Poor old Elijah!

 I'm afraid there is no recording this week; I have a new tablet and it came with its own integral recorder.  Which didn't.  I have now downloaded the one I'm used to, so I hope that next time I preach (not until August), the recording will work!

Well, poor old Elijah! Sounds as though he went properly through the mill, doesn’t it? For a bit of context, this chapter is giving us the aftermath of the great trial between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Now, back then, Baal was a rival god to Yahweh, our own God, and a great many of the children of Israel had started to follow him, encouraged by the Queen of the day, Jezebel, who seems to have been dominant over the king, Ahab. Jezebel, it must be said, was not an Israelite, but a Sidonian princess, who had been brought up to worship Baal, and brought that worship with her. And many prophets of God had been killed, although Obadiah, Ahab’s chief administrator, had saved at least a hundred of them. Obadiah was a devout follower of Yahweh, as God was known back then, despite everything.

Elijah, you may remember, had declared a severe drought over all the land because of the worship of Baal, but finally it was time for a great showdown. He went to Ahab and told him to bring all the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel, and they would build two altars, one to Baal and one to Yahweh, place a sacrifice on each altar, and whichever god lit the sacrifice with fire from heaven would be declared the god that Israel should worship. Elijah was so confident that God was God that he ordered that altar to be drenched in water, with water in a sort of moat round it. The Baalites went first, and nothing happened. Elijah teased them that Baal must have gone for a walk, or be on the loo, or something, and they worked themselves up into a terrific frenzy and cut themselves and so on, but nothing happened. And then Elijah prayed, and fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, and the wood, and even the water! Whereupon the people fell on their faces and said that God was God. But Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed, which doesn’t sound very Godly of him, but we mustn’t judge people who lived in the Iron age by our own standards!

Anyway, Ahab goes home that evening and tells Jezebel what has happened, and she is absolutely incandescent with rage, and vows to kill Elijah within the day. Elijah, hearing of this, runs away, and that’s where our reading comes in. He’s obviously totally knackered and completely out of cope, and he prays that he might die, and then he falls asleep. An angel comes, bringing him food, and he eats and sleeps again, and then he eats a last meal before heading off towards Mount Horeb, a journey which it is said took him forty days and forty nights – a foreshadowing of Jesus in the wilderness. I don’t know whether it was actually forty days and forty nights, or whether this is just code for “a long time”, and I don’t know whether he was able to find anything to eat along the route, but whatever. Anyway, he goes into a cave to spend the night, and God comes to him and says “Elijah, why are you here?”

To which he replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

And God tells Elijah to go and stand outside to experience the presence of the Lord. And we know what happened next: there was a huge wind, but the Lord was not in the wind; a mighty earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and a big fire, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire, either. And then there was only the sound of silence. And again God asked Elijah why he was there, and again Elijah replies, self-pityingly, that he was the only one left.

To which God says, more or less, that’s bollocks! He tells Elijah to anoint new kings of Aram and Israel, and to appoint Elisha as his successor, and between them they will kill the followers of Baal, but there are at least seven thousand people in Israel who haven’t ever worshipped Baal. Elijah is not alone.

And, just to finish off the story, Elijah is reassured, and goes and does what he has been told.

But poor old Elijah! I feel very sorry for him – I’m sure you know what it’s like to be absolutely exhausted and totally out of cope. I know I do, and all one can really do is go to bed and sleep it off. Things usually look brighter in the morning.

Only, in this case, for Elijah, things still looked pretty grim. Yes, the food the angel brought him helped, but the one thing he wanted was to go to where he knew God would speak to him. And sure enough, when he got to Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai, which is probably another name for it, there God was. But he didn’t get the reassurance and praise he had hoped for. Instead it was “What are you doing here?” Elijah had no business being on Mount Horeb; God wanted him back home in Israel.

I wonder why God chose that moment to show the wind, earthquake and fire to Elijah, but only spoke to him in the silence. And then to say again “Why are you here?”
I think it’s important, often to wait on God in silence. In my early Christian life, I had no real idea how to pray – all that was modelled was the public prayer meeting, with the earnest Evangelicals going “Oh Lord, we really pray that you will just….”, and it wasn’t until I was many years into my Christian life that I discovered that there were other ways of praying, and that talking to – or perhaps more accurately, talking at – God was not the only way to pray. I’m sure you’ve found this for yourselves, but I do want to remind you that prayer is often, if not mostly, a matter of waiting on God in silence, of stilling your mind, of opening yourself. Some people like to use a mantra – “Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, for instance; others like to use a rosary, perhaps using the “Saviour of the World” prayer. Still others use conscious relaxation methods. And it is while listening to the sound of silence that God speaks.

Don’t get me wrong; of course there is a place for prayer in words, as in the public prayer meeting, as in the liturgy. You can pray to God in your own words, and that, I suspect, is what most of us do, but of course there are loads of other prayers one can use, dating right back to the beginning of Christianity! Or even before – many people find praying the Psalms works for them, or perhaps a hymn. There’s no right or wrong way to pray; there’s no one way is right for everybody, and most of us will pray differently at different times! What matters is the contact with God, not the way you do it.

For Elijah, at that moment, it was running to Mount Horeb, where he knew God would speak to him. And indeed God did, but not in the way he expected. Instead of the – I was going to say hugs, but you know what I mean, that Elijah wanted and expected, it was pointed out to him that God doesn’t always deal in the spectacular, that Elijah still had work to do, and that there were at least seven thousand other people in the land who hadn’t and would not, bow to Baal!

Poor old Elijah! But as God never calls without enabling, I am sure Elijah received the reassurance and recovery he needed to enable him to go back and do as he’d been told. Elijah might have done the wrong thing in running away, but he was not sent back in his own strength. He was reassured that he wasn’t the only one, even though it felt like it. He was told to anoint two new kings, and eventually they would replace the current weak ones; and above all he was told to anoint his successor, Elisha. From now on, he would have someone shadowing him and helping him.

I think that’s a really good model for us, isn’t it? When we have gone wrong, as Elijah went wrong, God speaks to us – not normally in a spectacular way, but in the silence of our hearts – and reassures us, and heals us, and enables us to go right again.

I don’t, incidentally, think that Elijah had depression – that’s a very nasty illness, and I’m sure God wouldn’t have been so bracing with him, although I’m equally sure God would have healed him. But Elijah was exhausted and out of cope, and had lapsed into self-pity – all too easily done. But he knew the right thing to do, to go to God, even if he went about it the wrong way.

And that’s the same for us, isn’t it. Always, always, go to God. Sometimes we don’t want to; sometimes we feel too ashamed to show our faces before God. But we know that when we do, God will act – God will heal us, forgive us, and enable us to get up and go on.

The man who Jesus healed in our Gospel story was rather similar. We don’t know, from this distance, what had gone wrong for him, but it sounds like the worst kind of mental illness, and he felt he had a whole army of demons inside him. So he asked Jesus, firstly to leave him alone, and when that obviously wasn’t going to happen, to send his demons into the herd of swine that was grazing in the neighbourhood. And when this had happened, he was healed, and was able to get dressed and sit, clothed and in his right mind, at Jesus’ feet.

Sometimes, when we are too ashamed to go to God, or hindered by other reasons, it’s God who will come in search of us, as Jesus came to the man in the graveyard.

They are both odd stories in today’s readings, but I think what they spell out is God’s love and care for us, whoever we are. We may have trouble approaching God, but God is always looking out for us! Remember the father in Jesus’ story, who saw his estranged son coming and ran to meet him? That’s what God is like and it’s what I want to leave with you this morning!

Poor old Elijah! But God healed him and helped him and sent him forth. As he will do with us. Elijah was not alone – there were over seven thousand others. And we are not alone – we have our church families to love and support us. Amen.

Do you want to be made well?

Children's talk (of course, there weren't any children, but I gave the talk anyway): Shalom

This Sunday we had two choices of Gospel reading, so I thought that, for a change, we’d have both of them. We’re going to read the second one in a bit, and I’ll talk about it, but for now, let’s all look at something Jesus said in the first reading.

He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Now, when we have a Communion service, and quite often in other services, too, we wish one another God’s peace – that peace, that Jesus left with us. But peace, here, doesn’t just mean no war, although that, too! It doesn’t just mean feeling calm and happy, although that, too! It’s both of those things and more, beside. It’s about wholeness, and justice and living in unity – in short, it’s about the way things are like in God’s country, and the way they ought to be here.

The way things ought to be! When you wish people “Peace be with you”, you’re wishing them wholeness and healing and unity as well as peace!

I think, don’t you, that we need to stop and wish one another God’s peace, and then we’re going to hear a song on YouTube that you may well know – if you do, please join in!

This picture is not of the pool of Bethesda; it’s of the source of the Danube in Donaueschingen, Germany! But when we went to see it, all I could think of was the pool of Bethesda – it totally fits my mental image of what the pool was like!

The original pool was, of course, in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, which is called the Lions Gate today. Apparently it may have been built in the 1^st century BC as a Greek shrine to Asclepius, their god of healing. It was just outside the original city walls, so as not to offend the Jews, who would not have cared for a pagan temple in their midst. It was not until later in the 1^st century AD that the city walls were expanded and the pool or pools turned into a full-on temple, built by Hadrian, and by the 5^th century AD there was already a church there.

Anyway, whether it was an active shrine, with sacrifices being offered to Asclepius or not, we are told that many people came there for healing. A verse in the narrative which is now omitted from most translations, as they are not sure whether it was in the original, says that periodically an angel would come down and stir up the water, and the first person to get into the pool while it was still rippling would be healed.

And one of the people there that day was paralysed, and had been for 38 years. We aren’t told whether he had been coming to the pool every day for 38 years, or whether he only started coming more recently, but he had fairly obviously been there for some time. Jesus asks him if he wants to be made well, and his response is that every time the water is stirred up, someone else gets there first, as he has nobody to help him get into the water. Jesus tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk, and the man promptly does so.

That was as far as we got in our reading, but the story goes on to tell us it was the Sabbath day, and the authorities clocked the man carrying his mat, which was not allowed, and tore him off a strip for it. He said that he had been told to carry it by the person who had healed him, but couldn’t say who it was, as by then Jesus had disappeared. Later, Jesus meets the man again in the Temple, and tells him not to sin again or worse things could happen. The man went and told the authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him, and that was basically when they started to persecute him, mostly because he had been healing on the Sabbath. Healing, like carrying mats, was considered work, and working on the Sabbath was completely forbidden.

It’s a very strange story, I think. The more I look at it, the odder it becomes. We know that the man was Jewish, so why was he at a pagan shrine? How did he get there? Was he there twenty-four seven? Did someone bring him each morning and fetch him at night? How did he manage for food and drink, or for warmth on a cold day? How did he manage about going to the loo? He must have had some kind of carer, even if they couldn’t be with him full-time! As, I expect, did most of the people round the pool. And why was he the only person healed, if there were crowds there? Was he the only Jewish person? It seems improbable. Really, a very odd story. I believe some authorities suggest it was included to remind people that it is Jesus we need to turn to for healing, not some pagan religion. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t a true story, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we have nothing to learn from it!

Jesus asks him “Do you want to be made well?” This seems like a silly question, really. Of course he wants to be made well, why would he be at the pool every day, else? But, think about it a minute. Did he want to be made well? Was he, despite what he claimed, really quite comfortable with this life, where he could spend the day doing not very much, chatting with his friends, dependent on other people to do pretty much everything for him. And if he were healed, he’d lose all that. He would have to start looking after himself. He might have to start looking after his family, if he had one, instead of depending on them to look after him. He might even have to get a job!

Whatever happened, if he were to be made well, his life was going to change radically. Because that’s what happens when Jesus heals you. Life changes.

“Do you want to be made well?”
Sometimes it is our behaviour which changes – perhaps we used to get drunk, but now we find ourselves switching to soft drinks after a couple of glasses. Perhaps we used to gamble, but suddenly realise we haven't so much as bought a Lottery ticket for weeks, never mind visiting a bookie! Perhaps we used to be less than scrupulous about what belongs to us, and what belongs to our employer, but now we find ourselves asking permission to use an office envelope.

Very often these sorts of changes happen without our even noticing them. Others take more struggle – sometimes it is many years before we can finally let go of an addiction, or a bad habit. But as I've said many times, the more open we are to God, the more we can allow God to change us.

But the point is, when God touches our lives, things change. Life changes. Life changed for the man who Jesus had just healed. Life changes for us, when we allow God to heal us.

“Do you want to be made well?” Sometimes, of course, we cling on to the familiar bad habits, as we don't know how to replace them with healthier ways of acting and thinking, and that's scary. Perhaps we don’t really want to be made well. Perhaps we are quite comfortable with our life as it is, even though it isn’t ideal.

Perhaps we are used to our pain, even comfortable with it. Maybe if we were to be healed, we would have to confront the source of our pain, and it would get a lot worse before it got better. A wise person once said to me that nobody does any work on themselves until it becomes impossible not to, as the process is so inherently painful. That’s more about mental and emotional healing, but it can apply to physical healing, too – if I have this operation, it will make things better, but it’s going to be so much worse at first…

The man who Jesus healed didn’t answer directly, you notice. He just whinged that he had nobody to help him into the pool, so he could never get well. But when Jesus told him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk, he doesn’t seem to have argued or anything, just done as he was told. In spite of the fact that he got into trouble for it later. That sort of touch from God is irresistible, isn’t it? And frightening.

This isn’t the only occasion in John’s gospel where the consequences of being healed are spelled out. In another place, Jesus heals a blind man, also on the Sabbath day, and the authorities get themselves in a right muddle. Nobody born blind gets to see, it just doesn't happen. And if it did, it couldn't happen on the Sabbath. Not unless the person who did it was a sinner, because only a sinner would do that on the Sabbath – it's work, isn't it? And if the person who did it was a sinner, it can't have happened! And even the blind man’s parents get caught up in the row, telling the authorities that yes, it was their son, and yes, he has been blind from birth, but yes, it does seem that he can see now, and no, they haven’t the faintest idea why, or what happened!

“Do you want to be made well?” Later in John 5, Jesus tells the man he’s just healed not to sin again or something worse might happen. It’s not the only time he equates paralysis with sin – there’s that time when he’s teaching at home and a man comes with four friends who have to let his stretcher down through the roof because it’s simply too crowded else. And Jesus looks at the man on the stretcher and says “Your sins are forgiven!”

People do get stuck – sometimes physically, like these men, but more often mentally and emotionally. I know several people who found it extremely difficult to get back to normal life after the pandemic. I personally found it nearly impossible to make plans, in case things changed again and we went into another lockdown. That passed off fairly rapidly, but for others, not so much. Perhaps they were frightened that they might still catch Covid-19 – not an unreasonable fear, of course; people do still get it today, although far fewer and it seems far less fatal. Perhaps they had just got used to being mostly at home and only going out briefly for exercise, and changing that habit was difficult. But the thing is, they got stuck, and sometimes needed help becoming unstuck.

“Do you want to be made well?” It's easy to fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch you and change you. I know I have, many times. The joy of it is, though, that we can always come back. We aren't left alone to fend for ourselves – we would always fail if we were. We just need to acknowledge to ourselves – and to God, of course, but God knew, anyway – that we've wandered away again.

That's a bit simplistic, of course – there are times when we are quite sure we haven't wandered away, and yet God seems far off. But I'm not going into that one right now; nobody really knows why that happens, except God! But for most of us, most of the time, if we fall out of the habit of allowing God to touch us and heal us and change us, we simply have to acknowledge that this is what has happened, and we are back with him again.

“Do you want to be made well?” Sometimes dreadful things have happened to some of Jesus' followers, to those who speak truth to power, to those who refuse to conform to this world’s standards. But then, we always seem to be given the strength and the ability to cope with whatever comes. It’s not necessarily true that God never gives us more than we can handle, but what is true is that we don't have to cope alone. God is there, not only changing us,
but enabling us to cope with that change.

It is not, of course, just about healing us as individuals, but as communities – as families, as churches, as societies, even as nations. Being open to God, being open to God’s power to change and heal, can have consequences far beyond ourselves. We may not see them ourselves, we may never know that we were the catalyst, but it can happen, nevertheless.

Do you want to be made well? Amen.

No Difference

 The text of this sermon is substantially the same as the one preached here, only the current affairs have been updated!

Soul Songs - Nourished by Musical Expression

 

As you know, today is Palm Sunday, the day which kicks off Holy Week, when we remember Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and, frequently, go on to read and think about his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, before the wonderful Resurrection on Easter Day. Most years, we’d be reading about this and, in many churches, they’ll not even have a sermon, but will just read the whole of what are called the “Passion Narratives,” this year it would be chapters 22 and 23 of Luke’s Gospel. That is thought to speak for itself, no need to elaborate!

But this year, the Methodist Church has suggested we just look at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and specifically at the way the crowd of disciples, so Luke tells us, burst into spontaneous praise and song when they saw Jesus riding on a donkey.

We’re standing at the edge of Holy Week. The road ahead is about to turn steep – both for Jesus and for us. Today is full of joy and shouting and waving palms, but we all know that just a few days from now, we’ll be walking into the shadow of the cross.

But now it’s time for celebration. There’s a sense of movement, of something important about to happen. And right at the centre of it all is music. Not instruments. Not choirs or pipe organs. But something deeper: people lifting their voices in praise. It’s music from the heart. The kind that doesn’t need tuning or lyrics – it just pours out.

This is what we’re thinking about this morning: how music from the heart nourishes us. In this season of Soul Food, we’re thinking about what feeds us, what sustains us in our faith, what helps us grow strong and rooted as people of God. We’ve thought how we are nourished by all the things, not just bread;
by a safe home for everyone;
by patience and slowness;
by unconditional love and forgiveness;
then last week by companionship;
and today, we think how we are nourished by music that comes from deep within – the kind that rises up when our hearts recognise the presence of Jesus.

Here, on the road to Jerusalem, the music just pours out from the crowd. Spontaneously. They may have started by singing one of the psalms that were traditionally sung on the way to Jerusalem for Passover – in our Bibles, these are Psalms 120 to 134, usually titled “A Song of Ascents”. They include favourites like “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills”, “I was glad when they said unto me”, “Out of the depths I call unto Thee”, and so on. Have a look sometime.

But I don’t think they stuck to the Psalms. Luke’s Gospel tells us that they sang “Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”

No “Hosannas” here, although the other Gospels that record the story have them, but do you see how Luke has cleverly managed to make what they sang echo the song the angels sang at Bethlehem the night Jesus was born? “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.”

And then, when the religious leaders try to make them shut up, Jesus says “Look, if they keep quiet, these very stones will start to shout out!” All creation sings God’s praise, and if it’s dammed up in one place, it will spill out in another. This time of year, springtime, it can feel as though the whole creation is joining in praise! I know as well as you do that the birdsong that we love is actually about sex and turf wars, but it can sound like praise! The blossoms and the spring flowers are again about reproduction, but even still…. Perhaps that is how Nature praises God – in the cycle of the year, in the changing of the seasons.... There’s a hymn we used to sing when I was at school – it’s not in our hymn books – which begins “The spacious firmament on high”, and talks about how the heavens were made by God, and ends by imagining the stars all singing “The hand that made us is divine!” Maybe the stars do sing, at that! And, of course, we’re told that music is a characteristic of heaven! The “heavenly host” praises God constantly, and we are encouraged to join in with that.

Praise isn’t just about making us feel good, or making us feel close to God; praise isn’t just something we do because God demands it. God is worthy of our praise and worship at all times, of course, but there seems to be even more to it than that. It’s as though praise is an integral part of creation, and when we praise God, whether in words or in music, we become part of that. 

Note that “constantly”. It is always the right time to praise God – although sometimes it’s really hard to do. There are times when we simply have no praise in us. And that’s okay, because that’s where being part of a community comes in. It’s not individual praise, it’s corporate praise. If one individual has to drop out for a time, the rest of us can carry them in our own praise. It happens to us all, and is nothing to be ashamed of. But it is worth making the effort, even if you are just mouthing the words and no tune will come – God knows what is on your heart, and will honour your attempts at praise. Sometimes, of course, a flamboyant, bouncy praise song is totally inappropriate – at someone’s funeral, for instance, unless they specifically requested it, or at a time of national mourning, or straight after a mega-disaster. But it is still right to praise God – not for what has happened, of course, but anyway. And there are quieter, more reflective worship songs that will be appropriate then, and the more cheerful ones on other occasions.

I wonder what sort of music enables you to praise God? That’s the joy of the Church – I mean the whole Church, not just us Methodists! It caters to the whole spectrum of Christians, and that includes the music available. For some, it’s the wonderful choral music of Bach and so on – I like to listen to it, sometimes, but for me, it’s not so conducive to worship. But I know it is for others, and maybe it is for some among you.

I personally prefer music I can join in with – traditional hymns, for a start, and many of the more modern choruses and worship songs. Wasn’t it dreadful during the pandemic, do you remember, when we weren’t allowed to sing, but just had to hum with closed mouths behind our masks! I hated that. And there was the time when I had been diagnosed with pulmonary embolisms, and I wanted and needed to go to church to thank God that I had been diagnosed and treatment started ere worse befall. Anyway, came the first hymn and – I absolutely, physically couldn’t! I don’t mean I couldn’t sing in tune – you all know I don’t have much of a singing voice at the best of times – but I simply couldn’t get the air in the right place in my lungs to sing! Incredibly frustrating! Fortunately it didn’t last long, and within a week or so I was singing as loudly out of tune as ever! It is, I think, as well that we are commanded to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, not necessarily a tuneful one!

But the point is, no matter how unmusical we are, the music of praise helps align us with God, and thus nourish our souls. Whether it is listening to other people praise, and praising in our hearts as we do so; whether it is singing aloud, joyfully and, one hopes, tunefully – and whether that singing is when we are on our own, or when we are together as a church – then we are both praising the Almighty and nourishing our own souls.

It is Palm Sunday. Jesus is entering Jerusalem and the crowds – and we – are singing his praises. But we know, as he knew, that he is going to his death. On Thursday we will be remembering how he washed his disciples feet and instituted Holy Communion at the Last Supper, and on Friday, of course, we will be solemnly remembering his death on the cross. But we can, should and, indeed must continue to praise, all through this Passiontide, as it’s called. Perhaps bouncy songs are inappropriate, but there are plenty of others. Perhaps we might want to listen to one of the great Passion oratorios – Handel’s Messiah, for instance, or we might just want to sit quietly and let our praises sort of rise up in silence.

And then will come Easter Sunday, and our praises will spring forth joyfully and unrestrainedly as we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord. And as the year continues, as we celebrate the Ascension and Pentecost, Trinity Sunday and the long, long stretch of Ordinary Time until it all starts again in Advent, so we adapt our praise, but we don’t stop praising!

Those who wrote the Soul Food series suggest we now sing hymn number 82, “How Great Thou Art”, and reflect on the blessings God has given us while we do so. So let’s stand to sing.

Soul Repair: Nourished by Unconditional Love and Forgiveness

 

The service starts about 18 minutes in.  

Today, our soul food is God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, as shown in our Gospel reading. Also because it’s Mothering Sunday, which I’ll talk more about in a bit. But first, let’s have a look at our familiar, and, I suspect much-loved, Gospel story.

We don't know why the younger son got fed up with his comfortable life on the farm;
Jesus didn't go into details about his family background, or, if he did, Luke didn't record them!
Perhaps he was being asked to marry a girl he really disliked –
or perhaps he'd fallen in love with the wrong girl.
Or perhaps he just found farm work boring,
and the lights of the big city more attractive.
Whatever, he goes to his father and asks for his share of his inheritance, and takes off.

Now, it was really awful of him to ask that –
he was more or less saying “I can't wait until you're dead!”.
And, of course, it wasn't a matter of going to the bank and writing a cheque –
it was a matter of ­dividing up the farm,
letting the younger son have a certain number of fields and buildings,
and a certain amount of stock.
But this story is taking place in God's country,
where the rules are not the same as ours,
so the farmer does just that,
and a few days later, when the son has sold all this –
I wonder if he sold it back to his father, I wouldn't put it past him –
he lets his son go with his blessing.

And the son goes off to seek his fortune in the big city.

But, like so many of us, he doesn't make a fortune.
Instead, he wastes what he has on what the Bible calls “Dissolute living”.
You know the kind of thing –
fashionable clothes,
champagne,
caviar,
top-of-the-range smartphones,
expensive callgirls,
fast cars,
cocaine,
and so on and so forth.

They perhaps didn't have quite those things in his day, but very similar!
And he almost definitely gambled,
and may even have taken drugs as well.

And, inevitably, it all goes horribly wrong and he wakes up one morning with no money and with his creditors ringing the doorbell.
And he is forced to earn his living as best he can.

I don't think we Christians can ever quite realise the absolute horror of what happened next.
We don't have the utter horror of pigs that the Jews had and have.
We think of pigs, we think of bacon and sausages and roast pork with crispy crackling;
for the Jews –
and, I gather, for Muslims, too –
it was more like taking a job on a rat farm.
In terms of actual work,
it probably wasn't much different from the work he'd been used to,
but he would be an outcast among his own kind,
and we gather from the story that he wasn't paid very well, either.
He was hungry, to the point where even the pigs' food looked good.
I wonder if he was working for one of his creditors?

Anyway, one morning he wakes up and thinks to himself, “What on earth am I doing?
Even my father treats his people better than this –
maybe he'd take me on as a farm worker.”

You notice, perhaps, that he doesn't actually say he's sorry.
He doesn't appear to regret having left home,
only finding himself in this fix.
And yes, he would be better off working for his father than he is here.
He does say he’ll admit he has sinned, and is not worthy to be his father’s son any more, but there doesn’t seem to be any regret….
I wonder if those few years of squandering it all still felt worth it?

Well, we all know what happened next.
Father rushes out to greet him –
and men simply never ran in that place and time,
but remember that this story takes place in God's country,
and anything can happen there.
The celebrations go on and on.

Elder brother is most put out.
He has been working hard all the time,
and nobody ever gave him a party, did they?
And this wastrel, who has caused so much grief, is being treated like a prince.
What's all that about?

Well, the elder brother could have had a party any day in the week, if he'd wanted one.
He'd never said, had he?
He'd seemed quite content with his lifestyle.
Perhaps underneath, though, he was seriously jealous of his brother.
No, not jealous, that's the wrong word.
Envious.
Perhaps he wish he had had the guts to cut loose and make a life of
his own.
We don't know.

But whatever, Father's reaction seemed to him to be well out of order.
He wished his Father had said, “Get out –
how dare you show your face around here!”

Or that Father had said “Well, I suppose you can be a servant,
but no way are you coming back into this family.”

Or, perhaps, “Well, if you work really hard and prove to me you're really sorry, I might be prepared to forgive you –
in about ten years' time and providing you are absolutely perfect during that time!”

But for Father to rush up and hug Little Brother, and to be calling for champagne and throwing a party –
well, that was definitely out of order, as far as Big Brother was concerned.
His only hope was that Little Brother would insist on being treated as a servant:
“No, no, you can't give me a party!
I don't deserve it.
I'm going to live above the stables with the other workers,
and behave like a worker, not your son!”

You know, that's what I think I would have done.
I don't know about you, but I find being forgiven the hardest thing there is.
Responding to God's love is really hard.
I want to earn my forgiveness, earn God's love, God's approval.

But it doesn't work like that, does it?
The bit of Luke Chapter 15 that we didn't read was the other two “lost” stories –
the lost sheep and the lost coin.
We don't blame the coin for getting lost;
we know how easy it is to drop something, or to put it down in a safe place, and we can't find it.
If you knew how many time Robert mislays the keys to one church building or another….
And when we find whatever it was we have mislaid – usually when we’re looking for something else, we do rejoice!
We don't really blame the sheep for wandering off, either.
Sheep are dumb animals –
well, noisy ones, really, but stupid ones, whatever –
and if they can get into trouble, they will.
But the Good Shepherd isn't going to lose one if he can help it;
he'll be pulling on his coat and wellies as soon as he realises one has gone missing, and set off with his dogs to find it.

You might say that is over the top –
but again,
this is God's country, the Kingdom of Heaven,
and anything can happen there.
In God's country there is more joy over one lost sheep being found than over the 99 that stayed in their field.

But we can and we do blame the young man for running off.
Perhaps we would like to run off, who knows?
In any case, we can identify with him.
We know we can –
and maybe we have –
done dreadful things like that.
And we don't like it, like the big brother didn't like it,
when the Father forgives him so generously and open-heartedly,
even without his repenting properly.
He came home, he is here again, this calls for a drink!
No, we think, this won't do.
I can't be forgiven that easily.
It can't be that simple.
I need to earn it.

But we can't earn it.
We can't earn forgiveness.
We can't earn salvation.
Sometimes we speak as if, and maybe we even think,
that salvation is down to us,
that we need to say the special prayer so that God will save us.
No.
Salvation is all God's idea,
and God has a great deal more invested in the relationship than we do.
God pours out his love on us unconditionally, and all we need do is accept it.
God’s love and forgiveness are unconditional

This reading does fit in rather well with the fact that it’s Mothering Sunday. It’s also Mother’s Day, but they are two rather different things.

Mothering Sunday has roots way, way back in history, at a time when this mid-Lent Sunday was the time when servants would go home to visit their families
and, if possible, they would all visit the “mother church” of their area together.
One of the traditional readings for today is the one where Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem: “
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Your people have killed the prophets and have stoned the messengers who were sent to you.
I have often wanted to gather your people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
But you wouldn't let me.”

The image of Jesus as a mother hen!
What we remember on Mothering Sunday isn’t just our mothers, although them, too, but above all,
the wonderful love of God, our Father and our Mother.

We do give thanks for our mothers, of course we do.
But we have to remember, too, people whose Mums are no longer with us, and to remember that some people didn't have satisfactory relationships with their own Mums,
and some people have never known the joy of motherhood.
The Church used to be very tactless about this, and only give flowers to those women in the congregation who actually were mothers – quite ignoring those who would have loved to have had children.
And blithely glossing over the fact that for the rest of the year we were rather left to get on with it, and were told that the loneliness and isolation and lack of fellowship was “the price you pay for the wonderful privilege of being a Christian Mother!”
As if....
At least these days we give flowers to everybody in church!

But what I really want to leave with you this morning is God’s wonderful and unconditional love and forgiveness.
So much love, so much forgiveness – it could almost overwhelm us, which is probably why we hold back.
And we feel, rightly, that we don’t deserve it.
Well, of course we don’t – but who does?
I don’t know about you, but the first time I really realised the tiniest fraction of what God’s love is like was when they laid my newborn daughter in my arms.
Was this feeling, this love, this protectiveness, this –
this total overwhelmingness, was it really a picture of what God feels for me?
And for you?
And for each and every one of us?
I think it is.

But the awful thing we also have to remember is that this love is for everybody!
It’s not just for those who have “accepted Christ as their personal Saviour”;
it’s not just for those who conform to what we believe a Christian must be.
It’s everybody.
It’s the muggers, the phone snatchers, the bank robbers, the traffikers, the slavers, the rapists –
and yes, even the politicians!
God might –
and probably does –
hate the things they do, hate the things they say –
but God doesn’t hate them!
On the contrary, God loves each and every one of them as much as he loves you and me.
And each and every one of us is loved with all of God’s love, because God is love, and “when we are still far off” God comes running to rejoice with us that we are home at last! Amen!

Glimpses of Glory

 

Do you ever watch sport on television?
It doesn’t really matter which sport –
football, rugby, athletics, gymnastics, cycling, ice-skating –
whatever it is you enjoy,
the point I’m about to make is the same.

What we see on television is just the tip of the iceberg, the pinnacle of the sport.
They show you the very best athletes at the peak of their game.
What they don’t show you is the endless hours of practice every single one of those athletes puts in,
often training at unearthly hours of the morning to fit in with the day’s work, grinding along,
day after day after day,
getting injured,
recovering,
plodding on.
And then, every once in awhile, realising how much they’ve improved,
how much they are “getting it”.
Suddenly, all the hard work has paid off –
they’ve been selected for their team, or their club, or even their country!
Or perhaps they’re finding a certain aspect of the skill easy that six months before they could barely do.
A glimpse of the glory of what they’ve been working so hard for.

Perhaps you’ve taken a sport fairly seriously in your time, so you know what I’m talking about.
But even if you haven’t, isn’t it the same with our Christian lives, too?
We plod on, dutifully using what John Wesley called “The means of grace”,
that is, the Sacrament,
public worship,
the Scriptures,
prayer and so on,
and yet nothing seems to happen. 
Sometimes it feels as though our relationship with God is all down to us, not to God,
and doubts set in. 
But then, just sometimes, God breaks in and we get a glimpse of his glory. 
I know that has happened to me, and I hope it has happened to you.
 
In our readings today, various people get glimpses of God’s glory.
 
Firstly, Moses and the Israelites. 
Moses is spending time in the mountains with God. 
This passage is set shortly after that infamous episode with the golden calf,
and I think the authors are trying to emphasize that it is God, Yahweh, who is in charge,
not Moses, not a golden calf, nor anybody else. 
So Moses’ face shines when he has been in God’s presence,
as he is speaking with God’s authority. 
The Israelites caught a glimpse of God’s glory. 
And we are told that Moses did, too;
he was allowed to see just the tiniest shadow of the back of God –
as though God had a human form, but then, he was told,
he couldn’t see the face of God as he wouldn’t live through the experience. 
Nobody can, nobody except Jesus. 
We can only come to God through Jesus;
more of that in a minute. 
The Israelites could only see God’s glory reflected in Moses’ face, and it scared them. 
Moses, who hadn’t at all realised anything was different,
had to put a veil over his face while he was among them, so as not to scare them.
 
The New Testament reading set for today, which we didn’t read,
points out that Moses was able to take the veil off, eventually, because the glory faded. 
Moses was back among the people, involved in the every-day tasks of running the Exodus,
and gradually the glimpse of glory that he had had,
and that he had passed on to the Israelites,
faded.
 
Okay, fast-forward several hundred years to the time of Christ.
This time, it is Jesus who is going up the mountain and he asks his friends James, Peter and John to go with him.
I don't know whether Jesus knew what was going to happen,
only that it was going to be something rather different and special,
and he wanted some moral support!
And so the four friends go up the mountain –
and suddenly things get rather confused for a time,
and when it stops being confused,
there is Jesus in shining white robes talking to Moses and Elijah.
 
Peter, of course, babbles on about building shelters,
but more to reassure himself that he exists, I think, than for any other reason.
And then the voice from heaven saying "This is my Son, listen to Him".
In other words, Jesus is more important than either Moses or Elijah, who were the two main people, apart from God, in the Jewish faith.
To good Jews, as James, Peter and John were, this must have almost felt like blasphemy.
No wonder Jesus told them to keep their big mouths shut until the time was right,
or he'd have been stoned for a blasphemer forthwith.

Peter, for one, remembered this momentous day until the end of his life.
Years and years later, he –
or someone writing in his name –
was to write:
"For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received honour and glory from God the Father
when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, `This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'
We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven,
while we were with him on the holy mountain."
 
For Peter, James and John, it was to be proof that Jesus is the Messiah, and through all the turbulent times that followed they must have held on to the memory of that tremendous day, when they saw a glimpse of God’s glory in Jesus.
 
But they, too, had to come down from the mountainside and carry on,
and immediately they are confronted with a crisis:
a child who has been brought to the disciples for healing, but nothing has happened. 
In this version of the story, Jesus sounds almost cross –
well, you can’t blame him, can you? 
He was probably tired after being on the mountain,
and rather wanting a quiet supper and his bed,
and now the disciples were all talking at once, explaining how they’d tried to cast out this demon,
and the boy’s father is adding to the confusion, and yadda, yadda, yadda….. 
Basically, back to normal! 
We know from other accounts of this story that afterwards Jesus tells the disciples that they can only cast out that sort of demon with prayer and possibly fasting. 
 
So it seems that glimpses of God’s glory are very rare, and the normal gritty, hum-drum, everyday life is the norm. 
And that’s as it should be. 
You can’t live on a mountain-top all the time, you’d get altitude sickness! 
If you were on holiday all the time, you wouldn’t appreciate the rest and relaxation that being on holiday brings. 
It’s not much fun waking up and knowing you have no work to go to and, when you get up, the big excitement of the day will be deciding what to have for supper! 
We are never quite sure where God is in all of this. 
 
But God is there. 
Those very special glimpses of his glory, such as Moses saw,
such as Peter, James and John saw, are just that:
special. 
They happen maybe once or twice in a lifetime, if that. 
But God is there, acting, working in our lives, even if we don’t always recognise Him.

There are a couple of stories about this, which you may or may not have heard. In the first, two men are talking in the pub, and the first is telling of an adventure he’s recently had in North Africa. He got lost in the desert, and ran out of water, and quite thought his last hour had come, so he prayed out loud to God to come and save him.
“And what did God do?” asked his friend, realising that something must have happened as there he was, large as life and twice as natural, in the pub enjoying his pint.
“Oh,” said the first man, “God didn’t need to do anything, as just then a caravan came along, and I was able to go on with them to safety.”
 
The second story tells of the time there was a big flood, and people had to climb up on to the roofs of their houses to escape.
One person – let’s make it a woman this time, as we had a man in the last story, but it doesn’t really matter – one woman thought this was a remarkable opportunity to demonstrate, so she thought, God’s power, so she prayed “Dear Lord, please come and save me.”

Just then, someone came past in a rowing-boat and said “Climb in, we’ll take you to safety!”

“Oh, no thank you,” said our friend, “I’ve prayed for God to save me, so I’ll just wait for Him to do so.”

And she carried on praying, “Dear Lord, please save me!”

Then along came the police in a motor-launch, and called for her to jump in, but she sent them away, too, and continued to pray “Dear Lord, please save me!”

Finally, a Coastguard helicopter came and sent down someone on a rope to him, but she still refused,
claiming that she was relying on God to save her.

And half an hour later, she was swept away and drowned.

So, because she was a Christian, as you can imagine, she ended up in Heaven,
and the first thing she did when he got there
was go to to the Throne of Grace, and say to God,
“What do you mean by letting me down like this?
I prayed and prayed for you to rescue me, and you didn’t!”

“My dear child,” said God, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter –
what more did you want?”
 
When we pray for someone to be healed, quite often we want to see God intervening spectacularly, like the disciples expected to see with the boy with a demon from today’s reading. 
After all, if you think of it, there’s a limit to what medicine can do. 

When you have an operation, the surgeons can cut you open and do what needs to be done inside you, and then they can stitch you up again – but they can’t make that cut heal up!

They can, of course, do all sorts of things to encourage it to heal –
they can’t actually make the flesh grow back together again.
That has to be left to natural processes –
or is it God? 
 
I believe God is involved in healing, whether it is by direct, supernatural intervention,
or, more usually, through the normal processes of one’s immune system,
aided by medical or surgical intervention when necessary. 
But those glimpses of glory that I started with –
when you realise that you are making progress in your chosen sport or hobby, or perhaps when you are out there competing –
I believe those times, too, are from God.
 
I think, then, that what I want to leave with you today is this:
as we go into Lent,
which is a time when we are apt to think about God, and our relationship with Him,
perhaps a little more deeply than at other times of the year,
let’s be on the lookout for touches of God in our everyday lives. 
They don’t have to be spectacular, they probably won’t be. 
But each of them is a little glimpse of glory.  Amen.

Doormat or Dynamite?

 

Two familiar passages today; in the first, we see Joseph confronting his brothers many years after they sold him into slavery and told his father he was dead.
And in the second, Jesus is preaching to the crowds in what is often called the “Sermon on the Plain”;
Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount that we are so familiar with from Matthew’s gospel.

Let’s look at the Old Testament story first.
You know Joseph’s story, of course;
born into the most dysfunctional of dysfunctional families, his father and grandfather both liars and cheats.
And Joseph himself was the spoilt favourite –
his father had two wives, you may remember, Rachel, whom he loved, and Leah, whom he didn't but was tricked into marrying anyway.
He also had a couple of kids by Leah's and Rachel's maids, Bilhah and Zilpah, but Rachel, the beloved wife, had had trouble conceiving,
so Joseph and his full brother Benjamin were very precious,
especially as Rachel had died having Benjamin.
He, it seems, was still too young to take much part in the story at this stage, but Joseph was well old enough to help his brothers –
and, we are told, to spy on them and sneak on them to his father.
And stupid enough to boast of self-important dreams.

It's not too surprising that his brothers hated him, is it?
Obviously, he didn't deserve to be killed, but human nature is what it is,
and the brothers were a long way from home
and saw an opportunity to be rid of him.
At least Reuben, and later Judah, didn't go along with having him killed,
although they did sell him to the Ishmaelites who were coming along.

Joseph has a lot of growing up to do,
and it takes a false accusation and many years in prison to help him grow up.
But eventually he is freed
and given an important post in the Egyptian administration,
preparing for the forthcoming famine and then administering food relief when it comes.

And so his brothers come to beg for food relief.
And at first Joseph is angry enough with them to first of all insist they bring the youngest, Benjamin, with them next time they come –
he had stayed at home to look after their father –
and then to plant false evidence that he had stolen a gold cup.
He says he will let the others go but keep Benjamin as his slave,
but the other brothers explain that it will kill their father if he does so.

And at that something breaks inside Joseph, and he makes himself known to his brothers, forgiving them completely for all they had done to him –
pointing out, even, that God had used this for good,
as he had been able to organise the food relief,
knowing there would be five more years of drought and famine to come.
And he sends for his father to come and bring all the households and settle in Egypt.
The family is reunited and –
for some generations, at least –
they all live happily ever after.

Five hundred years or so later, the son of another Joseph is preaching to the people.
And what he says is completely revolutionary.
Here is a modern paraphrase:

“If you are ready to hear the truth then I have this to say:
Love! Love even your enemies.
Treat even those who hate you with love.
If anyone mouths off at you or treats you like dirt, wish them all the best and pray for them.
If someone gives you a smack around the ear to humiliate you, stand tall and stick your chin out, and invite them to have another crack.
Absorb the hostility –
don’t escalate it.
If someone nicks your coat, just say, ‘Hey, if you’re needing that, you’ll be needing these,’ and hand over your hat and scarf as well.
Give to everyone who asks something of you, and don’t go hassling people to give back what they’ve got from you.
Live generously, and don’t go keeping score and looking to balance the ledger.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

It’s all pretty familiar, isn’t it?
We are perhaps more familiar with the version given in St Matthew, but it’s pretty much the same sentiment.
Jesus goes on:
“If you want to know how to treat someone, just ask yourself what you’d be hoping for if you were in their shoes.
Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, not just the way you are treated.
It’s not as though you’d deserve a medal for loving someone who loves you.
Anyone can do that!
You won’t find your name in the honours lists for a good turn done to those who are always going out of their way to help you.
Any crook can do that!
And if you only ever give when it looks like there’ll be something in it for you, what’s the big deal?
Every business shark knows how to make an investment, but it’s not exactly evidence of a generous spirit.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

The thing is, of course, that we don’t do it!
None of it.
We know it in our heads, but we haven’t made it part of us.
We’re taught to stand up for ourselves, we’re taught to look out for number one.
Even though we’re taught to share, we understand that we may have our turn on the swings in the playground, or whatever.
Maybe as adults, we reckon we’ve a right to our turn at the remote control….

But from what Jesus is saying, we don’t.
We need to put other people first.
We need to allow other people to walk all over us, to hit us, to steal our possessions.
It does sound as though we’re supposed to be doormats, doesn’t it?
As though we need to just stand there, being totally passive, allowing other people to run our lives for us.
No wonder we don’t do it!

But are we supposed to be doormats?
I don’t think so!
Jesus wasn’t, after all.
Yes, he allowed himself to be arrested and crucified, he refused to defend himself at his trial.
But before that we see him arguing with the Pharisees and teachers of the law.
He doesn’t say “Oh well, I expect you’re right,” but tries to show them what he is all about, what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
He took up a whip and drove out the traders in the Temple –
was that being a doormat?

You see, it’s not just about standing there and taking it.
It’s about being positive, as well.
“Be different!” says Jesus.
“Love your enemies and do good to them.
Lend freely, and don’t go looking for returns.
God will see that it’s worth it for you.
You will be God’s very own children.
God is generous to those who don’t deserve it,
even if they’re totally ungrateful.
God forgives whatever anyone owes.
Do likewise:
treat people the way God treats people.”
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net

“Treat people the way God treats people.”
Of course, there are those who go around saying that God hates this group of people, or that group.
There are those who would like to exclude all sorts of people from God’s love.
But that’s not what the Bible says.
Our Methodist doctrines teach that everybody, no matter who, can be saved.
“And every offender who truly believes,
that moment from Jesus a pardon receives!”

God doesn’t hold things against us.
It worries me, you know, that people’s whole careers can be ruined because of a thoughtless tweet they may have published ten years ago.
People move on.
I don’t know about you, but there are things I’ve thought or said in my past that make me cringe to think about them now –
had there been social media when I was young,
I’d probably be utterly disgraced now!
And you can probably think of occasions in your own lives, too.

But the thing is, God doesn’t think of them.
“So far as the East is from the West,
so far has God put our transgressions from us,” says the Psalmist.
And Jesus reminds us, here as elsewhere,
that because that is so, we need to forgive, too.
Think of the story we call the Prodigal Son.

The son who asked for his share of inheritance and went into the world to have some fun,
and when he was in the gutter decided to go home again.
And the father ran to meet him, and put on a massive celebration for him,
and had obviously been longing and longing and longing for his son to come home again.

But the father couldn't make the son come home.
He had to wait until the son chose to come home of his own free will.
What's more, the son had to accept that his father wanted him home again.
He could have said "Well, no, I don't deserve all this,"
and rushed off to live in the stables, behaving like a servant,
although his father wanted to treat him as the son he was.
The son had to receive his father's forgiveness, just as we do.

And don't forget, either, the elder brother,
who simply couldn't join in the celebrations because he couldn't forgive his brother.
How dare they celebrate for that lousy rotter!
I don't know whether he was crosser with his father for having a party, or with his brother for daring to come home.
I feel sorry for him, because he allowed his bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time.

And that is exactly what happens to us when we do not forgive one another.
We allow our bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time with God.

I often think forgiveness is the Christian’s secret weapon.
All of Jesus’ teachings in the passage we have been looking at this morning seem to be about forgiveness.
If someone hits us, we forgive them, rather than hitting back.
If someone steals our coat, we forgive them, and perhaps even offer them more of our clothes.
And so on.
After all, that’s how we’d like them to treat us, isn’t it?

But as you know, and as I know, the world isn’t like that.
And we tend to conform to the world’s standards,
rather than God’s standards.

But what if we didn’t?
What if we really did do as Jesus tells us?
What if we really treated people the way God treats them,
the way we would like them to treat us?

The first Christians were known as the people who turned the world upside-down.
But that was two thousand years ago, and over the centuries we have watered down Jesus’ teaching.
We have got used to it, and we don’t see how revolutionary his teaching actually was.

Joseph, as we have seen, was able to forgive his brothers –
it took him awhile, but when he got there, he really forgave them.
He saw how God had worked everything together for good, and not only forgave them, but invited them to come and settle locally.
He really is the poster child for forgiveness.

Jesus promises us that if we give generously –
and I don’t think he means just material giving, but giving of ourselves, of our time, of our love, of our forgiveness –
then God’s generosity to us will know no limits, either.

What do you think, I wonder?
If you did as Jesus says in the gospel reading –
would you turn into a doormat?
Or could it be, possibly, just might, it prove to be dynamite,
something to turn the world upside-down?
Amen.

A tree planted by the water

 

From our first reading this morning, the passage from Jeremiah chapter 17:
“I will bless the person
    who puts his trust in me.
He is like a tree growing near a stream
    and sending out roots to the water.
It is not afraid when hot weather comes,
    because its leaves stay green;
it has no worries when there is no rain;
    it keeps on bearing fruit.”

And in the Psalm we read together, we are told that those who delight in the law of the Lord “are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in due season.
Their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.”

Some time ago I saw a documentary about the Kalahari desert in Africa, which is one of the driest places on earth.
But water still flows under, and very occasionally on top of, the dried river beds, and you could see, from drone footage, exactly where the rivers run, because they are lined with green trees,
and it was those trees that enabled giraffes to live there,
as they could feed on the leaves.

Israel is pretty dry, too, I understand –
the Negev, do they call the desert there?
Anyway, the whole thing of irrigation, and planting trees by the river, has a great many echoes in the Bible,
so I imagine it must have been very much a thing,
especially back in the days before modern irrigation techniques were able to make the desert, quite literally, blossom like a rose.

One of my favourite passages is in Ezekiel,
where that prophet has a vision of a stream of water beginning in the Temple in Jerusalem and flowing down to the Dead Sea,
becoming wider and deeper as it flows, full of fish, fertile, bringing fertility to the whole area, including the Dead Sea.
And we are told that “On each bank of the stream all kinds of trees will grow to provide food.
Their leaves will never wither, and they will never stop bearing fruit.
They will have fresh fruit every month, because they are watered by the stream that flows from the Temple.
The trees will provide food, and their leaves will be used for healing people.”

Zechariah also mentions this river, but says half of it will flow to the Mediterranean and half to the Red Sea.
He doesn’t put trees alongside it explicitly, though.

This river appears, according to the book of Revelation, to be in the heavenly Jerusalem rather than the earthly one we know.
The writer has a vision of the new Jerusalem, and in part,
“The angel also showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing down the middle of the city's street.
On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month;
and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.”

But the point of the passages in both Jeremiah and the Psalm is that it is we who are –
or who can be –
like the tree planted by the water.
It is we who can bear fruit all year round, who can stay green and fresh even in times of drought.
And at this point we all start to wriggle and feel uncomfortable and think, “Oh God, I’m not like that at all!”

And, of course, we aren’t like that.
At least, most of us aren’t.
Some of us are, and you will know who those people are in your life.
But they won’t know it –
partly because if they did know it, they might start thinking what great people they are, and then, of course, they wouldn’t be.
Because the whole point is, those of us who do bear fruit, or green leaves, or whatever, are the ones through whom God’s Spirit flows.

Jesus said that if we abide in him, we will bear much fruit, and apart from him, we can do nothing.

We know, too, what the fruit is that we are going to bear –
those lovely, life-enhancing qualities that St Paul lists in his letter to the Galatians:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
And I am sure there are others –
Paul’s lists are apt to be descriptive, not prescriptive!

But to get back to our passage, Jeremiah also points out that people who do not trust in God are like desert shrubs –
small, stunted, good for nothing much at all.
A far cry from the lush trees growing by the river.
And we may well know people like that, too;
people who do make a fair fist at being human,
but oh, how much more they could be if only they trusted Jesus!

And, you know, it’s not just us as individuals, but us as a church.
As a church, we can be lush trees growing by the river;
at that, we can guide people to the source of living water, Jesus himself.
We can cry out against injustice where we perceive it;
we can stand by our American friends who are really worried by this new regime; by our Ukrainian,
Russian,
Palestinian,
Israeli,
Sudanese,
Somali
or Syrian friends whose lives have been devastated by war;
we can cry out against the conditions that mean people need to use the food banks –
and, indeed, donate to them;
and so on –
you can watch the news as much as I can!
Or, alas, we can be small and stunted and good for nothing much –
but I’m sure this church isn’t like that!

And Jesus himself had some pretty harsh things to say to people –
and, presumably, churches –
who only trusted themselves, as we heard in our Gospel reading.
We are more used to the version of this teaching given in Matthew, I think, probably because Matthew’s version is so much easier.
We can think of ourselves as poor in spirit, as hungry and thirsty after righteousness –
but we are manifestly rich and well fed,
just like those whom Jesus condemns here.

I imagine Jesus does not condemn us just for being rich and well fed and content –
after all, that is largely an accident of birth.
Had we been born in another country, at another time, things might have gone very differently for us.
But it’s the “I’m all right, Jack” mentality that so often goes with being rich and well fed that is to be shunned at all costs.
We may be all right –
but there are plenty of people who aren’t.
We may be going home to a big Sunday lunch,
or we might be planning to go out for brunch,
as there are so many good restaurants in this area that serve it on a Sunday.
We’re on our way to the country for a week!
But what of those whose cupboards are bare, who depend on the food banks for today’s meals?
What of those who are homeless and begging in the streets?
These appear to be the ones who, in this passage, Jesus is praising and blessing.

I’m not saying, of course, that we should be giving to every beggar on the streets –
there are better ways of
helping to relieve homelessness and hunger.
I know some of you have donated to the Brixton Food Bank recently –
Robert took a car-load from here over to the hub at Brixton Hill just the other day.
Please go on doing this as and when you can afford to –
it is more necessary than ever, alas.

But it isn’t so much what you do, as your attitude.
Remember Jesus’ story of the rich man ostentatiously giving huge amounts to the Temple, and then the poor old beggar woman giving a tiny coin?
It was, said Jesus, the woman who had given the most;
the rich man wasn’t going to miss what he’d given, but that coin might have meant the woman going without her supper that day.

But how do we become that sort of person?
I know I’m not!
The sort of person who resembles a tree planted by the water,
bearing fruit and leaves all year round –
well, that’s not me!
I’m far too selfish and lazy and greedy and so on….
But then, we all have our faults.
And if I were to try to conquer mine in my own strength, I’d just be setting myself up for failure.

The thing is –
and this isn’t easy, either –
it’s about letting God grow us.
We are to produce fruit, and fruit isn’t manufactured, it’s grown.
Leaves aren’t stuck on the tree with Blu-tak, they are grown, too.

Some years ago now, a friend gave me a small flower-pot containing an aloe vera shoot. These days, it’s huge – at least three large plants, and I ought to repot it. But I’ve done nothing to make this happen – given it a few drops of water from time to time; plucked a leaf when I’ve needed some aloe vera for something, and that’s it. It has grown.

Plants grow.
Flowers grow.
Fruit grows.
Leaves grow.
We can’t make them grow, and we can’t make ourselves produce the good qualities that are required of God’s people.
But we can allow God the Holy Spirit to flow through us,
to fill us,
to indwell us,
to enable us to become the people God designed us to be.
And if we do that –
and, let’s face it, we’re not going to be able to do that every moment,
but the more we try to allow God to work in and through us, the more successful we will be –
if we do allow God the Holy Spirit to flow through us, we will gradually become a tree planted by the water side.

Amen.

Extravagance

 

 

I suggest you listen to the beginning of the recording, at least, as I included what would have been the children's talk had there actually been any children in church!

I wonder how many of you went to a Christmas party? We invited someone to lunch on Christmas Day, but the only other party we went to was Brixton Hill’s big annual Christmas dinner. For reasons I won’t go into now, that was a bit of a disaster, with food having to be cooked on one site and brought round to the other. Mostly by R! But there was plenty of food; most people were able to take a “goody bag” home with them.

That’s one of the things about parties, or weddings,
or any other big event that you’re hosting, or your church is,
have you got enough food and drink for everybody –
to the point that, very often, there is far too much, as there was at Brixton Hill this year!
And I do know we got it right when it came to buying the sparkling wine for our daughter’s wedding, many years ago now,
but I also remember worrying lest we should, perhaps, have got another case….
As it turned out, there was plenty –
we were even able to take a couple of bottles home with us!

But it seems to have been very far from the case for that poor host of the wedding at Cana we have just read about.
As I understand it, back in the day wedding feasts lasted two or three days, and a host would expect to have enough food and drink to cater for the entire time.
But something had gone badly wrong here.
We don’t know what had happened, or why –
only that it had.
Such embarrassment –
the party will be going on for awhile yet, but there is no wine.

But among the wedding guests were a very special family.
Mary, the carpenter's widow from Nazareth, and her sons.
Cana isn't very far from Nazareth, only about twelve miles,
but that's quite a good day's journey when you have to rely on your own two feet to get you there.
So it's probable that either the bride or the groom were related to Mary in some way,
especially as she seems to have been told about the disaster with the wine.

And then comes one of those turning-point moments in the Gospels.
Mary tells her eldest son, Jesus, that the wine has run out.

Now, as far as we can tell, Jesus is only just beginning to realise who he is.
John's gospel says that he has already been baptised by John the Baptist,
which implies that he has been out into the desert to wrestle with the implications of being the Messiah –
and the temptations which came with it,
and John also tells us that Simon Peter, Andrew and some of the others have started to be Jesus' disciples
and had come with him to the wedding.
But, in this version of the story, Jesus hasn't yet started to use his divine power to heal people and to perform miracles,
and he isn't quite sure that the time is right to do so.
So when his mother comes up and says “They have no wine,”
his immediate reaction is to say, more or less,
“Well, nothing I can do about it!
It isn't time yet!”

His mother, however, seems to have been ahead of Jesus for once, on this,
and says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you!”
And Jesus, who was always very close to God,
and who had learnt to listen to his Father all the time,
realises that, after all, his mother is right
and the time has come to start using the power God has given him.
So he tells the servants to fill those big jars with water –
and they pour out the best wine anybody there has ever tasted.
As someone remarked, right at the fag-end of the wedding,
when people are beginning to go home and everybody has had more than enough to drink, anyway.

I don't suppose the bridegroom's family were sorry, though.
Those jars were huge –
they held about a hundred litres each, and there were six of them.
Do you realise just how much wine that was?
Six hundred litres –
about eight hundred standard bottles of wine!
Eight hundred....
you don't even see that many on the supermarket shelves, do you?
Eight hundred....
I should think Mary was a bit flabber-gasted.
And it was such good quality too.

Okay, so people drank rather more wine then than we do today,
since there was no tea or coffee, poor them,
and the water could be a bit iffy,
but even still, I should think eight hundred bottles would last them quite a while.
And at that stage of the wedding party, there's simply no way they could have needed that much.

But isn't that exactly like Jesus?
Isn't that typical of God?
We see it over and over and over again in the Scriptures.
The story of feeding the five thousand, for instance –
and one of the Gospel-writers points out that it was five thousand men, not counting the women and children –
well, in that story, Jesus didn't provide just barely enough lunch for everybody, quite the reverse –
there were twelve whole basketsful left over!
Far more than enough food –
all the disciples could have a basketful to take home to Mum.

Or what about when the disciples were fishing and he told them to cast their nets that-away?
The nets didn't just get a sensible catch of fish –
they were full and over-full, so that they almost ripped.

It's not just in the Bible either –
look at God's creation.
You've all seen pictures of the way the desert blooms when it rains –
look at those millions of flowers that nobody, for a very long time, ever knew were there except God.
Or look at how many millions and millions of sperm male animals produce to fertilise only a few embryos in the course of a lifetime.
Or where lots of embryos are produced, like fish, for instance, millions of them are eaten or otherwise perish long before adulthood.
And millions and millions of different plant and animal species, some of which are only now being discovered.

Or look at the stars!
All those millions upon millions of stars, many with planets, some with planets like our own that may even hold intelligent life.....
God is amazing, isn't He?
And just suppose we really are the only intelligent life in the Universe?
That says something else about God's extravagance in creating such an enormous Universe with only us in it!
Our God is truly amazing!

Scientists think that some of the so-called exoplanets they have been discovering lately might contain life, although whether or not that would be intelligent life is not clear, and probably never will be.

So how did God redeem such beings, assuming they needed redemption?
We know that here, his most extravagant act of all was to come down and be born as a human baby –
God, helpless, lying in a makeshift cradle fashioned from an animal feeding-trough.
Having to learn all the things that human babies and children have to learn.
Becoming just like us, one of us, knowing what it’s like to work for his living, what it’s like to be a condemned criminal and to die a shameful death!

But God, God who could only allow Moses the teeniest glimpse of his glory, or he would not have been able to survive it, and even then his face shone for hours afterwards, this God became a human being who could be captured and put to death.

You know, sometimes I think the main function of the church is to help us cope with God.
Perhaps the church, quite unwittingly, limits God, or, like Moses, we’d not be able to handle it.
St Paul prays that we might know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

The Church, which is His body.
And yet we –
we the Church –
are so bad at being His body.
We limit God.
We limit God as individuals, saying “Thus far shall you come, and no further!” We don’t allow God access to all of us, to every particle of our being.

And we limit God as communities, as churches;
We tell God what to do.
We tell God who God may love, and who is to be considered beyond the pale.
We judge, we fail to forgive, we withhold, despite the fact that Jesus said
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged;
do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven;
give, and it will be given to you.
A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,
will be put into your lap;
for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

And yet we still hold back from God, both as individuals and as communities.
I don’t mean just money –
although we do that, too, despite the promise that if we:
“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts;
see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”

But we hold back ourselves from God.
We aren’t –
well, I know I’m not, and I dare say I speak for you too –
we aren’t really prepared to give ourselves whole-heartedly to God.
After all, who knows what God won’t ask of us if we do?
We might even have to give up our lives, as Jesus did!
Or worse, perhaps God would say “No thank you!”
Perhaps we would be asked to go on doing just exactly as we are doing –
how disappointing!

But I wonder if it’s really about doing.
Isn’t it more about being?
Isn’t it more about being made into the person God created us to be?
Isn’t it more about allowing God into us extravagantly, wholeheartedly…. I would say “completely”, but I don’t think that’s quite possible.
God is simply too big, and we would be overwhelmed.

Nevertheless, Jesus came, he told us, so that we can have life, and have it abundantly!
Abundantly.
Can we let more of God into our lives, to be able to live more abundantly?

Do you dare?
Do I dare?
Do we dare?
Amen!