Tag: New Creation

Sermon: King’s Cross, Luke 23:33-43 (Last Sunday Before Advent, Feast of Christ the King, Year C)

Luke 23:33-43

Christmas Pudding Flames: Wikimedia Commons

Last Monday, our daughter went to visit my sister to continue a family tradition. Every year, they meet to make the Christmas puddings together. It’s a tradition that began when my Mum and my sister used to make them. Even when Mum was confined to a care home in the last six months of her life, my sister took the Christmas pudding mix into the care home for her to stir. After Mum died, my sister invited our daughter to continue the tradition with her. They follow an old family recipé.

Yes, today is what has historically been called ‘Stir-Up Sunday’, the stirring of the Christmas pudding mix linked to the traditional Collect prayer for today:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people,
that they, bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be richly rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[1]

But in the last hundred years – in fact, this year is the centenary – the Last Sunday Before Advent has been given a new and better name: the Feast of Christ the King. An initiative of Pope Pius XI to emphasise the reign of Christ in the wake of increased atheism and secularism after World War One, I think it’s an excellent name.

Why? Because the last Sunday of the Christian Year (which begins again on Advent Sunday) should be the climax of the Christian story. Our God reigns – no contest – in the life of the age to come. It’s where we’re heading. It’s our controlling vision for life.

And so I want to reflect on Christ our King today.

Firstly, Jesus is King at the Cross:

Earlier this year, our nation was stunned when a six-figure crowd marched through London for the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally led by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson. Many people commented on the number of Christians and people with overtly Christian symbols, chanting Christian slogans, on the march. ‘Christ is King!’ they shouted. Some were dressed in mock-ups of Crusader uniforms. Alarmed at the spread of Islam, particularly in its militant form, they seemed to view a return to what they saw as the traditional religion of this nation as a way of subjugating Islam and Islamic terrorism. It was a view that seemed to want to impose Christianity by force. Is that the way Christ is King?

It’s very different from what Luke tells us. For sure, it’s what the religious authorities wanted from a Messiah. To them, Jesus couldn’t possibly the Chosen One, because here he was, nailed to a Cross, dying a shameful death as a convict:

‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ (verse 35b)

The Roman soldiers saw it similarly. They were used to enforcing the emperor’s will violently:

36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, 37 and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ 38 There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

And yet he was King of the Jews. And not just of the Jews. Here is the enthronement of King Jesus, not on a battlefield taking the blood of his enemies but shedding his own in the conquest of sin and of evil forces.

Had we read from Colossians 2 rather than Colossians 1 for our first reading, we might have come across these verses:

13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

The Cross is an exercise in disarmament. Forgiveness takes away the power of shame that evil forces have over us. Jesus reigns, not through violence but through suffering love.

Is that something for us to remember in our Christian witness? Surely it is. When the world doesn’t like what we say, we don’t cower in silence but neither do we force it on people. Instead, we witness to Christ by a love that is willing to endure hardship and even suffer to be faithful to him.

Secondly, Jesus is King in Heaven:

Hear again some of the words of the penitent thief:

42 Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ 43 He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Jesus has the authority to welcome the penitent thief into Heaven. He reigns there, too. After his Ascension he will return there to reign at the Father’s right hand.

Right now, Jesus reigns from Heaven. He is King there. To be sure, as I have said before, not everyone acknowledges that, any more than criminals acknowledge the laws of our land passed by Parliament and enforced by the Police. That doesn’t change the sovereignty of Parliament in our nation.

The evangelistic call is to acknowledge Jesus as King. Again, as I’ve said before, ‘good news’ in the Roman Empire was the announcement of a new Emperor on the throne or of that Emperor’s armies conquering other nations. We call people to recognise who is on the throne of the universe, and to swear allegiance to him.

And it also means that if this is our message, it is one by which we are to live. Remember that earliest Christian creed: ‘Jesus is Lord.’ It is a challenge for you and for me to live under the teaching of Jesus, because he is Lord (or King).

If you’re anything like me, you will almost immediately know some areas of your life that do not currently conform to the commands of Jesus. Maybe you are battling in those things, wrestling between the will of Jesus and what you want.

But this is important for our witness. The world soon notices when we who proclaim God’s will in Jesus are not living like that. It’s why we are often called hypocrites.

Sometimes we believe the enemy’s lie that satisfaction in life is only found when we concentrate on gratifying our desires. It is as if God is some kind of cosmic spoilsport who just wants to make us miserable. Yet is it not actually the truth that real fulfilment comes from adopting the ways of Jesus, even when they are costly? Is it not a wider application of the principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive?

What are the parts of our lives where we sense Jesus is whispering to us by his Spirit and calling us to walk in his ways, acknowledging him as King? Will we finally believe the Good News that true contentment is found in the kingdom of God and not in self-centredness?

When the world sees Christians living like that, there is often a sneaking admiration for such people. Such Christians as these often earn the right to speak about Jesus, and their words carry weight.

CS Lewis wrote in his book ‘Mere Christianity’:

Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

When we live under the reign of Jesus, we point to this better way.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is King for eternity:

Verse 43 again:

He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Paradise. What’s the significance of that word here? I’m going to quote the New Testament scholar Ian Paul:

The language of ‘paradise’ would have made sense to a non-Jewish audience, but it was also used by Jews to refer either to an intermediate state in the presence of God as well as to our final destiny in a renewed heaven and earth. It is worth noting that the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, LXX) constantly translated the Hebrew for ‘garden’ with ‘paradise’, so that God planted a ‘paradise’ in Eden for the first human in Gen 2.8. For anyone aware of this, Jesus’ promise to the thief is of the restoration of all things.

Jesus’ promise to the penitent thief holds not only for the immediate context when he reigns despite opposition, but right into eternity, when God has made all things new, when the redeemed live in the new creation and worship in the New Jerusalem.

For this is the climax of God’s reign in Jesus: that he will so rule over all things in goodness and love that they will be made new. Sin, suffering, and death will be no more. People will live in fully reconciled relationships with God and each other. There will be peace and justice.

This is where we’re heading as disciples of Jesus. This is our direction of travel. The destination sign on the bus says, ‘New Jerusalem.’ That’s why I said in the introduction that today is the climax of the Christian Year. For this is where the mission of Jesus is taking us.

And if that is the case, then we live accordingly now. We build our lives, relationships, and values based on what God will bring in under his benevolent rule. We don’t lord it over one another, because there is one Lord and Saviour who is over all of us. As the Colossians 1 reading today said, he is over all things and is head of the church.

Anyone who does try to lord it over others is not fit for the kingdom of God. That’s why many of our American friends have been protesting against Donald Trump at the ‘No Kings’ rallies – not merely to protect the American constitution but because Christians say Jesus is Lord, and when they see Trump not merely exercising authority but lording it over people and dismantling any accountability through Supreme Court decisions, that is contrary to the Gospel.

We may not face temptation on that level, but we can be enticed into acting as big fish in small ponds. The church is not the place to climb the greasy pole but to kneel and serve, because Jesus is Lord, and will be for all eternity.

Conclusion

Sometimes, I like to talk about the Local Preacher whom my church youth group adored. Alfred John Evill was born in 1902 and was therefore a toddler when the Welsh Revival of 1904 happened. He preached like the revival was still going on.

He didn’t pick the most modern of hymns, but he was the most challenging preacher – which we loved. But he said one important thing about the fact that his sermons were challenging.

“I never challenge you without first challenging myself.”

Today’s sermon has been challenging. It has brought me up short as I wrote it, thinking about my willingness to practise suffering love, the areas where I fall short of acknowledging Jesus as Lord, and my commitment to serve.

May God grant me – and may God grant you, too – the grace to affirm in both words and deeds that Jesus is King.

[1] Methodist Worship Book, p560

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A Harvest Festival Sermon: As Long As The Earth Endures (Genesis 8:15-22)

Genesis 8:15-22

A week ago, I got a new mobile phone. When I saw that I could get an up-to-date model on a cheaper contract than I had been paying, it was a no-brainer. Save money, get newer model with extra whizzy features: easy decision.

iPhone 17 family from heute.at CC 4.0

To save money, I had to change to a different phone network, and it took a few days to move my number from EE to Vodafone. However, when I then tried to make a phone call once that had all been done, I kept getting the message ‘Call failed.’

The nice AI robot I spoke to at Vodafone told me that what I needed to do was restart the phone. Then I should be sorted.

And a restart is what we have in our passage from Genesis. God reboots creation after the Flood. You can tell that from the way these verses restate things from the original creation stories. For example, the humans and the animals are to ‘multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it’ (verse 16), just as it said in Genesis 1.

So what do we learn when we apply this notion of the restart (or reboot) to the words we read about harvest? Here they are again from verse 22:

 ‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’

The rhythms of the world that we mark at a time like harvest remind us of God’s original good intentions for his creation. When seeds are planted and they ripen at the right time, this is a sign that what God built into his creation is working. The same goes, says the writer, for the rhythms of day and night, and of cold and heat – although as a true Brit I really don’t like it when the days get shorter, and I would happily settle for a climate that had no extremes of cold and heat.

Cosmic waves dancing at Stockcake CC 1.0

God’s intention was always to build a reliable rhythm into his creation. It fits with the notion of there being scientific laws that tell us how the universe behaves. A certainty and a reliability in how something behaves or operates is good and helpful. And because God has not simply created but continues to uphold the universe by the word of his power, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, one preacher was confident to say that scientific laws are a description of God’s habits.

Miracles, by the way, then become those occasional times when God in his sovereign will chooses to change his habits temporarily.

Therefore, one of the things we celebrate at a festival such as harvest is this rhythm and reliability that God has built into his creation. It is out of his goodness that he has built a predictability into our world. This is what he does as a good and benevolent Creator. Hence, the first thing we are doing at harvest is lifting our voices in praise to a trustworthy God who has made his creation reflect that nature of his character.

But when I say this, some of you have questions in your mind. Some of you are saying an inward ‘No’ or at the very least a ‘Yes, but.’ You are probably protesting, ‘But it isn’t always as good and as nice as that.’ We need to observe a second attribute of God when we consider harvest and creation.

Allow me to talk about my new phone again. Part of the process of setting it up involved restoring all my apps, text messages, photos, and so on to the new device so that when I wiped the old one I didn’t lose them. Thankfully, there is a simple way of doing this. Since I was moving from one iPhone to another, I logged into my Apple account on the new phone, and it began a process of downloading everything I needed to my shiny new model. I had always kept the old one backed up, so it went smoothly – although it did take time, and I still have to log into apps again when I first use them.

Why tell you this? Because the God we praise at Harvest is the God who restores. We are used to talking about God restoring broken people through the Cross of Christ, when he heals and forgives broken sinners, bringing us into that knowledge that he loved us before we ever considered him. We may also talk about a God who restores broken relationships, as he teaches us to forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave us.

National Trust for Scotland Work Party restoring House 15, built in 1860 at Wikimedia Commons CC 2.0

But when we celebrate Harvest, we mark a God who also longs to restore his creation. He put things back together after the Flood, and I therefore believe he also wants to see the healing of creation in our day.

That’s why denominations and church leaders increasingly say that creation care is a Christian duty. We don’t do this out of fear that the world is about to burn, as many do, but out of trust in a God whose desire is to restore. It is an urgent task, but Christians can be hopeful about it.

Those decisions we make when shopping for small things or when considering large purchases like what kind of car we will buy are not just private financial matters. They are questions of discipleship. Do we truly believe in a God whose desire is to restore creation?

It is also our Christian duty to call out those who are banging the drum for policies that will blatantly damage God’s good creation. This week, we have witnessed what one environmental expert dubbed ‘The stupidest speech in UN history’. I am, of course, talking about President Trump’s address, where he falsely claimed that clean energy sources don’t work and are too expensive, and advocated a return to coal (or ‘clean, beautiful coal’ as he has mandated it be called in the White House) and North Sea oil.

Now you may so there is little chance of Mr Trump taking heed, and sadly I think that is right. But it is still our responsibility to declare God’s truth. That way, he – and his acolytes in this country and around the world – will be without excuse on the Day of Judgment.

For most of us, though, we won’t be operating in the political sphere. It will be about standing up for truth when friends pass on misinformation on social media or from extreme political parties.

Finally, there’s a third element I want to bring into this, and it requires us to interpret Genesis in the light of the New Testament.

I want to pick up on the words, ‘As long as the earth endures.’ The Old Testament doesn’t have much to say about the life of the world to come. There are a few glimpses, but for most of what the Bible says about that, we have to go to the New Testament.

The New Testament talks about the destruction of the earth in 2 Peter 3, which is what environmentalists worry about, and which climate-sceptic Christians take as a reason not to worry about the earth’s future.

End Of The World (El Fin Del Mumbo) at Wikimedia Commons CC 4.0

But what both miss is the greater promise of the New Testament that God is making all things new, that there will be a new creation, with new heavens and a new earth. God is the God of resurrection, and resurrection is bodily and material. Our eternal destiny is not to be disembodied spirits, but to be raised with a new body, just as Jesus was.

And therefore, our eternal home is also physical and material. Could it be that there will be harvests too in the life to come? I don’t see why not. John’s vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation includes trees, and while Revelation is more symbolic than literal, it indicates to me a physical place.

What does that mean for us now? Given that, as Paul tells us, our ‘labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58), can we assume that God takes what we do for his kingdom in this world and mysteriously builds it into his coming kingdom? Can it be that nothing we do for God’s creation is ever in vain?

If so, then this reinforces why as Christians we approach harvest and creation with a sense of hope. Yes, there are serious and dangerous issues to face in the world. Harvests do not always happen at their proper time. They do not always yield all that we need. And much of this is down to the way the human race has damaged the planet.

Let us not lose heart when we see the dreadful effects of climate change on our world, with its extreme temperatures, storms, and shortages. It’s not a case of just piously saying, everything is going to be all right and abdicating our responsibility, we still need to take these things seriously and act appropriately. But when we do so, and when we do so in faith that God in Jesus is making all things new, we know that we contribute will count, because God will make it so.

When we make that lifestyle change – it’s worth it. When we raise funds for people suffering in the developing world – it’s worth it. When we write to our MP about government policy – it’s worth it. When we refuse to be taken in by the conspiracy theories our friends are spreading – it’s worth it.

I invite you to ask yourself a question that I see posed in a Christian Facebook group every Friday: what have you been working on this week to help make the world a little more beautiful?

Isn’t that a fitting thing to do? After all, we have a trustworthy God who has made a good creation. He is worthy of our praise, both in gathered worship and in making what is good in the world ourselves.

Not only that, but our God is also a God who restores what is broken, and therefore we can sing his praise for his restoring work and show it by the beauty we create in the world.

And finally, he is a God whose restoring work extends into the life to come, and so it is worthwhile praising him now in anticipation of that new world, and in crafting things that are valuable and praiseworthy.

Let us rejoice in the harvest and build for God’s kingdom.

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

Grey Squirrel

Luke 13:10-17

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

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

Grey Squirrel
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 3.0

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

Firstly, Jesus and the crippled woman:

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

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

Ankylosing spondylitis
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 3.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, Jesus and the synagogue leader:

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

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

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

Shabbat (Sabbath)
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC Licence 2.5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirdly and finally, Jesus and the congregation:

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

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

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

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

Courtesy StockCake, CC Licence 1.0 (Public Domain)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Meanings Of Pentecost, Acts 2:1-21

Acts 2:1-21

The vicar was paying a visit to his local Church of England primary school. To impress him, the children had memorised the Creed. They stood before the vicar, each one reciting a line in turn. ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth’; ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, his Son, our Saviour’; and so on. 

But when it came to when one child should have said, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ there was nothing. Eventually, one child broke the embarrassed silence and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit isn’t here today.’

Are we sometimes embarrassed by believing in the Holy Spirit in the church, too? We do our business without reference to him. We complacently assume his presence. We find the name ‘Spirit’ rather spooky and unsettling, like the old name ‘Holy Ghost.’ And as for all those strange things attributed to his work in the New Testament like speaking in tongues and having direct words from God for people, well no thank you very much, that’s all too awkward and un-British. 

I want to take the familiar story of Pentecost from Acts chapter 2 and show you how the deep meaning of Pentecost shows us how vital it is to welcome the Holy Spirit and his work. I’m confining myself to the first thirteen verses: that is, I’m stopping before Peter gets to speak. There is just so much here I have to put a limit somewhere. 

Firstly, Pentecost is about obeying God’s Law:

As you will realise, Pentecost was an existing Jewish festival. It celebrated the time when God gave his Law (the ‘Torah’) to Israel at Mount Sinai. He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Then, on their way to freedom in the Promised Land, he gave them his Law to obey in response to him having delivered them. Keeping God’s Law always was a response to having first been saved by God. It never was the case that we kept God’s Law in order to be saved in the first place. 

But even so, there was a problem. Israel repeatedly failed to keep God’s Law. Ultimately, they were so thoroughly disobedient that in reality they preferred the ways of other gods, the false and imaginary gods of other nations and cultures. It didn’t end well. It ended with them being exiled from the Promised Land, as God had warned them when he first gave them his Law. 

I expect we know similar struggles. We know that God has commanded certain standards of behaviour from his people in response to the fact that he has delivered us not from Egypt but from sin. But we fail. Daily! It’s why we have the confession of sin and the assurance of forgiveness in our worship every week. 

The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the festival of God’s Law, shows us that God has not left us relying on our own feeble resources to obey his will. He pours out his Spirit upon us so that we can do the will of God. So often we are like cars drained of fuel (or electric charge today) and we cannot move. But with the Holy Spirit, we are filled with the power to do God’s will and obey his Law. 

So today, if there is an area of life where we know we want to obey God but are struggling to do so, let us seek again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Secondly, Pentecost is about God’s harvest:

We are used to having one harvest festival a year in late summer or early autumn to mark the full ingathering of the crops from the fields. Ancient Israel, however, had two harvest festivals a year. One of them was just like ours. It was celebrated at the Feast of Tabernacles (which also remembered other aspects of their history). 

But their first harvest festival was at Pentecost. It was the festival of the first fruits of the harvest. The early crops were a sign that promised the full harvest would come later. 

This too is what the Holy Spirit does. God promises a full harvest of salvation at the end of time, when his people will be completely saved – not only from the penalty of sin in forgiveness, but also from the practice of sin, because we shall be made completely holy, and further from the very presence of sin, which will be eradicated. 

But there are victories on the way to that destination, and the Holy Spirit brings those first fruits in this life. Do we want to see people come to Jesus and find both the forgiveness of their sins and true purpose for life? If so, then we pray for the Holy Spirit to be poured out. We pray that the Spirit will energise our lives and witness. We also pray that the Spirit will be at work ahead of us in the lives of those we are longing to see discover Jesus. 

So never mind all the talk of learning techniques for evangelism. Pray instead for the Holy Spirit to be at work powerfully. Our job is simply to be witnesses. That is, we give an account of what has happened in our lives. No-one comes to the Father unless they are first drawn to him, so we ask the Spirit of God to do that. 

How many of you have a list of people dear to you whom you are longing to find faith? When you pray for them, pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus to them. 

Thirdly, Pentecost is about God’s new creation:

The coming of the Spirit is mysterious. Notice how Luke struggles to describe it:

2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 

‘A sound like the blowing of a violent wind.’ ‘What seemed to be tongues of fire.’ It’s not literal, but it does convey the idea that the Spirit is hovering over the disciples. Does that remind you of anything? 

How about Genesis 1 verse 2?

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

As the Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, so at Pentecost the Spirit hovers over the disciples because this is the making of the new creation. 

God has come to make all things new. We’re on that journey to the new creation at the end of all things, when there will be new heavens and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem, God’s people. The renewal starts now. 

And so when we see things in the world that do not display the newness of God’s redeeming love, the Holy Spirit empowers God’s people to act for healing, renewal, and justice. 

Did the Holy Spirit empower Martin Luther King in the 1960s to stand up against institutional racist policies in the United States? I believe so. Did you know that when the Solidarity movement arose in Poland in the early 1980s against the terrors of Russian communism much of it came out of a renewal movement in the Roman Catholic Church in that nation? 

What, then, of the evils we see today? Be it Trump or Putin, God is raising up his people by his Spirit, though it will be costly. Where is the fastest growing church in the world today? It is exploding even under the persecution of the mullahs in Iran. 

Is God calling any of us to be equipped by the Spirit to pay the price of advocating for his new creation?

Fourthly and finally, Pentecost is about God’s community:

I want to bring a couple of things together here. One is that the episode begins with the disciples ‘all together in one place’ (verse 1), which followed on from their meeting for prayer in chapter 1. 

Then we get the crowd who gather, coming from different places and speaking different languages, yet they all ‘hear [the disciples] declaring the wonders of God in [their] own tongues’ (verse 11). It’s not the reversal of Babel, where proud humankind was scattered from one language into many, because there are still many languages. But it is about diverse humanity being united under ‘the wonders of God.’

In other words, the work of the Spirit brings unity in Christ across the biggest of divisions. Church is not about going to a place where I mingle with people who are just like me. Instead, it is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ uniting people who otherwise would not hold together. European, Asian, and African; highly educated and barely literate; poor and wealthy; even both Spurs and Arsenal fans! 

We live in a world riven by division. People feel its pain. We look for ways to cross the divide. The tragically murdered MP Jo Cox said before her untimely death, ‘There is more that unites us than divides us,’ but sadly she underestimated the fact that it is sin which causes the division and Jesus is the cure. 

And so the Holy Spirit takes the work of Jesus on the Cross to reconcile us to God and to reconcile us to one another. He applies that to our hearts and minds. In Ephesians Paul talks about God bringing Jew and Gentile together at the Cross. The Holy Spirit makes that real. 

It’s what we are marking when we share The Peace at Holy Communion. Some older Christians will remember communion services where the minister said that those who loved the Lord and who were in love and charity with their neighbour were invited to take the holy sacrament to their comfort. It’s the same idea, it’s just that The Peace is actually a much older tradition of the Church to express this. 

But while expressing this unity in a traditional, liturgical way is important for what it symbolises, it is also something that needs to be lived out. It involves us building our friendships. It means apologising and seeking forgiveness when we have hurt someone else in the church. It means refusing to hold onto bitterness. And it means the world seeing that our relationships are different. 

Conclusion

So who’s up for the challenge, then? These works of the Holy Spirit are all connected. The first about obeying God’s Law and the fourth about unity are two sides of the holiness coin, one personal, the other social. The second about the harvest and the third about the new creation are both about God’s mission on which all Christians are sent. 

All of this comes under that description of the crowd: ‘we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues’. Is that worship, or mission, or both? 

Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to empower us to declare the wonders of God in our words and in our lives, in the church and in the world. 

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Harvest Festival: A Harvest of Restoration, Joel 2:21-32

Joel 2:21-32

Many years ago, listeners to Radio 4’s Sunday morning service choked on their corn flakes when the minister leading a harvest festival announced: “And now, the children will bring up their gifts.”

I am glad I never witnessed that!

At harvest festival, there are certain themes that we regularly celebrate – not least the goodness of God in creation but also God’s concern for justice, because not everyone receives what they need from the harvest of the land. These are important themes to consider, even if harvest festival as we know it was merely the invention of a Victorian clergyman in the Cornish village of Morwenstow in 1843. In case you ever need to know it for a quiz, his name was Robert Hawker.

But our reading from Joel prompts another harvest theme, and that is restoration.

The context of Joel’s prophecy is that a locust swarm has invaded the Holy Land, devastating all the crops, and leaving the people facing starvation. Joel says that this is a warning from God to call the people back to him in repentance, although it’s hard to be sure what particular sins have been committed. Part of their returning to the Lord includes fasting – which they may already have been doing involuntarily due to the food shortages.

But now it appears God has heard their cry for mercy. Crops are growing again and he has driven out the locusts. In this context we hear the wonderful words of restoration in our reading. The people truly have reason to give thanks for having crops to harvest again.

Moreover, Joel tells the people that God’s restoration project is bigger and better than they ever asked or imagined. What does it include?

Firstly and most obviously, restoration of the land:

We hear that once again there will be pasture for the wild animals, autumn and spring rains, threshing-floors filled with grains, and vats overflowing with new wine and oil, and that these are reasons for rejoicing, not fear (verses 21-24).

We are used to supporting charities that help with disaster relief – whether it’s earthquakes, floods, droughts, or war. But in the popular mind we are often only thinking about helping those who are in trouble there and then. Yet many of these organisations will want to be in the affected areas for the long haul. Providing temporary accommodation, food, and medical help is only the beginning for them. They know there is a rebuilding job to be done. It’s not for nothing that ‘All We Can’ used to be called the ‘Methodist Relief and Development Fund’.

So, for example, if I visit the ‘Stories’ section of Tearfund’s website, then yes, I will find one account of emergency relief in South Sudan following floods. Homes, infrastructure, and farming land have all been destroyed, and relief workers are trying to bring in temporary shelters, food supplies, and clean water.

But I will also find the story of a small church in Bangladesh that is transforming its village. Many of the people come from lower castes. One consequence of this is they are often not well educated. Only menial jobs are available. But the outcomes from this church of just 33 members studying the Bible have been listed by their pastor:

‘We have seen financial development along with spiritual development.

‘We don’t only do church-based work, we also do various other things outside of the church. For example, we plant trees on behalf of the church. We also do awareness work about hygiene – not only in our congregation, but we also discuss these things in our community. We teach health awareness about toilet issues, such as having to wear sandals, what to do before going to the toilet, and having to use soap after coming back from the toilet.’

Their communication with the government has led to 24 new homes being built. With a water supply that contains toxic levels of arsenic and iron, they have built a water pump. They soon plan to campaign against child marriage.

All this is because they believe in a God who restores the land. God wants to make his creation new. If a small church of poor, uneducated people can make such a difference in their village, what can we do? By all means let us give our harvest gifts, but can we not be more ambitious than that?

Secondly, we have restoration of the people:

In verses 25-27 we hear that God will repay the people for the years the locusts have eaten. They will eat again and praise God. Twice he says, ‘never again will my people be shamed.’

There is a human toll to disasters: not just things like hunger, but also shame. Given that Israel had suffered the plague of locusts due to some unspecified sin, there will have been shame at the wrongdoing. The Gospel says that in Jesus God restores us from the shame of our sins. Those burdens we have carried are ones we can lay down at the foot of the Cross and find them burned up by the holy love of God. The blood of Jesus deals with them – for in the Old Testament blood symbolises life and Jesus replaces our shame with his life.

But shame is not limited to the guilty. Tragically, it is also felt by those who have been sinned against. If you have been following the news story about the monstrous abuse perpetrated by the late Mohamed al-Fayed, the former owner of Harrod’s this week, and if you have heard the stories of women coming forward to say they were raped by him, then time and time again you will have heard those women say that one of the reasons they said nothing for years was their sense of shame. Abusers control their victims by seeking to transfer shame onto them.

And here the Gospel is again by definition Good News for the shamed. Jesus is as much in the business of healing the broken as he is of forgiving sinners. We know that from the Gospels, don’t we?

Many years ago, I read a book called ‘The Locust Years’. It is the story of a woman called Jacqui Williams who went travelling in the United States but became caught up in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church – the cult popularly known as the Moonies. They took over her life, reducing her to an existence of little more than selling flowers, sweets, and trinkets on the street to support the cult’s income. When she had to return to the UK to renew her visa, she thankfully found faith in Jesus and her new-found Christian faith was her liberation. The book is called ‘The Locust Years’ after this very passage in Joel with God’s promise to restore the years the locusts have eaten – in her case, her time with the Moonies.

The Christian Church is about the business of seeing people restored in Christ. And if we’re not about that, we barely deserve the name ‘church.’ What used to be called ‘the harvest of souls’ is the restoration of people through the love of God in Christ. It’s why John Wesley said we had no business except the saving of souls.

Thirdly and finally, we have the restoration of all things:

Here we’re moving to the famous verses at the end of the reading (28-32) about God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh – sons and daughters, old, young, and servants alike. And I hope you’re thinking, ‘I hear that every year on Pentecost Sunday, because Peter quotes it in his sermon.’

It’s set in the middle of language about ‘the great and dreadful day of the LORD’ and contains references to the sun being turned to darkness and the moon to blood. The nature of this language is clearly not literal. After references to the sun going dark and the moon turning to blood, do not expect someone like Carol Kirkwood or Elizabeth Rizzini or Tomasz Schafernaker to pop up and add, ‘These will be followed by sunny intervals and scattered showers.’

So we’re in ‘end times’ language here, but that doesn’t mean a short countdown to the Second Coming. We have been in the end times since the Resurrection, and that’s one reason this language occurs at Pentecost. God’s kingdom has come and is coming, but it’s overlapping with the old order of things.

Therefore, God’s goal of ‘making all things new’ with a new creation that includes new heavens, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem that we read about in Revelation 21 doesn’t just all pop up at the end of history as we know it. That stuff begins now. Salvation and deliverance in every form have begun.

Hence, even now God wants to bring restoration in every way. And we the church are his agents of transformation. You name it, God wants to do it. The restoring of relationships with him. The restoring of relationships between people. The restoring of our broken relationship with creation. The restoring of the body. The restoring of a just and peaceful society. All these (and probably more!) are the many and varied harvests of restoration which God desires.

Naturally, not all of these things will come in all their fulness before Jesus appears to wrap things up. Don’t we all have the agonised experience of unanswered prayer? But let’s go for as much as we can get. Let’s not give up in despair, because some things have gone wrong. Let’s set out on this wonderful ministry of restoration that we have been given as the people of God. With the help of the Holy Spirit who is poured out on us, as these verses from Joel say, let’s confront the brokenness of this old order with the ministry of restoration that Jesus began and entrusted to us.

Who knows how much of a harvest we might see?

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Mission in the Bible 2: Chosen to Bless the Nations (Genesis 12:1-9)

Genesis 12:1-9

Last week, when I launched this series, I looked at Genesis chapter 3, where God comes looking for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they have sinned. As such, God is the first missionary and mission is a God thing.

I used a quote from the great Anglican missiologist Dr Chris Wright, who wrote this:

It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world.

This week, we see God beginning to work out the plan of his mission in co-operation with human beings as he chooses Abram and his descendants.

Now before I get into the heart of this, I think it’s worth addressing one issue about this passage that some Christians are relating to the current violence between Israel and Hamas. It’s one that gets trotted out every time Israel engages in actions that are subjected to international criticism. It’s the first half of verse 3, where God says,

I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;

Some Christians take this as reason for saying we should never criticise Israel, and only ever support her. However, there is a difference between criticism and cursing. If criticising Israel constituted cursing, then the Old Testament prophets ought to be deleted from the Bible, because they do plenty of it! No: we can still make honest moral evaluations of Israel’s actions and be biblical. Cursing Israel should just be invoked on things like the constitutions of Hamas, the Houthis, and other radical Muslims who call for the destruction of Israel.

That said, let’s get back to considering what this passage teaches us about mission. We’ll have to say a little bit about the original Old Testament Israel context of each theme that I mention before we understand them in terms of the New Testament and the Church.

The first of three great themes here is what has been historically called election.

When I use the word ‘election’, I do not mean a poll where we choose our politicians. I mean that God elects, or chooses, his people. Here, God chooses Abram to be the forefather of the people he is choosing as his own.

Now some Christians have pushed this to the point of suggesting that God chooses some people for salvation and he chooses all the rest for damnation. Christians such as John Calvin taught this, and later John Wesley argued and disagreed with the followers of Calvin. Wesley said that while he agreed not all people would be saved, God offered salvation to all and it was up to us to respond, to receive God’s free gift.

Because of the Calvinist teaching about election which became expressed as what we call ‘double predestination’ – God predestines some to salvation and others to damnation, as I said – the word ‘election’ has had a bad reputation among people like us who stand in the tradition of Wesley.

But it need not, because it has a positive meaning. Election is not about privilege: it is about blessing. Hear what God said to Abram in the second half of verse 2:

I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.

Election means that God has blessed his people so that they will be a blessing to others.

Now we begin to see why this passage is a missionary text. We are blessed in order to bless others. Sometimes I have done that with a formal blessing at the end of a service: ‘May God bless you that you may bless others.’

We know the incredible blessings of God. We know about his love in creation, his love in sending people in his name over the centuries before finally sending his Son, who even died for us, rose again for us, and even now prays for us before the day he appears again in glory. We know the blessing of the Holy Spirit in our lives if we have given ourselves to Jesus Christ.

And all these blessings are not just so that we can enjoy some self-indulgent spiritual bless-up. God blesses us with the riches of his love so that we can bless others with that love.

It’s why the Bible contains such radical commands as ‘Love your enemies.’ It’s why God placed each of us in the world as well as in the church – so that we have people around us to bless.

In fact, on that subject why not ponder for a moment who you are likely to meet in the next twenty-four hours and consider how you might bless them? What if the church became known as a people who blessed others generously, outrageously, even? And what if at the same time as blessing people we prayed for the opportunity to open up so we can tell people about the source of the blessing, Jesus Christ?

The second theme overlaps with the first, but I’m separating them for convenience. It’s the great nation.

Consider how verse 2 begins:

I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you

The bigger the nation, the more people to bless, and the more who can bless others. Let there be no doubt that in Christian terms, God’s basic intention for the church is for it to grow in quantity as well as quality.

Now I say that in the face of decline that has been going on in our nation for about a century, there or thereabouts. Our numbers are reducing and our average age is increasing. It’s a hard thing to preach that God wants to grow the church when most of the time we see the opposite. Some of us had great hopes for the church when we were younger but have become progressively more discouraged as we have got older.

So let us be honest here about decline as well as growth. Some of the decline is our fault, and some of it is not. To some extent we cannot help it that we live in a society that is increasingly hostile to Christianity. Some of that is a sinful choice to reject God.

But in other ways it is down to us. We have not always been good witnesses. The obvious example of that is the huge number of sexual abuse scandals in churches. There are other factors, too: our unwillingness to share our faith; our ambivalent attitude to strangers; our rejection of core Christian beliefs by trying to make ourselves more like the world – in which case the world says, if you’re just like us then we don’t need to change or join you. And so on.

I cannot guarantee growth to you. If there were a foolproof method, then we would have reduced faith to a form of technology, rather than a mysterious relationship of love.

But we can be intentional about the things that make for growth. We can be disciplined about the ways of growing our spiritual lives – the ‘means of grace’, as Wesley called them. These involve prayer, Bible study, fellowship, worship, the sacraments, fasting, giving, serving the poor, openness to the Holy Spirit, and so on. And we can be intentional about building relationships with people outside the church, as I said in the first point about blessing people and looking for opportunities to share about the source of all blessing.

What we can do, then, is sow the seeds and pray that God will water what we sow.

The third and final theme I want to highlight for mission from this passage is the land.

Verses 6 and 7:

6 Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

We know how important the land was and is for Israel and the Jewish people. When they were exiled to Babylon, it struck at the very heart of their faith. ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ lamented the Psalmist. The gift of the land was always conditional upon obedience to God’s Law.

And we still see the importance of the land for Judaism in dimensions of the current tragic violence in the Middle East.

But what sense does it make for us as the Church, the people who have been grafted onto the People of God through faith in Christ? We are not an ethnic group. We come from every tribe, and tongue, and nation (Revelation 7:9).

There’s a clue in the way Jesus takes one Old Testament verse and rephrases it. You will know how in the Sermon on the Mount he says,

Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)

But do you know what Old Testament verse he is amending? It’s Psalm 37:11, which says,

But the meek will inherit the land
    and enjoy peace and prosperity.

Inheriting the land made sense in the Old Testament with Israel. And that it’s the meek who do retains the important truth that the gift of the land is conditional, not automatic. You need to do what God requires.

But for Jesus it’s bigger. The meek will inherit the earth, which makes sense if it’s a multinational people of God. And it also makes sense if that’s at the end of all things, when God will bring in the new heavens and the new earth (Revelation 21:1).

Our inheritance is so much more than what falls within the boundaries of one nation. Our inheritance is the new creation itself.

Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but what does it have to do with mission? It means that our calling is to take as many people as we can on the journey to the new creation. That doesn’t mean simply that we say, get your sins forgiven and have a ticket to heaven when you die.

It certainly does include our sins being forgiven, but it is so much more. The vision of the new heavens and the new earth where God has made everything new is the hope that inspires us to say that this is what the kingdom of God looks like in all its richness and fulness, so let’s start working for the kingdom now.

And so what inspires us and what we urge people to do is not only come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, but also to come to him to find fulfilment and true purpose in life by building for his kingdom. Be made new by the Holy Spirit, and work for a world where sickness, sin, poverty, and other curses no longer exist. There really is nothing like it.

That’s why God chooses us. That’s why God wants us to grow. This is God’s mission. And he wants us to bless the nations with him.

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Discipleship and the New Creation, John 1:29-42 (Ordinary 2 Epiphany 2 Year A)

John 1:29-42

I once said of John’s Gospel that John won’t settle for one meaning of a word when ten will do. It’s a Gospel packed with symbolism, even in the literal stories.

And that’s true in our passage today, from the very first words of it: ‘The next day’ (verse 29). There is a whole series of references in the first two chapters of his Gospel to time: this is the first of three times John says ‘The next day’ (also in verses 35 and 43). So they are days two, three, and four of a week.

Then chapter two opens with ‘On the third day’, a phrase that has meanings all of its own when you know about the Resurrection. But if you add it to the first four days we have a week in the life of Jesus.

Now is John just showing us what a typical week in the ministry of Jesus was like? No. A Gospel that has begun with the words ‘In the beginning’ and then alludes to seven days is telling us that these are not seven days of creation, but seven days of re-creation, as Jesus has come to make all things new. These stories are telling us some of the ways in which Jesus brings salvation by making the old, decaying, sin-afflicted creation new.

In today’s reading, we see the part that discipleship plays in the new creation. We see two gifts God gives us, and two responses he calls us to make in order that we may be true disciples of Jesus.

Of the two gifts the first is the Lamb of God. Twice in our reading John the Baptist tells his disciples, ‘Look, the Lamb of God’ (verses 29, 36). Of course, by ‘Lamb of God’ he means Jesus.

And in the first of those two references, John the Baptist goes further:

‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’

‘Takes up the sin of the world’ is arguably a better translation: Jesus the Lamb takes up the sins of the world like he takes up the Cross. He takes them up onto himself. The very thing which has been wrecking creation, namely sin, is taken out of the way by the One who will die at the time of the Passover lambs. Instead of Israel being passed over for death because her homes were marked with the blood of Passover lambs in Egypt, now anyone marked with the blood of the Lamb of God is passed over, too.

Not only are they forgiven, but their sin is removed because the Lamb of God has taken it up. This is the first gift of a discipleship for a new creation. People are made new as sin is taken up from them by Christ.

‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ wrote the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. We are made new at the Cross, and creation is taken in the direction of newness rather than decay by the removal of our sins.

What is the application for us? Well, obviously praise and rejoicing. But we will come specifically to application in the two responses in a few moments’ time.

The second of the two gifts is the gift of the Spirit.

32 Then John gave this testimony: ‘I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water told me, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.” 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.’

Put simply, the Holy Spirit is permanently with Jesus and Jesus will give the Holy Spirit permanently to his disciples.

If the first gift, Jesus the Lamb of God, removes sin from us and from creation, then the second gift, the Holy Spirit, enables us to live in newness of life following that. The Holy Spirit brings the power to live like the new creation is here.

But of course we know that’s a battle. Paul has a wonderful passage on this in Galatians chapter 5 where he talks about living in the flesh versus living in the Spirit. ‘Flesh’ here is not our bodies but our sinful human nature that does not want to do the will of God. He says, you won’t win the battle just by keeping the Law, the religious rules. It’s no good just applying willpower, because you will fail. Instead, he says, you crucify the flesh as you live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit.

So how do we live by the Spirit who has been given to us? By adopting lifestyles that are hospitable to the Holy Spirit. Historically, Methodists have called these the ‘means of grace’. These days, Christians more often call them ‘spiritual disciplines’ or ‘spiritual practices.’ A church leader from Portland, Oregon named John Mark Comer has a course to help groups of Christians learn and practice the disciplines so as to be open to the Spirit. It’s called Practicing The Way. The course teaches each practice over a four-week period, and that includes putting it into practice. Were I remaining here longer I would be introducing this big time, but instead I commend it to you for personal study and house groups. (It’s free of charge.)

These, then, in brief, are two gifts of God that work to bring in the new creation. We have Jesus the Lamb of God who removes all the old creation sin to give us and the world a new start. And we have the Holy Spirit, who helps to live in a new creation way.

But I also said there were two specific examples of our response in the passage. What are they?

The first of the two responses is being wih Jesus.

When John the Baptist identifies the Lamb of God for a second time, two of his disciples leave him to follow Jesus, and the earliest expression of that following Jesus is wanting to see where he is staying (verses 35-39). In other words, they want to be with Jesus.

If you are going to follow someone you had better get to know them, and that’s what happens here. Sure, there is a lot of work in the world with which the Christian needs to get on with, but none of that kind of following Jesus makes any sense unless we have spent time with him, getting to know him and his ways.

That’s why you can’t choose between prayer and action as a Christian. Prayer feeds action. We need time with Jesus and then time in the world. Some people disparage prayer as ‘wasting time with God’, but it’s the best waste of time you can ever fritter away.

How might we do this? Don’t just speak to him, listen as you also read the Scriptures prayerfully. Learn not only to be alert for what he wants you to do, but also be open to him disclosing his heart and his passion to you.

You can be with Jesus on your own. You can be with him in the company of a small group or of a congregation. It’s best to be with him in all of those permutations.

But whatever you do and however you express it, make sure that spending time with Jesus is a priority, because it sets you up for following him in the world. And it gives you the agenda for your part in God’s new creation.

The second of the two responses is bringing people to Jesus.

40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus.

We don’t read much about Andrew in the Gospels, but on those rare occasions when he does become centre-stage in the narrative he’s often bringing people to Jesus. As well as this incident, he also brings the boy with the five fish and two loaves to Jesus, and he brings some Greeks who want to see Jesus.

Andrew is the quiet evangelist. Not for him the crowds to teach and preach to like Jesus. But he knows he has encountered someone special in Jesus and he wants other people to know. He doesn’t always know a lot, but he knows enough to say, ‘We have found the Messiah’ and encourage others to try him out, too.

What Andrew does (and quite consistently here) is like the modern-day Christian who knows that Jesus would make a difference in the life of a friend and invites them to come to church.

Simple invitations. Not grand sermons. Not great intellect. Just someone who has had a transforming experience of Jesus Christ and realises that many people need him. This is the chance for others to find who can release them from the deathly habits of the old creation and bid them come into the new creation.

Conclusion

From ‘In the beginning’ at the opening of Genesis to ‘In the beginning’ at the opening of John’s Gospel: we jump from creation to new creation.

How this world needs to be made new. Disciples whose old ways of sin have been lifted off them by Jesus the Lamb of God and have been given the powers of the new creation in the Holy Spirit are part of Jesus’ plan to make all things new. We can get our bearings for following Jesus from being with him, and we can invite others into his saving presence so that they too might be renewed and signed up for the work of God’s kingdom.

It therefore just remains to ask: what part is each of us playing?

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Restoring Work (Easter 5 Resurrection People 6) John 21:1-14

John 21:1-14

Christians are a little too good at times at keeping God in a box. One of the ways we do that is we put him in a church box. The only place we think we’ll encounter God is in a church setting.

But people who do that haven’t read the Gospels very carefully. Much more of the action with Jesus is not at the synagogue or the Temple but in daily life.

And if the Resurrection (and the Ascension) make Jesus present everywhere then we can meet him at the breakfast table, at the shops, and at our place of work, as the disciples did here.

How do we feel about that? Are there times when we would rather he wasn’t there? I remember a Christian businessman saying, ‘On Sundays, my priorities are first, God, second, my family, and third, my work. On Mondays, those priorities are reversed.’

Does this truth make us feel uncomfortable, or is it good news? If, like that businessman, we’re clearly uncomfortable with the prospect, reflect with me now, because actually, it’s good news that the risen Lord is present everywhere, including work.

Firstly, the risen Lord is present to guide our work.

Peter and the lads are experienced fishermen. By going fishing at night they have opted for the time commonly accepted to be the most productive for fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Yet they catch nothing. Not even some plankton.

Why on earth – apart from desperation – would they take instructions from Jesus, who had been a carpenter, not a fisherman? What does he know?

Well, he must know something, because one of those little unexplained details of the story is that he has already got some fish and is cooking them on the beach!

Of course, as readers of the Gospel, we know he’s more than a carpenter, he’s the Risen Lord. Those pesky fish that Peter and his friends are trying to catch are part of the creation he oversaw.

And furthermore, in that creation the human race was assigned work as a good thing, for it was part of the stewardship of creation under God which is the human calling.

So it makes complete sense that the risen Lord is interested in the disciples’ fishing work. It isn’t inferior because it’s not overtly religious. It isn’t inferior because this is what several of them left to follow Jesus. It’s still valuable as part of what makes for a flourishing world as God designed it.

The same is true for us, whether we do paid work or whether we volunteer, whether we need the income, or whether in retirement we are free to dedicate our time to other causes.

Therefore our risen Lord has a genuine interest in our work, and that involves him guiding us in that as much as in any church decision. Our work is to be a matter for prayer as much as any other aspect of our lives.

Are there areas of our paid work or our volunteering where we are struggling? Have we thought that this was secular and not religious, and therefore not brought it to God? That would be a sad mistake.

You may be an employee or self-employed. You may be a business owner. Or you may be a student. Or you are using free time to make a difference as a volunteer. Jesus is risen and alive and cares about what you are doing. Don’t be afraid to involve him. He wants to be involved.

So bring him that staffing decision. Bring him that knotty problem your lecturer set. Bring him the moral issue you’re wrestling with. He is interested, and he is present to help.

Secondly, the risen Lord is present to give purpose to our work.

I once had a manager who was the sort of person who lived to work. This was a problem for most of her staff, who generally worked to live. The office was everything to Mrs Freeman, and she couldn’t understand those who didn’t see it that way.

Why were the rest of us different? Well, for a few, they had spouses who earned a lot more and so their earnings weren’t a life and death issue. But for many, it was because work was not a place of fulfilment but of frustration or tedium. It certainly wasn’t a fulfilling experience.

I think many people would identify with the latter group. We’ve replaced the Seven Dwarfs’ song ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go’ with ‘I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.’

And as I’ve said to you before, I’ve had that same experience of frustration and tedium in the ministry just as I did in the office. Those who romantically look on at my work and think it must be some kind of uninterrupted heavenly bliss have never got close to a manse family.

I have also testified before that the Bible verse which just about kept me going during the worst of times was 1 Corinthians 15:58, the climax to Paul’s great chapter on the Resurrection, where he says that a great consequence of Christ being risen from the dead is that our labour is not in vain.

If you remember the sin of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, you will recall that when God finds them he pronounces various curses on them and the snake. One of those curses is that Adam will find work to be frustrating. The Good News of salvation in the Resurrection reverses this curse, just as it reverses our separation from God by sin.

We heard that promise when we also read Isaiah 65:17-25 in the service:

21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
    they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
    or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
    so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
    the work of their hands.
23 They will not labour in vain,
    nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
    they and their descendants with them.

Surely Peter and his colleagues in the boat had a sense of this when they dragged their huge catch to shore. After the fruitlessness of the night, now their purpose was fulfilled. They had fish. They could sell fish. They could make a living.

Not everything will be put right now. The vision of complete fulfilment awaits the ‘new heavens and new earth’ of which Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21 speak. (Which implies, by the way, that there will be work to do in the life to come – but it will be fulfilling work.)

However, we can ask the risen Lord whose resurrection promises that coming new heavens and new earth to help us find purpose and meaning in what we are doing now. It may be the chance to serve. It may be creative management of the earth and its resources.

Sure, while sin lasts there will still be frustration. But as the new creation begins to poke through, the risen Lord will bring purpose and meaning to what we do. Let us ask him to make that clear for us.

Thirdly and finally, the risen Lord is present to bless our work.

One hundred and fifty-three fish! Bulging, over-filled, and heavy nets! This is clearly way more than a normal catch!

Over the centuries, various scholars have tried to find symbolic meaning or significance in the number 153, and maybe that’s not surprising, given the many layers of meaning we often find in John’s Gospel. However, those attempts have largely failed, and perhaps we just need to default to a simple explanation.

Somebody counted the fish. The risen Lord had blessed the work of his disciples’ hands.

In Ephesians 3:20 the Apostle Paul tells that prayer can lead to God doing

Immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.

There is no reason to confine that promise to church work. Paul places no such limit. And this story shows that we can seek God’s blessing through the risen Christ in every part of life, including work such as paid employment, studies, and volunteering.

How significant might that be in the economic situation we are now facing? As prices increase at a rate we haven’t seen for thirty years, as manufacturers’ costs go up, and as household budgets get squeezed to the point where more families are having to make impossible choices, would this not be a great time to ask the risen Lord to bless our work?

So what are the needs of your employer, your educational institution, or your charity? Pray that the risen Lord will be present to bless.

Yes, let’s increase the range of people and causes that we pray God will bless. Not churches and the sick, but all sorts of elements in society. As you walk along the high street in the village, why not pray a blessing on the businesses? OK, there will be one or two whose business you will consider inappropriate for blessing, such as the betting shops, but why not pray that blessing?

The prophet Jeremiah told those Jews who were forcibly taken into Babylonian exile that they should ‘seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which [God] has carried [them] into exile’ (Jeremiah 29:7).

This makes for an interesting challenge: instead of complaining about our society, why don’t we instead pray blessing upon it through the risen Christ?

In conclusion, because the risen Christ is present everywhere to bless we need to get rid of our old sacred/secular divide. Jesus doesn’t see things like that. As one preacher once put it, ‘The only thing that is secular is sin.’

No, see the whole creation as the arena for our risen Lord to be at work, because his Resurrection is the first sign of him making that entire creation new.

And let that vision of the Risen One who transformed the fishing expedition of his friends be one that inspires us to pray and to believe that he also wants to transform our work, our studies, our volunteering, our work in our homes and families.

Because all of those are part of the creation he is renewing. Let’s join him in his work – in prayer and in action.

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

Luke 24:13-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, we see hope beating despair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revelation 22:1-5

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

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

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

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

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

Firstly, in the New Creation there is life:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, in the New Creation there is healing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirdly, in the New Creation there is light:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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