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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firstly, life:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, healing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirdly, restoration:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

November 9, 2025 0

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.

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.

September 28, 2025 0

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?

September 29, 2024 0

Pentecost: The Spirit Brings Life, Purpose, And Hope (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I don’t know what associations go through your mind when you hear the reading from Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones. Perhaps you hear the words of the old spiritual, ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem – dry bones.’

I always remember hearing an Anglican bishop read the passage and then ask the question of his congregation, ‘Can these dead Anglicans live?’

It goes without saying that ‘Can these dead Methodists live?’ is an equally valid paraphrase!

Well, maybe ‘dead Methodists’ is a bit harsh (although not in some places!) but perhaps we ask, ‘Can these struggling Methodists live?’ You don’t need me to rehearse the issues of smaller congregations with older members.

And to that issue, God’s promise to send the Holy Spirit speaks powerfully. In Ezekiel, the people of God are struggling in exile in the alien culture of Babylon. And we struggle as now a minority in a culture which no longer uses Christian values as a foundation for life.

So let’s go digging for hope in Ezekiel 37, and the way I propose to do it is this. Three times in the passage God tells the prophet to prophesy the coming of the Spirit on the dry bones, and each time the promised result gets bigger and better. Come with me and catch a vision of hope in these verses.

Firstly, life:

⁴Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”’

⁷So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

There is no cure for the state of God’s people other than a spiritual one. At the risk of stating something that is a hobbyhorse of mine, no amount of new programmes will change the fortunes of the church. No new creative techniques will bring life to dry bones. It is our foolishness that we fall for these parodies of the spiritual life so often. It is to the shame of our denominations that national leaders so often propagate them.

The only cure is for the Sovereign Lord to breathe his breath, the Holy Spirit, into us. If the flowers and plants in the garden are withering, we water them. It is the same with us. We need to be watered with the living water that Jesus promised, namely the Holy Spirit.

I want to tell you one of my favourite sermon stories. It concerns the nineteenth century American evangelist, D L Moody. On one occasion, he was visiting the United Kingdom and spoke to a group of church leaders. For his text he chose Ephesians 5:18, where Paul urges the recipients of his letter to ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ Moody pointed out that this is legitimately translated into English as ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’

At the mention of this, a vicar objected. ‘Why do I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit? I was filled with the Spirit at conversion.’

‘I need to continue to be filled with the Spirit,’ replied Moody, ‘because I leak.’

And we all leak. We may well be able to point back to glowing times in our lives when we were particularly conscious of the Holy Spirit’s power at work in us, and nothing I say is intended to diminish those experiences. But we cannot live on past glories. As our cars need refilling with petrol or recharging with electricity, so we need refilling with the Spirit.

Perhaps life or our Christian duties have drained us. Think of the time in the Gospels when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and we read that he knew that virtue had gone out of him. It happened to Jesus. We know he recharged in times with his Father. Why not us, too?

Surely, Pentecost is the best day of all to make this our prayer. ‘Lord, we leak. Fill us again with your Spirit.’

Secondly, an army:

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

Now if we get nervous at the mention of an army, let me just say that this is a vision, not something literal. There is nothing that follows this which is military. Nor are we meant to conjure up images of extreme militant believers, like the Christian Nationalists in the USA or anything else of that ilk.

I think the force of the image that the coming of the Spirit creates ‘a vast army’ is about the way the Holy Spirit equips all God’s people to be a missionary people, to be a movement that is a force for good rather than evil in the world.

To hear some Christians talk about their experience of the Holy Spirit, you would think that the function of the Spirit was little more than the supplying of a personal bless-up. And while I have no doubt that on occasions the Spirit provides comfort and encouragement for us, and enables us to experience God’s love, I am also certain that the Holy Spirit is not here for our self-indulgence.

On the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit sent one hundred and twenty disciples of Jesus onto the streets of Jerusalem among a multinational crowd with the good news of Jesus.

If you want a contemporary example of this, then the 24-7 Prayer Movement re-formed an ancient lay Christian order called the Order of the Mustard Seed. Its participants take three vows, which are worked out in six practices, that are seen as flowing from the Holy Spirit. Together, they form a corporate body that takes God’s love to the world. These are the vows the associated practices:

What does it mean to be true to Christ?
We live prayerfully
We celebrate creativity to His glory

What does it mean to be kind to people?
We practice hospitality.
We express God’s mercy and justice.

What does it mean to take the gospel to the nations?
We commit ourselves to lifelong learning that we might shape culture and make disciples by being discipled.
We engage in mission and evangelism.

Were we to pray, as Moody recommended, to be refilled with the Spirit because we leak, then I suggest this is the sort of body we would look like, too.

Thirdly and finally, restoration:

¹¹Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” ¹²Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”’

Now, just as with the word ‘army’, we have to be careful here. The promise of the land was central to Judaism, and certain interpretations of that are central to the current war between the Israeli government and Hamas in Gaza. But the promise of hope for Christians has never been about a geographical nation.

We also have to be careful not to see the idea of returning to the land as meaning for us a thought that things will be restored to the way they were in the supposed ‘good old days.’

Restoration for us is the recovery of our hope. After generations of decline, where in the next couple of decades some long-established Christian denominations may no longer exist in this country, where respect has turned to grudging toleration and then to the attempted silencing of Christians in areas of public life including politics, it’s not surprising that we have become disheartened.

There may or may not be some green shoots of recovery in our society. Justin Brierley, the Christian broadcaster, podcaster, and thinker, has written and spoken about what he calls ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God’. The professed conversions of the former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the media personality Russell Brand, along with the interest in Christianity shown by public intellectuals such as the historian Tom Holland after an answered prayer may start to shift the atmosphere in the public arena.

But whether that happens or not, the Spirit restores our hope not on the basis of whether Christianity’s popularity is waxing or waning, but on the promise of Jesus that he will build his church and the gates of Hades (that is, death) will not prevail against it. It is the hope that even death cannot destroy God’s People, because of the Resurrection and the promise of the new heavens and new earth. The Holy Spirit settles us in that hope, whatever is happening in the wider world.

This becomes yet another reason to pray, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ It may not be one of the ministries of the Spirit that most readily occur to us, but it is an important one nevertheless.

In conclusion, when we may be troubled about the future of the church, we pray again, Come, Holy Spirit.’ For the Spirit will give life to the tired and discouraged in the People of God. And the Spirit will make us a corporate body of God’s redeeming love in Christ for the world. And the Spirit will give us rock-solid hope, whatever fluctuations there are in the culture around us.

Can these dry bones live? Let us not simply say, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Let us instead say, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’

May 19, 2024 1

It’s The King, Jim, But Not As We Know It, Luke 23:33-43 (Sunday Before Advent Year C 2022)

Luke 23:33-43

It has become fashionable to refer to this Last Sunday Before Advent as the Feast Of Christ The King. But once of my minister friends said recently he wasn’t going to call today the Feast Of Christ The King, because that was only invented by the Pope in 1925.

My friend is right, but I disagree with him.

He is right that Pope Pius XI came up with that name, but just because a Catholic Pope invented the feast doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

I mean, what’s the alternative? When we just call today the Last Sunday Before Advent it’s as if everything is just petering out so that we can start winding up through Advent again, getting excited for Christmas.

But does the Christian Year really fizzle out like that? The Christian story doesn’t. It comes to a climax with the kingdom of God coming in all its fulness and God putting everything right at the Last Judgement. It comes with everything, even death, being conquered by Christ and placed under his feet. It is the time when everything will have been made new. Pain, tears, and suffering will be abolished. I want to celebrate that before we begin to retell the Christian story at Advent.

So I’m sticking with the Feast Of Christ The King. It’s a wonderful day. I was even twenty-four hours later than I intended emailing the order of service through this week because I was so spoilt for choice of hymns and songs, there are so many that celebrate Jesus as King.

But here’s the surprise. If we take a final episode from Luke’s Gospel to explore this wonderful theme, then we end up in an unexpected location. For although we read throughout Luke of Jesus inaugurating the kingdom of God, the place where Luke shows Jesus being addressed as King is in the reading we heard. He is proclaimed King at the Cross. Of all the places.

So how does Jesus act as King at the Cross? In this strange location he also exercises kingship in startling ways.

Firstly, Jesus forgives his enemies.

If you’ve been to any of the weddings I’ve conducted you may have heard me tell the story about the newlyweds who had all their photos taken outside the front of the church after the ceremony. The photographer got all the usual groups together there: groom with best man, bride with bridesmaids, happy couple with his family, with her family, with friends, and so on. What the photographer didn’t notice is that behind the couple in every photo was the church noticeboard, which served as a wayside pulpit. So immediately behind the bride and groom was a Bible verse: ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.’

³⁴Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’

A king may pardon criminals. But that is usually after they have been convicted and with a sense that yes, these people have indeed done wrong. But Jesus is surrounded by people who are wilfully taunting him and inflicting pain on him. These are the people he asks his Father to forgive. People who think that the wicked things they are doing are actually right.

They don’t know what they’re doing? They’re acting with their own free will and are therefore answerable for their actions, but this passage is stuffed with allusions to Old Testament psalms and prophecies, indicating that God was working out his eternal purposes at the Cross. So yes, they were morally responsible, but God was using even their sinful actions to accomplish his will.

So here is a kingdom that is based on justice, yes, but not on revenge.

And how glad we should be that his kingdom is like this. We have all acted as enemies of God in our lives. We have all put Jesus on the Cross by our actions, even without realising it. If God’s only option were vengeance, we would have been fried by now.

But at the Cross, Jesus says, whatever you have done to me, I offer you forgiveness. Will you respond by leaving behind the ways by which you have crucified me and live instead under my kingdom?

The invitation is there. How do we respond?

Secondly, Jesus suffers.

³⁸There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

But Luke writes this against a backdrop of rulers and soldiers sneering at his apparent inability to save himself (verses 35-37). The supposed Messiah, the true King of Israel, is suffering. This invalidates his claim in their eyes. And so they mock.

That way of thinking hasn’t gone away. It’s still present in the world. As I’ve said before, Islam believes Jesus couldn’t have died on the Cross, because no prophet of God should end up suffering and dying unjustly. To which Christians say – they shouldn’t, but they do. However, God will put things right in the Resurrection.

It’s a contrast to what we marked a week ago with Remembrance Sunday. We remembered great and terrible suffering then, but of a different kind. People risked suffering for the sake of freedom. But it wasn’t that their suffering brought freedom. The surrender of the Nazis and of Japan happened when they could no longer endure the suffering and defeats inflicted upon them.

But in the case of Jesus at the Cross he suffers not in defeat but in victory. His suffering for the sin of the world is what brings freedom to those who will embrace him.

Once again, Jesus turns our expectations of kingship upside-down. Unlike Roman emperors condemning gladiators to death in the Colosseum, he takes on death, feels all its force, and protects others from its consequences. He is like the bumper of the car taking the force of the collision and protecting the driver and passengers.

And he is victorious. For he removes the sting of death, and serves notice on it in the Resurrection.

Jesus is the King in the model of the Old Testament: slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And he shows that truth about God not only in the way he lives but in his death on the Cross.

Others mocked that title ‘King of the Jews’ at Golgotha but Jesus was showing his true kingship in the most radical way possible – the King of Love is the King of Suffering Love, suffering for his people.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus restores.

We come to the account of the two criminals executed with Jesus. One joins with the mockers:

³⁹One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

But the other, knowing that they have been justly convicted for their crimes unlike the innocent Jesus (verses 40-41) , makes his famous heart-rending plea:

⁴²Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

⁴³Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’

‘Remember me.’ This sense of being forgotten and rejected by society – understandably! But has he heard of how merciful Jesus is to sinners? Has he heard the stories of Jesus sharing meal tables with the socially disreputable?

And guess what? Even in the middle of his agony as he hangs there, Jesus’ heart still beats for the excluded. He responds with grace to the cry for mercy.

And he does so with a change of his usual language. Normally when Jesus talks about death he uses the image of ‘being asleep.’ Not here. ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ Why?

Ian Paul, whom I often quote, puts it like this:

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.

The criminal will be in a place of restoration. His salvation means that he, like creation, will be restored to all that he was meant to be. All things are being made new, and that includes him. As the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians, ‘If anyone is in Christ, new creation!’ Jesus isn’t about locking up the criminal and throwing away the key. He truly remembers him and makes him new. He makes him all he was ever meant to be.

He has the same project for us, too.

Conclusion

So King Jesus forgives his enemies, suffers out of love, and restores the forgotten. All this will reach its climax at the end of history as we know it.

How then do we live now in the light of that? If we return to Pope Pius XI and listen to why he made this Sunday the Feast Of Christ The King we shall know the answer. Pius said:

If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.

November 20, 2022 0

Video worship – The Baptism Of Jesus As His Ordination And Ours

Here’s the video for this week’s devotions. A text version of the talk is below.

Mark 1:4-11

My ordination service was memorable for all the wrong reasons. For one thing, I never experienced the spiritual exhilaration that others report, only a sense that at last I was no longer under suspicion from the church authorities.

For another, my sister and brother-in-law weren’t there. They had been invited, they had booked into an hôtel, and they had ordered a buffet there afterwards for a family celebration. But there was no sign of them.

You have to understand that this was in a time when few people had mobile phones. So my father went outside to look for them. When they didn’t arrive for the service, we decided afterwards to find a phone box. Then we discovered that they had been to a wedding the day before, and my sister had suffered a fish bone getting stuck in her throat at the wedding breakfast. They had tried to get a message to me, but it hadn’t got through.

I have often viewed the baptism of Jesus as his ordination service. Here is the public confirmation and commissioning of the ministry to which he had been called since before the beginning of human history.

And like our ordination services, the place of the Holy Spirit is significant here. At an ordination, we often sing the ancient hymn ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ (‘Come, Holy Spirit’) and we lay hands on the ordinands, praying that the Holy Spirit will equip them for their calling.

So in this talk, I want to reflect on what the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus tells us about the public ministry he is about to begin.

¹⁰ Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

These words are loaded with scriptural resonances from elsewhere, and when we realise that their significance for the ministry of Jesus will become apparent.

Firstly, Jesus ‘saw heaven being torn open’ (verse 10).

When heaven is opened in the Scriptures, it usually means God is about to reveal his glory and his will. Ezekiel’s inaugural vision that makes him a prophet begins when ‘the heavens were opened and [he] saw visions of God’[i]. Stephen the martyr, on trial for his life and facing stoning, saw ‘heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’[ii] The revelation Simon Peter receives to mix with Gentiles and ultimately proclaim the Gospel to them begins in a trance when he sees ‘heaven opened’[iii]. There are at least eight examples in the Book of Revelation itself[iv]. And so on.

Therefore in this incident the Father is telling Jesus that something important is about to be communicated.

We may think that such spiritual experiences are rare, unusual, or even non-existent for us. However, there are occasional times when we are conscious that the presence of God is close or even virtually tangible. It does not feel like the sky has a ceiling and our prayers bounce back down to us without reaching heaven. We have those times when we know the lines of communication are clear.

If we do, then this passage tells us to pay attention. God may be opening heaven to say something important to us, or to do something important with us.

I wonder whether we stand to attention at such times?

Secondly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him’ (verse 10). This has echoes of the creation story in Genesis 1, where ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’[v] before the six days of creation begin.

So here too God is about to begin a work of creation. Except creation already exists! With Jesus he begins the work of the new creation. Through Jesus all things will be made new.

This shows us that Jesus is way bigger and more important than the ways in which we often treat him. For all our confessions of him as Son of God and Saviour, there are too many times when we treat Jesus as if he were someone who helps us to improve our lives, or who mentors us in good ways of living. We treat life with Jesus as some kind of deluxe addition to life.

But that is not why Jesus came, it is not why he ministered, and he will not have it. Jesus came that we might say goodbye to all that is old, decaying, and twisted due to sin and instead to welcome in a world where not only are we individually made new in our lives, but that all creation will be made new. Even our bodies will be made new at the Resurrection.

Following Jesus is not like buying a new car, where we look at the specifications and say, I’ll add on some extra features, like a parking camera to help my reversing, and a heated driver’s seat to keep me comfortable.

No: the ministry of Jesus is one where our old life is put in the grave and we are raised to a completely new life. It is one where we look forward to the old world going and living in the new heavens and new earth.

To welcome Jesus into our lives, then, requires that we are willing to sing the words to the old chorus ‘Spirit of the living God’: ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me.’ When we allow him to do that in our lives, he will make us new and make his world new.

Thirdly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him like a dove’ (verse 10, italics mine).

That the Spirit descends like a dove takes our last thought further. The most obvious biblical precedent here is of Noah using a dove to find out whether the flood waters had receded[vi].

This is an indication, then, that as Jesus comes to make his new creation, he does so as One who rolls back the damage of the past, and who shows that the judgment of God no longer pertains to all who own the name of Christ. Yes, ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me’ can be challenging, disconcerting, and disturbing, but Jesus also comes as the gentle One who restores where we have been broken by the actions of others and who tells us that no longer have to live under our past, because through him God has offered us forgiveness.

If you are already broken, let Jesus put you back together in a new and beautiful way. Maybe you think that the brokenness will still show. Maybe in this life it will, but don’t let that daunt you. After all, the risen Jesus showed his scars to the disciples.

Think if you will about the Japanese art of kintsugi. This is the practice of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. Even the flaws and imperfections are beautified, to make a more attractive piece of art. See that as a picture of what Jesus wants to do in your life. Why not invite him to do his work of restoration in you?

Fourthly and finally, verse 11:

And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

The first thing that has always struck me here is that the Father proclaims his delight in his Son before he has even begun his ministry. It is a powerful statement of unconditional love.

But if we want to dig into the biblical background here, then the obvious stopping-off point is the so-called Servant Songs in the Book of Isaiah, especially the first of those songs[vii]. It begins with the words,

‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.’ (Verse 1)

The main difference is that whereas in Isaiah the designation ‘servant’ is used, here in Mark it’s ‘Son’. We draw the conclusion that God’s own Son came as the Servant of the Lord. The Son of God is the Servant.

Later in Mark Jesus will tell his disciples that servanthood rather than status is what matters in the kingdom of God, and that even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many[viii].

But it’s established right here at the beginning of the Gospel that Jesus will carry out his ministry of salvation in the form of a servant. The Son of God will bring in the new creation and all heal the broken not in the way that many assume an Almighty God will do, with force and irresistible energy, but by treading the path of servanthood.

And so he comes to serve – not in the sense that he waits on our every indulgence but that he provides our every need and he knows that the only cure for the wounds of he world lies at the Cross.

When we receive that, he then enlists us to serve him by serving others that they may see through us the nature of God’s transforming love. That is what Jesus is ordained to do. This is what all his followers, reverends or otherwise, are all ordained to do as well.

[i] Ezekiel 1:1

[ii] Acts 7:56

[iii] Acts 10:11

[iv] Revelation 4:1; 5:3; 8:1; 10:8; 11:19; 13:6; 15:5; 19:11.

[v] Genesis 1:2

[vi] Genesis 8:8-12

[vii] Isaiah 42:1-7

[viii] Mark 10:35-45

January 10, 2021 0

Last Week’s Sermon: Reconciliation, Restoration, And Church Discipline

I’m behind on posting sermons – sorry. Here is last week’s sermon. I’ll post today’s sermon tomorrow.

Matthew 18:15-20

You don’t have to look far on any day to see conflict and relationship breakdown in our world. I was putting together these thoughts on Thursday, and looking at the BBC news, I found these stories:

The violence conducted by the Islamic State organisation in Iraq and Syria;
The tensions between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces, along with the questionable rôle of Russia herself;
A book by French President Francois Hollande’s former partner Valerie Trierweiler about his liaison with the actress Julie Gayet;
Political argy-bargy over the Scottish Referendum.

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

And if it isn’t the national and international news, then we know of troubles among our friends and families. We witness the pain of marriage break-ups, family members falling out with each other, people leaving a place of employment because they don’t get on with the boss, and many other things.

Sadly, the church is not exempt from this. Mrs X won’t speak with Mr Y. A group of people will complain about someone else in the church; that person will consider the complaints unreasonable; and the minister gets lobbied by both sides! Or perhaps the minister goes around upsetting people, and either a campaign starts to get him or her removed, or people lie low until the minister leaves.

What a tragedy it is when the church shows the same characteristics as much of the world. At the heart of our faith is the notion of reconciliation. Through the death of Jesus on the Cross, God reconciles us to himself. And we are meant to be a community of reconciliation. Ephesians talks about Jews and Gentiles being brought together in the Gospel. Jesus talks about forgiving one another. In fact, the story that comes straight after today’s reading is the one where Jesus tells Peter to forgive someone ‘seventy times seven’ and tells the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Doesn’t all this show us that the Christian community is meant to be a model of reconciliation to the world? The way we deal with sins and frictions is surely to be a signpost to the kingdom of God for people.

It isn’t surprising, then, if Jesus here wants us to find a way of reconciliation if at all possible when sin damages relationships in the church. I’m going to split his teaching in this passage into two sections. There are practices for us to implement, and promises from Jesus.

Reconciliation in the sno — Reconciliation In The Snow by Tim Green on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Firstly, then, the practices Jesus calls us to implement when someone sins against us. He tells us initially to ‘go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone’ (verse 15b). This isn’t what many of us like to hear. Some of us are nervous, and dislike the thought of confrontation. Others of us rather enjoy gossip, and would prefer to talk about the misdemeanour behind the culprit’s back. We like to engage in a form of revenge by sullying the other person’s reputation on the quiet.

If we fall into one of those two reactions to the idea of speaking alone to the person who has hurt us, we need to hear what Jesus says next about the process. He talks about the aim of going to the person: ‘If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.’ (Verse 15c) The point of going to see someone who has caused offence, says Jesus, is reconciliation and restoration: reconciliation between the two estranged parties, and restoration to full fellowship.

Think about that goal if you have a negative feeling about approaching someone who has done you wrong. If the prospect fills you with nerves, then this reassures you that you do not have to go in with a confrontational attitude. This is about putting things right, and healing the relationship.

And if you would rather gossip about the person, then you need to be challenged by Jesus’ goal of reconciliation and restoration. Despite what is practised in some churches by some Christians, being sinned against is no reason for character assassination. That is the opposite of Jesus’ purposes for his people. We are called to show a different way of life to the world. A lot of Christian witness could be improved by the elimination of gossip in favour of building one another up.

shun'd by dalloPhoto — shun’d by dalloPhoto on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

But what if it doesn’t work? There is no guarantee, not even from Jesus. The next stage is this:

But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. (Verse 16)

The Old Testament Law required more than one witness, and Jesus brings that in here. If there is disagreement between the original parties, others are now involved. This isn’t about going mob-handed to the person who has mistreated us. In fact, as Tom Wright says in his popular commentary on Matthew, one point in taking two or three others along with us for the next stage is for the sake of checks and balances. What if I have misconstrued what happened? What if this is a misunderstanding? Others can bear witness and help us through it, if that is the case. Remember, our objective according to Jesus is to ‘regain’ the one who has injured us.

Only if none of this works do we escalate to the level of the church congregation:

If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Verse 17)

Still the hope is that the other member will listen. This is not a court of law; this is the church of Jesus Christ seeking to effect reconciliation. Yes, it may involve difficult and humbling things: if wrong has been done, then an admission of the fact and repentance will be involved. We do not banish someone until these attempts have been exhausted.

But if the person will not respond positively to all these overtures, then the regrettable final stage comes. It is a last resort. We do not leap into excluding someone, but nor do we rule it out if nothing works. For just as Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden due to their sin, and just as the people of Israel were exiled from the Holy Land due to their sin too, so in the final analysis may someone be exiled from the Church for persistent and unrepentant sin. Yes, we know we are all sinners, but those who are not prepared to address their condition before God and his people ultimately place themselves outside the fellowship, and the church must confirm this serious state of affairs. Sometimes only this will bring home the severity of the situation.

These, then, are the practices that Jesus briefly outlines here. Sometimes the process will be more complex than this, but this is only a short account of Jesus’ teaching, and the important point is that we keep to his goal of seeking restoration and reconciliation if at all possible. We only confirm exile from the church when the person has hardened their heart against the Gospel call of grace and holiness.

We need now to think about the second half of the reading, the promises of God that Jesus enunciates for these stressful circumstances. The first promise may not sound much like a promise at first:

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Verse 18)

There are some Christians who think this has something to do with casting out demons, but the context is the one we have of restoring relationships and church discipline. It’s a reminder of who we are as the church: we are the community of God’s kingdom. What we do here is a foretaste of glory. We are rehearsing for God’s great and beautiful reality, his new creation, when he makes all things new. This is our part in making all things new. So be encouraged when you are part of something like this. You are taking part in God’s kingdom work of renewing his world. You are building for God’s great future.

The next promise follows on from this, and it’s one we have misunderstood for so long, because we have regularly quoted it out of context:

Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. (Verse 19)

When we take those words out of context, we read them simply as a promise from Jesus about answered prayer. If two of us agree – and some Christians actually refer to what they call a ‘prayer of agreement’ – then our heavenly Father will do it for us.

This leads to disappointment. How many prayer requests over the years have been ones where you were in agreement with other Christians, but you didn’t receive the answer you desired? Many more than most of us care to admit, I’d venture to suggest.

But the context isn’t prayer requests. The context is this desire to bring restoration after sin, only resorting to exclusion in extreme circumstances. It’s a context where God’s people engage in such things as a preparation for the new heavens and new earth to come, where we model God’s kingdom to the world. And so when we agree on restoration to the Christian community, it truly happens. The Father makes it so. Such is his desire for reconciliation that when we forgive and repent, he makes a way through.

And sadly he also honours the exile from the Christian community where someone has so hardened their hearts to sin that they refuse grace. So our preference for restoration and our last resort use of exile are signs of God’s coming kingdom, and the Father puts his seal on what we do, honouring the state of our hearts. What we do is not idle or independent: it is backed up by Heaven.

Then there is a final promise, and yet again – like all these promises – it is a verse we have taken out of context, misused, and misunderstood:

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Verse 20)

When we are few in number at a service or church meeting, we invoke this verse. God is still with us – and we comfort ourselves with that thought, even if in the ensuing meeting we don’t have much sense of God’s presence at all.

There is some truth in this, and on one level these words of Jesus are radical. Compare it to the Jewish regulation that required at least ten (and they had to be men) in order to form a synagogue, and you see some of the power of these words.

But again, I come back to the question of context. God is with us in the desire to bring restoration. When Jesus speaks or ‘two or three gathered in [his] name’, it’s only four verses since he told the complainant to take one or two witnesses with him, so that the matter might be established by two or three witnesses (verse 16). Context requires us to refer back to that.

And that is why I made the point earlier that those of us who get nervous about this process should hang on for the promises Jesus brings. Not only does he promise us that what we do is a sign of the kingdom; not only does he promise that the Father backs up our work in this area; he also promises to be present with us in the sensitive work of reconciliation, restoration, and repentance.

Why? Because God is committed to this work. Perhaps nothing else shows more clearly the Gospel having an effect upon people’s lives than when they go to extraordinary lengths to overcome estrangement and renew broken relationships.

So we serve a God who does not let sin have the last word: that belongs to grace. And he calls us to be like that: the church is to be a place where the final word goes to grace.

Is that true of us? Here?

September 14, 2014 2

Tag: restoration