Lent Sermon Series 4: Outward Disciplines

New readers start here: in our circuit sermon series so far, we have begun by asking what the point of Lent is, and answered that by saying that it is to do with reorienting ourselves towards Jesus.

In the second week, we took that further by asking what our relationship with God looks like.

Then last week, this week, and next week we’re looking at various spiritual disciplines that we can use to tune into Jesus and the will of God better. After all, since he draws us into a relationship of friendship, we shall be keen to know what he says and what he cares about.

Last week’s set teaching was on what we call ‘inward disciplines.’ This week we turn to what are classified as ‘outward disciplines.’ And to do that, we’re taking the familiar story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness that we usually read on the First Sunday in Lent, not the Fourth. But we’re not going to look at it in the conventional way, where perhaps we look at the meanings of the three temptations, or we highlight the way Jesus fasted and quoted Scripture. There was material about both of them in last week’s reflections, in any case.

This week, we are asked to think about four outward disciplines that help us focus on Jesus. There is no single Bible passage that refers to all four, but this one gets as close as any.

Firstly, submission.

Submission by ucumari photography. CC 2.0.

Jesus submitted to the Father’s will when he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (verse 1). In fact, ‘led’ is altogether too weak a word. This is not on the same level as the inane ‘I feel led’ conversations of some Christians – you know, ‘I feel led to buy a Mars bar,’ and so on.

No: Jesus was ‘thrown out’ into the wilderness! The Father made his will known very strongly here – and Jesus submitted to it.

Not only that, Jesus submitted to human beings, not least in his trials and execution.

Here is an important Christian discipline: to submit to God and to one another. We submit to the will of God. We also submit to one another, for Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:21 to be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Now some of you may be listening to this nervously, knowing that there is a bad form of submission. There are terrible stories coming out of some churches where abused wives were told by pastors to go back home and submit to their abusive husbands. Those same churches never challenged the husbands, and in some cases covered up for them. Please do not hear me as approving of anything remotely like that. It is evil. It should be reported to the police.

So what is godly submission actually about? It is a discipline that is designed to counter the selfishness of ‘me first’, which is so contrary to the way of Jesus. Jesus gave up the glory of heaven and – as Paul says in Philippians 2 – made himself nothing, and took the form of a servant, becoming obedient even to death on a cross.

Let that be a challenge for Lent and for the whole of our Christian lives. How am I putting the will of God before my own will? How am I preferring others to me? This is what submission is about.

Secondly, solitude.

Jesus goes to the wilderness alone. This is a solitary act of discerning the Father’s will and battling evil spiritual forces. It is something he would practise during his ministry when he took himself off on his own to pray.

There is much that the Bible teaches us about being together as the People of God: we are the Body of Christ and we all need each other. We worship together. We have fellowship and study the Bible together.

But we also need solitude. Every one of us needs those times when it is just ‘God and me.’ I need to relate to God myself. I need to know the voice of his love for me. I need to know what he is saying to me. I need to tell him what is on my mind and heart. Much as I need other people, I cannot rely on them to do the spiritual life for me.

This has all sorts of surprising benefits. Our willingness and ability to practise solitude with God contributes to the other side, where we relate to others. True solitude makes us better at fellowship! Being present with God enables us to be present with others. The great German Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that you cannot practise true fellowship unless you know how to practise solitude with God.

So this is not a call to go off and live in a remote place as a hermit. Nor is this a call to enter some kind of spiritual loneliness. The truth of Genesis 2 remains that God says it is not good for us to be alone. We need helpers.

Perhaps we don’t like the thought of solitude with God because we might feel spiritually exposed. But that is a good thing. Because solitude does not expose us before a vengeful, angry God who wants to fry us at the first opportunity.

No: we enter solitude with a God of mercy, grace, and love. And if in that relationship he highlights something uncomfortable in our lives, it is so that he can heal it and we can draw closer to him.

Let us ask ourselves how we set aside time to be in solitude with God.

Thirdly, simplicity.

I think we can reasonably infer that – apart from the story we read where Jesus puts the devil in his place – he inevitably practises the spiritual discipline of simplicity. This is bare bones living. Just what Jesus needs, and no more.

We know that soon after this, Jesus will make simplicity of lifestyle a virtue for his disciples when he tells them not to store up treasures on earth but in heaven. Later in his ministry he will send his disciples out two by two to nearby villages ahead of his arrival, and he will instruct them not to take with them more than they need.

I can remember a big emphasis in the church when I was in my teens that promoted the slogan, ‘Live simply so that others can simply live.’ The trouble is, there is no set level below which we are living simply and above which we are living greedily. We each have to discern this prayerfully and thoughtfully.

You can even see different responses among the disciples of Jesus. On the one hand, think of the fishermen who left their nets and their family businesses to follow him. But also think of the wealthy women in Luke 8 who funded a lot of Jesus’ ministry, having stayed put.

Simplicity is not only about being able to give generously to others, it is also about being content. Look how stressed many people become because they are not content, and because they are sucked in by the advertisers and influencers. What kind of witness is it to show such people that you can have peace of mind without that strain and hassle?

Our television has had a particular fault for a while, and at the beginning of the year I suggested we look for a new one in the sales. We found a good model that would do everything we wanted at nearly £200 off the list price. However, Debbie then raised some questions and doubts about the wisdom of proceeding then and there. So we decided to be content with the current TV, despite the issue.

Where is Jesus calling us to practise the discipline of simplicity so that we have more to give or so that we can exhibit the peace of contentment?

Fourthly and finally, service.

Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org
A disgruntled gouty man ringing a bell for his servant who is just leaving the room. Etching. CC 4.0.

I said in the introduction that no single Bible passage covers all of the four outward disciplines, and this is the one I cannot really infer from the account of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Although if I were pushed, I would say that it follows from the discipline of submission with which we began!

But we know that in any case Jesus had much to teach about this later. You have only to go on to Matthew 20, where two of the disciples, James and John, get their mother to speak to Jesus and ask that he grant them the privilege of sitting on his right and his left in his kingdom. Jesus uses that faux pas to teach that in his kingdom leaders do not lord it over others, but serve, just as he came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

If we want to become like Jesus, then we need to imitate him. In a sense, that’s what we’ve been talking about with all of these spiritual disciplines: do what Jesus did. As the saying goes, it isn’t rocket science.

And nowhere could it be plainer than in this discipline: service. Jesus served people when he healed them, when he gave his time to them, when he taught them. For Jesus, live was not gimme, gimme, gimme: it was, what can I give to others?

Now while this attitude is still widely admired in our society, it is also true that it is perhaps more admired in the breach. So much of our language is about us wanting our rights and wanting what we deserve.

Jesus, though, shows us a different way to live. In fact, not simply different: it’s in an opposite spirit. Serve.

We might not like the word ‘servant.’ We think of people who had an inferior status, whether we are the generation that watched Upstairs, Downstairs, or the generation that watched Downton Abbey.

And it’s worse if we think of the word ‘slave.’ Not only do we have the terrible history of slavery in the world, we have recent examples of modern slavery, such as the appalling case in the news the other day of the woman who enslaved another woman for twenty-five years and treated her with unbearable cruelty.

We cannot control how others treat us. But Christianity is not about upping our social status anyway. And in any case, God will be pleased with us and will affirm us and reward us if we follow in the footsteps of Jesus by taking the decision to serve others. And as we do so, we shall become more like him.

Which is our goal. Isn’t it?

March 15, 2026 0

The J.O.Y. of Following Jesus, Luke 4:21-30 (Ordinary 4 Epiphany 4 Candlemas Year C 2025)

Luke 4:21-30

When I became due for my second sabbatical from ministry, I was serving in an appointment where no previous minister had had a sabbatical. The circuit tried to do lots of explaining to the senior church steward at my main church, but he only had one question:

‘What’s in it for us?’

There was no concern for my well-being, only for what they could get out of it.

Such was the attitude that when I then had to have surgery ten days after returning from the sabbatical, the response was, why didn’t you have the operation during the sabbatical?

Soon after that, my re-invitation came up for consideration, and you won’t be surprised to know that a faction organised against me. They didn’t try to throw me off a cliff as the Nazareth mob attempted with Jesus, and I would agree I made some mistakes in my ministry there, but you might understand why today’s passage resonates with me.

To treat the reading more positively, I would say it encapsulates that old Christian saying that the letters of the word ‘JOY’ stand for Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last.

So – Jesus first:

There is a wonderful episode in the book of Joshua chapter 5, just before the Israelites are preparing to take Jericho:

¹³Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’

¹⁴‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’ Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’

¹⁵The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.

I think Jesus’ words to the Nazareth synagogue have a similar effect. They have heard all about his wonderful words and deeds. We read last week how the news had spread throughout the countryside about him, and how people in various synagogues had praised his teaching (Luke 4:14-15). Now the local lad made good has come home, but it doesn’t go to their plan, because if the words of Isaiah have been fulfilled in their hearing (verse 21) then who is he?

Oh.

He is making a proclamation that he is the long-awaited Messiah, even if he avoids the specific word. He is the prophet greater than Moses who has been expected according to Deuteronomy.

And if he is, then he is the One to whom they must bear allegiance. It’s not enough to take pride in what they regard as home-grown talent, like football supporters chanting when a young player has come through their academy and scored for the first team, ‘He’s one of our own.’ Like the mysterious character Joshua encountered, as commander of the Lord’s army he has come – and then some.

Our first call, then, is to pledge allegiance to Jesus. We do that in a big way each year at our Covenant Service, but there is a sense in which we do that every time we take communion.

For we call Holy Communion a ‘sacrament’, and that word comes from the Latin ‘sacramentum’, which was the oath of allegiance that a Roman soldier took to the Emperor. When we come to the Lord’s Table, we pledge our allegiance again to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

There is a slogan on the Methodist website that says, ‘God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.’ But that’s a very partial description of the good news. Because when John the Baptist and then Jesus came preaching what they called the good news, it came with the requirement of a response. And the first response is to pledge allegiance to Jesus as Lord. After all, the first Christian creed was simply the words, ‘Jesus is Lord.’

Next – Others second:

On Thursday, an American Christian friend of mine posted to Facebook with some disgust words of the new Vice President, JD Vance as reported by Fox News:

“I think there is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”

These are appalling words for someone like Vance to say, when he is a convert to Roman Catholicism. They so contradict the New Testament, where all believers are a family, where social distinctions are dissolved in the Gospel, and where Jesus redefines our neighbour as anyone at all who is in need and says that neighbour love of that kind is one of the greatest commandments.

And it may be that we can make an easy poke at the Trump administration for such blatant heresies. Certainly, JD Vance’s parish priest needs to call him to repentance.

But what is the difference between that and the way many other Christians turn religion into a consumer exercise? When our faith is about the style of worship I like, the music I prefer, and mixing with people just like me, we have gone far from the ways of Jesus.

What has Jesus just been reading about from Isaiah? Good news to the poor. Recovery of sight for the blind. Freedom for the captives. The Jubilee year. When we pledge allegiance to Jesus, these are the things that follow next.

If we are to follow Jesus and not the mob, we will be thinking, who can I bless today? Who can I serve this week? Where can we make a difference for good in our neighbourhood? What are the social issues that need a Gospel witness? Who have we excluded from hearing the Good News, especially among the poor, and what will we do to right that?

It may be a stark statement and possibly an over-statement, but you may know the famous words of William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury during World War Two, about the Church. He said that the church was the only institution that existed for the benefit of those who were not its members. It is good that this congregation already takes that seriously. Let us always remember that such things are not peripheral to the church, but central to our calling.

Finally – Yourself last:

It’s important to hear that I said ‘Yourself last’ not ‘Yourself not at all.’ For this is the Jesus who taught, love your neighbour as you love yourself. And in doing so he assumed we would love ourselves. There is a distinction to be drawn between a proper loving of ourselves and indulging ourselves, always gratifying ourselves, or thinking the universe revolves around us.

No wonder we read in the Gospels of Jesus going away on his own to pray, and of him encouraging the disciples to come aside from all the activity to rest awhile. Is it what he did when he walked through the crowd here?

There is a proper self-care that is not the same as self-centredness. It is a looking after ourselves so that we are fit and able to live with Jesus at the heart of our lives and with the strength to show God’s love to all, especially those on the margins. Yes, Charles Wesley wrote in one of his hymns the line, ‘To spend and to be spent for those who have not yet my Saviour known.’ But where does the energy come from that we spend? And what do we do when we are spent? We need to tend to ourselves for the sake of the Gospel.

Yourself last, but this is self-care in order to be able to serve, and thus we distinguish it from self-pampering.

Much of this is a challenge to me, because I do not always look after myself as well as I might for the sake of all I am called to. Last year, I read a memoir by the great scholar who supervised my post-graduate research in Theology, Richard Bauckham. It was mainly a book about his struggles with poor eyesight, but in passing he made a comment about how he has always ensured he gets eight hours of sleep a night in order to be in a good state to pursue his calling as a scholar, even in retirement.

That is something I have not been good at, especially since a phase in my ministry ten years ago, when two of my three circuit colleagues curtailed their appointments, and the other retired. I ended up getting into the bad habit of doing late nights.

The Methodist Church has been on a learning curve with this. When I entered the ministry, the official guidance was that on our six working days a week, we ministers could take up to an hour off each day. That’s all. Somehow we were also meant to cultivate a hobby! Is it any surprise that in 2017 a nurse at our doctor’s surgery told me that working 8 am to 10 pm six days a week was bad practice for anyone?

Then, a few years ago, the Connexion woke up to the fact that there was a well-being crisis among ministers. Well, fancy that! Now they tell us to divide each of our working days into three sessions – morning, afternoon, and evening – and work two of the three. They also tell us to remember the provisions of the European Working Time Directive, under which workers normally do not start another day’s shift until at least eleven hours after their previous one has finished.

These are examples from my world. There will be approaches you can take in your circumstances. There will be other matters to consider, too. But the principles are the same.

So – Jesus first: in response to his love for us, we pledge our allegiance to him.

Others second: we have a Gospel to proclaim in word and deed.

Yourself last: self-care for the sake of that Gospel.

This is a Christian way of living. It rejects the ‘What’s in it for me?’ line. It doesn’t throw Jesus off a cliff. Instead, it exalts him and brings JOY to him and to us.

And that’s what we’re about.

February 2, 2025 0

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want: What Do Your Prayers Say About You? (Mark 10:35-45, Ordinary 29 Year B)

Mark 10:35-45

The village where I live has various claims to fame, from an internationally known strain of the azalea flower being named after it, through the novelist Hilary Mantel being a former resident, and then the fact that in their pre-fame days the Spice Girls rehearsed here.

While the Spice Girls were preparing for world domination, they sometimes had lunch at a café in the village run by the churches, called The King’s House. (It’s no longer in operation, sadly.)

And so it came to pass than when a documentary was made some years later covering their ascent to fame, a scene of them at The King’s House was scripted and filmed. One of the volunteers there was assigned the rôle of taking their order.

The volunteer in question was one of our church members, a retired Professor of Botany at Imperial College named Jack Rutter. I never knew him, because he moved away and then died just as we arrived here. He was a brilliant man, but his vast knowledge did not stretch to popular culture.

Thus it was that he could be handed a line in the script which he could deliver with a completely straight face as the Spice Girls dithered over what to order from the menu.

He said to them, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

³⁵Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’
³⁶‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.

Jesus says to James and John, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

Because when Jesus asks us what we really want from him, it reveals our hearts. So in the Old Testament at the dedication of the Temple, the Lord asks King Solomon what he wants, and he famously chooses wisdom rather than wealth. Next in Mark’s Gospel Jesus meets blind Bartimaeus and asks him what he wants him to do for him. Bartimaeus asks for his sight, and he then follows Jesus.

But when Jesus responds to James and John’s request that he do whatever they ask of him, he uncovers an unworthy, if not spiritually lethal request. For what they want is so contrary to the ways of God’s kingdom.

And perhaps that’s something we might reflect on generally: what do the kinds of requests we make in our prayers say about us, our values, and our priorities? Are they in line with God’s kingdom?

Sometimes, God’s answer to our prayers is ‘No,’ and on this occasion James and John get a very lengthy ‘No’ as Jesus sets out just how contrary to popular aspirations in his day (and ours) the kingdom of God is.

In what ways does Jesus say ‘No’ to what James and John really, really want? There are three, and they are all linked.

Firstly, Jesus talks about suffering.

Jesus asks them whether they can drink his cup and be baptised as he will be.

‘We can,’ they answer,

You will, says Jesus, but it’s not up to me who gets the best seats in the house. (Verses 38-40)

The problem James and John have here is that they interpret ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’ differently from Jesus. In the Old Testament, ‘cup’ is used figuratively in different ways. It can be a good thing, such as ‘My cup overflows’ in Psalm 23, and that’s the sort of meaning James and John have in mind. However, it can also be the cup of suffering, and that’s the line Jesus takes.

Jesus has to tell them that the life of the Christian disciple in following him will not be one big jamboree. For all the joy of the kingdom, following Jesus will mean suffering for your faith, just as Jesus himself suffered.

When we become Christians, some of our problems are all over but some other problems are only just beginning. Our sisters and brothers in other nations know this at great cost. For us it may be lesser.

I recently ran an advertising campaign on Facebook for one of my churches, hoping to drum up some letting income. A small minority of people launched personal attacks at me for doing so, one telling me to ‘f- off out of here’. I didn’t respond. I didn’t justify myself. I didn’t put him down. I just ignored it. I expect it from time to time as a Christian. I’ve had worse. Let’s not be surprised by it if we follow Jesus.

Secondly, Jesus talks about serving.

Gentile and pagan rulers lord it over people. They enjoy their status. They crush the people under them, says Jesus. I’m sure we can think of plenty of examples in our own world. He reverses this by saying that the key value to greatness is not gorging yourself on power but serving others. In fact, he doesn’t even say ‘servant’, he says ‘slave’, which was lower than a servant. (Verses 42-44)

It’s a sign of that Christian heritage that we refer to senior members of Government as ‘ministers’, a word which means ‘servants.’ I’ve said before in sermons that ‘Prime Minister’ means ‘first servant’, and one thing to do at a General Election is ask which party leader looks most like someone who would bring a spirit of service to the job.

But we need to remember it in the church, too, which is what Jesus was talking about. Even in the small pond of the church there are those who like to be big fish. There are sad individuals who crave the limelight, or who want to climb the greasy pole. Pick whatever metaphor suits you! But these people think it’s OK to put others down. They like to be seen as the important ones.

I see these traits in both my fellow ministers and in members of congregations. And Jesus reminds us that this is contrary to his kingdom. ‘Not so with you,’ he says (verse 43) – and that is present tense, not future. It isn’t that it’s something to be eradicated in the future, it’s something that shouldn’t even be present now if we had any inkling of what it means to be his disciple.

When you want to fill a vacancy in the church, be that an officer in the local congregation or a new minister, look for someone who doesn’t care about status but who does care about serving.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus talks about sacrifice.

⁴⁵For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I’m using the word ‘sacrifice’ here not in the ritual religious sense but simply in the sense of giving up something or even everything.

Here is the way Jesus would be the triumphant Messiah who brought people into his kingdom: not by obliterating his opponents but by giving himself up to death, through which those who were kept captive by sin were set free.

We cannot sacrifice for others in the same way as Jesus, but the call to sacrifice, to give up things for the kingdom of God is still loud and clear to us from Jesus.

Life, then, according to Jesus, is not about all the things we amass. It’s not about the abundance of possessions. It’s not about having a bigger and better home. It’s not about having a better paid job than the neighbours. And it certainly isn’t about having access to the elite members of society.

Jesus says we will know true life when we have sacrificed for the kingdom of God. I wonder why we find this so hard? We wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing time, money, or possessions for children, so why not for Jesus and his kingdom? If that’s our issue, then are we like James and John people who are apparently in the religion game just for the benefits and not for the challenges?

Conclusion

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

If your life is centred on yourself then suffering, serving, and sacrificing are not going to be top of your list.

But if your life is focussed on following Jesus, then you may well pray for the grace to endure suffering for his name, to serve others rather than polish your own reputation, and to sacrifice things for the cause of the kingdom.

What do you ask for in your prayers?

October 17, 2021 0

A Day In The Life: The Kingdom Ministry Of Jesus (Mark 1:29-39)

This week, we look at what a typical day in the life of Jesus’ early ministry looked like, and how it pointed to the kingdom of God which he heralded. What does that mean for us?

Here’s the video, and the script of the talk follows as usual.

Mark 1:29-39

Although the Beatles had their wildly successful career while I was a child, I can’t say I listened to their music until I was a teenager and their songs came on the radio as oldies. At the time, I could warm to their melodic songs like Yesterday and Penny Lane, but I found some of their more experimental songs strange and even disturbing.

One example of the disturbing category for me was ‘A Day In The Life’. Not only was it filled with druggy lyrics and accompanying psychedelic arrangements, it ended with a strange section where the instruments of the orchestra kept accelerating in tempo until there was one final, aggressive piano chord, which eventually died away.

Some critics say that song was their crowning achievement. It just left me feeling troubled.

‘A day in the life.’ In our reading today, Mark edits together some typical accounts of Jesus’ early ministry to provide us with a sense of what a day in the life of Jesus during those first weeks and months of his mission in Galilee were like.

But it’s not just any old ‘day in the life of Jesus’. It’s very focussed. All the themes reflected here give pointers towards the coming kingdom of God which Jesus was heralding in his ministry. He said the kingdom had come near, and so in this typical day’s ministry we see glimpses of what is coming.

Firstly, healing:

²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. ³¹ So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

Let’s leave aside any jokes about the greatest miracle here being that Simon Peter wanted his mother-in-law healed, let’s see this for what it is: a sign of the coming kingdom. As Jesus heals people, he shows that the coming kingdom is one where sickness will not ravage people, but that our resurrected bodily lives will be characterised by well-being in every sense.

How do we read this as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and in a week when the number of deaths in the UK has gone past 110,000?

We remember that God’s kingdom is both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’. So we see signs of the kingdom when people are healed, but not all are healed. Death, the last enemy, has not been completely vanquished yet. But it will be when Christ appears again.

In the meantime, we pray for the sick to be healed, and we support them when they do not receive that healing in this life. We keep praying, we keep doing those things which make for health, but we leave the outcomes to God as his kingdom pierces this broken world.

Secondly, banishing evil:

³² That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all who were ill and demon-possessed. ³³ The whole town gathered at the door, ³⁴ and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Casting out demons is only something that very few Christians will probably undertake, and we should not underestimate it by mistakenly attributing all such incidents to mental illness or epilepsy.

But we are all involved in the battle against evil. We set ourselves against evil in society as we stand for justice. We seek to be a positive witness for goodness and truth in our daily relationships.

And of course we battle the evil that we find deep within ourselves, those things that we wouldn’t want other people to know about.

And yet sometimes the greatest help in our own inner battles is precisely when we do find a trustworthy friend with whom to share our struggles, and who can hold us to account.

We face all types of evil from social injustice to nasty neighbours to our own shame with the help of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit is with us, among us, and within us to help us in the ministry of Christ. ‘More Holy Spirit!’ is a good prayer when we face evil.

Thirdly, intimacy with God:

³⁵ Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. ³⁶ Simon and his companions went to look for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’

Many preachers rightly say that Jesus’ priority of prayer is vital in his being equipped to show the signs of the coming kingdom, and they would of course be right. How does anyone – even Jesus – do the will of God without fuelling it in prayer?

But it is also a sign of the coming kingdom to pray, because when the kingdom of God comes in all its fulness there will be a closeness to God, who will no longer be distanced from us by sin or anything else. It’s worth therefore investing now in the practice of drawing near to him.

And no, not all prayer times are ecstatic, but that’s OK. Not all meals are memorable, but they all feed us. So in anticipation of the coming kingdom, prayer is a sign of the intimacy with God that is promised.

Fourthly and finally, there’s a theme that runs through all the three we’ve discussed so far. And that theme is service.

When Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is healed, her response is to serve (verse 31). When Jesus casts out demons, he commands them to be silent ‘because they knew who he was’ (verse 34) and had they blabbed who he was, people would not have understood that Jesus saw himself as the Messiah in terms of Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord, rather than a military leader. And true prayer is an act of service, because prayer reminds us that we are ranked below God, and owe him service.

Serving is a sign of the kingdom because it characterises the relationships of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a place where we seek to grab all we can for ourselves, it is somewhere that we say, ‘What can I give to others?’

Perhaps you know the old story wherein it was imagined that in both Heaven and Hell the occupants were given very long chopsticks with which to eat a meal. In Hell, people starved, because they only thought to try and feed themselves and the length of the chopsticks precluded that. In Heaven, however, everybody flourished, because people sat opposite each other and fed one another with their long chopsticks.

When we follow the pattern of Jesus by serving him and serving people, we are imbibing the culture of God’s kingdom. It’s an important way that we prepare for the life of the age to come – alongside our ministry to the sick, our opposition to evil in the power of the Spirit, and our fellowship with God.

May we more truly point to the coming kingdom through our lives.

February 7, 2021 0

Zooming In On The Ministry Of Jesus

Here’s this week’s video worship. I discovered some good music this week for the confession, Lord’s Prayer, and blessing.

As usual, the text of the message is below the video.

Mark 1:14-20

Many of you know that I’m an amateur photographer. When I want to make a photo of an object that is a long distance away and I can’t physically get close to it, I use a zoom telephoto lens. I have two such lenses.

This first lens will go from making things about one and a half times larger than we naturally see them to about four times. This second lens is my monster and will make objects look between about four and ten times larger than our normal field of vision.

Our reading today is like the experience of zooming in closer on Jesus’ ministry. Here, he begins his public ministry, and we get to see him laying out the fundamentals of that ministry. In a week where we’ve seen the inauguration of a new American President, and where like many new Presidents, Joe Biden has set out his plans for his first hundred days in office to show what he hopes to be the important threads of his presidency, so here we see Jesus setting out the essential elements of his ministry.

Firstly, we see the context. This is the wide view.

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee

Something is lost in the NIV’s translation here. It’s OK to translate the opening words as ‘After John was put in prison’, and we know from later in Mark that he was imprisoned. But a strict translation would say, ‘After John was handed over’. He has been handed over (or betrayed, possibly) to the henchmen of Herod Antipas.

One or two things flow from this. John has done his work of preparation. Now the stage is set for Jesus. Just as he has been handed over, so he hands over the public ministry to Jesus.

But also, the language of handing over will reappear in Mark and the other Gospels. For in Gethsemane, Jesus too will be handed over.

And so too may some of the first readers of this Gospel. It’s likely that Mark wrote his Gospel for Christians suffering under the persecution of Nero in Rome in the mid-sixties.

So the wide context of John handing over to Jesus is that the shadow of suffering for one’s faith is cast across the landscape. It’s present here near the beginning of the Gospel, and it doesn’t go away. With our comfortable life in the West we often don’t see this shadow, but millions of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world will recognise this, and we have a duty to stand up for them.

Secondly, we see the theme of Jesus’ ministry.

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [Italics mine.]

‘Good news’ here is a technical term. The Greek used here is the same as where the Septuagint, the famous Greek translation of what we call the Old Testament, speaks about reports of victory coming from a battlefield[i]. Similarly, when a Roman herald came to a town or village in the empire and said he was proclaiming good news, it was usually the news that Rome’s armies had won a great victory somewhere.

So when Jesus comes to herald ‘the good news of God’, it is a public announcement that God himself has won a great victory. The ordinary people will have received such an announcement with great joy.

But of course they will be disappointed. They will discover that Jesus does not herald a God who wins great battles by the force of his armies. No legions of angels appear to dispatch the hated Romans.

Instead, this Gospel which begins with the shadow of suffering introduces us to a God who wins his victories in completely different ways. He wins them not with violence but with compassion, as seen in the healing miracles of Jesus.

And he wins the greatest victory of all through suffering, as Jesus goes to the Cross, which becomes not a place of defeat but of triumph.

What an amazing message this is for those living under the shadow of unjust suffering as those Christians in Rome did. It is the same for those who suffer for the name of Christ today.

And what a confounding message for those in our day who cannot accept God unless he deals with pain and suffering in their prescribed ways. Loud and clear comes the message from the throne of the universe, ‘I do not do things your way. Learn what I am like and how I achieve the ultimate conquest.’

Thirdly, we get closer still to the action as we hear the content of Jesus’ ministry.

¹⁵ ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’

The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. You bet it has. When Jesus says the kingdom of God has come near he means it has come close in a spatial sense. It’s close in physical distance rather than being close in time.

And that’s because the kingdom comes in and with him. So his arrival makes the kingdom near. And thus the time really has come. When God’s kingdom comes this close, it’s time to do something. This is the hinge of history.

In Jesus God is acting in kingly power. And while it’s good news, that God is doing this, it’s also why the necessary response is ‘Repent and believe the good news’.

Why? Plenty of people say they believe in Jesus. They believe he existed and they have a warm regard for him. But if we truly want to believe in him then we have to accept what he says here, which is that no belief in him exists without first being preceded by repentance.

And that’s because believing in Jesus requires conforming to the ways of God’s kingdom. Yes, God coming and acting in kingly power is good news for his people, but it isn’t as simple as booting out the enemies of God’s people. It also means God’s people need to polish up their act.

I wonder whether the Holy Spirit is prompting any of us in this way? ‘You say you believe in Jesus, well great – but are you conforming your life more and more to his ways and his pattern?’

Fourthly and finally, we zoom right in on the ministry of Jesus in the calling of the first disciples.

¹⁶ As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁷ ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ ¹⁸ At once they left their nets and followed him.
¹⁹ When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. ²⁰ Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Simon, Andrew, James, and John have missed out on the opportunity to be disciples of a rabbi. Those chances went to the bright lads. So they’ve gone off into their family businesses.

But here comes a second chance, and it’s a surprising one. Normally, a young Jewish man would ask a rabbi if he could apprentice himself to him. It wasn’t the done thing for a rabbi to come and call people to be his followers. But Jesus did that.

And the call was different in another way[ii]. The usual pattern was for a disciple to say that they were following Torah (the Jewish Law). They didn’t say they were following a person, not even an eminent rabbi. But Jesus is different. He’s on a different plane from the normal rabbis. To follow him is to follow the law of God, for he is the instigator of it.

Further, this was not to be some academic call to learn Torah and its meaning. It was a call to service: ‘I will send you out to fish for people.’ Thus, it’s possible for Jesus to issue this kind of call to anyone. No qualifications are needed.

And even more than this, it was a call to fellowship, for Jesus creates the beginnings of a community here. This is not an isolated individual call. This is about the making of a new community. Jesus calls all his people to that, too, for he is making us into a sign to the world of how human community is meant to be as he makes all things new. That’s why we have to dispense with all the ways in the church that we carry on as if we are just a club or a social organisation. Our destiny is far greater than such trivia.

So this is where we get to when we zoom in on the ministry of Jesus. In the shadow of suffering, God wins a great victory. Jesus calls us to a belief in him that requires aligning ourselves with his purposes. It involves loyalty to him, a commitment to service, and the building of a new community.

Is that what we are about in our churches? It needs to be, if we care about the kingdom of God.

[i] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p24, discussing the meaning of ‘gospel’ in 1:1.

[ii] What follows is based on Edwards, pp49-51.

January 24, 2021 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

A Ministry Scrapbook

Regular blogging is quite difficult at present, as we get ready for our move next month. Last night I had my big circuit farewell service. Some had questioned my choice of venue, one of the ecumenical churches I have served. Why not the main church I had served, a small ordinary Methodist church? I didn’t mean to sound arrogant, but I thought that after eight years here and building up all sorts of networks there might be a lot of people who wanted to say goodbye. I thought we needed a larger venue.

I was right: I arrived twenty minutes before the service was due to start and I couldn’t get in the large car park. The whole service went brilliantly well. My sermon, which could have caused a few ruffled feathers, had an amazing response. I would estimate that about a quarter of the congregation came forward at the end to be anointed with oil.

There was a bunfight afterwards, except I never made it to the church hall even to get a cup of tea, due to the number of people wanting to speak to me. By the time I arrived home, around 9:15 pm, I was emotionally shattered. I felt the same when I woke up this morning: legs like jelly, plus a headache. (And no, it was the usual non-alcoholic Methodist communion wine.)

Some of these emotions made a bit more sense when I read the following wonderful words this morning from Nancy Beach’s beautiful book An Hour On Sunday:

‘Take a moment to mentally scroll through names and faces of people in your church. Think of someone who came to faith through your community. Now call to mind a few more people – someone who discovered spiritual gifts, someone else who found healing for family relationships, another who learned how to manage money, care for her body, or worship his Creator in new ways. Can you think of specific names? Those people, those eternal souls, are the fruit of your labor. And people are what matter most to God …

‘Every ministry is a scrapbook of faces, with new pages added every year. As we turn the pages of the scrapbook and look at each person’s eyes, we’re reminded of his or her story, of the impact of our church on that individual’s one and only life. Life change. There’s nothing more rewarding.’ (pp 254, 255)

So after eight years when I had really wondered whether what I had done here had been worth anything, when I had become painfully aware of my own failings (either true failings or those imposed by the unrealistic expectations of others) I think I’ve finally come to see that the jelly in my legs and the headache are about a realisation that I actually do have a ministry scrapbook I can take away from this place.

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July 25, 2005 0

Tag: service