that is closely compacted together.
4 That is where the tribes go up –
    the tribes of the Lord –

The tribes went up three times a year to participate in festivals that celebrated the creating, redeeming, and providing works of the Lord. They ‘declared the mighty acts of God,’ to use my earlier expression. And the building of Jerusalem ‘closely compacted together’ was an architectural metaphor for this structure and framework that the worship festivals gave to Israel.[i]

Christian worship is meant to do no less. We declare and celebrate our belief in God as Creator of all things. We rehearse his special creation of the human race in his own image. We recall his acts of salvation in forming a people for himself, and sending patriarchs to lead them and deliver them, judges and prophets to call them back to him. Most of all, we recall how the Father sent his only-begotten Son who took on human flesh, proclaimed the kingdom of God, and went to the Cross to conquer sin. We rejoice in God’s raising of Jesus from the dead to bring new life, Christ’s ascension to the Father’s right hand on high where he reigns until everything is put under his feet, and the sending of the Spirit to empower our lives of discipleship. We anticipate the full coming of God’s kingdom, when all things will be made new. 

This is what we acclaim about our God in worship. Have you ever wondered why we have a big thanksgiving prayer at Holy Communion? This is why. It goes over the mighty deeds of God and puts Christ and his Cross central. 

This gives us a framework for our life of devotion to Christ. You know, atheists have good arguments against the existence of God. Christians and others have good arguments to support the existence of God. But which gives a better framework for life? Is it atheism, with its belief that we are just an accidental collection of atoms and that the process of evolution is entirely random and without purpose? If that is true, then it is meaningless to talk about love. How can you love another accidental collection of atoms? How can you speak of having any purpose in life when everything is random? 

Or is it better and truer to speak of a God with good intentions for his creation, who continues to reach out to humans who have rejected him, who came and lived among us and paid the ultimate price, and whose kingdom project is to make all things new? For all the problems there might be in believing in God, this framework is surely a better one to live by. 

And it is worship that embeds us in that framework. 

Secondly, worship is a command:

4 That is where the tribes go up –
the tribes of the Lord –
to praise the name of the Lord
according to the statute given to Israel.

‘According to the statute given to Israel.’ Ancient Israel was commanded to worship. This was God’s decree for them. 

We may say that we are not under the Jewish Law, we are under grace, but that does not negate the command and duty to worship. The first commandment, according to Jesus, is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus wasn’t shy in giving out commandments! He also talked about us worshipping God in spirit and in truth. 

Today, we resist the idea of being commanded by someone else. We think we run our own lives. We want to be in charge. We do not want to be subservient. We are wrong.

This is not about being humiliated, but it is about being humble. It is about recognising our true relationship with God, where he is the Creator and we are his creatures. 

You will have heard preachers say that the English word ‘worship’ is a contraction of ‘worth-ship.’ It is about ascribing true worth, in this case, to God. It is the right thing to do. 

But more than that, the Greek word most often translated as ‘worship’ in the New Testament means ‘to move towards and kiss.’ This is not in the romantic sense. It refers to the kiss of allegiance, such as when a new Prime Minister or a new Anglican bishop is appointed and they have to kiss the sovereign’s hand. 

If this is all true, then our habit of measuring worship by our feelings must go. It is not good worship just because it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, although it’s nice if that happens. Nor do we decide whether to worship depending on whether we feel like it. God is worthy of our worship, full stop! Maybe at times we shall particularly feel that it is a sacrifice to worship but so be it if we are doing what is right regardless of our feelings by offering our worship. 

Thirdly, worship is about hearing the Word of God:

5 There stand the thrones for judgment,
    the thrones of the house of David.

Judgment? We don’t like that word. But here’s a definition of this particular biblical word: 

The decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.[ii]

In worship, we are not only coming to get our lives set in a proper framework and to give God the honour due to his Name, we are also coming to hear what God says to us. That is why the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching of them is so important. When I preach, it is not my task to share a soundbite or a religious opinion. It is not that I preach a sermon to make a point. 

I have a much deeper and more solemn task than that. It is to teach and proclaim the Word of God. Nothing less. And given the levels of biblical illiteracy among many experienced Christians, that takes time. I hold to the old adage that ‘Sermonettes by preacherettes make Christianettes.’ 

If we stay at home and engage with the Scriptures, that’s good and necessary. But we also need to engage with God’s Word in worship with others, as together we listen to what he is saying and discern together with guidance that word he has for us now. 

It may be fashionable to knock preachers, and maybe some of us deserve it on occasions, but do not despise the fact that God has ordained to speak to us through his Word. 

Fourthly and finally, worship is about seeking God’s action in the world:

6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
    ‘May those who love you be secure.
7 May there be peace within your walls
    and security within your citadels.’
8 For the sake of my family and friends,
    I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
    I will seek your prosperity.

Our encounter with God in worship leads to our desire that he act in the world. And so we ask him to do so. We ask for ‘peace’ and ‘security’. Peace and security are gifts we receive in worship: peace and security with God as he assures us of his faithful love. 

More than that, the Hebrew words for peace and security both play on the name ‘Jerusalem.’ Our worship and our life together as God’s people are to be characterised by these qualities. And we desire that the rest of the world also experience these gifts, not only peace and security in relationship with God but also peace and security in their own societies and nations. 

So, you say, this is the justification for prayers of intercession. Indeed so. If we have received such riches from God we shall want others to share in them, too. So we pray for God’s mission in the world – both for people to know God’s peace and security themselves (evangelism) and for societies to experience peace and security in their relationships and their ordering (social justice). 

But it doesn’t stop there. We don’t get away with just ‘thoughts and prayers’, as if we have done our duty by praying and continuing with our private happy lives. God calls us to partner with him in the answers to these prayers. 

So if worship begins with the journey to Jerusalem, it concludes with our departure into the world. As one church put over the exit doors from its premises, ‘Servants’ Entrance.’

[i] Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p47f.

[ii] Ibid., p50.

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Journey To Jerusalem 1: Looking In The Wrong Place For God, Psalm 121 (Lent 2)

Psalm 121

Have you ever lost something and not found it for a while because you were looking in the wrong place for it? That sometimes happens in our household. One of us misplaces our mobile phone, cannot find it, and says to someone else in the family, ‘Can you ring my phone, please?’ It will then turn out that we have been looking downstairs for a phone that was upstairs in a bedroom. 

Or one of us goes to our pocket for our car key, only for it not to be there. It has fallen out of a pocket and slipped down between the seats of the sofa. It was no good looking in the pocket: that was the wrong place. 

I’ll leave those of you who know us personally to guess who it is who loses their phone, and who loses their car key. Either way, we get frustrated by looking in the wrong place – all without knowing. 

Psalm 121 is for people who are looking in the wrong place for God, matters of the spirit, and the meaning of life. And since this Psalm is describing the journey of pilgrims to Jerusalem for Israel’s great feasts, the implication is that even disciples can look in the wrong places for the important things in life. 

It’s all there in the opening two verses: 

1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains –
    where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

Many people read those famous words, ‘I lift my eyes to the mountains’ and think that the Psalmist is encouraging us to look at the wonder of creation. But while the majestic peaks the pilgrims would have seen on their journey would have been awe-inspiring, that is not what the Psalmist is affirming here. 

No: it’s looking to the mountains versus our help coming from the Lord. Why? Eugene Peterson says, 

During the time this psalm was written and sung, Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practised on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil. There were nostrums, protections, spells and enchantments against all the perils of the road. Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influence of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Are you haunted by the demons that can use a pebble under your foot to trip you? Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief. From whence shall my help come? From Baal? From Asherah? From the sun priest? From the moon priestess?[1]

Do you see now that for the pilgrims to lift up their eyes to the mountains was to go looking in the wrong place? The mountains were the strongholds of false gods, idols, demons, and occult practices. 

So firstly, the psalmist says, don’t look to false gods:

3 He will not let your foot slip –
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

In the days of the psalmist, there was a popular belief that a demon could move a pebble and make you slip. Therefore, you needed to seek protection. There was a variety of idols to which you could turn. One of the most popular, Baal, is hinted at in these words of the psalm, when we read that the true God ‘will neither slumber nor sleep’ You may recall the story where the prophet Elijah took on the priests of Baal at Mount Carmel. When Baal failed to set the sacrifice his priests had offered alight by fire, Elijah mocked his opponents, telling them to shout louder, in case Baal was asleep. 

Ad the psalmist here says, Baal won’t answer you or protect you because it’s as if he’s asleep – in fact he doesn’t even exist. But ‘he who watches over Israel’ isn’t like that at all: he ‘will neither slumber nor sleep.’ 

 We may not have Baal today, but we have plenty of instances where we go after that which is not god in order to find satisfaction in life. I am not saying that advertising is wrong per se, but much of it is based on the idea of making people feel dissatisfied with their lives unless they have the one particular item being presented to them as the solution to all their problems. And we have so many adverts like that, because they work. We fall for them. The Christian virtue of contentment would destroy so much of our economics today. 

Money is similar. We need it, but it is a good servant and poor master. We delude ourselves that a higher income or a lottery win will make us happy. But J D Rockefeller, the first ever American billionaire, was asked how much money was enough, and he replied, ‘Just a little bit more than I already have.’ Yes, even someone as ridiculously wealthy as him. 

Money never satisfies. It always demands more. And it never delivers true peace. The best that can be said for it is as Spike Milligan said, that it may not make you happy, but it may make you comfortable in your misery. 

Alongside Baal in Canaanite religion was the goddess Asherah. She symbolised many things, but the theme the Bible seems most concerned about is that she was a fertility deity. There were trees and poles dedicated to her as totems of fertility, and we read of Gideon being told to cut down an Asherah pole. 

The contemporary equivalent is the devotion to sex as a god. We live in a society where primary school children are encountering pornography on the Internet. We make people feel inferior if they are not in a relationship. And in the general absence of belief in God, people look to their romantic partners to fulfil them – a burden a mere mortal cannot carry. 

Once again, we are dealing with idols. We have elevated a good part of God’s creation into a deity itself. Sex and relationships are crucial to humanity, and I would say they are among God’s best inventions! But they are only that: creations, not gods. And so to look to them for ultimate meaning and significance in life is to go looking in the wrong place again. We end up doing terrible things as a result. These things are a gift of God, to be received with thanksgiving, they are not of themselves divine, and they should not be worshipped. 

The trouble, as the great Catholic novelist G K Chesterton said, is that ‘When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.’

Secondly, the psalmist says, don’t fear the created order:

If we’re dealing with created things that are not gods, there is still the issue that creation itself can have fearsome power. Should we live our lives in terror of that? 

No, says the psalmist, that too would be looking in the wrong place for the meaning of life:

5 The Lord watches over you –
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

The power of the sun in the Middle East is significant. When I spent three weeks in Israel in July 1989, the temperature was regularly over 40C each day, and that was before the record-breaking summers of recent years. We were advised to drink six litres of water a day to remain hydrated. Hence, pilgrims walking to Jerusalem maybe not in the height of summer but probably in late Spring or early Autumn would still have protracted exposure to what we would consider quite hot conditions. They would have to be careful. 

And the reference to the moon? Surely the nights would be a relief? Not exactly:

A person travelling for a long distance on foot, under the pressures of fatigue and anxiety, can become emotionally ill, which was described by ancient writers as moonstroke (or by us as lunacy).[2]

But again, serious as these things are, and as we and the ancients also know through phenomena like storms and earthquakes, they are not the ultimate truth to be feared. Whatever the dangers are, we have a Lord who watches over us and who is our shade. Four times in this psalm we are told that the Lord watches over us. Whatever bad things come our way, God has not forgotten us. So Eugene Peterson again: 

The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships with others is to conclude that God has gotten bored in looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for awhile, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious spiritual mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.[3]

And we have read that our God is the ‘Maker of heaven and earth’. In other words, he created all these things to which we wrongly look for meaning and truth. They are created things, but he is their Creator. Instead of looking in the wrong place at these things, let us look in the right place to our Maker and Redeemer. We put these things in their place: under God’s sovereign rule, as we are. 

And we remember that God cares for us, even when the difficulties and the pain come. As the final two verses of the Psalm say, 

7 The Lord will keep you from all harm –
    he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and for evermore.

It is not that we shall have a trouble-free existence, even though the psalmist’s words may sound like that. The rest of Scripture affirms, as Jesus said, that ‘In the world you will have tribulation.’ But as Jesus goes on to say, ‘But be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.’ 

God will be taking care of us. His Son took the journey to Jerusalem and ended up on a cross. But God raised him from the dead. 

This is like the journey we are taking. On it we do not look in the wrong place to worship or fear the created order, but rather we put ourselves in the hands of the Lord, who is the Maker of heaven and earth. He will hold us, as we trust our lives to him through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 

[1] Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, p36f

[2] Ibid., p35.

[3] Ibid., p39.

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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.

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Passion Sunday: Framed By The Cross, John 12:1-8 (Lent 5 Year C 2022)

John 12:1-8

You don’t have to be around my family long to find those of us who are passionate about photography. My daughter and I share a love for it, and it all began with my late father. He wanted to document his time doing National Service with the RAF and got the bug there. Belatedly, at the age of 21, I caught it off him. In his later years, few things gave him greater pleasure when we were with him than seeing our daughter’s latest photos.

So when Dad died, one of the things we spent some money from his estate on was a family portrait session at a studio we knew of in a nearby village. After the session, Debbie and I returned to the studio a week or two later to choose the photos we wanted.

But it wasn’t just about choosing the photos: we also had to pick frames for them from a selection we were offered. Some choices were easier than others: a portrait of our dog, who is predominantly black in colour, was paired with a black frame. It wasn’t always as straightforward as that, as we considered both the content of the photo and the colour of the wall where it would hang.

Our reading today has a frame. At the top and the bottom, the beginning and the end, we find the Cross of Christ. We have it in the beginning with the reference ‘Six days before the Passover’ (verse 1). For in chapter 19, as the Passover lambs die, so too will Jesus (John 19:14), the Lamb of God (John 1:29). Then near the end, Jesus says that Mary anointed him for his burial (verse 7). Who knows, perhaps she took what was left of the perfume she used here to the tomb.

The Cross frames our story. What Jesus has recently done for the siblings Lazarus, Martha, and Mary by raising Lazarus from the dead (verse 1) will be ratified by the Cross. Ultimately, it is the source of all our blessings.

And within that frame, we see in Lazarus, Martha, and Mary fitting responses to all that Jesus has done for them. The brother and his two sisters are all here examples of responding to the grace of God. They are examples of true disciples.

So in what ways do they respond to Jesus, and what can we learn from them?

Martha is first up in the text. John writes of her, ‘Martha served’ (verse 2).

This is very different in tone from Luke’s story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42), where we read that Martha was ‘distracted by serving’. Here it’s different. She is serving as her way of playing a part in honouring Jesus with this dinner.

Jesus had raised Lazarus back to life with no pre-conditions, but here is the natural response of someone like Martha. What can she do in gratitude? She can serve Jesus. On the surface it’s just a meal, but in John’s Gospel where even the most literal things are also symbolic, we see here an important spiritual principle for all of us.

We too have freely received from Jesus without any preconditions. He went to the Cross for us and offered us the forgiveness of sins. We owe him everything – and we cannot pay it. But we can offer to serve him in grateful response for all he has done for us. If we truly count our blessings we don’t merely end up writing a religious shopping list. Instead the cumulative effect of all those blessings is for us to say, ‘How can we show our gratitude?’

Serving Jesus is an obvious way to show our gratitude for the Cross and all it contains. And so we ask questions in prayer: ‘What do you need me to do, Lord? What would please you?’

Sometimes it will be obvious what we can do. There will be a presenting need. At other times we need to wait and seek God in prayer to know how he would like us to serve him. When the answer comes, it may be something we find pleasing or it may be something we find difficult.

It comes back to the Covenant Service, doesn’t it? ‘Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are hard.’ For me, responding to the call to ministry was part of my way of serving Jesus in response to all he has done. Sometimes it’s rewarding and thrilling, but on other occasions it’s dull, depressing, or even frightening. But I carry on because this is a way in which Christ has shown me (and the Church) that I can serve him in response to his great love for me.

Can each of us name ways in which we are called to serve Christ in response to his grace and mercy to us?

Lazarus is next. ‘Lazarus was among those reclining at table with [Jesus]’ (verse 2)

‘Reclining at table’? Put out of your mind a typical dining table. In particular, stop thinking about Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, where it looks like Jesus and the disciples are sitting down to a meal in the way we would.

Instead, remember that a Middle Eastern table was close to the floor. In order to eat, you would lie with your head near the table and your legs away, supporting yourself on your left elbow while using your right hand to take food. That is what ‘reclining at table’ was like.

And the point here isn’t that Lazarus is lazily enjoying the food and the company while the women slave in a hot kitchen. It’s more that this is a picture of intimacy. Perhaps on a day when we celebrate Holy Communion, intimacy at a meal table has special significance.

And so again, we have a response to what Jesus has done here. Jesus has brought his friend Lazarus back to life. In response, Lazarus wants to get close to him. You can imagine that Lazarus will be getting to know his friend Jesus better as they eat together.

We too can draw near to Jesus in response to all the wonderful things he has done for us. Don’t we want to know someone like that better? This is why we pray. This is why we read our Bibles. This is why we gather for worship. This is why we eat in his presence, not only in ordinary meals but also at the Lord’s Supper. It’s all about getting to know better the One who has been so full of love for us, sinners that we are.

Sometimes when a preacher reminds us to pray, read our Bibles, worship, and take the sacraments it sounds like a sergeant-major barking orders. But that isn’t the reason for doing these things. All these so-called ‘means or grace’ (or in other traditions ‘spiritual disciplines’) are there as ways of coming close to Jesus.

So I’m not going to harangue you today about your personal devotions. But I am going to say this: let’s ponder all that Jesus has done for us, and let that motivate us to use the means he has provided to come close to him.

Finally, the star of the show (well, apart from Jesus, of course): Mary. We know how Mary responds to all Jesus has done for her, Martha, and Lazarus:

Then Mary took about half a litre of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (Verse 3)

If Martha responds by serving and Lazarus by intimacy, then Mary responds by giving. Her giving is generous and perhaps sacrificial. But it is so beautiful that ‘the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’

That’s what true giving from the heart to Jesus in response to his love is like. There is a beauty about it. Mary is not paying a tax. Nor is she settling a bill. She is responding from the heart to the grace and mercy of Jesus. And everyone present can smell the fragrance.

Not only that, but we can also say her giving is prophetic. In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet. But Jesus’ own feet don’t get a wash. Not that he needed to be washed clean of sin, of course. But his feet have already been washed here by Mary, who has anointed him for burial (verse 7) after the Cross.

The one who doesn’t understand this is Judas, whom John tells us is a taker to the point of being a thief (verses 4-6) rather than a giver.

Now when Christians give, we do not ultimately give to the church, we give to Jesus. When we give, we do not pay a subscription that entitles us to benefits from the church, we give as an act of gratitude and worship because Jesus has done so much for us and our lives are framed by his Cross. Some of you will recall that’s why I never refer to ‘the collection’ in a service: I talk about ‘the offering.’

I know I’m saying this at a time when giving of the financial kind is especially hard. Inflation is at its worst for thirty years and is poised to get worse; and on Friday we saw our energy bills leap by 54%.

But nevertheless we can ask the general question about giving. And we ask it not in a way that is designed to inflict guilt on people: rather, we say, have we truly taken into our hearts and minds the lavish and outrageous grace of God in Christ who went to the Cross for us? Have we caught a vision of just how much God loves us? In gratitude, what can we give of our money, time, talents, possessions, indeed of our very lives?

Can we make the atmosphere fragrant with the scent of our giving?

So – Passion Sunday, when we start to see that the Cross of Jesus frames not just this reading but our whole lives: can we sense how broad and deep and high the love of God for us is in Christ?

And if we can, then like Martha can we show our gratitude in serving, like Lazarus can we show our love in drawing close to Jesus, and like Mary can we demonstrate our response to that love in generous giving?

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Self-Examination, Luke 13:1-9 (Third Sunday in Lent, Year C)

I’ve no idea what the compilers of the Lectionary were smoking when they put together the current set of readings. Last week we were in Luke 13:31-35, but this week we jump back to the beginning of the chapter!

Luke 13:1-9

Whatever their reasons, though, I hope to show you by the end of this reflection that the themes of today’s reading are eminently suitable for Lent.

“Jesus, what about those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with the sacrifices at the Temple?” (cf. verse 1)

It has a horrible contemporary ring, doesn’t it? Jesus, what about those mothers and babies in the maternity hospital at Mariupol that the Russians bombed?

And for many people who bring sincere questions about suffering to God, it may sound relevant too. The child who died of cancer. The husband and father who went off with another woman. The natural disaster that killed hundreds.

These are not easy questions for Christians who believe in a loving and powerful God. We begin to answer them by talking about God who in Jesus Christ entered unjust human suffering himself. But we may not come to a complete answer, and not everybody wants an intellectual answer, many simply want to be heard and held.

And those who think the problem of suffering trumps the existence of God are deluding themselves. If the existence of unjust suffering is a problem for believing in a loving, just, and powerful God, then the existence of love and purpose are problems for an atheist. How many atheists would push their beliefs to the limit by saying to a spouse, “I have electrical and hormonal responses to you,” rather than “I love you”?

Which brings us to the way Jesus responds to his questioners here. Had they genuinely been seeking God, then surely he would have responded differently. How do we account for his apparently harsh response unless it is that this is one of those trick questions from people who are not serious about following him?

His answer makes sense if that’s the case. Not everyone who asks questions about spiritual matters is serious about getting to a point of following Jesus. I once shared digs with an atheist colleague during a work training course. He told me his objections to belief in God. I did my best to respond, but at the end he said he wasn’t interested in changing his mind, he just wanted a good argument.

And so Jesus brings the conversation round to the real issue for those who ask deep questions for frivolous reasons. Repent. Jesus didn’t call Pilate to repent of his wickedness. He called his hearers to repent. And if the collapse of the tower at Siloam (verse 4) sounds horribly like a first century Grenfell, it’s not the architect or the builder he calls to repent but his listeners.

Let’s remember that Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God, and that when he did so, he characteristically said, “Repent and believe the good news.” The good news is that there is a new king on the throne and it’s not Caesar. We need to repent in order to conform to the ways of his kingdom.

Jesus was telling his hearers that Caesar didn’t have final control over Israel, and nor did the self-interested religious establishment. God was on the throne of the universe in his Person. There would be further good news at the Cross as this God conquered his enemies, the principalities and powers of evil. So, says Jesus, here’s the good news – but it’s only yours when you repent.

And that repentance is not a one-off act. It’s a lifetime of turning back to God, turning our lives bit by bit back to the ways of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed.

Today, we rightly want Vladimir Putin to change his ways. We abhor what he is doing – and so we should. But we must not let that distract us from the challenge Jesus issues to us, too: repent.

We are all far from the finished article. I hope and pray we can look back at our lives and see where Jesus has changed us already. But his words in today’s reading are such that our prayer needs to be something like this: “Jesus, I’m grateful for all the ways you have transformed my life. What’s next?”

Well, that could be challenging enough. But if Jesus has already given us what we might construe as a ‘negative’ challenge in the call to repent – give up certain things, strip things out of your life, and so on – he also has a ‘positive’ challenge for us. Be Fruitful.

We hear this in the brief parable Jesus tells about the unfruitful fig tree in the vineyard (verses 6-8). The fig tree hasn’t borne any fruit for three years, and the owner is persuaded to give it one more year by the gardener.

Some people observe that it’s strange to talk about a fig tree in a vineyard, but it did happen sometimes in the ancient world. The important thing here to remember is that Jews hearing about a vineyard will remember that in Isaiah chapter 5 that is the precise metaphor the prophet uses for Israel. The fig tree is someone dwelling among Israel, the people of God, who is not being fruitful.

We know Jesus had a lot to say elsewhere about being fruitful, not least in his ‘I am the vine’ passage in John 15.

But what kind of fruitfulness does Jesus expect of us? Not literal figs, I hope – I can’t stand them! It is of course a metaphor for the work of the Spirit in our lives individually and as God’s people. So Jesus expects churches to make more new disciples of him. He expects us to exhibit more Christlikeness as individuals and as a community. He expects us to make a difference in society as, in the words of Jeremiah, we ‘seek the welfare of the city to which [we] have been called.’

What if we used this as a report card on our church? Are we making new Christians? Is our love for God and one another increasing? Would our local community miss all the good we do if we suddenly vanished overnight?

I don’t know what you’d say, but for many churches today I suspect it might be quite a mixed report. New Christians? Few, if any. More love? Yes and no. Making a difference locally? Maybe, maybe not.

In the parable, the owner and the gardener agree to give the fig tree just one more year. If nothing changes, then they agree to cut it down. Could it be that a spiritual principle like this is behind some of the church closures we see in our time? I know there are other factors as well, but does Jesus actively close some churches because they are no longer fruitful for the kingdom of God?

I have to say, it wouldn’t surprise me.

What do we need to do in order to change and improve? Do we need to stop behaving as if the church is all about satisfying our own personal needs and tastes? I believe we do. Do we need to stop speaking to people in the church in ways we never would countenance in our families or at work? Sure. Do we need actively to structure our church life around an outward-looking focus rather than an inward navel-gazing? Yes, I think so.

So in conclusion, to come back to where I began by saying this reading had highly suitable themes for Lent, why did I say that?

Well, repentance is probably quite obvious. Lent is a time when we examine ourselves. Often that means we have to put right things in our lives where we have gone awry from the purposes of God. So yes, repentance is a Lent theme.

But so is fruitfulness. Because that too requires self-examination. And I hope I’ve shown that when it comes to fruitfulness, we not only need to examine ourselves as individual Christians, we need to do the same as churches.

Shocking, then, as this reading may be – it’s hardly Sunday School ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ material – may the Holy Spirit use it that we all, both individually and together, may change for the better, for the sake of God’s kingdom as revealed by Jesus.

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The Fox and the Hen, Luke 13:31-35 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year C)

Luke 13:31-35

It’s very common in our road to see foxes. Mainly we see them of an evening, but it’s not unusual to see them brazenly strutting around in the daytime.

They are of course on the lookout for food, and this means we have to take extra precautions with putting out our food waste bins on ‘bin night’. It isn’t enough to lock the bin by pulling the handle forwards, because the foxes use their noses to flip the handle back and they can then open the bins, find food, and leave a mess. I know: I’ve twice had to clear up afterwards.

Instead, not only do we pull the handle forwards, we put the food bin on top of the regular black waste bin or blue recycling bin. The refuse collectors don’t like us doing that, because they have to move the food bin to empty the main bin, but it’s the only way to stop the foxes.

Thankfully, we aren’t a household that keeps chickens, or we would have much bigger problems to solve with the foxes.

Which brings us neatly to today’s passage, where Jesus describes Herod Antipas as a fox and compares himself to a hen. Is that relevant today when we see the actions of a vicious fox, Vladimir Putin, on the world stage? Perhaps. Let’s think about Herod the fox and Jesus the hen. And let’s ask what these images mean for our life and faith today.

Herod the fox

I think we need to remember the context. Although last week for the first Sunday in Lent preachers will have jumped back to Luke 4 and the temptations in the wilderness before Jesus’ public ministry began, we have to remember that before that we were part-way through that ministry in our readings. We had reached the Transfiguration, where Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about his departure which he was going to accomplish at Jerusalem – that is, his death and resurrection.

By now, Jesus has told his disciples that he is going to suffer and die at the hands of the establishment in Jerusalem, he has tapped a Jerusalem postcode into his sat-nav, and that’s where he’s heading. He’s on his way to betrayal, torture, Calvary, and a temporary stay in a tomb.

The Pharisees who come and speak to him are concerned for him. (Yes, there are well-intentioned Pharisees in the Bible.) But their reading of the politics is that Jesus won’t even make it to Jerusalem. Herod will get him before then.

‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’ (Verse 31b)

Jesus, make your escape, they say. They know what Herod is like.

So how does he respond?

32 He replied, ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

In calling Herod a fox he is not referring to the man’s cunning or intelligence but to his ‘malicious destructiveness’[1]. To Jesus, Herod is

a varmint in the Lord’s field, a murderer of God’s agents, a would-be disrupter of the divine economy[2]

Herod the fox murders God’s people, says Jesus. After all, he had cowardly agreed to the murder of Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist. He had a track record.

So shouldn’t Jesus get out of that territory? Well, he does move on, but not because he’s scared of Herod. He does so because he knows his destiny is to complete his work not on Herod’s turf but in Jerusalem. No prophet can die outside Jerusalem.

Jesus isn’t scared by Herod, but that doesn’t mean he won’t suffer. In the face of fear, Jesus sticks resolutely to his God-given task. He doesn’t compromise, he doesn’t back down, he doesn’t run away, he says, this is my purpose and no Herod in this world is going to knock me off course. And by staying on course he brings about the salvation of the world.

What are the things that might scare us off course as Christians? Is it mockery by our friends? Is it changes in the law of the land? Is it the church adopting a policy on something that deeply upsets our conscience?

Whatever it is, it’s time to rebuke the fox and keep going. It may be costly to do so, but God has called us to be disciples of Jesus and imitate his Son. But the example of his Son says that when we stay the course, however difficult it may be at times, the results are measured in blessings.

Jesus the hen

So who will rise to this task? Jesus issues a challenge to Jerusalem ahead of his arrival there, but how hopeful is he of a positive response?

34 ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

It doesn’t sound very promising, does it? The very people who longed for the Messiah have either not recognised him or they have rejected him, and so they are not gathered under his protective care. How dreadful their future will be.

It is no good soft-soaping this. It is no good pretending that everyone will make it into the kingdom of God. God loves all people but not everybody responds to that love, and thus they find themselves outside, in a desolate house to use Jesus’ image here, instead of under the caring love of God in Christ.

You see, the question isn’t what religion we are. It isn’t what nationality we are. It’s about whether we say yes to walking with Jesus.

So is there no hope for the Jews? Is this one of those passages that anti-Semitic racists can use against the Jews? I think of the Jewish lady I worked with in an office, who told me one day how when she was a child other children called her a ‘Christ killer.’ What a miracle that years later my friend Doreen found God’s love in Christ for herself.

Yet there is a hint in what Jesus says that God has not finished with them. If there were no hope, Jesus could just have ended with the words, ‘Look, your house is left to you desolate.’ But he doesn’t quite. His final words here are,

I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

There is always a hope of acknowledging Jesus. People who have once said ‘no’ to him can still be drawn back to him at a later date by the Holy Spirit and bow the knee to their Lord, saying ‘yes’ to him.

Could that be one of us? Have we relied on our religious upbringing or our regular attendance at church without ever having said ‘yes’ to Jesus? Have we never known the security of his saving love?

Or is it that there is someone dear to us who up until now has either consciously rejected Jesus or alternatively simply been completely apathetic about him? Who are those people we long to discover the love of God in Christ? A family member? A dear friend? Someone we’ve been praying for over a long period of time but where we have been tempted to give up? Let’s renew our prayers for them. It is still possible they will see the beauty and glory of Jesus and say ‘yes’ to him.

Conclusion

We’re only in this position of being able to say ‘yes’ to Jesus or pray that others do because Jesus didn’t allow Herod to knock him off course. He went through with his calling, costly as it was for him to do so.

So let’s make sure we don’t waste the opportunity – either by making our own response to Jesus or by continuing in prayer for others to do so.

[1] Ian Paul, Who is included in and excluded from the kingdom in Luke 13?

[2] Darr, Character Building, cited by Joel Green in Luke NICNT p536 and quoted by Paul, op. cit.

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What Are You Doing For Lent This Year? A Suggestion.

An interruption to the weekly teaching videos: I wrote this piece for the newsletter at one of my churches. After completing it, I thought the idea in it might be appreciated by other Christians who are thinking how they might spend Lent this year.

The idea isn’t stunningly original, but it’s simple. And it’s a discipline of engagement rather than a discipline of abstinence. See what you think. I’d love to know if you find this helpful.

…

Between Christmas-Epiphany and Easter I find the calendar of the ‘Church Year’ confusing. And the culprit is Lent.

Why? Well, once we’ve got past the birth of Jesus and the (slightly later) visit of the Magi, we then usually go to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry at his baptism, having ignored the temptations, because we’re saving them for Lent. We then skip through the early and middle parts of his ministry, right up to the Transfiguration on the Last Sunday Before Lent. But then, instead of heading towards Jerusalem, we jump back to the wilderness temptations for the beginning of Lent and follow Jesus’ example of fasting and self-denial for forty days right before the end of his ministry rather than at the beginning. And while we’re doing it, we do another quick run through his public ministry.

As the introduction to one famous TV comedy show used to say every week, ‘Confused? You will be!’

Is it any wonder that many experienced Christians still don’t get a grip on the great biblical narrative when the church organises things in such an inconsistent way, and has done for centuries? In my weekly videos and sermons this year I’ve tried to bring some semblance of order to the post-Epiphany/pre-Lent period by concentrating on the Lectionary Gospel passages about the early and middle part of Jesus’ ministry, so that we can keep the story building. But once Lent kicks in, the continuity will go to pot.

So I have a suggestion. Make your Lent discipline one in which you read all four of the Gospels. At two chapters a day, you will get through them all in Lent, and that will be less than ten minutes’ reading each day.

Here is a suggested pattern. Because there are four documents to read – not strictly Four Gospels, but one Gospel and one Jesus according to four different writers – you will get a better flavour of each if you read them separately. I recommend that you begin with Mark. It was almost certainly the first to be written, it is the simplest, and Matthew and Luke clearly depend on it for some of their material.

Once you’ve read Mark, then read Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels, followed by Luke, the most Gentile of the four.

Finally, read John. Most scholars think it was the last to be written. John’s style and material are very different from the other three. While people puzzle about that difference, a worthy theory is that John expected his audience at the very least to know the content of Mark, so he sees no point in repetition.

Now this approach isn’t without its own problems. Mark, Matthew, and Luke will take you on a similar shaped story culminating in just one visit to Jerusalem by the adult Jesus. John, on the other hand, writes of three visits that Jesus makes to Jerusalem during his ministry. But you will get more of the ‘big story’ of Jesus’ life and ministry.

As I said, this is not a demanding discipline to try. There are actually forty-six days in Lent (because the Sundays are additional to the forty days). If you begin on Ash Wednesday, you will spend eight days in Mark, fourteen in Matthew, twelve in Luke, and either ten or eleven in John. You will finish around Good Friday or Holy Saturday, just in time to celebrate Easter.

I encourage you to try this. And if you do, I would love to hear how you get on. Please give me some feedback about how it goes for you. Let’s do something that engages deeply with Jesus this year.

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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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