Let us Pray - O God, light of the minds that know you, life of the souls that love you, and strength of the thoughts that seek you - bless the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts. Breath your life into us that we may live in the manner you have appointed unto us and better love and serve you and one another. Amen
Not so very long ago a dear friend in England sent me through the internet the story of a little girl who was asked by her teacher to write an essay on “birth”.
After getting home from school, she quickly went to ask her mother as to how she had been born. Her mother, who was very busy with the cooking at the time, told her “the stork brought you, darling, and left you on the doorstep.”
Continuing with her research, she went to her father and asked him as to how he was born. In the middle of doing some repairs to his computer, and did not want to be interrupted in his work, her father in a very similar way deflected the question by answering, “I was found at the bottom of the garden. The fairies brought me here.”
Then, still continuing with her research, the little girl went and asked her grandmother how she arrived into this world. Her grandmother told her “I was picked up from next to the pool.”
After having gathered all this information on hand, the girl wrote out her essay. When the teacher asked her to stand up in front of the whole class, she stood up and began to speak in great confidence. “There has not been a natural birth in our family for the last three generations….”
In today’s Gospel reading we read and heard that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of being born from above – or being born again – Jesus was not talking of a natural birth. He explained to Nicodemus that he was talking of a spiritual birth – a birth that was, and is still, somehow supernatural and a mystery.
“Very truly, I tell you”, Jesus said, “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit…”
Let us all take a moment to think about this today – let all of us think about our own unnatural birth – and about the mystery that is involved in our unnatural birth, and about the mystery that is involved in it, the mystery of God, the God who made us in the first place and gave us our first birth, the God who saves us, by becoming one with us, the one who is sinless dying with us, the one who is sinless dying for us, the God who lives and works in us and gives us our second birth, our unnatural birth.
I hope that you will be in agreement that all of our own experiences of God are marvelous and mysterious experiences…it is like looking at the picture of the old woman and the young woman you got inserted in your service sheet today. There is only one and only one reality, yet there is more than one reality at the same time.
And so it is with God.
We have and we know the God Isaiah told us about.
We know the God who is high up and lifted up in his temple.
We know the God who speaks and brings forth all of creation.
We know the God who is Judge, Lord, Ruler, King of all creation.
We know the God who is in light inaccessible, in other words hidden from our eyes.
This God is strange to us. This God is way beyond our understanding. This God we dare not touch, even though we know this God and he knows us, even though we see the signs of this God, signs that are all around us in this world, the wind, the air, and the fire.
And then we have the God who is in Christ. The God who is Christ, the God who is lowly, and humble; the God who reaches out and touches others; the God who humbles himself as a servant and serves others; the God who walks this world with us; and cries and laughs with us; the God who called God Abba, Father, Daddy. The God who is tempted with us, the God who hungers and thirsts with us, the God who embraces us and encourages us; the God who surrenders himself to death for us, having only the promise and the hope of being raised from the dead again.
And we have and know of God the Spirit. God, who gives to us all our visions and dreams; God, who is the source of all my strength and of hope; God, who is the supplier of healing words and of comfort filling prayer. God, who is the wind, the breath, the air we breathe in. God, who is the transformer, the one who gives new birth and new life. God, who is ever presence within us, and in the presence surrounding all of us. God, who is calling to us – calling for us – calling through us, calling in us….
Paul told us that we are all children of God.
When we cry Abba, Father, it is the Spirit of God, who is bearing witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
As a Christian, a lay preacher and a student of theology, I do not claim to know all about God, I do not claim to know all there is to know about God. I do not claim nor even imagine that I will ever know all there is to know about God. God is always much greater than my knowledge of him. However, I do know what God has shown or reveal about him to us. I do know God in three different ways, I know him in three ways. I experience him in three ways. I love him in three ways.
In his book “Mere Christianity” C.S. Lewis, tried to describe part of this experience, this three-fold knowing, this three-fold loving. In his description of a Christian at prayer he wrote: “What I mean is this”, he wrote, “An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what he is prompting him to pray is also God: God so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all real knowledge of God comes through Christ. The Man who was God that Christ is standing beside him, helping to pray, and praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the living being to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the living being inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. The whole threefold life of the three-personal Being that is actually going on within that ordinary act of prayer.”
(PAUSE)
What so many people lack in this world of ours in their lives is a sense of the mystery of God and of the mystery of the life that God gives to them.
We keep on trying to develop one simple mental picture of God. One simple portrait of what our life in God is like or ought to be like.
Most people would like to think that things are either black or white, and most of us will go to great and incredible lengths to fit things around us into one or the other category – but God is much greater than any category – any system of thought or classification, and so is our life in Him.
We know that God is just and holy. We know that God demands from us perfect obedience, at the same time; we know that God is a merciful God. He is merciful and forgiving. He is willing to forgive us, no matter how serious our sins are.
I confess that I am a sinner. I am totally unworthy to even touch the hem of the gown worn by our Lord, Jesus Christ. At the same time I know that I am a child of God. As a child of God, I am intimately acquainted with the Spirit of God. I know that Jesus is my brother and I know that I am a joint heir with our Lord, Jesus Christ, in all the riches of heaven.
I know that our God is a mystery. The life that our God gives to us is a mystery. However, I know that God, within that mystery touches us. I know that God, within that mystery touches our souls. I know that it is a mystery that we can all experience and taste and know something of, but we will not know all within this lifetime of ours.
When I became a Christian, when I yielded myself to all the claims of Jesus, no matter how outrageous it may seem to other people. I yielded myself to His claim to be the Son of God. I yielded myself to his claim to be the way, the truth and the life. I yielded myself to his claim to be in the Father, and that the Father is in Him. When I yielded myself to Him, something happened to my life.
My vision in life began to change and started to see new things in the world surrounding me. I began to see the hand of God in the lives of the people around me; the hand of God stirring up the people surrounding me. And to sense that our God is reaching out to people all around this world and calling all of them to Him. I began to sense and see God in people surrounding us. I started to see God struggling to convince the people around us that there is great beauty inside each and every being. And to see the world as a magical place, full of enchantment, full of purpose and meaning. There is within me a compulsion to do things that I had never done before; a compulsion to pray for other people; a compulsion to tell other people that God is all around them; the compulsion to suddenly stop in the middle of the turmoil of my daily life and to give thanks to God for little things, or just simply to take a deep breath, and began to see the fact that there is some divine purpose in life, which is too deep for words, and began to experience within myself a growing peace. A peace that is continuing to grow and grow. I began to experience the suffering in other people as well as their joys; the suffering of creation and in the triumphs of the people surrounding me. I began to see God hand’s in the working of my life. I began to see the need to answer the call, that if I do love Him, I will go and look and feed His sheep!
My life and my birth is not a natural one, and I thank God for it.
What I am experiencing and going through right now is not something that came to me as a result of my first birth from my mother’s womb. I did not learn or experience it by going to any particular school. I did not earn it by living a better life or doing kind deeds. It just happened to me, as a result of my coming to believe in God, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in asking Him to be my God, my personal God, in the way that Jesus taught us.
Every one who believes in God has this experience. Every one of us who hunger and thirst for His righteousness has this experience. Every one of us who yearn for God will be satisfied by His presence in us. For all of us will experience Grace. All of us will sense the gifts of God of their lives. All of us will experience the incredible miracle of the indwelling God. All of us will know that that they are born from above. Every one who believes in God, know what a miraculous happening that we were born again, and our second birth, just like the first birth, was only made possible by the labours of other people, and not cause by ourselves.
For every one of us who is a believer, because of what we experienced and gone through, we begin to see the words of the Bible about God as the truth in each and every respect. We come to see that God has revealed Himself to us, and know that He is still revealing Himself in many different ways to all of us. We come to see God in the way that has been written in the Scriptures. And to see God in the way that God has been described to us, God as three persons, and yet there is only one God. We come to see God as the creator of all creation, the redeemer of mankind, and the sustainer of all life in the world. We will start to see God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We come to see God as being our loving parent. We will start to see God as a dear brother. We come to see God as a caring presence. We come to see God in a true way, in a life giving way.
That my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is part of the truth that Jesus was talking about when he was speaking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus had a difficult time in understanding that truth. He had a difficult time in understanding how one could be born anew. It did not seem at all natural to him that one could be born anew. It is, we must all admit, not a natural birth, for it is divine. It is the gift from God, the Father, God, the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
So we preach, and so you believed – says the Apostle Paul. May it be so, both now and forevermore. Amen.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21
A young boy was wandering around an old downtown church one Sunday morning, and stopped and examined a large bronze plaque that was hanging on the wall. “What are all those names up there?” He asked one of the ushers. “Those are the names of people who died in the service.” The usher replied. Curious, the boy asked the usher – which service, the 9:00 Family Service or the 11:30 Communion service?”
I was reading through Genesis 11:1-9, and the story of the Tower of Babel reminded me of a story I read some time ago. This is story by Victor Hugo, a French writer.
One day a bee got trapped inside Victor Hugo’s study and in its attempts to escape from the room, was frantically beating and hitting itself against one of the windows.
Hugo remembers seeing on the floor other bees that had already got killed by doing exactly the same thing that this bee is doing. So out of pity he decided to rescue the small creature that was beating out its little brains on the window.
He tried to help, by first of all, opening the window, and using a handkerchief, tried to shoo the bee out of the window. However, the bee flew in the opposite direction, back into the depths of his study.
Hugo realized that the only way that he could save the bee was to catch it. And with this in mind, with his handkerchief he began the process of tracking the bee down.
When the bee saw Hugo coming, it flew away towards another closed window, and again beat itself against it. The time the bee was even more frantic than before. AS the bee hit the window time and time again the buzzing got louder. It seems as though the bee was telling Hugo, “Cruel executioner, you would not take away my liberty. Cruel executioner, why do you not leave me alone? Why do you keep on persecuting me?”
Poor bee, for Hugo decided not to pay any attention to the messages that the bee seems to be sending to him. He very gently pinned the bee between the window and the handkerchief and began to fold the bee inside the handkerchief.
Although caught, the bee did not give up its struggle against the fingers of Hugo and the handkerchief, and the bee even tried to sting him. With the bee caught, Hugo managed to take it to the open window, and put the bee outside. For a moment the bee seemed stunned, perhaps it was the shock of sudden freedom when everything seem lost. After a moment it flew off on its chosen destination.
Can you see something similar between this story of the bee and the story of the Tower of Babel?
The similarity of both stories is that we see the subjects of both stories were attempting to do something, and in both stories, they chose a method of doing what they were trying to do in a manner that was harmful to them.
The bee in the story was just like a bird that once flew into my living room some years ago, and then could not get out, tried to escape by attempting to fly through a closed window in its attempt to be free. The people of Shinar on the great plains of Babylonia were attempting to keep their unity intact by building a great city for themselves, and within that city they began to build a great big tower, a tower tall that it would reach into heaven.
In both stories the subjects were seeking freedom of one kind or another. They were seeking not only to get away from danger to themselves, but they were also trying to get to something that they thought were good. They were trying to build or to experience something that to them was glorious.
The Scriptures tells us that God looked upon the people of Shinar, and saw that they were seeking a name for themselves, and that their tower was beginning to ascend into heaven, and knew that if they continued in that course, they would succeed in everything that they proposed, and so God scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth and confused their language so that they would not be able to understand each other and so succeed in their purpose.
I would suggest to you that what God did was an act of mercy!
Yes, an act of mercy!
I would like to further suggest to you that both the story of the bee and the story of the Tower of Bebel are our own stories.
I think that we will all be in agreement if I say to you that each and everyone of us would want to escape from the chaos and the constant threat of being destroyed completely out there in the great wilderness of the world we are living in. We would love to be able to avoid the dangers of our daily life, whether it might be spiritual emptiness or physical hunger, and all of us would love to be able to create a glorious future for our children. A future where we will not have to worry about the possibility of losing our lives and everything that makes life seem so good to each and every one of us. We would all want to have a future when we no longer have to worry about what we shall have to eat, or what we shall have to wear, or what it is that we might have to do in order to make a living. We would all love to have a guaranteed for our future out there for us, and a guaranteed in being successful in everything we do as well as being able to do all the things that we would like to do.
Does such wants seems like evil goals to you? However, just like the bee and the people of Shinar, we often do get into trouble when we tried to work towards these goals. Do you know why? This is because the methods that we often used are the wrong ones.
Very often we push against the current of the river of life, instead of going with its flow. When we go with the flow of the river, we might calmly and easily, in the knowledge that the waters of life will hold us up, and eventually we will end up at our goal, or maybe to an even better destination than what we were hoping for.
Our own drive to security in life, for safety in life and for glorious ease, often leads us to build our own towers - Our own towers of protection. Towers that attempt to reach into heaven and gain for us the powers of God Himself.
Sometime ago world leaders, environmentalists and economists from all the major powers met in Japan. They were trying to deal with all the consequences of our tall building blocks.
As our buildings get higher and higher, countries competing with each other to have the tallest building in the world, millions and millions of different species of plants, animals and insects have perished. As mankind tried to protect ourselves and our future, millions and millions of people have suffered from droughts and starvation. Here we are trying to enjoy a standard of living that is beyond all reason, a standard of living which is actually based on limitless consumption of the world’s limited resources, the ozone layer has thinned. Cancer has increased, wars have multiplied and our own children, who are precious to us, have become bitter, unhappy, troubled and violent, as witness by the news that we read of so very often, children killing others with guns and with knives. Only a couple of weeks ago, we have a 10 year old child going after his own mother with a knife here in Hong Kong.
“Come – let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves, otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Just like the bee in the story, we keep on hitting the window. And just like the bee, we have an author who is trying to save us, trying to get us to the very goal that we are seeking, trying to help us.
Whenever I watch the movie STAR WARS, I always get a groan from Carmel, “not again”. It is one of my favourite films. It is an old film, when Harrison Ford used to be just as good looking as I am. We have in the film a lot of technology. There is the Death Star commanded by the Evil Lord – Darth Vader, and there is the small little fighter ships piloted by the Rebel army.
The movie is a classic adventure story – a battle between Good and Evil. What makes the movie so very fascinating is not the technology or all the machinery, nor was the part of the rescue of a princess in distress, but what makes it such a great success what George Lucas calls the Force.
The hero in the movie is a person by the name of Luke Skywalker, a very young man, full of impulse and eager to make a difference to the world. At the very end, he did make a difference, for he turns into the force.
The force in the movie consists of life energy, the very soul of all living creatures. That force, once you tune into it, can be used to do good, or do evil, although the force is good by its very own nature.
The force is stronger than any technology or any machinery, in fact it was stronger than anything that was, or ever will be, and it is all around us, to be touched and felt and responded to, whenever one is ready for it.
In the first STAR WAR movie, Luke saves the rebels from destruction by remembering the force, by concentrating on the force, and allowing the force to guide his actions.
Luke is not perfect in doing it at all. He does not find it easy to open himself up to the force, however, at the very end, he did managed to tune himself in with the force, and the force did work through him, so in the end, there was a happy ending to the movie.
I mentioned the force to you today, because it is something very similar to the force at the heart of the Christian Faith –what we know comes from the Holy Spirit of God. That very spirit which is the power of God and the essence of God; that very spirit which is the power that upholds the entire universe itself. The very Spirit of God which was poured out upon the first believers of Christ on that day of Pentecost some 2000 years ago, and which has ever since that time come to dwell within each and every one of us who believes in Christ.
In the church’s prayers for new believers we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in all our thoughts about God. We understand that the Spirit of God is the one who leads us, teaches us, communicates to us the forgiveness of God, give us dreams and visions and helps us to understand them. It is the Spirit of God who comforts us, sustains, inspires, strengthens and renews us; and at the end it is the Spirit of God who will draws us closer to each other, and to Jesus Christ our brother, and to God the Father, who are one.
It is the Spirit of God that makes our faith comes alive, and it is the Spirit of God that does the work of salvation in our daily lives. The Spirit is all around us, and within us, and that is what the day of Pentecost means.
There is an author to all our personal stories, and author like Victor Hugo, chasing us around in his study, trying to let us go free, so we can fly in the larger world without fear or worry.
Our author, our God, works by his Spirit. God is Spirit, and we need to let his Spirit catches us, to rise up from its dwelling place inside everyone of us, and to blow upon us when we walk outside.
Think about your dreams, listen to what people surrounding you are really saying, stop and read the word that are held up before us, the Word that the Spirit uses in such wonderful ways at times to comfort us or to challenge us. Hear the visions that other people talk about, visions of change towards wholeness, of justice and of plenty for everyone, and is based on love, and mercy and devotion.
Expect to be surprised by God. Expect all good things to occur. Believe in the Spirit and the Power of God, trust in it, and wonderful things will happen.
Although the tower of Babel has fallen, and will forever fall, the unity and the understanding that we all needed so much has come to us and will remain with us all, as it did to the first disciples on the first Pentecost.
"A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen accidentally kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.
ALL BUT ONE !!!
He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.
He was glad he did.
The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.
When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl,"Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay!?"
She nodded through her tears.
He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That's our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.
If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.
It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit."
Praise be to God, the Father, the Son, and The Spirit, One. AMEN
I was reading through Genesis 11:1-9, and the story of the Tower of Babel reminded me of a story I read some time ago. This is story by Victor Hugo, a French writer.
One day a bee got trapped inside Victor Hugo’s study and in its attempts to escape from the room, was frantically beating and hitting itself against one of the windows.
Hugo remembers seeing on the floor other bees that had already got killed by doing exactly the same thing that this bee is doing. So out of pity he decided to rescue the small creature that was beating out its little brains on the window.
He tried to help, by first of all, opening the window, and using a handkerchief, tried to shoo the bee out of the window. However, the bee flew in the opposite direction, back into the depths of his study.
Hugo realized that the only way that he could save the bee was to catch it. And with this in mind, with his handkerchief he began the process of tracking the bee down.
When the bee saw Hugo coming, it flew away towards another closed window, and again beat itself against it. The time the bee was even more frantic than before. AS the bee hit the window time and time again the buzzing got louder. It seems as though the bee was telling Hugo, “Cruel executioner, you would not take away my liberty. Cruel executioner, why do you not leave me alone? Why do you keep on persecuting me?”
Poor bee, for Hugo decided not to pay any attention to the messages that the bee seems to be sending to him. He very gently pinned the bee between the window and the handkerchief and began to fold the bee inside the handkerchief.
Although caught, the bee did not give up its struggle against the fingers of Hugo and the handkerchief, and the bee even tried to sting him. With the bee caught, Hugo managed to take it to the open window, and put the bee outside. For a moment the bee seemed stunned, perhaps it was the shock of sudden freedom when everything seem lost. After a moment it flew off on its chosen destination.
Can you see something similar between this story of the bee and the story of the Tower of Babel?
The similarity of both stories is that we see the subjects of both stories were attempting to do something, and in both stories, they chose a method of doing what they were trying to do in a manner that was harmful to them.
The bee in the story was just like a bird that once flew into my living room some years ago, and then could not get out, tried to escape by attempting to fly through a closed window in its attempt to be free. The people of Shinar on the great plains of Babylonia were attempting to keep their unity intact by building a great city for themselves, and within that city they began to build a great big tower, a tower tall that it would reach into heaven.
In both stories the subjects were seeking freedom of one kind or another. They were seeking not only to get away from danger to themselves, but they were also trying to get to something that they thought were good. They were trying to build or to experience something that to them was glorious.
The Scriptures tells us that God looked upon the people of Shinar, and saw that they were seeking a name for themselves, and that their tower was beginning to ascend into heaven, and knew that if they continued in that course, they would succeed in everything that they proposed, and so God scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth and confused their language so that they would not be able to understand each other and so succeed in their purpose.
I would suggest to you that what God did was an act of mercy!
Yes, an act of mercy!
I would like to further suggest to you that both the story of the bee and the story of the Tower of Bebel are our own stories.
I think that we will all be in agreement if I say to you that each and everyone of us would want to escape from the chaos and the constant threat of being destroyed completely out there in the great wilderness of the world we are living in. We would love to be able to avoid the dangers of our daily life, whether it might be spiritual emptiness or physical hunger, and all of us would love to be able to create a glorious future for our children. A future where we will not have to worry about the possibility of losing our lives and everything that makes life seem so good to each and every one of us. We would all want to have a future when we no longer have to worry about what we shall have to eat, or what we shall have to wear, or what it is that we might have to do in order to make a living. We would all love to have a guaranteed for our future out there for us, and a guaranteed in being successful in everything we do as well as being able to do all the things that we would like to do.
Does such wants seems like evil goals to you? However, just like the bee and the people of Shinar, we often do get into trouble when we tried to work towards these goals. Do you know why? This is because the methods that we often used are the wrong ones.
Very often we push against the current of the river of life, instead of going with its flow. When we go with the flow of the river, we might calmly and easily, in the knowledge that the waters of life will hold us up, and eventually we will end up at our goal, or maybe to an even better destination than what we were hoping for.
Our own drive to security in life, for safety in life and for glorious ease, often leads us to build our own towers - Our own towers of protection. Towers that attempt to reach into heaven and gain for us the powers of God Himself.
Sometime ago world leaders, environmentalists and economists from all the major powers met in Japan. They were trying to deal with all the consequences of our tall building blocks.
As our buildings get higher and higher, countries competing with each other to have the tallest building in the world, millions and millions of different species of plants, animals and insects have perished. As mankind tried to protect ourselves and our future, millions and millions of people have suffered from droughts and starvation. Here we are trying to enjoy a standard of living that is beyond all reason, a standard of living which is actually based on limitless consumption of the world’s limited resources, the ozone layer has thinned. Cancer has increased, wars have multiplied and our own children, who are precious to us, have become bitter, unhappy, troubled and violent, as witness by the news that we read of so very often, children killing others with guns and with knives. Only a couple of weeks ago, we have a 10 year old child going after his own mother with a knife here in Hong Kong.
“Come – let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves, otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Just like the bee in the story, we keep on hitting the window. And just like the bee, we have an author who is trying to save us, trying to get us to the very goal that we are seeking, trying to help us.
Whenever I watch the movie STAR WARS, I always get a groan from Carmel, “not again”. It is one of my favourite films. It is an old film, when Harrison Ford used to be just as good looking as I am. We have in the film a lot of technology. There is the Death Star commanded by the Evil Lord – Darth Vader, and there is the small little fighter ships piloted by the Rebel army.
The movie is a classic adventure story – a battle between Good and Evil. What makes the movie so very fascinating is not the technology or all the machinery, nor was the part of the rescue of a princess in distress, but what makes it such a great success what George Lucas calls the Force.
The hero in the movie is a person by the name of Luke Skywalker, a very young man, full of impulse and eager to make a difference to the world. At the very end, he did make a difference, for he turns into the force.
The force in the movie consists of life energy, the very soul of all living creatures. That force, once you tune into it, can be used to do good, or do evil, although the force is good by its very own nature.
The force is stronger than any technology or any machinery, in fact it was stronger than anything that was, or ever will be, and it is all around us, to be touched and felt and responded to, whenever one is ready for it.
In the first STAR WAR movie, Luke saves the rebels from destruction by remembering the force, by concentrating on the force, and allowing the force to guide his actions.
Luke is not perfect in doing it at all. He does not find it easy to open himself up to the force, however, at the very end, he did managed to tune himself in with the force, and the force did work through him, so in the end, there was a happy ending to the movie.
I mentioned the force to you today, because it is something very similar to the force at the heart of the Christian Faith –what we know comes from the Holy Spirit of God. That very spirit which is the power of God and the essence of God; that very spirit which is the power that upholds the entire universe itself. The very Spirit of God which was poured out upon the first believers of Christ on that day of Pentecost some 2000 years ago, and which has ever since that time come to dwell within each and every one of us who believes in Christ.
In the church’s prayers for new believers we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in all our thoughts about God. We understand that the Spirit of God is the one who leads us, teaches us, communicates to us the forgiveness of God, give us dreams and visions and helps us to understand them. It is the Spirit of God who comforts us, sustains, inspires, strengthens and renews us; and at the end it is the Spirit of God who will draws us closer to each other, and to Jesus Christ our brother, and to God the Father, who are one.
It is the Spirit of God that makes our faith comes alive, and it is the Spirit of God that does the work of salvation in our daily lives. The Spirit is all around us, and within us, and that is what the day of Pentecost means.
There is an author to all our personal stories, and author like Victor Hugo, chasing us around in his study, trying to let us go free, so we can fly in the larger world without fear or worry.
Our author, our God, works by his Spirit. God is Spirit, and we need to let his Spirit catches us, to rise up from its dwelling place inside everyone of us, and to blow upon us when we walk outside.
Think about your dreams, listen to what people surrounding you are really saying, stop and read the word that are held up before us, the Word that the Spirit uses in such wonderful ways at times to comfort us or to challenge us. Hear the visions that other people talk about, visions of change towards wholeness, of justice and of plenty for everyone, and is based on love, and mercy and devotion.
Expect to be surprised by God. Expect all good things to occur. Believe in the Spirit and the Power of God, trust in it, and wonderful things will happen.
Although the tower of Babel has fallen, and will forever fall, the unity and the understanding that we all needed so much has come to us and will remain with us all, as it did to the first disciples on the first Pentecost.
"A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen accidentally kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.
ALL BUT ONE !!!
He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.
He was glad he did.
The 16 year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.
When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl,"Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay!?"
She nodded through her tears.
He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That's our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.
If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.
It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit."
Praise be to God, the Father, the Son, and The Spirit, One. AMEN
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Jeremiah 18:1-11 Psalm 1; Luke 14:25-33
O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Around the world today in many churches there have been potter's wheels set up, clay has been brought into the church, drop clothes thrown down, and potters have started practising their art - with water, clay, wires and knives, and of course their hands.
I don't know any potters here - and I would like to pass it around right now.
Let us become children for a moment and get used to this play dough that I have brought. Share it around. Take a small chunk. Feel it in your hands as you squeeze and knead it. You can make many things with this clay. A "sort of round" ball, a potato with eyes, or a cube, or if we had a lot of time a dinosaur or your pet poodle.
You may wonder what this had to do with worship but bear with me.
Jeremiah was a prophet from a very early age and he lived about two and one-half thousand years ago. The people of Judah, where Jeremiah lived, had entered into some rather unhealthy and useless political alliances and the long and short of the story was that they were conquered and sent off as refugees into exile.
Jeremiah was faithful to the truth of God but he suffered imprisonment because the people, and especially the king, did not want to hear his message.
The prophet Jeremiah had a vision, a message from God. It involved him getting off his knees and going to the workshop of a local artisan, a potter. There he was able to see as well as hear what God's message for the people really was.
Now here comes the good part. I'd like you to take the play dough and make a miniature pot, or a bowl, or a glass.
Do you like it?
Now maybe it doesn't suit you. What do you do?
Do you throw it in the garbage and ask me for a new lump of play dough? Or do you squish it up and start over?
You START OVER, of course!
Indeed you can make many pieces of pottery or art with this play dough and use it over and over (if you keep it in an airtight container).
A potter works in much the same way.
She takes a lump of clay and sits at the wheel. The wheel goes round and round and the pot takes shape. The scraps are thrown into a bucket. Sometimes, for no apparent reason the pot collapses and it is reshaped and the potter starts over.
After another try or still another try the pot is ready for the kiln. The extra pieces in the scrap pail are not garbage though. They are mixed together and put on the wheel to make another pot.
Nothing is ultimately a failure, nothing wasted.
When Jeremiah first related the vision he had of the potter and the clay, a vision that God gave unto him, he was trying to tell the people that this is how God relates to them.
That message is as much for us as it was for Israel in the time of Jeremiah.
God wants us to become beautiful and useful vessels, not to carry water or hold food,
but to carry the good news of his love and call and care and purpose.
Sometimes things go wrong.
- sometimes we, through no fault of our own go astray,
- sometimes it is because of a conscious choice we have made,
- Sometimes it is because habits and behaviour patterns have
overwhelmed us,
- sometimes it is because of values and beliefs we have clung to for
years, values and beliefs that deny God - things like the importance
of worldly success.
Regardless of the reason we have gone astray. God is always there wishing to re-shape and re-make and re-new us, indeed to reshape and renew the creation itself.
You see, we believe that the creation is good. That from the beginning God has known us and called us good. God calls us to follow in ways that lead to life and wholeness but when it does not work out or when we stray from this plan God is still there to help us to start over, with a clean slate.
To use the analogy of the potter, God forms us back into the shapeless lump of clay and asks us to allow him to shape us into a beautiful and useful vessel.
This process may not always feel good to us - the clay.
The process the clay goes through for the air to be removed and the bits and pieces of whatever to be absorbed is not an easy one - as anyone who has potted well knows. It is work for the potter - and undoubtedly it is work for the clay. The clay is pounded, thrown, and battered - until it is pliant - the defects removed - the material easy to work.
Such working might be thought of as a bit like the challenges we face in life, those things which take the wind out of us, deflate us, overwhelm us, the criticism that we receive from those who love us, the guilt that we feel in the heart of our hearts because of things we know God doesn't like. But remember, out of this, battering, this pounding, this cutting, when we surrender ourselves to it in the way God wants us too when we learn from it in the way that the Spirit is leading us, something very wonderful can arise.
This message of the potter and of the clay is a beautiful message because it tells us that we always have another chance
that when we failed
that when we have lost the beauty that we once had,
that when we have gone off on a path that is not helpful
that God can rework us, that God can salvage us, and make us beautiful, and that it is God's purpose to do so.
It is a wonderful message, because it tells us that God indeed labours over us, that even when things seem really difficult, when we are feeling assaulted or when we are having crosses thrust upon us, even when, to use the word's of today's gospel, we are being called to give up our families and our possessions, God's hands are all around us seeking to do a wonderful thing for us - and to us, - seeking to make us vessels of his love and his beauty, - seeking to make us what we were created to be, those who live abundantly and love abundantly.
That is in fact what happened with the people of Israel. Disobedient, selfish, neglectful of the poor and the needy around them, they were reworked by God during their period of exile in Babylon. Everything they had was taken from them and they were reworked by God.
Finally, after a sufficient amount of time had passed, the people were returned to the promised land renewed and revitalized, with a new mission, a new focus, a new sense of the wonder of God, and of how God wanted them to live.
From these people came Christ Jesus, the child promised long before, the messiah predicted by all the prophets.
From them comes the message we believe today, a message of grace and of redemption
a message of God's love and power.
Next time you are in a potter's shop, admiring a fine pot or vessel, think of the process that the clay has gone through and how the potter has struggled with it to make it so beautiful, and give praise to God for his love for you and for me, give praise to the Potter for his work over the clay.
Blessed be the name of God, day by day. Amen
Around the world today in many churches there have been potter's wheels set up, clay has been brought into the church, drop clothes thrown down, and potters have started practising their art - with water, clay, wires and knives, and of course their hands.
I don't know any potters here - and I would like to pass it around right now.
Let us become children for a moment and get used to this play dough that I have brought. Share it around. Take a small chunk. Feel it in your hands as you squeeze and knead it. You can make many things with this clay. A "sort of round" ball, a potato with eyes, or a cube, or if we had a lot of time a dinosaur or your pet poodle.
You may wonder what this had to do with worship but bear with me.
Jeremiah was a prophet from a very early age and he lived about two and one-half thousand years ago. The people of Judah, where Jeremiah lived, had entered into some rather unhealthy and useless political alliances and the long and short of the story was that they were conquered and sent off as refugees into exile.
Jeremiah was faithful to the truth of God but he suffered imprisonment because the people, and especially the king, did not want to hear his message.
The prophet Jeremiah had a vision, a message from God. It involved him getting off his knees and going to the workshop of a local artisan, a potter. There he was able to see as well as hear what God's message for the people really was.
Now here comes the good part. I'd like you to take the play dough and make a miniature pot, or a bowl, or a glass.
Do you like it?
Now maybe it doesn't suit you. What do you do?
Do you throw it in the garbage and ask me for a new lump of play dough? Or do you squish it up and start over?
You START OVER, of course!
Indeed you can make many pieces of pottery or art with this play dough and use it over and over (if you keep it in an airtight container).
A potter works in much the same way.
She takes a lump of clay and sits at the wheel. The wheel goes round and round and the pot takes shape. The scraps are thrown into a bucket. Sometimes, for no apparent reason the pot collapses and it is reshaped and the potter starts over.
After another try or still another try the pot is ready for the kiln. The extra pieces in the scrap pail are not garbage though. They are mixed together and put on the wheel to make another pot.
Nothing is ultimately a failure, nothing wasted.
When Jeremiah first related the vision he had of the potter and the clay, a vision that God gave unto him, he was trying to tell the people that this is how God relates to them.
That message is as much for us as it was for Israel in the time of Jeremiah.
God wants us to become beautiful and useful vessels, not to carry water or hold food,
but to carry the good news of his love and call and care and purpose.
Sometimes things go wrong.
- sometimes we, through no fault of our own go astray,
- sometimes it is because of a conscious choice we have made,
- Sometimes it is because habits and behaviour patterns have
overwhelmed us,
- sometimes it is because of values and beliefs we have clung to for
years, values and beliefs that deny God - things like the importance
of worldly success.
Regardless of the reason we have gone astray. God is always there wishing to re-shape and re-make and re-new us, indeed to reshape and renew the creation itself.
You see, we believe that the creation is good. That from the beginning God has known us and called us good. God calls us to follow in ways that lead to life and wholeness but when it does not work out or when we stray from this plan God is still there to help us to start over, with a clean slate.
To use the analogy of the potter, God forms us back into the shapeless lump of clay and asks us to allow him to shape us into a beautiful and useful vessel.
This process may not always feel good to us - the clay.
The process the clay goes through for the air to be removed and the bits and pieces of whatever to be absorbed is not an easy one - as anyone who has potted well knows. It is work for the potter - and undoubtedly it is work for the clay. The clay is pounded, thrown, and battered - until it is pliant - the defects removed - the material easy to work.
Such working might be thought of as a bit like the challenges we face in life, those things which take the wind out of us, deflate us, overwhelm us, the criticism that we receive from those who love us, the guilt that we feel in the heart of our hearts because of things we know God doesn't like. But remember, out of this, battering, this pounding, this cutting, when we surrender ourselves to it in the way God wants us too when we learn from it in the way that the Spirit is leading us, something very wonderful can arise.
This message of the potter and of the clay is a beautiful message because it tells us that we always have another chance
that when we failed
that when we have lost the beauty that we once had,
that when we have gone off on a path that is not helpful
that God can rework us, that God can salvage us, and make us beautiful, and that it is God's purpose to do so.
It is a wonderful message, because it tells us that God indeed labours over us, that even when things seem really difficult, when we are feeling assaulted or when we are having crosses thrust upon us, even when, to use the word's of today's gospel, we are being called to give up our families and our possessions, God's hands are all around us seeking to do a wonderful thing for us - and to us, - seeking to make us vessels of his love and his beauty, - seeking to make us what we were created to be, those who live abundantly and love abundantly.
That is in fact what happened with the people of Israel. Disobedient, selfish, neglectful of the poor and the needy around them, they were reworked by God during their period of exile in Babylon. Everything they had was taken from them and they were reworked by God.
Finally, after a sufficient amount of time had passed, the people were returned to the promised land renewed and revitalized, with a new mission, a new focus, a new sense of the wonder of God, and of how God wanted them to live.
From these people came Christ Jesus, the child promised long before, the messiah predicted by all the prophets.
From them comes the message we believe today, a message of grace and of redemption
a message of God's love and power.
Next time you are in a potter's shop, admiring a fine pot or vessel, think of the process that the clay has gone through and how the potter has struggled with it to make it so beautiful, and give praise to God for his love for you and for me, give praise to the Potter for his work over the clay.
Blessed be the name of God, day by day. Amen
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Genesis 37:1-4; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33
You may have heard the story about a man taking a walk in the mountains enjoying the scenery when he stepped too close to the edge of the mountain and started to fall. In desperation he reached out and grabbed a limb of an old tree hanging onto the side of the cliff.
Full of fear he assessed his situation. He was about 100 feet down a shear cliff and about 900 feet from the floor of the canyon below. If he should slip again he will be falling to his death. Full of fear, he cries out, "Help me!" But there was no answer. Again and again he cried out but to no avail. Finally he yelled, "Is anybody up there?"
A deep voice replied, "Yes, I'm up here." "Who is it?" "It's the Lord." "Can you help me?" "Yes, I can help. Have faith in me." "Help me!" "Let go." Looking around the man became full of panic. "What?!?!" "Have faith in me. Let go. I will catch you."
"Uh... Is there anybody else up there?"
Often each and everyone of us goes through hard and difficult times, and I often wonder where our faith fits in when we are going through difficult times, the times of storm, the times of trials and of testing.
There are some people who will tell you that you if you have faith, life will be smooth sailing. There are some people who will tell you that if you have faith, God will take good care of you, He will cure all your ills and He will guard you from every danger in the world. That is if you have enough faith, if you stay close to God….
If we listen carefully to our Scripture reading of this morning from the Book of Matthew, we may discover that this is not necessarily the case.
Do you remember the incident in the Gospels of Jesus feeding the 5,000? Do you remember that in that particular incident the crowds had gathered to hear Jesus, and as the day went on, Jesus told the disciples to “Give the people something to eat?”
The disciples were shocked! Their immediate response to Jesus was “We do not have enough! All we have here are two little fish and five small loaves of bread. That is not enough! We cannot possibly do what you asked us to do, Jesus!” Does that reaction of the disciples sounded familiar to you?
Jesus said to his disciples, “Give the food to me.” After they given him the food, Jesus blesses it, and tells the disciples to pass it out. The disciples did as they were instructed, and everyone had their fill, and when they finished eating, there were even 12 baskets of food left over!
What do you think that the disciples were thinking throughout all this? They were after all, right there in the middle when Jesus performed that miracle. Maybe some of the members of the crowed did not realize as to what was happening at the time, but the disciples were right there. They were there all the way through the entire miracle. They took part in the miracle. What do you think that they were thinking? Did witnessing the miracle change them? Did witnessing the miracle strengthen their faith?
Well from the Scriptures the disciples seem to be slow learners.
After the feeding of the 5,000 was all over, Jesus dismisses the crowd and sends them all home. After sending the people home, he told the disciples, “Get in the boat and cross the lake. I will join you later, but right now I need to be alone for a while to pray.”
The instructions that Jesus gave to the disciples probably did not sound strange at all, for often as we can read from the Scriptures, Jesus did spend a lot of time praying. In any case, I think probably the disciples were thinking that he may be joining them by getting another boat later that night to cross the lake and so they set sail for the other side.
Unfortunately a few hours later we find the disciples caught in the middle of the lake in a wind storm. The waves were rolling, a strong wind was blowing they were getting absolutely nowhere at all. It takes them every bit of effort just to keep their boat into the wind, and they were not making any progress at all in getting across to the other side of the lake.
We must remember that the reason for their being out there in the middle of the lake in the first place was due to what Jesus told them to do. In fact, it was what Jesus ordered them, or commanded them to do – to get in the boat and cross to the other side of the lake.
They were following orders by doing exactly what Jesus had told them to do, and due to their being obedient to him, discovered that they were now caught in a big storm! A storm that was far too big for them to handle!
Do faith and obedience always mean smooth sailing in life? Apparently that is not the case. Sometimes when we follow Jesus, it may at times leads us straight into a storm!
Finally in the small hours of the morning just before first light, Jesus came walking out to them, actually walking on the water! The initial reaction of the disciples was one of fear. They were terrified! “It is a ghost!” they were saying, or more like screaming.
But then Jesus called out to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
I do not know why, but for whatever the reason it may have been, maybe Peter needed proof or something, and Peter said, “If it is really you Lord, command me to come out on the water with you.” He probably regretted it as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Mind you, if you really think of it, he was the only one who even dared to say that, the other apostles just simply refused to even take that step out of the boat!
Anyway Jesus simply told him, “Come…come on, Peter.”
I would imagine at that particular moment in time, it would be, to Peter, very much like letting go of that root that you would have been hanging onto for dear life. At this very point, I would imagine that Peter was probably ready to call out, “uh, is there anyone else out there?”
But Peter is caught, after all, he was the only one amongst the twelve who asked Jesus to let him get into the water, and since Jesus said ‘yes’, there was no backing down. So he very cautiously puts one leg over the boat, then the other leg, still holding onto the boat. He lets go of the boat with one hand, and then the other, and there we find dear old Peter, walking on the water as well!
Is that impossible? It is no more impossible than feeding 5000 people with two fishes and five loaves of bread! As Jesus plainly said and as we all know, “With God, all things are possible!”
Quite contrary to all the laws of nature, the impossible was happening – this is because the Lord of the universe was there.
But then something happens to Peter. It was almost as if he suddenly woke up and realized where he is.
Often when we watch cartoons with our children, we see a cartoon character runs off a cliff and stays suspended in mid air until he finally realizes what a stupid thing he just did, and then down drops the cartoon character.
Well, here we have Peter, walking on the water towards Jesus. Everything seems to be going on fine, but then he took his eyes off Jesus and began to look around at his surroundings. And guess what he saw? He saw big waves and a driving wind, and there he was in the middle of it, on the water, unprotected, without even a life jacket or a floating log.
He forgot all about Jesus, he forgotten all the miracles of Jesus he seen before, and got scared, as a result he began to sink.
The name “Peter” means rock, but now instead of being a solid rock of faith, he began to sink like a rock.
In desperation, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Have you ever been in a similar situation before? Have you ever been there before? I understand and believe that it is the most elementary cry of every human being whenever we are confronted with something or event or happening which is
- beyond our strength
- beyond our ability
- beyond our control
In the midst of our human helplessness and powerlessness, we will often cry out, “Lord, save me!” I know I do, whenever I am in trouble, and often those are troubles that I got myself into by not listening to God, I will cry out, “Lord, save me!”
Jesus reached out and grabs hold of Peter, pulls him up and helped him to get back into the boat.
“Why did you doubt, Peter? Where is your faith? Did you not believe me? Did you not believe me when I told you to let go?”
Suddenly the wind dies down, the waves settle. The disciples were all filled with awe and amazement. Falling to their knees they declared, “Truly you are the Son of God!”
As I was preparing for today’s sermon, I heard God speaking to me, as He did this morning through the Scriptures to all of us. What I hear is the Lord saying to Peter, to all the disciples and to each and every one of us:
Life is simply full of adventures and encounters and accidents and all kinds of experiences that will remind us time and time again, that if our eyes are open to see it, that God alone is God and each and every one of us are totally dependent upon the Lord as our only source of life and hope and strength.
Even when we are so very certain that God is the one leading us and we are acting as according to God’s will, we should never dare think that we, as we are acting in accordance to the will of God, we can therefore go it alone, and therefore relying solely on our own strength, resources and abilities.
We must not forget that the disciples were only doing what Jesus had told them to do. If they would have remembered that, they could have pressed forward without fear, even in the middle of the biggest storm they ever had in their lives.
Peter was only doing what the Lord invited him to do. He was in actually doing the impossible if we measure it by worldly standards.
It was only when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on the storm raging all around him that he got scared, got into trouble and began to sink.
We know that without Jesus we can do nothing, but with God, all things are possible. After all, He is the creator of this world, He is the one who created you and me, and He will never tell us to do anything without supplying the means for us to do so. But we have to place our complete faith and trust in Him to do so.
I am sure that Peter never in his lifetime forgets that moment. There were of course, many other times of doubt and testing through his life, and he was not always successful.
Just like us, whenever he floundered he will always end up crying out, “Lord, save me! And the Lord will always be there to reach out to save him, just as He is always there for us. Peter always found the help and the strength he needed when he asked for it.
Life in this world is always full of adventures and encounters, as well as accidents and experiences that will remind us time and time again that ultimately we are completely dependent upon God for our life, our hope, our joy, and our salvation.
At the very end, we will find that there is just nobody else up there, and the one and only choice we have is to let go, and let God work out His Will in our lives.
As a congregation of God’s people, we often are faced with situations and opportunities to let go and let God’s will be done within our midst.
Every time we bring a little baby to the waters of Holy Baptism;
Every time we gathered around the table of the Lord;
Every time we adopt a budget and decide as to how to spend the money God has entrusted to us;
Every time we are face with new challenges or new opportunities for ministry to other people;
Every time we gathered together at a funeral to mark the passing of one of God’s faithful servants from this world into everlasting life.
We will with all certainty be facing again and again the temptation to doubt and falter. The temptation to focus on the storms that are raging all around us, the human nature of feeling fear, instead of focusing on Jesus, who is the Lord of life, the Master of the winds and the waves.
We do know that Jesus has been calling us forth as His people, and God is inviting us to trust Him, to let go and let God take control of our lives.
And so, we go from here, seeking to be God’s faithful people, trusting and depending on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all the time, always keeping our eyes focused on Jesus, who is the one and only source of life, hope, joy and salvation.
I would like to end this sermon by sharing with you a Prayer of the Order I belong to, the Religious Order of St. Luke: Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the endings, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us the faith to go out with good courage. Not knowing where we go. But only that your hand is leading us, and your love is supporting us; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Full of fear he assessed his situation. He was about 100 feet down a shear cliff and about 900 feet from the floor of the canyon below. If he should slip again he will be falling to his death. Full of fear, he cries out, "Help me!" But there was no answer. Again and again he cried out but to no avail. Finally he yelled, "Is anybody up there?"
A deep voice replied, "Yes, I'm up here." "Who is it?" "It's the Lord." "Can you help me?" "Yes, I can help. Have faith in me." "Help me!" "Let go." Looking around the man became full of panic. "What?!?!" "Have faith in me. Let go. I will catch you."
"Uh... Is there anybody else up there?"
Often each and everyone of us goes through hard and difficult times, and I often wonder where our faith fits in when we are going through difficult times, the times of storm, the times of trials and of testing.
There are some people who will tell you that you if you have faith, life will be smooth sailing. There are some people who will tell you that if you have faith, God will take good care of you, He will cure all your ills and He will guard you from every danger in the world. That is if you have enough faith, if you stay close to God….
If we listen carefully to our Scripture reading of this morning from the Book of Matthew, we may discover that this is not necessarily the case.
Do you remember the incident in the Gospels of Jesus feeding the 5,000? Do you remember that in that particular incident the crowds had gathered to hear Jesus, and as the day went on, Jesus told the disciples to “Give the people something to eat?”
The disciples were shocked! Their immediate response to Jesus was “We do not have enough! All we have here are two little fish and five small loaves of bread. That is not enough! We cannot possibly do what you asked us to do, Jesus!” Does that reaction of the disciples sounded familiar to you?
Jesus said to his disciples, “Give the food to me.” After they given him the food, Jesus blesses it, and tells the disciples to pass it out. The disciples did as they were instructed, and everyone had their fill, and when they finished eating, there were even 12 baskets of food left over!
What do you think that the disciples were thinking throughout all this? They were after all, right there in the middle when Jesus performed that miracle. Maybe some of the members of the crowed did not realize as to what was happening at the time, but the disciples were right there. They were there all the way through the entire miracle. They took part in the miracle. What do you think that they were thinking? Did witnessing the miracle change them? Did witnessing the miracle strengthen their faith?
Well from the Scriptures the disciples seem to be slow learners.
After the feeding of the 5,000 was all over, Jesus dismisses the crowd and sends them all home. After sending the people home, he told the disciples, “Get in the boat and cross the lake. I will join you later, but right now I need to be alone for a while to pray.”
The instructions that Jesus gave to the disciples probably did not sound strange at all, for often as we can read from the Scriptures, Jesus did spend a lot of time praying. In any case, I think probably the disciples were thinking that he may be joining them by getting another boat later that night to cross the lake and so they set sail for the other side.
Unfortunately a few hours later we find the disciples caught in the middle of the lake in a wind storm. The waves were rolling, a strong wind was blowing they were getting absolutely nowhere at all. It takes them every bit of effort just to keep their boat into the wind, and they were not making any progress at all in getting across to the other side of the lake.
We must remember that the reason for their being out there in the middle of the lake in the first place was due to what Jesus told them to do. In fact, it was what Jesus ordered them, or commanded them to do – to get in the boat and cross to the other side of the lake.
They were following orders by doing exactly what Jesus had told them to do, and due to their being obedient to him, discovered that they were now caught in a big storm! A storm that was far too big for them to handle!
Do faith and obedience always mean smooth sailing in life? Apparently that is not the case. Sometimes when we follow Jesus, it may at times leads us straight into a storm!
Finally in the small hours of the morning just before first light, Jesus came walking out to them, actually walking on the water! The initial reaction of the disciples was one of fear. They were terrified! “It is a ghost!” they were saying, or more like screaming.
But then Jesus called out to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
I do not know why, but for whatever the reason it may have been, maybe Peter needed proof or something, and Peter said, “If it is really you Lord, command me to come out on the water with you.” He probably regretted it as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Mind you, if you really think of it, he was the only one who even dared to say that, the other apostles just simply refused to even take that step out of the boat!
Anyway Jesus simply told him, “Come…come on, Peter.”
I would imagine at that particular moment in time, it would be, to Peter, very much like letting go of that root that you would have been hanging onto for dear life. At this very point, I would imagine that Peter was probably ready to call out, “uh, is there anyone else out there?”
But Peter is caught, after all, he was the only one amongst the twelve who asked Jesus to let him get into the water, and since Jesus said ‘yes’, there was no backing down. So he very cautiously puts one leg over the boat, then the other leg, still holding onto the boat. He lets go of the boat with one hand, and then the other, and there we find dear old Peter, walking on the water as well!
Is that impossible? It is no more impossible than feeding 5000 people with two fishes and five loaves of bread! As Jesus plainly said and as we all know, “With God, all things are possible!”
Quite contrary to all the laws of nature, the impossible was happening – this is because the Lord of the universe was there.
But then something happens to Peter. It was almost as if he suddenly woke up and realized where he is.
Often when we watch cartoons with our children, we see a cartoon character runs off a cliff and stays suspended in mid air until he finally realizes what a stupid thing he just did, and then down drops the cartoon character.
Well, here we have Peter, walking on the water towards Jesus. Everything seems to be going on fine, but then he took his eyes off Jesus and began to look around at his surroundings. And guess what he saw? He saw big waves and a driving wind, and there he was in the middle of it, on the water, unprotected, without even a life jacket or a floating log.
He forgot all about Jesus, he forgotten all the miracles of Jesus he seen before, and got scared, as a result he began to sink.
The name “Peter” means rock, but now instead of being a solid rock of faith, he began to sink like a rock.
In desperation, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Have you ever been in a similar situation before? Have you ever been there before? I understand and believe that it is the most elementary cry of every human being whenever we are confronted with something or event or happening which is
- beyond our strength
- beyond our ability
- beyond our control
In the midst of our human helplessness and powerlessness, we will often cry out, “Lord, save me!” I know I do, whenever I am in trouble, and often those are troubles that I got myself into by not listening to God, I will cry out, “Lord, save me!”
Jesus reached out and grabs hold of Peter, pulls him up and helped him to get back into the boat.
“Why did you doubt, Peter? Where is your faith? Did you not believe me? Did you not believe me when I told you to let go?”
Suddenly the wind dies down, the waves settle. The disciples were all filled with awe and amazement. Falling to their knees they declared, “Truly you are the Son of God!”
As I was preparing for today’s sermon, I heard God speaking to me, as He did this morning through the Scriptures to all of us. What I hear is the Lord saying to Peter, to all the disciples and to each and every one of us:
Life is simply full of adventures and encounters and accidents and all kinds of experiences that will remind us time and time again, that if our eyes are open to see it, that God alone is God and each and every one of us are totally dependent upon the Lord as our only source of life and hope and strength.
Even when we are so very certain that God is the one leading us and we are acting as according to God’s will, we should never dare think that we, as we are acting in accordance to the will of God, we can therefore go it alone, and therefore relying solely on our own strength, resources and abilities.
We must not forget that the disciples were only doing what Jesus had told them to do. If they would have remembered that, they could have pressed forward without fear, even in the middle of the biggest storm they ever had in their lives.
Peter was only doing what the Lord invited him to do. He was in actually doing the impossible if we measure it by worldly standards.
It was only when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused on the storm raging all around him that he got scared, got into trouble and began to sink.
We know that without Jesus we can do nothing, but with God, all things are possible. After all, He is the creator of this world, He is the one who created you and me, and He will never tell us to do anything without supplying the means for us to do so. But we have to place our complete faith and trust in Him to do so.
I am sure that Peter never in his lifetime forgets that moment. There were of course, many other times of doubt and testing through his life, and he was not always successful.
Just like us, whenever he floundered he will always end up crying out, “Lord, save me! And the Lord will always be there to reach out to save him, just as He is always there for us. Peter always found the help and the strength he needed when he asked for it.
Life in this world is always full of adventures and encounters, as well as accidents and experiences that will remind us time and time again that ultimately we are completely dependent upon God for our life, our hope, our joy, and our salvation.
At the very end, we will find that there is just nobody else up there, and the one and only choice we have is to let go, and let God work out His Will in our lives.
As a congregation of God’s people, we often are faced with situations and opportunities to let go and let God’s will be done within our midst.
Every time we bring a little baby to the waters of Holy Baptism;
Every time we gathered around the table of the Lord;
Every time we adopt a budget and decide as to how to spend the money God has entrusted to us;
Every time we are face with new challenges or new opportunities for ministry to other people;
Every time we gathered together at a funeral to mark the passing of one of God’s faithful servants from this world into everlasting life.
We will with all certainty be facing again and again the temptation to doubt and falter. The temptation to focus on the storms that are raging all around us, the human nature of feeling fear, instead of focusing on Jesus, who is the Lord of life, the Master of the winds and the waves.
We do know that Jesus has been calling us forth as His people, and God is inviting us to trust Him, to let go and let God take control of our lives.
And so, we go from here, seeking to be God’s faithful people, trusting and depending on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all the time, always keeping our eyes focused on Jesus, who is the one and only source of life, hope, joy and salvation.
I would like to end this sermon by sharing with you a Prayer of the Order I belong to, the Religious Order of St. Luke: Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the endings, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us the faith to go out with good courage. Not knowing where we go. But only that your hand is leading us, and your love is supporting us; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Harden not your hearts
Listen to these words, words that are recited in many traditions of our faith almost every day of the year as part of the gathering prayer the gathering psalm of the faithful.
O today that you would harken to God's voice!
Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness when you forebears tried me and put me to the test though they had seen my works.
Forty years I loathed that generation, and said. They are a people whose hearts are perverse, for they give no heed to my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger that they shall not enter my rest.
For many years I puzzled about this portion of Psalm 95.
I wondered - why is it so harsh? - why does the judgement of God come down so hard upon the people of Israel at Meribah? - what significance did the event there have?
They are difficult passages, these stories of Meribah and Massah, they are passages that deal with God's judgement and that is always hard for people to deal with.
I want us to today to think about the story of Meribah and Massah. And, as we do so, I would like us all to ask ourselves the question: "are the people described in these stories a people like us?" Or, put another way, "Are we like them?"
Let us begin by looking at what happened at Meribah.
The book of Exodus tells us that after miraculously escaping from Egypt and from Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea, the people moved from place to place in the desert of Sin, just as the Lord commanded.
When the people hungered and demanded food, God provided them with food, both quails and manna.
When the people thirsted and demanded water, God provided it - first by showing Moses how to sweeten the bitter waters at Marah and then by leading Moses and the people of Israel to the 12 springs of Elim.
The people had ample experience of the power and the love of God.
One day, as Exodus 17 tells us, the people arrived at a place called Rephidim, and there was no water to be found there.
The people, as they had before, began to quarrel with Moses. They ask him to provide water for them. They question him and God, saying:
"why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst"
Moses is frustrated and he asks the people "why do you put the Lord to the test?" and then he asks God, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me"
And God - as we heard this morning - tells Moses to walk on ahead of the people, taking with him some of the elders of the people & his staff and to stand by a particular rock, and hit it with his staff.
Moses does as he is commanded, he goes to the rock with the elders, he strikes it, and water flows forth; it flows abundantly, and the people are satisfied.
Moses then names the place associated with this event Meribah - which means quarrelling and Massah - which means testing.
A simple tale, yet one that is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.
Now - ask yourselves - what is the great sin committed at Meribah? Ask as well - do we commit that sin? Are we like the people there?
As you think about these questions let me tell you another story, a story that is more contemporary, a story that has happened to many people, perhaps even to you.
A certain child lived off the income of its parents. It is, after all the natural way that children are nurtured. He received food, clothing, shelter and education. He got an allowance, and finally, when he went to university, his parents sent him money each month to pay his room and board. The child used to communicate each week with his parents, but, as his life got busier, he would forget to write or call, and he would not be home when his parents called him. Each month however his cheque arrived in the mail. Over time, as the child need's grew and he spent more money on things he wanted, he found that it was very difficult to meet his payments for books and clothing and food. Finally, desperate and afraid, he wrote his parents and asked for more money.
The parents either couldn't or wouldn't send the desired money and told him so. They soon received a terse reply from their child.
Do you love me or not?
Did the parents love the child?
That is Israel's question to Moses at Meribah and Massah, and through Moses it is their question to God.
Another question, however, can be put to these two tales.
Did the child love the parents?
Did Israel trust God to do the right thing?
Did Israel love God?
This too is a question we need to ask ourselves in relationship to our faith in Christ. Do we love Him. Do we really trust him?
The people of Israel, in their wanderings in the desert, continually sought for new proof of God's love. When things did not go their way, when what they wanted did not appear immediately, or in the fashion that they expected, they began to doubt God and accuse Him of not caring for them.
The great sin of Meribah and Massah is not the sin of asking that their needs be met by God, that is not a sin at all, it something we are encouraged to do, "give us this day our daily bread" rather the sin of Meribah and Massah s the sin of unbelief, the sin of doubt and of grumbling against God within that doubt.
Psalm 95 calls this sin "hardness of heart" which is nothing more than the refusal to believe in God's love and to trust in God's providence despite all the evidence, despite all the good things that God has so clearly done.
Think about what has God done in your life. And thinking about it, ask yourself, do I doubt God's goodness when I am in trouble? Do I complain about God and his intentions towards me when I get into trouble?
The sin of Meribah and Masseh is hardness of heart.
The miracle of Meribah on the other hand is not the fact that Moses got water to flow from a rock. It is that God, despite the attitude of the people, despite their grumbling and complaining provided them with what they needed.
But there is a catch to this tale of grace and love.
God does provides those who test him with what they need, as he provided for his people at Meribah, but God, after a while, can become frustrated with us.
God knows what people need. He knows and he provides.
But in the face of their continuous doubt, in the face of the their continuous refusal to believe in Him despite all the things that he has done for them, God finally allows the people to wander in their errors.
He allows them to wander in the desert of loneliness, fear, and doubt until they finally learn what they should know, what they need to know.
God cares for us. But we - like the people of Israel, cannot enter his rest until we understand that he cares, and embrace him as they have been embraced by him.
People who continually test God, people who continually demand proof of his love, simply will not reach their promised rest. They will not reach it, because they themselves reject it.
As the Scripture says, "They are a people who err in their hearts".
If our hearts stay closed. If we refuse to trust in and believe in God and his goodness we run the risk of missing the goal of our faith, we run the risk of wandering around in the wilderness even though the promised land is so very very close at hand.
That, my friends, is why Psalm 95 has a call in it. That is why it has an invitation, like that of a person asking his or her lover to come back and be loved.
The psalmist cries, because he knows what is at stake
"O today that you would harken to his voice, Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah.
God calls us to trust in him, He calls us to believe in his goodness, so that we might enter into his rest. So that we might not have to wander in the wilderness.
Are we a people like those at Meribah?
Do we quarrel with God and demand from him proof of his love when the going gets a little tough? Is our faith conditional on getting everything we want when we want it?
What kind of people are we?
Are we grumblers and complainers? Or are we a people who truly believe in the Son of The Living God? A people who believe that God is with us in Christ - leading us on the way to the promised land - much as he was with Israel in the cloud by day and the fire by night - leading them on the way from bondage in Egypt to the land of milk and honey that he had promised to them.
Think for a second of the old story about the day that fortune knocked on a fellow's door. The problem is that the man didn't hear it because he was over at a neighbours telling a hard-luck story.
Today harken to His voice - Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah - this is the call of God to us all.
Harden not your hearts, instead believe - for I love you - says the Lord.
And this is where we turn to Peter, the apostle who first believed that Jesus was the Presence of God, and God's salvation to his people Israel, and to the whole world.
Peter saw what Jesus did, and by the miracle of the Holy Spirit who seeks to lead us all to truth, he saw that God was in Jesus.
Peter decided, in an act of faith, that God was acting in and through Jesus, and because he saw, because he was willing to see, he received power from God.
Peter received the power to speak for God, the power to give life to others, and the power to enter into the rest that is promised to all people of faith.
This church today is testimony to Peter's faith. It exists because Peter and others like him, trusted and believed in God despite the circumstances about them, despite the hostility of the religious leaders of their time, despite the persecutions unleashed upon them by the Romans, despite the lions that were unleashed upon them in the Coliseum, and the roadside crucifixions that were practised throughout the
Empire.
We know of course that Peter questioned God, and that at times he feared more for his safety than he trusted the Lord but still, in the end - Peter turned to Christ - and trusted in God - this even when he knew that a cross awaited him because of it.
Faith is a gift of God.
That is part of the meaning of today's new testament reading, where we are told that is the Spirit of God who reveals to Peter that Jesus is the Promised One, the Messiah, the Son, of God.
But it is a gift that is given by God freely to all - to all who desire to be set free from their bondage to all who desire to enter into the promised land, into the rest of God.
But faith, as a gift, needs to be exercised if it is to avail us of those things God has prepared for us.
The story is told of a great university which once built a fine new library. It was a monumental structure with tall white columns and beautiful marble and ornate furnishings. As students and faculty took visitors around the campus they proudly pointed out "that this is our new library". Thousands of people came in fact to admire the fine building - and all spoke well of the designer and the builders.
Finally the librarian could stand it no longer and he posted a sign in front of the building which read,
"This is not the library, the library is inside".
We have to be willing to enter into our faith, into the heart of God if we are to have the rest God has promised to us.
When we do so - when we claim the faith of Peter and allow ourselves to see in Christ, the living God who cares for us and looks after us and is with us to lead us into the kingdom of God then we, like he, receive the power to bind and to loose, to forgive and to curse.
Harden not your hearts rather give praise to our living Lord and to the glorious name of God, for he is with us to lead us - in safety - to an even better place than the place, which we in faith, or in even in doubt, long for.
Praise be His name day by day. Amen
O today that you would harken to God's voice!
Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness when you forebears tried me and put me to the test though they had seen my works.
Forty years I loathed that generation, and said. They are a people whose hearts are perverse, for they give no heed to my ways. Therefore I swore in my anger that they shall not enter my rest.
For many years I puzzled about this portion of Psalm 95.
I wondered - why is it so harsh? - why does the judgement of God come down so hard upon the people of Israel at Meribah? - what significance did the event there have?
They are difficult passages, these stories of Meribah and Massah, they are passages that deal with God's judgement and that is always hard for people to deal with.
I want us to today to think about the story of Meribah and Massah. And, as we do so, I would like us all to ask ourselves the question: "are the people described in these stories a people like us?" Or, put another way, "Are we like them?"
Let us begin by looking at what happened at Meribah.
The book of Exodus tells us that after miraculously escaping from Egypt and from Pharaoh's army at the Red Sea, the people moved from place to place in the desert of Sin, just as the Lord commanded.
When the people hungered and demanded food, God provided them with food, both quails and manna.
When the people thirsted and demanded water, God provided it - first by showing Moses how to sweeten the bitter waters at Marah and then by leading Moses and the people of Israel to the 12 springs of Elim.
The people had ample experience of the power and the love of God.
One day, as Exodus 17 tells us, the people arrived at a place called Rephidim, and there was no water to be found there.
The people, as they had before, began to quarrel with Moses. They ask him to provide water for them. They question him and God, saying:
"why did you bring us out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst"
Moses is frustrated and he asks the people "why do you put the Lord to the test?" and then he asks God, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me"
And God - as we heard this morning - tells Moses to walk on ahead of the people, taking with him some of the elders of the people & his staff and to stand by a particular rock, and hit it with his staff.
Moses does as he is commanded, he goes to the rock with the elders, he strikes it, and water flows forth; it flows abundantly, and the people are satisfied.
Moses then names the place associated with this event Meribah - which means quarrelling and Massah - which means testing.
A simple tale, yet one that is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.
Now - ask yourselves - what is the great sin committed at Meribah? Ask as well - do we commit that sin? Are we like the people there?
As you think about these questions let me tell you another story, a story that is more contemporary, a story that has happened to many people, perhaps even to you.
A certain child lived off the income of its parents. It is, after all the natural way that children are nurtured. He received food, clothing, shelter and education. He got an allowance, and finally, when he went to university, his parents sent him money each month to pay his room and board. The child used to communicate each week with his parents, but, as his life got busier, he would forget to write or call, and he would not be home when his parents called him. Each month however his cheque arrived in the mail. Over time, as the child need's grew and he spent more money on things he wanted, he found that it was very difficult to meet his payments for books and clothing and food. Finally, desperate and afraid, he wrote his parents and asked for more money.
The parents either couldn't or wouldn't send the desired money and told him so. They soon received a terse reply from their child.
Do you love me or not?
Did the parents love the child?
That is Israel's question to Moses at Meribah and Massah, and through Moses it is their question to God.
Another question, however, can be put to these two tales.
Did the child love the parents?
Did Israel trust God to do the right thing?
Did Israel love God?
This too is a question we need to ask ourselves in relationship to our faith in Christ. Do we love Him. Do we really trust him?
The people of Israel, in their wanderings in the desert, continually sought for new proof of God's love. When things did not go their way, when what they wanted did not appear immediately, or in the fashion that they expected, they began to doubt God and accuse Him of not caring for them.
The great sin of Meribah and Massah is not the sin of asking that their needs be met by God, that is not a sin at all, it something we are encouraged to do, "give us this day our daily bread" rather the sin of Meribah and Massah s the sin of unbelief, the sin of doubt and of grumbling against God within that doubt.
Psalm 95 calls this sin "hardness of heart" which is nothing more than the refusal to believe in God's love and to trust in God's providence despite all the evidence, despite all the good things that God has so clearly done.
Think about what has God done in your life. And thinking about it, ask yourself, do I doubt God's goodness when I am in trouble? Do I complain about God and his intentions towards me when I get into trouble?
The sin of Meribah and Masseh is hardness of heart.
The miracle of Meribah on the other hand is not the fact that Moses got water to flow from a rock. It is that God, despite the attitude of the people, despite their grumbling and complaining provided them with what they needed.
But there is a catch to this tale of grace and love.
God does provides those who test him with what they need, as he provided for his people at Meribah, but God, after a while, can become frustrated with us.
God knows what people need. He knows and he provides.
But in the face of their continuous doubt, in the face of the their continuous refusal to believe in Him despite all the things that he has done for them, God finally allows the people to wander in their errors.
He allows them to wander in the desert of loneliness, fear, and doubt until they finally learn what they should know, what they need to know.
God cares for us. But we - like the people of Israel, cannot enter his rest until we understand that he cares, and embrace him as they have been embraced by him.
People who continually test God, people who continually demand proof of his love, simply will not reach their promised rest. They will not reach it, because they themselves reject it.
As the Scripture says, "They are a people who err in their hearts".
If our hearts stay closed. If we refuse to trust in and believe in God and his goodness we run the risk of missing the goal of our faith, we run the risk of wandering around in the wilderness even though the promised land is so very very close at hand.
That, my friends, is why Psalm 95 has a call in it. That is why it has an invitation, like that of a person asking his or her lover to come back and be loved.
The psalmist cries, because he knows what is at stake
"O today that you would harken to his voice, Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah.
God calls us to trust in him, He calls us to believe in his goodness, so that we might enter into his rest. So that we might not have to wander in the wilderness.
Are we a people like those at Meribah?
Do we quarrel with God and demand from him proof of his love when the going gets a little tough? Is our faith conditional on getting everything we want when we want it?
What kind of people are we?
Are we grumblers and complainers? Or are we a people who truly believe in the Son of The Living God? A people who believe that God is with us in Christ - leading us on the way to the promised land - much as he was with Israel in the cloud by day and the fire by night - leading them on the way from bondage in Egypt to the land of milk and honey that he had promised to them.
Think for a second of the old story about the day that fortune knocked on a fellow's door. The problem is that the man didn't hear it because he was over at a neighbours telling a hard-luck story.
Today harken to His voice - Harden not your hearts as at Meribah and Massah - this is the call of God to us all.
Harden not your hearts, instead believe - for I love you - says the Lord.
And this is where we turn to Peter, the apostle who first believed that Jesus was the Presence of God, and God's salvation to his people Israel, and to the whole world.
Peter saw what Jesus did, and by the miracle of the Holy Spirit who seeks to lead us all to truth, he saw that God was in Jesus.
Peter decided, in an act of faith, that God was acting in and through Jesus, and because he saw, because he was willing to see, he received power from God.
Peter received the power to speak for God, the power to give life to others, and the power to enter into the rest that is promised to all people of faith.
This church today is testimony to Peter's faith. It exists because Peter and others like him, trusted and believed in God despite the circumstances about them, despite the hostility of the religious leaders of their time, despite the persecutions unleashed upon them by the Romans, despite the lions that were unleashed upon them in the Coliseum, and the roadside crucifixions that were practised throughout the
Empire.
We know of course that Peter questioned God, and that at times he feared more for his safety than he trusted the Lord but still, in the end - Peter turned to Christ - and trusted in God - this even when he knew that a cross awaited him because of it.
Faith is a gift of God.
That is part of the meaning of today's new testament reading, where we are told that is the Spirit of God who reveals to Peter that Jesus is the Promised One, the Messiah, the Son, of God.
But it is a gift that is given by God freely to all - to all who desire to be set free from their bondage to all who desire to enter into the promised land, into the rest of God.
But faith, as a gift, needs to be exercised if it is to avail us of those things God has prepared for us.
The story is told of a great university which once built a fine new library. It was a monumental structure with tall white columns and beautiful marble and ornate furnishings. As students and faculty took visitors around the campus they proudly pointed out "that this is our new library". Thousands of people came in fact to admire the fine building - and all spoke well of the designer and the builders.
Finally the librarian could stand it no longer and he posted a sign in front of the building which read,
"This is not the library, the library is inside".
We have to be willing to enter into our faith, into the heart of God if we are to have the rest God has promised to us.
When we do so - when we claim the faith of Peter and allow ourselves to see in Christ, the living God who cares for us and looks after us and is with us to lead us into the kingdom of God then we, like he, receive the power to bind and to loose, to forgive and to curse.
Harden not your hearts rather give praise to our living Lord and to the glorious name of God, for he is with us to lead us - in safety - to an even better place than the place, which we in faith, or in even in doubt, long for.
Praise be His name day by day. Amen
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Hebrews 4:12-16; Psalm 22:1-18; Mark 10:17-31
The gospel story today is one of the most familiar stories of the New Testament and one of the most problematic - both for what it says about those who are wealthy - and for what it says about who in fact can inherit eternal life, who in fact can enter the Kingdom of God.
A man, who is both young and a ruler among his people (according to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew) approaches Jesus with a question. "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he asks.
It is a question which reveals much and Jesus knows it, which is why he responds the way he does.
This is a man who doesn't have to worry about the life he already has. His mortgage is paid off. His creditors have been looked after. His stock portfolio is brimming over with only blue chip merchandise. He is truly blessed in the ways that the world, and indeed many of the church, count blessings. And he wants even more: he wants the blessings of heaven – he wants to enter the Kingdom of God and there dwell with Abraham and all who gone before him.
Let us not have any doubts about the sincerity of this man. His integrity is beyond question. When Jesus asks him if he has kept the commandments - and in particular those that relate to how we treat one another. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honour your father and mother, he responds that he has kept them all faithfully from the days of his childhood and Jesus, we are told, looked at him and loved him.
And then he tells the man that he lacks one thing, "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor", Jesus says, "and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
We never really hear how things turn out for the rich young ruler. We do know that he goes away from Jesus very sad, because he had great wealth. What we do not know is whether or not he later follows the command that Jesus gave him. Whether he does or doesn't is never mentioned and at one level it is not important for us to know. But Jesus does say something after the young man goes away that astonishes and perplexes his disciples. He says to them
"How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God." and when the disciples are amazed by these words, he goes on to say "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."
I wish I could tell you just how perplexing it was for the disciples to hear these words. They, like so many of us, were raised to believe that earthly wealth - especially that wealth acquired by those who adhered to the customs, traditions, and laws of Moses - was a sign of God's blessing.
And in a very real sense it is.
Consider the story of Job - righteous before God and blessed with everything that a person could want till tested by Satan. And how those blessings were restored many times over when he passes his time of testing.
Consider the law itself which says, for example, in Deuteronomy, Chapter 7: 12-14:
If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land--your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young.
The disciples were even more amazed, our story today continues, when they heard these words of Jesus concerning how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God, and they said to each other "Who then can be saved?"
Indeed, who can be saved?
I received a letter not so long ago that reminded me of so many conversations and letters I have had or received over the past years as a part of the church of Christ Jesus.
It said, in part.
I have been attempting to learn more about God's word to calm my fears and reassure myself that I will indeed be welcomed into God's kingdom when the time comes. Well, that is not happening....instead I am feeling that there is no chance of that happening. I feel further from God every time I try to understand. I know that I am a perfectionist and I know all of my faults, shortcomings and downfalls and what a letdown I have been to God who created me in His perfect image.
I have really been trying to put great whole hearted effort into listening to God and trying to do the things that He wants me to. I feel that I just keep falling short of the mark, then haunt myself hour after hour as I lay awake at night. Why am I getting farther from God instead of closer. Then I begin to analyse and become more critical.
"If I had more faith..... my feet would be healed"
"If I had more faith..... I could forgive my sister"
"If I had more faith..... I would not think mean, critical or harsh thoughts of others"
"If I had more faith..... I would not speak gossip, criticize or scold"
"If I had more faith..... I would have the same type of wisdom and insight that can be seen in all the other past and present members of my prayer group."
"If I had more faith..... I would not have to work so hard to be a Christian"
I really do try hard, but the more scriptures that I read and try to understand the more convinced I am that I am doomed.....
"Who then can be saved" the disciples ask Jesus.
What a question that is. One that echoes in my heart not only as I consider the rich young ruler or as I consider the plea of the person who wrote the letter I just read, but which echoes in my heart as I consider how much I love God and yet how far I am from the perfection that God demands of me.
One thing you lack....
I think every one of us here today, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, realizes that we lack one thing - perhaps even more than one thing.
As the reading from Hebrew's today says, and as the letter I read from my friend indicated
"the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heat. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."
That Word most surely judges us - and finds in us - not just one thing that is lacking - but in many cases, many things lacking.
"The more scriptures that I read and try to understand the more convinced I am that I am doomed."
Could have the rich young man given everything away and followed Jesus and thereby entered the Kingdom of God. Was his problem simply that he loved money more than he loved God.
Perhaps.
The love of money is most certainly an evil and Jesus' words about the danger of being rich should give us all pause. When the truth is told it is all too likely true that for us, as it seems it may have been for the rich young ruler, that when it comes to giving it away most people stop at nothing, or next to nothing.
You know as well as I that there are many affluent people - and most of us are that - who will quickly profess their indifference to money – or disdain for it - as if to protect themselves from the charge that they are over attached to it - but who by their habits of spending - even on the Sabbath Day - show that they value a big lunch or a shopping trip far more than they value contributing to the work of God in their church and their community.
It is easy to fool ourselves when it comes to which we love more - God or Mammon. But that can change - for us - as much it could have changed for the rich young ruler.
But all in all, money is but a symbol of what stands in the way of our of entering the Kingdom of God and it is entirely possible to give up everything for God - and still not have the heart that we need to enter into his presence.
The Apostle Paul, who was one who had a religious pedigree and a zealousness for God that was among the best, writes in the third Chapter of his letter to the Philippians:
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
And then, in his first letter to the Corinthians he reminds us and undoubtedly himself:
If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
"Who then can be saved", the disciples ask.
It is a profound question. And Jesus answers it by saying, "With man this is impossible, but with God; all things are possible with God."
The scriptures today speak to us of those things that are impossible to us and of how the word of God reveals to us, sometimes in the starkest fashion, just who we are and how far we are from entering the Kingdom of God. A message, in short, that would be thoroughly depressing - if it were not for the fact that the core message in today's reading is this answer of Christ - that all things are possible with God.
My friends, as it says in the Letter to The Hebrews - in Christ we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with us and help us. He knows all our flaws and imperfections and yet intercedes on our behalf. Because of his goodness we can approach the throne of grace with confidence - and we called to do so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Inheriting eternal life is not something that we can earn - nor is entering the Kingdom of God something we can work for. There is nothing we can give to obtain it. It is free gift. All we have to do is hold out our hands and accept the gift. It's both the easiest and the hardest thing we can ever do.
The easiest - because the gift is free. The hardest - because our hands are so often filled with other things. I tell you today - keep holding out your hands - trust in God to show you the love he has promised even as he reminds you over and over again to let go of all those other things you worry about or value.
Praise be to God. Amen
A man, who is both young and a ruler among his people (according to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew) approaches Jesus with a question. "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he asks.
It is a question which reveals much and Jesus knows it, which is why he responds the way he does.
This is a man who doesn't have to worry about the life he already has. His mortgage is paid off. His creditors have been looked after. His stock portfolio is brimming over with only blue chip merchandise. He is truly blessed in the ways that the world, and indeed many of the church, count blessings. And he wants even more: he wants the blessings of heaven – he wants to enter the Kingdom of God and there dwell with Abraham and all who gone before him.
Let us not have any doubts about the sincerity of this man. His integrity is beyond question. When Jesus asks him if he has kept the commandments - and in particular those that relate to how we treat one another. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honour your father and mother, he responds that he has kept them all faithfully from the days of his childhood and Jesus, we are told, looked at him and loved him.
And then he tells the man that he lacks one thing, "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor", Jesus says, "and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
We never really hear how things turn out for the rich young ruler. We do know that he goes away from Jesus very sad, because he had great wealth. What we do not know is whether or not he later follows the command that Jesus gave him. Whether he does or doesn't is never mentioned and at one level it is not important for us to know. But Jesus does say something after the young man goes away that astonishes and perplexes his disciples. He says to them
"How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God." and when the disciples are amazed by these words, he goes on to say "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."
I wish I could tell you just how perplexing it was for the disciples to hear these words. They, like so many of us, were raised to believe that earthly wealth - especially that wealth acquired by those who adhered to the customs, traditions, and laws of Moses - was a sign of God's blessing.
And in a very real sense it is.
Consider the story of Job - righteous before God and blessed with everything that a person could want till tested by Satan. And how those blessings were restored many times over when he passes his time of testing.
Consider the law itself which says, for example, in Deuteronomy, Chapter 7: 12-14:
If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land--your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young.
The disciples were even more amazed, our story today continues, when they heard these words of Jesus concerning how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God, and they said to each other "Who then can be saved?"
Indeed, who can be saved?
I received a letter not so long ago that reminded me of so many conversations and letters I have had or received over the past years as a part of the church of Christ Jesus.
It said, in part.
I have been attempting to learn more about God's word to calm my fears and reassure myself that I will indeed be welcomed into God's kingdom when the time comes. Well, that is not happening....instead I am feeling that there is no chance of that happening. I feel further from God every time I try to understand. I know that I am a perfectionist and I know all of my faults, shortcomings and downfalls and what a letdown I have been to God who created me in His perfect image.
I have really been trying to put great whole hearted effort into listening to God and trying to do the things that He wants me to. I feel that I just keep falling short of the mark, then haunt myself hour after hour as I lay awake at night. Why am I getting farther from God instead of closer. Then I begin to analyse and become more critical.
"If I had more faith..... my feet would be healed"
"If I had more faith..... I could forgive my sister"
"If I had more faith..... I would not think mean, critical or harsh thoughts of others"
"If I had more faith..... I would not speak gossip, criticize or scold"
"If I had more faith..... I would have the same type of wisdom and insight that can be seen in all the other past and present members of my prayer group."
"If I had more faith..... I would not have to work so hard to be a Christian"
I really do try hard, but the more scriptures that I read and try to understand the more convinced I am that I am doomed.....
"Who then can be saved" the disciples ask Jesus.
What a question that is. One that echoes in my heart not only as I consider the rich young ruler or as I consider the plea of the person who wrote the letter I just read, but which echoes in my heart as I consider how much I love God and yet how far I am from the perfection that God demands of me.
One thing you lack....
I think every one of us here today, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, realizes that we lack one thing - perhaps even more than one thing.
As the reading from Hebrew's today says, and as the letter I read from my friend indicated
"the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heat. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."
That Word most surely judges us - and finds in us - not just one thing that is lacking - but in many cases, many things lacking.
"The more scriptures that I read and try to understand the more convinced I am that I am doomed."
Could have the rich young man given everything away and followed Jesus and thereby entered the Kingdom of God. Was his problem simply that he loved money more than he loved God.
Perhaps.
The love of money is most certainly an evil and Jesus' words about the danger of being rich should give us all pause. When the truth is told it is all too likely true that for us, as it seems it may have been for the rich young ruler, that when it comes to giving it away most people stop at nothing, or next to nothing.
You know as well as I that there are many affluent people - and most of us are that - who will quickly profess their indifference to money – or disdain for it - as if to protect themselves from the charge that they are over attached to it - but who by their habits of spending - even on the Sabbath Day - show that they value a big lunch or a shopping trip far more than they value contributing to the work of God in their church and their community.
It is easy to fool ourselves when it comes to which we love more - God or Mammon. But that can change - for us - as much it could have changed for the rich young ruler.
But all in all, money is but a symbol of what stands in the way of our of entering the Kingdom of God and it is entirely possible to give up everything for God - and still not have the heart that we need to enter into his presence.
The Apostle Paul, who was one who had a religious pedigree and a zealousness for God that was among the best, writes in the third Chapter of his letter to the Philippians:
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
And then, in his first letter to the Corinthians he reminds us and undoubtedly himself:
If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
"Who then can be saved", the disciples ask.
It is a profound question. And Jesus answers it by saying, "With man this is impossible, but with God; all things are possible with God."
The scriptures today speak to us of those things that are impossible to us and of how the word of God reveals to us, sometimes in the starkest fashion, just who we are and how far we are from entering the Kingdom of God. A message, in short, that would be thoroughly depressing - if it were not for the fact that the core message in today's reading is this answer of Christ - that all things are possible with God.
My friends, as it says in the Letter to The Hebrews - in Christ we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with us and help us. He knows all our flaws and imperfections and yet intercedes on our behalf. Because of his goodness we can approach the throne of grace with confidence - and we called to do so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Inheriting eternal life is not something that we can earn - nor is entering the Kingdom of God something we can work for. There is nothing we can give to obtain it. It is free gift. All we have to do is hold out our hands and accept the gift. It's both the easiest and the hardest thing we can ever do.
The easiest - because the gift is free. The hardest - because our hands are so often filled with other things. I tell you today - keep holding out your hands - trust in God to show you the love he has promised even as he reminds you over and over again to let go of all those other things you worry about or value.
Praise be to God. Amen
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Hebrews 10:11-25; Psalm 16; Mark 13:1-8
The gospel reading this morning is the beginning of the chapter of Mark known as the Mini-Apocalypse.
The Apocalypse is that series of events which signals the end of time as we know it, the end of time as we know it- and the end of this world as we know it.
During that time - the times of the end - it is written that the faithful will suffer terrible persecutions as evil strives to destroy all that is good; and at the end of that time evil itself will be totally destroyed.
The Apocalypse is a time of judgement. A time that we all, in one way or another, will enter into or experience, whether we are in heaven or on earth, whether we are interceding for the faithful before the throne of God, or whether we are the ones being interceded for.
This week there was quite a discussion of this morning's extract from the Apocalypse of Mark. A discussion that centred for the most part on the horror of those days described by Jesus, and whether or not God would actually unleash the kind of indiscriminate violence. The kind of judgement that the thirteenth chapter of Mark and The Revelation to John describes.
Wars, earthquakes, persecutions, the end of things like the Temple in Jerusalem, deadly pollution and stars falling from the sky, it all sounds a little much to a lot of people - and they either don't believe it will happen - or they don't believe God would operate that way.
Will it happen?
Look around the world my friends - it has been happening since the day the curtain in the temple was torn in two - it has been happening since the day the stone was rolled away to reveal the empty tomb.
We are living in the end times:
- in the time when the wheat is separated from the chaff
- in the time when God's people are persecuted and harassed and killed,
- in the time when all manner of evils are loose upon the face of earth,
evils which has been intensifying from century to century as they struggle
to quench the light of God.
The question is not - is the time of the end described in the scriptures real? - no sane person can doubt that if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear - but whether or not God judges the peoples and sifts the nations in this fashion? Whether or not it is God who permits the innocent to suffer as they wait the final day? And whether or not God will, in the end, erase evil from the world as totally as I erased the incorrect sums from the equations I wrote during the children's time?
One of the great mysteries of God is the mystery of God's judgement.
How is it that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? How is that God's judgement is balanced with God's grace? And how is that God seems to use violence to bring to an end the ways of violence?
I have no doubt my friends that the history of our planet over the last two thousand years is a history of the approaching end of all things and I have no doubt about who the author of the violence and the horrors is - nor should you!
Evil my friends calls down it's own judgement upon itself. Those who hate, end up swallowing up themselves in hatred. Those who are greedy - consume their very selves as they seek for ever more than they have. Those who are violent - perish by the very violence they unleash.
Like a giant sun whose light has gone out and which is collapsing into nothingness, so the evil about us will come to an end - for nothing can come of nothing unless God wills it otherwise.
What we see, how thousands of Christians are being killed each year in places like India, Pakistan, Africa and the Far East, all for no other reason than the fact they bear the name of Christ. - how horrors like those of Nazi Germany and Somalia and Iraq and Yugoslavia are loosed upon the world - upon people of every race, creed and colour - more and more frequently - how famines sweep the earth while food is discarded and fertile earth is buried under parking lots and shopping malls, cannot be blamed upon God.
But it can be seen to be used by God to accomplish his purpose. And it can be seen that out of what is happening around us new life will come.
Jesus says in today's reading from the Gospel of Mark, after saying how the temple - the largest and most important edifice of the last age - will be destroyed, and how there will be wars and rumours of wars, and how nations will rise against nations, and there will be famines and earthquakes. That such things must happen, but the end is still to come, that such things are the beginning of birth pains.
What we see about us is the ending of the old world and the coming of a new one.
And there is not only mercy in the coming of the new world. But there is a mercy in the length of time that it takes for the old world to cease, for the old world to consume itself to make way for the new.
There is a mystery to God's judgement and part of that mystery is this - that God permits evil to practice its arts upon the good - if it could not then none of us could be called free - and that while evil is practising its arts - an art that will surely lead to it's destruction. - God calls each and every one of us to change sides and to become citizens of that world that is yet to come - that world that he is bringing to birth in our midst.
What I am saying, and what the scriptures teach is that God offers mercy to who all who desire it, and that the time of the ending, - an ending that is inherent in those forces which seek to end all that is good is extended so that all might choose aright - so that all who desire it may be part of the new life that is being brought to birth.
God's judgement is a mystery - especially as it relates to how the innocent suffer with the guilty during the time of the ending - during this time we live in.
And how God balances justice and mercy in his judgements - so that evil does vanish away and what is good does triumph and brings forth new and everlasting life is not something that anyone can speak of lightly - as if all the answers are know, all we can say - as a people of faith - is that God will judge rightly - and God will do good, not harm.
A story - a parable if you will, about suffering and about the end times in which we live - that someone shared on the Internet as people discussed today's gospel reading.
At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly - not with cringing shame, but with belligerence.
"Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?" snapped a young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "I've endured terror ...beatings...torture....death!"
In another camp a black American boy lowered his collar, "What about this?'" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn, "Lynched for no crime but being black!"
In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. "Why should I suffer?" she murmured. "It wasn't my fault." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups! Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world.
"How lucky God was to live in heaven", they said, "where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred! What does God know of all that humankind had been forced to endure in this world? God leads a pretty sheltered life", they said.
So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a black American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child..
In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured.
Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth - as a man! Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence loud murmurs of approval went up from the throne of people assembled. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence there was a long silence..... No one moved.... For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.
My brothers and sisters, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us today in a way that the gospel passage does not, that God has come among us - not to serve his sentence - for it is not he who has created the suffering in this world - but to serve ours - and to open to us the gates of heaven.
The mystery of God's judgement is found in the fact that he judges with great love - and while all that we are familiar with will be shaken to its core - and while there will be a time when the wheat will be separate from the chaff, a time when that which has gone around will come around. The wheat will be saved out, the good will transformed from one degree to another, and what will come around and pour out ever more blessings than this world can afford us - is a new world.
Christ Jesus lives to intercede for us - and calls us to live with him - both now as our old self passes away, and forever as we are reborn with our world.
As the writing of the letter to Hebrew's concludes in today's reading:
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
That day is approaching - ever and ever closer. Praise be to God for it. Amen
The Apocalypse is that series of events which signals the end of time as we know it, the end of time as we know it- and the end of this world as we know it.
During that time - the times of the end - it is written that the faithful will suffer terrible persecutions as evil strives to destroy all that is good; and at the end of that time evil itself will be totally destroyed.
The Apocalypse is a time of judgement. A time that we all, in one way or another, will enter into or experience, whether we are in heaven or on earth, whether we are interceding for the faithful before the throne of God, or whether we are the ones being interceded for.
This week there was quite a discussion of this morning's extract from the Apocalypse of Mark. A discussion that centred for the most part on the horror of those days described by Jesus, and whether or not God would actually unleash the kind of indiscriminate violence. The kind of judgement that the thirteenth chapter of Mark and The Revelation to John describes.
Wars, earthquakes, persecutions, the end of things like the Temple in Jerusalem, deadly pollution and stars falling from the sky, it all sounds a little much to a lot of people - and they either don't believe it will happen - or they don't believe God would operate that way.
Will it happen?
Look around the world my friends - it has been happening since the day the curtain in the temple was torn in two - it has been happening since the day the stone was rolled away to reveal the empty tomb.
We are living in the end times:
- in the time when the wheat is separated from the chaff
- in the time when God's people are persecuted and harassed and killed,
- in the time when all manner of evils are loose upon the face of earth,
evils which has been intensifying from century to century as they struggle
to quench the light of God.
The question is not - is the time of the end described in the scriptures real? - no sane person can doubt that if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear - but whether or not God judges the peoples and sifts the nations in this fashion? Whether or not it is God who permits the innocent to suffer as they wait the final day? And whether or not God will, in the end, erase evil from the world as totally as I erased the incorrect sums from the equations I wrote during the children's time?
One of the great mysteries of God is the mystery of God's judgement.
How is it that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? How is that God's judgement is balanced with God's grace? And how is that God seems to use violence to bring to an end the ways of violence?
I have no doubt my friends that the history of our planet over the last two thousand years is a history of the approaching end of all things and I have no doubt about who the author of the violence and the horrors is - nor should you!
Evil my friends calls down it's own judgement upon itself. Those who hate, end up swallowing up themselves in hatred. Those who are greedy - consume their very selves as they seek for ever more than they have. Those who are violent - perish by the very violence they unleash.
Like a giant sun whose light has gone out and which is collapsing into nothingness, so the evil about us will come to an end - for nothing can come of nothing unless God wills it otherwise.
What we see, how thousands of Christians are being killed each year in places like India, Pakistan, Africa and the Far East, all for no other reason than the fact they bear the name of Christ. - how horrors like those of Nazi Germany and Somalia and Iraq and Yugoslavia are loosed upon the world - upon people of every race, creed and colour - more and more frequently - how famines sweep the earth while food is discarded and fertile earth is buried under parking lots and shopping malls, cannot be blamed upon God.
But it can be seen to be used by God to accomplish his purpose. And it can be seen that out of what is happening around us new life will come.
Jesus says in today's reading from the Gospel of Mark, after saying how the temple - the largest and most important edifice of the last age - will be destroyed, and how there will be wars and rumours of wars, and how nations will rise against nations, and there will be famines and earthquakes. That such things must happen, but the end is still to come, that such things are the beginning of birth pains.
What we see about us is the ending of the old world and the coming of a new one.
And there is not only mercy in the coming of the new world. But there is a mercy in the length of time that it takes for the old world to cease, for the old world to consume itself to make way for the new.
There is a mystery to God's judgement and part of that mystery is this - that God permits evil to practice its arts upon the good - if it could not then none of us could be called free - and that while evil is practising its arts - an art that will surely lead to it's destruction. - God calls each and every one of us to change sides and to become citizens of that world that is yet to come - that world that he is bringing to birth in our midst.
What I am saying, and what the scriptures teach is that God offers mercy to who all who desire it, and that the time of the ending, - an ending that is inherent in those forces which seek to end all that is good is extended so that all might choose aright - so that all who desire it may be part of the new life that is being brought to birth.
God's judgement is a mystery - especially as it relates to how the innocent suffer with the guilty during the time of the ending - during this time we live in.
And how God balances justice and mercy in his judgements - so that evil does vanish away and what is good does triumph and brings forth new and everlasting life is not something that anyone can speak of lightly - as if all the answers are know, all we can say - as a people of faith - is that God will judge rightly - and God will do good, not harm.
A story - a parable if you will, about suffering and about the end times in which we live - that someone shared on the Internet as people discussed today's gospel reading.
At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly - not with cringing shame, but with belligerence.
"Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?" snapped a young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "I've endured terror ...beatings...torture....death!"
In another camp a black American boy lowered his collar, "What about this?'" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn, "Lynched for no crime but being black!"
In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. "Why should I suffer?" she murmured. "It wasn't my fault." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups! Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world.
"How lucky God was to live in heaven", they said, "where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred! What does God know of all that humankind had been forced to endure in this world? God leads a pretty sheltered life", they said.
So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a black American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child..
In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured.
Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth - as a man! Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence loud murmurs of approval went up from the throne of people assembled. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence there was a long silence..... No one moved.... For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.
My brothers and sisters, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us today in a way that the gospel passage does not, that God has come among us - not to serve his sentence - for it is not he who has created the suffering in this world - but to serve ours - and to open to us the gates of heaven.
The mystery of God's judgement is found in the fact that he judges with great love - and while all that we are familiar with will be shaken to its core - and while there will be a time when the wheat will be separate from the chaff, a time when that which has gone around will come around. The wheat will be saved out, the good will transformed from one degree to another, and what will come around and pour out ever more blessings than this world can afford us - is a new world.
Christ Jesus lives to intercede for us - and calls us to live with him - both now as our old self passes away, and forever as we are reborn with our world.
As the writing of the letter to Hebrew's concludes in today's reading:
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
That day is approaching - ever and ever closer. Praise be to God for it. Amen
Job 42:1-6,10-17; Psalm 34; Mark 10:46-52
I would imagine that at one time Bartimeaus, the blind beggar who sat by the roadside, have eyes that could see. His life would have been full of light, and one can also assume that it was full of hope at the time.
However, something unfortunate must have happened to him – and he ended up being unable to see – and as he has been deprived of the usage of his eyesight – all his options in life collapsed, and he ended up as a beggar, sitting and begging by the roadside, hoping upon hope that somebody passing by would take pity on him, always hoping that somebody would fill up his bowl with food, or that some one will give him a few coins in order for him to purchase the little things in life that everybody needs.
In those ancient days of the first century there was very little sympathy one could expect for the misfortune, for those who are blind and those who are handicapped in any manner. I can say with absolute certainty that Bartimaeus was living a very hard life. In some circles in Israel in those days, there were people who assumed that misfortunes was cause by one’s own fault, and that blindness or handicapped of any nature is always a punishment from God, either for something that they have themselves done or for something that their parents may have done.
In some circles the fact that a person was blind simply meant that the person was a drain on precious resources, in other words, a social liability – best to be ignored – best to be left by the roadside begging. How little things have changed in that respect throughout the centuries!
As Bartimaeus was blind and could not see, he was, in the eyes of many people, not even a human being at all. He became to them only an object, an object to be pitied, or cursed, or to even to be completely ignored.
How many of us present here today, I wonder feel as Bartimeaus must have felted?
How many of us present here today feels cut off from the land of the living – being prevented by one reason or another from taking part fully in the life that goes on all around us. How many of us are unable to exercise the options that everybody else seems to be in possession of, feeling hurt and alone, and wondering, wondering if perhaps in some way we do deserve what we are going through right now.
How many of us feel trapped in the life that we are having?
- in the job that we have?
- In the relationships we have?
How many of us have the feeling that we are not able to break free, to change things, or unable to do anything at all, except dream of how it used to be, or dream of how things should have been?
How many of us, being in this kind of position, do anything about it? How many of us reaches out to other people or to God for help?
How many of us reach out to our friends and neighbours and confide to them of our own feelings, our own needs? How many of us here actually ask our family members for help when help is needed? How many of us even think of reaching out to God and ask Him for His help?
Sometimes we suffer really hard; sometimes we suffer for a very long time, not because the situation we found ourselves in cannot be overcome, but only because we are afraid to ask for help. Often we do not ask for help as we do not want to become a burden to others, or perhaps we do not want to seem weak to other people, or even admit our own weaknesses to our own selves.
I have heard of a woman who will not pray to God for herself, just because she thinks he has much more important things to do than to listen to her.
I have heard of a man who will not tell his own wife as to how much he is hurting inside himself, just because he does not think that she will be interested in his plight, as she already has so many of her own problems to bear.
I know of several people in Hong Kong who will not ask other people for help with their own substance abuse problems, just because they cannot admit to themselves that their problems have become much bigger than they themselves are.
I also know of children who are having a very difficult time dealing with life. They will not ask their parents or their teachers for help, just because they are afraid that they by asking for help, they will either get into trouble, or, even worse, be ignored, if they do ask for help from the adults.
There are times in our lives when we all needed help. There are times in our lifetime when if we are to survive at all, if we are to continue living, if we are go keep on growing, we must turn to other people and to God and ask Him for help in getting what we need.
Doctor Fred Collier, a retired medical doctor tells this story about himself when he was a youth.
He was a medical student in the Army Specialized Training Corps in 1945 when the Second World War came to a close. He was from a poor family that did not have the kind of money that he needed in order to complete medical school on his own. So when he was discharged out of the army, he had absolutely no idea as to how he will ever finish his schooling, if indeed he will ever finish it at all.
One day he happened to pick up a copy of a magazine while he was sitting inside a barber’s shop. One of the articles in the magazine talked about the kindness and compassion of Eleanor Roosevelt, whose husband, the late President Franklin Roosevelt had died only a few months ago.
That particular article in that magazine planted a seed into Fred’s mind. He went off to the local library and with the help of the librarian found Mrs. Roosevelt’s home address. He got home, sat down and wrote a letter to her, telling her about his problems. He wrote it and rewrote the letter until he had the letter written exactly the way that he wanted it.
When he put the letter in an envelope and deposits it into the mailbox, even his young wife wondered whether the effort was worth the time and the postage stamp that Fred spent on the letter.
Much to Fred’s surprise, Mrs. Roosevelt sent him a letter agreeing to meet him. At the end of the meeting , she gave him her promise to help him. In the months and years of his study, Fred got checks from Mrs. Roosevelt. Fred in turn, kept her informed of his progress and sent her copies of all of his term papers. Her secretary later on said that Mrs. Roosevelt always read Fred’s letters and reports with great interest.
Later on, Mrs. Roosevelt even visited the couple in their sparsely furnished flat. The landlord of the flat nearly had a heart attack when he recognized their famous visitor.
When Fred finally finishes Medical School from Yale University, he told Mrs. Roosevelt that he did not know as to how he would ever be able to repay her. She told him that repayment was not necessary, nor does she want any repayment. Then she told him that she will be adequately repaid, if when one day, he became financially secured, he will help out someone who is truly deserving of help, as he was.
Doctor Fred Collier reached out for help and he received it. So did the blind Bartimaeus. They both reached out for help from someone whom they knew could help them in their respective situations. They reached out to someone they hoped and prayed would help.
It is a very difficult thing to do, this asking for help. A very difficult thing, a very humbling thing, but there are times in our lives when each and every one of us will need help from someone. There are times when we must turn to other people and to God for help or else we will perish.
The good news is that there is absolutely no situation in life that is so bad that someone cannot help us with it, that someone cannot help us to overcome such a situation. Or at least to bear it with a hope and strength that will transforms it, and us as a result completely.
And even if it is a situation where we cannot go to someone else for that help that we so desperately needed, there is no situation where we cannot go to God for help and still find the help that we needed so badly.
God does not always answer our prayers in the way or manner that we had in mind, but God will always answer our prayers in a way that is appropriate to the situation. God will always give to us what we need, and God will always give us the strength to bear what we must bear and to bear it so well that our world will changes because of it.
This is the lesson of the Garden of Gethsemane and of every dark night of the soul. It is also the lesson of the cross and of the tomb and of all the sufferings that God may ask us to bear.
It is what lies behind all transformation that matters. What lies behind Easter, what lies behind new life, eternal life, and an abundant and rich life.
Jesus told us that seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you. Ask and you shall receive. These are all promises of our Lord, Jesus Christ; promises that He kept time and time again in His walk upon this earth with us. Those are promises that he keeps from heaven as he intercedes for us before the throne of God.
Many Bible commentators who commented on today’s Scripture readings from the Gospel of mark commented on how the blind Bartimeaus could see more than many people who have good eyes can see with their sight.
When I was preparing for today’s sermon, I was struck by this. I am struck by this because I know just how easy it is for anyone to be blind to Christ. I know just how easy that we can ignore His presence when I am struggling with some problems or caught up in some situation or other that is hurting me and also hurting someone else. I know the faith that it takes in order to ask God for help; the courage that it takes in order to go to someone and confess your need to them; and the vision that it will require in order to admit your blindness and to beg them for help when deep inside you, there is a voice telling to keep quite about your problems.
But what really strikes me even more about the blind Bartimeaus is not that he not only saw Jesus as the one who could help him and had the faith to ask Jesus for that help. It was that after Jesus helped him and told him to go on his own way, that he had the faith to follow Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God can and definitely help you with your problems, as He helped me all those years with my problems, no matter how big or how small your problem is, He is never too busy to help. From my own experiences I know that His word will give you the wisdom and the insight that you will need when you feel lost.
Our Lord, Jesus Christ will always reach out and touch you when you call upon Him for His help, and that He will always give you your rest when you seek it from Him. The Holy Spirit will give you the strength that you needed when you waited upon the Holy Sprit and will guide you and lead you when you turn to the Spirit for help and guidance.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will do all this freely for you, without demanding that you do anything special in return or that you need to be someone special, for every one of you are special in God’s sight.
God will help every one of us, just as Eleanor Roosevelt helped Dr. Fred Collier. God will help us in many and various ways – sometimes through other people, sometimes directly within your hearts, and always helping us without any expectation of return or repayment of any kind.
After He help those who have had the faith to turn to Him for help, Jesus almost always tell them, as He said to Bartimeaus, “go – your faith has made you well.”
What a wonderful thing it is, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if and when we have the faith to ask, we, like Bartimeaus, also have the faith to follow Jesus and to learn to do for other people what has been done for us.
Never be afraid to ask for help. Do not be afraid to turn to your friends and your neighbours and share your needs; and most important of all, do not be afraid to turn to God, who alone can help you when nobody else can.
Do not be afraid to ask, and after asking – in perfect freedom – pass on what you have received, and follow the one who gives the entire all He has for you.
Praise be to God for the salvation He grants us through Jesus Christ our Lord, brother, our friend, and our servant. Amen.
However, something unfortunate must have happened to him – and he ended up being unable to see – and as he has been deprived of the usage of his eyesight – all his options in life collapsed, and he ended up as a beggar, sitting and begging by the roadside, hoping upon hope that somebody passing by would take pity on him, always hoping that somebody would fill up his bowl with food, or that some one will give him a few coins in order for him to purchase the little things in life that everybody needs.
In those ancient days of the first century there was very little sympathy one could expect for the misfortune, for those who are blind and those who are handicapped in any manner. I can say with absolute certainty that Bartimaeus was living a very hard life. In some circles in Israel in those days, there were people who assumed that misfortunes was cause by one’s own fault, and that blindness or handicapped of any nature is always a punishment from God, either for something that they have themselves done or for something that their parents may have done.
In some circles the fact that a person was blind simply meant that the person was a drain on precious resources, in other words, a social liability – best to be ignored – best to be left by the roadside begging. How little things have changed in that respect throughout the centuries!
As Bartimaeus was blind and could not see, he was, in the eyes of many people, not even a human being at all. He became to them only an object, an object to be pitied, or cursed, or to even to be completely ignored.
How many of us present here today, I wonder feel as Bartimeaus must have felted?
How many of us present here today feels cut off from the land of the living – being prevented by one reason or another from taking part fully in the life that goes on all around us. How many of us are unable to exercise the options that everybody else seems to be in possession of, feeling hurt and alone, and wondering, wondering if perhaps in some way we do deserve what we are going through right now.
How many of us feel trapped in the life that we are having?
- in the job that we have?
- In the relationships we have?
How many of us have the feeling that we are not able to break free, to change things, or unable to do anything at all, except dream of how it used to be, or dream of how things should have been?
How many of us, being in this kind of position, do anything about it? How many of us reaches out to other people or to God for help?
How many of us reach out to our friends and neighbours and confide to them of our own feelings, our own needs? How many of us here actually ask our family members for help when help is needed? How many of us even think of reaching out to God and ask Him for His help?
Sometimes we suffer really hard; sometimes we suffer for a very long time, not because the situation we found ourselves in cannot be overcome, but only because we are afraid to ask for help. Often we do not ask for help as we do not want to become a burden to others, or perhaps we do not want to seem weak to other people, or even admit our own weaknesses to our own selves.
I have heard of a woman who will not pray to God for herself, just because she thinks he has much more important things to do than to listen to her.
I have heard of a man who will not tell his own wife as to how much he is hurting inside himself, just because he does not think that she will be interested in his plight, as she already has so many of her own problems to bear.
I know of several people in Hong Kong who will not ask other people for help with their own substance abuse problems, just because they cannot admit to themselves that their problems have become much bigger than they themselves are.
I also know of children who are having a very difficult time dealing with life. They will not ask their parents or their teachers for help, just because they are afraid that they by asking for help, they will either get into trouble, or, even worse, be ignored, if they do ask for help from the adults.
There are times in our lives when we all needed help. There are times in our lifetime when if we are to survive at all, if we are to continue living, if we are go keep on growing, we must turn to other people and to God and ask Him for help in getting what we need.
Doctor Fred Collier, a retired medical doctor tells this story about himself when he was a youth.
He was a medical student in the Army Specialized Training Corps in 1945 when the Second World War came to a close. He was from a poor family that did not have the kind of money that he needed in order to complete medical school on his own. So when he was discharged out of the army, he had absolutely no idea as to how he will ever finish his schooling, if indeed he will ever finish it at all.
One day he happened to pick up a copy of a magazine while he was sitting inside a barber’s shop. One of the articles in the magazine talked about the kindness and compassion of Eleanor Roosevelt, whose husband, the late President Franklin Roosevelt had died only a few months ago.
That particular article in that magazine planted a seed into Fred’s mind. He went off to the local library and with the help of the librarian found Mrs. Roosevelt’s home address. He got home, sat down and wrote a letter to her, telling her about his problems. He wrote it and rewrote the letter until he had the letter written exactly the way that he wanted it.
When he put the letter in an envelope and deposits it into the mailbox, even his young wife wondered whether the effort was worth the time and the postage stamp that Fred spent on the letter.
Much to Fred’s surprise, Mrs. Roosevelt sent him a letter agreeing to meet him. At the end of the meeting , she gave him her promise to help him. In the months and years of his study, Fred got checks from Mrs. Roosevelt. Fred in turn, kept her informed of his progress and sent her copies of all of his term papers. Her secretary later on said that Mrs. Roosevelt always read Fred’s letters and reports with great interest.
Later on, Mrs. Roosevelt even visited the couple in their sparsely furnished flat. The landlord of the flat nearly had a heart attack when he recognized their famous visitor.
When Fred finally finishes Medical School from Yale University, he told Mrs. Roosevelt that he did not know as to how he would ever be able to repay her. She told him that repayment was not necessary, nor does she want any repayment. Then she told him that she will be adequately repaid, if when one day, he became financially secured, he will help out someone who is truly deserving of help, as he was.
Doctor Fred Collier reached out for help and he received it. So did the blind Bartimaeus. They both reached out for help from someone whom they knew could help them in their respective situations. They reached out to someone they hoped and prayed would help.
It is a very difficult thing to do, this asking for help. A very difficult thing, a very humbling thing, but there are times in our lives when each and every one of us will need help from someone. There are times when we must turn to other people and to God for help or else we will perish.
The good news is that there is absolutely no situation in life that is so bad that someone cannot help us with it, that someone cannot help us to overcome such a situation. Or at least to bear it with a hope and strength that will transforms it, and us as a result completely.
And even if it is a situation where we cannot go to someone else for that help that we so desperately needed, there is no situation where we cannot go to God for help and still find the help that we needed so badly.
God does not always answer our prayers in the way or manner that we had in mind, but God will always answer our prayers in a way that is appropriate to the situation. God will always give to us what we need, and God will always give us the strength to bear what we must bear and to bear it so well that our world will changes because of it.
This is the lesson of the Garden of Gethsemane and of every dark night of the soul. It is also the lesson of the cross and of the tomb and of all the sufferings that God may ask us to bear.
It is what lies behind all transformation that matters. What lies behind Easter, what lies behind new life, eternal life, and an abundant and rich life.
Jesus told us that seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you. Ask and you shall receive. These are all promises of our Lord, Jesus Christ; promises that He kept time and time again in His walk upon this earth with us. Those are promises that he keeps from heaven as he intercedes for us before the throne of God.
Many Bible commentators who commented on today’s Scripture readings from the Gospel of mark commented on how the blind Bartimeaus could see more than many people who have good eyes can see with their sight.
When I was preparing for today’s sermon, I was struck by this. I am struck by this because I know just how easy it is for anyone to be blind to Christ. I know just how easy that we can ignore His presence when I am struggling with some problems or caught up in some situation or other that is hurting me and also hurting someone else. I know the faith that it takes in order to ask God for help; the courage that it takes in order to go to someone and confess your need to them; and the vision that it will require in order to admit your blindness and to beg them for help when deep inside you, there is a voice telling to keep quite about your problems.
But what really strikes me even more about the blind Bartimeaus is not that he not only saw Jesus as the one who could help him and had the faith to ask Jesus for that help. It was that after Jesus helped him and told him to go on his own way, that he had the faith to follow Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God can and definitely help you with your problems, as He helped me all those years with my problems, no matter how big or how small your problem is, He is never too busy to help. From my own experiences I know that His word will give you the wisdom and the insight that you will need when you feel lost.
Our Lord, Jesus Christ will always reach out and touch you when you call upon Him for His help, and that He will always give you your rest when you seek it from Him. The Holy Spirit will give you the strength that you needed when you waited upon the Holy Sprit and will guide you and lead you when you turn to the Spirit for help and guidance.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will do all this freely for you, without demanding that you do anything special in return or that you need to be someone special, for every one of you are special in God’s sight.
God will help every one of us, just as Eleanor Roosevelt helped Dr. Fred Collier. God will help us in many and various ways – sometimes through other people, sometimes directly within your hearts, and always helping us without any expectation of return or repayment of any kind.
After He help those who have had the faith to turn to Him for help, Jesus almost always tell them, as He said to Bartimeaus, “go – your faith has made you well.”
What a wonderful thing it is, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if and when we have the faith to ask, we, like Bartimeaus, also have the faith to follow Jesus and to learn to do for other people what has been done for us.
Never be afraid to ask for help. Do not be afraid to turn to your friends and your neighbours and share your needs; and most important of all, do not be afraid to turn to God, who alone can help you when nobody else can.
Do not be afraid to ask, and after asking – in perfect freedom – pass on what you have received, and follow the one who gives the entire all He has for you.
Praise be to God for the salvation He grants us through Jesus Christ our Lord, brother, our friend, and our servant. Amen.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
1 Timothy 1:12-17; Psalm 14, Luke 15:1-10
That is the frame for all that follows in chapter fifteen, the story of a shepherd and his sheep, of a widow and her coins, of a man and his two sons.
It is important to remember the situation which prompted Jesus to tell these stories and to ask - "whom do we identify with in this situation - as well as in the stories that Jesus tells".
We do that kind of thing when reading a novel or watching a movie. We tend to identify with someone in it. So, which group or character do you identify with in today's gospel reading?
With Jesus - the good guy - who tries to straighten out the religious people? Who calls into question all they believe? Who reaches out and loves everyone, especially the most unloved?
With the Pharisees - the ones who rightly saw the dangers of too close an association with the wrong people (for what parent has not worried about your child falling in with the "wrong crowd"?), but so convinced that they and they alone were only in the right?
With the tax collectors and sinners - those traitors - the tax collectors who were working for the Romans and robbing their own people? With the sinners, the people of the land who never attended synagogue and seemed to lack even basic morality?
With the shepherd who lost a sheep or the poor widow who lost a coin?
With the 99 sheep who were OK - or the one who was lost?
With the coins snug in the widow's purse - or the one that was lost between the cracks in the floor?
Interesting isn't it? And I am sure all of you have an answer - that all of you do identify more with one than another.
And yet it can be a bit of problem.
Sometimes the things or persons we identify with can blind us to the fact that we are also like someone else in the story. Maybe someone we don't like so well. Maybe we are equally blinded to the fact that we are more like someone who is really likeable in the story..
Our way of identification can blind us to who we are, or who we could be, to where we are at, and to where we could be at.
Ralph Milton tells of the teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the students one day, "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which colour would you be?"
Think about it.
What colour would you be?
Red or Green?
It is a tough question isn't it when you pose only two options..One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped"
The reason I am going on about this point is simple. It seems to me that in the frame of the story - everyone but Jesus is striped. And that in the world today - it is the same.
We are a curious combination of the lost and the found. We are striped. We are - in some sense - not completely complete.
It is hard language, this language of lost and found, especially for people in the middle, as most of us are most of the time. It seems too absolute.
Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there.
Some more - some less. But always something.
The wonderful thing is - that God wants us to enter fully into the light. The wonderful thing is that God wants to bless us all richly to keep us safe, to make us strong, to help us be like a Shepherd who really cares for his sheep like a poor widow who really values all her coins.
The wonderful thing is that the lost part of us is as valuable to God as the found part, that God does not want any one of us or any part of one of us - to be ignored, neglected, or lost.
God wants to bless us - all of us and God rejoices when one of us - or a part of us - is found.
Clearly Jesus wants us understand something important about God here:
- that God values and seeks out everyone, even the most unlikely persons,
- that God calls and wants to embrace everyone, even those whom others
would not,
- that God rejoices when those who have lost their way are found,
- and that God celebrates when he can once again sustain and nourish those
who for one reason or another have wandered away from him.
Jesus wants us to identify with both the shepherd and the poor widow in their sorrow and their joy, and to understand that each of us is valued - no matter what our colour our how many stripes we have.....
All of us are valued.
The 99 and the 1.
The coins in the purse - and the one under the floor.
The son at home - and the son who wanders.
Without all we are incomplete. Without all God the heart of God is incomplete. So when we are found - there is much joy, the joy of the widow who finds her precious coin, the joy of the shepherd who finds his precious sheep.
Rejoice in your value.
Let the shepherd gather you in.
Rejoice in your worth.
Let the widow find you.
And be like the shepherd.
Be like the widow.
Seek, look, find - those of every stripe. And rejoice when they come in and their pain and their sorrow is relieved .
Rejoice.
Erma Bombeck, in one of her books, describes a visit to a church one Sunday. She writes:
"...I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theatre said, "Stop grinning! You're in a church!" With that, she gave him a belt on his hind-side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "that's better," and returned to her prayers."
Indeed, there are the lost - and there are the found and there are parts of us that are in the light, and parts in the dark.
As you are searched for, as you are looked for, as you are valued and as you are found - rejoice!
And search for, look for, and find and rejoice over others.
Erma Bombeck adds
"I so much wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humour to have created the likes of us."
God loves you.
God looks for you.
God wants to ease your pains.
God wants to make you whole.
Allow him.
Listen for his voice.
Follow him when he calls to you.
Do as he asks.
You will discover wonderful parts to you that you never knew were there, there will be less and less stripes and more good solid colour, you will be made whole.
And allow him to use you to seek, look, find, and rejoice over others. And this place and you will become known as place and a people of healing and wholeness, a place and a people of joy.
A special place and a special people because in it, in you, God is known.
Blessed be to God, day by day. Amen
It is important to remember the situation which prompted Jesus to tell these stories and to ask - "whom do we identify with in this situation - as well as in the stories that Jesus tells".
We do that kind of thing when reading a novel or watching a movie. We tend to identify with someone in it. So, which group or character do you identify with in today's gospel reading?
With Jesus - the good guy - who tries to straighten out the religious people? Who calls into question all they believe? Who reaches out and loves everyone, especially the most unloved?
With the Pharisees - the ones who rightly saw the dangers of too close an association with the wrong people (for what parent has not worried about your child falling in with the "wrong crowd"?), but so convinced that they and they alone were only in the right?
With the tax collectors and sinners - those traitors - the tax collectors who were working for the Romans and robbing their own people? With the sinners, the people of the land who never attended synagogue and seemed to lack even basic morality?
With the shepherd who lost a sheep or the poor widow who lost a coin?
With the 99 sheep who were OK - or the one who was lost?
With the coins snug in the widow's purse - or the one that was lost between the cracks in the floor?
Interesting isn't it? And I am sure all of you have an answer - that all of you do identify more with one than another.
And yet it can be a bit of problem.
Sometimes the things or persons we identify with can blind us to the fact that we are also like someone else in the story. Maybe someone we don't like so well. Maybe we are equally blinded to the fact that we are more like someone who is really likeable in the story..
Our way of identification can blind us to who we are, or who we could be, to where we are at, and to where we could be at.
Ralph Milton tells of the teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the students one day, "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which colour would you be?"
Think about it.
What colour would you be?
Red or Green?
It is a tough question isn't it when you pose only two options..One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped"
The reason I am going on about this point is simple. It seems to me that in the frame of the story - everyone but Jesus is striped. And that in the world today - it is the same.
We are a curious combination of the lost and the found. We are striped. We are - in some sense - not completely complete.
It is hard language, this language of lost and found, especially for people in the middle, as most of us are most of the time. It seems too absolute.
Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there.
Some more - some less. But always something.
The wonderful thing is - that God wants us to enter fully into the light. The wonderful thing is that God wants to bless us all richly to keep us safe, to make us strong, to help us be like a Shepherd who really cares for his sheep like a poor widow who really values all her coins.
The wonderful thing is that the lost part of us is as valuable to God as the found part, that God does not want any one of us or any part of one of us - to be ignored, neglected, or lost.
God wants to bless us - all of us and God rejoices when one of us - or a part of us - is found.
Clearly Jesus wants us understand something important about God here:
- that God values and seeks out everyone, even the most unlikely persons,
- that God calls and wants to embrace everyone, even those whom others
would not,
- that God rejoices when those who have lost their way are found,
- and that God celebrates when he can once again sustain and nourish those
who for one reason or another have wandered away from him.
Jesus wants us to identify with both the shepherd and the poor widow in their sorrow and their joy, and to understand that each of us is valued - no matter what our colour our how many stripes we have.....
All of us are valued.
The 99 and the 1.
The coins in the purse - and the one under the floor.
The son at home - and the son who wanders.
Without all we are incomplete. Without all God the heart of God is incomplete. So when we are found - there is much joy, the joy of the widow who finds her precious coin, the joy of the shepherd who finds his precious sheep.
Rejoice in your value.
Let the shepherd gather you in.
Rejoice in your worth.
Let the widow find you.
And be like the shepherd.
Be like the widow.
Seek, look, find - those of every stripe. And rejoice when they come in and their pain and their sorrow is relieved .
Rejoice.
Erma Bombeck, in one of her books, describes a visit to a church one Sunday. She writes:
"...I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theatre said, "Stop grinning! You're in a church!" With that, she gave him a belt on his hind-side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "that's better," and returned to her prayers."
Indeed, there are the lost - and there are the found and there are parts of us that are in the light, and parts in the dark.
As you are searched for, as you are looked for, as you are valued and as you are found - rejoice!
And search for, look for, and find and rejoice over others.
Erma Bombeck adds
"I so much wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humour to have created the likes of us."
God loves you.
God looks for you.
God wants to ease your pains.
God wants to make you whole.
Allow him.
Listen for his voice.
Follow him when he calls to you.
Do as he asks.
You will discover wonderful parts to you that you never knew were there, there will be less and less stripes and more good solid colour, you will be made whole.
And allow him to use you to seek, look, find, and rejoice over others. And this place and you will become known as place and a people of healing and wholeness, a place and a people of joy.
A special place and a special people because in it, in you, God is known.
Blessed be to God, day by day. Amen
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