God gets involved

 

A new introduction to an old friend!

At this time of year, our Old Testament readings are all about Abraham. Over the last month, if the Old Testament lesson was read, we learnt how God called Abraham to leave his home in Ur
how he and Sarah were childless, but God promised them a child;
how Abraham pre-empted this by conceiving a child, Ishmael, on his servant;
how that all went rather pear-shaped when Ishmael started playing too roughly with Isaac, when he was finally born, and making him cry;
last week, we had that extraordinary episode when God appeared to be asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac;
and now, this week, we come to a nearly-grown-up Isaac, and his search for a wife.

Scholars seem to think that these stories of Abraham,
which had been an integral part of the Jewish tradition,
were collected together and written down during the 5^th and 6^th centuries BC –
this, you remember, was when the Israelites were in exile,
the Temple had been destroyed,
and they had no king of their own.
Only a very few Israelites were left in Jerusalem,
and they had rather lapsed from their traditions and practice.
So the various stories were collected and written down,
possibly somewhat haphazardly, in case it should all be lost.

Abraham himself is thought to have lived in the early part of the 2^nd millennium BC.
Apparently the earliest he could have been born was 1976 BC and the latest he could have died was 1637 BC.
This was in the Bronze age –
he would have had bronze tools, not iron, and possibly still a flint knife.

Many years ago now, Robert and I visited the town of Bolzano,
where they have the museum where the body of Oetzi, the ice-man, is stored.
You may remember that he was found in the Alps about 20 years ago,
having been shot by person or persons unknown.
His body had been preserved in a glacier for over 5,000 years.
The point is, this was even longer ago than Abraham –
he only had a copper axe, as they hadn't discovered about bronze yet.
But the things that were found with him –
his axe,
his coat,
his trousers,
his bow and arrows,
his knife and so on,
you could see just how they were used, and he was really a person just like you or me!
That makes Abraham feel less remote, as he, too, would have worn clothes we recognise, and carried tools we'd know and so on.

Abraham had felt called by God to leave his home-town of Ur in the Chaldees, which in his day was allegedly highly civilised.
They had, apparently, nineteen different kinds of beer and a great many fried-fish shops, if you call that being civilized!
However, they did enjoy other kinds of food, such as
onions,
leeks,
cucumbers,
beans,
garlic,
lentils,
milk,
butter,
cheese,
dates,
and the occasional meal of beef or lamb.
Just the sort of food I like!

There was wine available, to make a change from beer,
but it was expensive, and drunk only by the rich.
They played board-games,
enjoyed poetry and music, which they played on the lyre, harp and drum,
and were generally rather well-found, from all one gathers.

The only thing was that without many trees in their part of the world,
they had to do without much furniture,
and tended to sleep on mats on the floor, for instance, instead of beds.
But definitely a sensible and civilised place in which to live.
When you hear it described, it doesn't sound all that remote, does it?
They were people like us, and had similar tastes to us.

But Abraham had felt called to leave there,
and to take his family and household and to live in the desert.
And they had all sorts of adventures, and sometimes things went very wrong, but mostly they went all right.

And now Isaac has grown up and Sarah has died,
and it is time for Isaac to marry.
Abraham is urgent that he marry a woman from his own tribe,
not a local Canaanite woman, who wouldn't have known about God,
so he sends his servant back to Ur, to find a suitable relation for Isaac to marry.

The servant explains, rather earnestly, how he asked God to show him which the right woman was –
would she offer to draw water for his camels, or not?
That wasn't an easy task –
camels, which can go four or five days without water, like to drink A LOT at one time, so she'd have needed a fair few bucketsful!

Rebecca's family would have liked a few days to get used to the idea,
but the servant says he needs to get back as soon as possible,
and Rebecca agrees to leave next day.
So she and her various maidservants –
one of them may have been her old nurse –
got packed up and ready, and set off.
And eventually they get home safely,
and there is Isaac coming to meet them.
And they get married, and live more-or-less happily ever after!

We sometimes get alarmed about arranged marriages these days;

we know that in those communities where they're still more-or-less the norm, things can go horribly wrong –
think of those so-called “honour killings” we hear so much about!
Even in this day and age, it isn't always easy for someone to escape an abusive situation if they don't know where to go.
But as I understand it, an arranged marriage can be every bit as happy and as successful as one where the bride and groom have chosen one another;

we all know that you have to work at being married,
whether you knew your husband for years beforehand or whether you met him a few days or weeks before the wedding –
or even at the wedding!

I think Rebecca was very brave going off with Abraham's servant like that;

she had no way of knowing who or what was awaiting her at the far end of the journey.
The servant had bigged up Abraham's –
and thus Isaac's –
wealth, and had given her lots of gold jewellery, but was he telling the truth?

But one thing stands out about this story and that is that God was involved from beginning to end!
And God led them all to a happy ending.

I wonder how much we actually believe that God is really involved in our lives?
I know we say we do, but these Sundays in Ordinary Time are very much places where what we think we believe tends to come up against what we really do believe!
After all, not all of our stories have happy endings, do they?
Some do, many do, and for these we give thanks,
but what happens when they don't?
Does God get involved in our lives?
And if so, how does this work, and how can we work with God to ensure a happy ending?

Well, the Bible definitely tells us that God is involved in our lives,
and I am sure most of us could tell of moments when we were perfectly and utterly sure of this.
But equally, most of us could tell of moments when we really struggled with it!
Where was God when this or that bad thing happened?
Does God really care?
In the story from two weeks ago, Ishmael and Hagar in the desert,
we found that God was there with them, even though it hadn't felt like it.

Many of us have lived through enough bleak times to know that one comes out the other side.
We know that, when we look back, we will see God's hand upon it all.
God may not have led us to a happy ending, exactly,
but we can see how God has worked all things together for good for us.

It's not a matter of God waving a magic wand and producing the happy ending we want;

we all know God doesn't work like that.
And it's not a matter, either, of God having set the future in stone so that nothing we can do can change things.
Nor is it a matter of God simply sitting back and letting us struggle as best we can, although everybody feels at times that this is what is happening.

It's more as if God is working with us, moment by moment.
Sometimes we –
or other people –
do things that mean the situation can't come out as God would have wished.
God has a detailed plan for creation, but his plan for our individual lives isn't –
can't be –
mapped out in moment-by-moment detail
since we are free to make our own choices.
But God truly wants the best possible life for each one of us.
The idea, I think, is to stay as close to God as possible,
trying to be aware of each moment of decision and what God would like for us to do.

But, of course, as St Paul points out in the letter to the Romans, that isn't actually possible!
We're a bit crap at actually doing the right thing, no matter how much we know we want to!
It was impossible for Paul to keep the Jewish law in its entirety,
no matter how much he wanted to.
And although we know we are, and I quote, under grace not under the law,
we do tend to find it easier to try to follow a set of rules and regulations than to follow Jesus!
And, of course, we don't follow those rules and regulations perfectly –
how could we?

But Jesus points out that his burden is light!
Sometimes we don't feel as though it is.
“Come unto me all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”

I am sure Abraham's servant must have felt incredibly burdened when he went back to Ur to find Rebecca.
But the servant, at least, spent his time moment-by-moment in God's presence.
He trusted that God would lead him, step by step, to the right woman and that God would bring the whole journey to a happy conclusion.
“Come unto Me all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”
Abraham's servant trusted God.
I wonder how much we trust God?
It isn't always easy, is it.
Last week's story, how God asked Abraham to kill Isaac,
was very much about trust.
Abraham didn't even argue with God –
he just went ahead and did as he was told, leaving it very much up to God to do the right thing!
Even Isaac didn't struggle –
he was a young man at that stage, not a small boy,
and he could easily have overpowered his elderly father.
But no –
he allowed himself to be bound and laid upon the altar.
And God did do the right thing, as it were, and produced the ram.

And now God did show the servant his choice of wife for Isaac.
And so was born the Kingdom of Israel.
We never know the consequences of our choices –
they may be far more far-reaching than we expect.
But we do need to practice involving God in our everyday lives,
otherwise, when the crunch comes, we'll find it much harder than it need be to rely on him.
“I will give you rest,” says Jesus, but if we don't know how to come to him for that rest, how can he give it to us?
Amen.

Trinity Sunday 2023 Evening service

 This is similar, but not identical, to what I preached this morning.  This was a Zoom service; please excuse the washing-machine noises at the beginning!

Today is Trinity Sunday,
the day on which we celebrate all the different aspects of God.
It’s actually a very difficult day to preach on,
since it’s very easy to get bogged down in the sort of theology which none of us understands,
and which we can very easily get wrong.

The trouble is, of course, that the concept of the Trinity is trying to explain something that simply won’t go into words.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and most of the time we don’t really stop and think about it.
Trinity Sunday is the day we are expected to stop and think!

The thing is, the first half of the Christian year,
which begins way back before Christmas,
is the time when we think about Jesus.
We prepare for the coming of the King, in Advent,
and then we remember his birth,
his being shown to the Gentiles,
his presentation in the Temple as a baby.
Then we skip a few years and remember his ministry,
his arrest, death and resurrection, and his ascension into heaven.
Then we remember the coming of the promised Holy Spirit,
and today we celebrate God in all his Godness, as someone once put it.

The second half of the year, all those Sundays after Trinity,
tend to focus on different aspects of our Christian life.
And today is the one day in the year when we are expected to stop and think about God as Three and God as One.
And it is difficult.
It’s a concept that doesn’t really go into words,
and so whatever we say about it is going to be in some way flawed.
It took the early Church a good 400 years to work out what it wanted to say about it, and even that is very obscure:
“That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity:
Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father,
another of the Son,
and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one,
the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.”
The whole thing incomprehensible, if you ask me!

There are all sort of illustrations you can use to try to get a mental image of what it’s all about.
Look, for instance, at what happens when you join two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen one –
you get H₂O.
Di-hydrogen monoxide!
Which, I am sure you realise, can be ice –
a solid, good for cooling drinks or injuries, for preserving food, or for skating on.
Or it can be water –
a liquid, making up most of our bodies, good for drinking, sustaining all life.
Or it can be steam –
a gas, good for removing creases from our clothes or for cooking vegetables. Ice, water, steam, all very different from each other, but all, still, H₂O.

It’s an illustration.
It happens to be my favourite one, but there are plenty of others.
Another local preacher, on the same subject, brought in three tins of soup –
lentil, mushroom and tomato –
well, it might not have been exactly those, but something like that –
all tasting very different but all soup.
Some people like thinking of an egg,
which has the shell, the white, and the yolk....
They are all sort-of pictures, but only sort-of.
Nobody really understands it.
And, of course, that is as it should be.
If we could understand it,
if we knew all the ins and outs and ramifications of it,
then we would be equal to God.
And it’s very good for us to know that there are things about God we don’t really understand!
It’s called, in the jargon, a “mystery”.
That means something that we are never going to understand,
even after a lifetime of study.
Lots of things to do with God are mysteries, in that sense.
Holy Communion, for one –
we know what we mean when we take Communion,
but we also know that it may very well mean something quite different, but equally valid, to the person standing next to us.
Or even the Atonement –
none of us really understands exactly what happened when Jesus died on the Cross, only that some sort of change took place in the moral nature of the Universe.

Nevertheless, for all practical purposes,
we live very happily with not understanding.
We synthesise some form of understanding that suits us,
and, provided we know it is not the whole story, that’s fine.
And the same applies to the Trinity.
It doesn’t matter if we don’t really understand how God can be Three and One at the same time:
what matters is that we love and trust him, whatever!

And in our Gospel reading, Jesus talks of Himself, the Father and the Spirit as equal:
“All that belongs to the Father is mine.
That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.”
Like St Paul, He doesn’t have the word “Trinity”, but it is the kind of thing He means.

And in the reading from Proverbs, which is sometimes used today, we are reminded of Wisdom.

“The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old:
I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.
When there were no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;”

and so on and so forth.
Wisdom, here, is personified as female.
The Greek word for Wisdom is Sophia.
And some commentators equate Sophia, here, and in other passages, with the Holy Spirit.

Incidentally, some people find the image of God as Sophia, Wisdom, helpful and different.
It’s one of the many images of God we have, up there alongside the Shepherd, the Rock, the Strong Tower and so on.
If you don’t find it helpful, then don’t use it, but if it is something that appeals, then do.

But that is beside the point.
Seeing God as Wisdom is a very old tradition,
but the real point is that even in the Old Testament we get glimpses of God as having more than One Person.
The Trinity might not be a Bible expression, but it is a Bible concept.

But really, the thing about today is that, no matter how much we don’t understand God as Three but still One,
today is a day for praising God in all his Godness.
It is not really a day for deep theological reflection, nor for self-examination, but a day for praise and wonder and love and adoration. Amen

Trinity Sunday 2023 Morning Service

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day on which we celebrate all the different aspects of God.
It’s actually a very difficult day to preach on, since it’s very easy to get bogged down in the sort of theology which none of us understands, and which we can very easily get wrong.

The trouble is, of course, that the concept of the Trinity is trying to explain something that simply won’t go into words.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and most of the time we don’t really stop and think about it.
Trinity Sunday is the day we are expected to stop and think!

The thing is, the first half of the Christian year, which begins way back before Christmas, is the time when we think about Jesus.
We prepare for the coming of the King, in Advent,
and then we remember his birth,
his being shown to the Gentiles,
his presentation in the Temple as a baby.
Then we skip a few years and remember his ministry,
his arrest,
death and resurrection,
and his ascension into heaven.
Then we remember the coming of the promised Holy Spirit,
and today we celebrate the whole Godness of God, as someone once put it.

The second half of the year, all those Sundays in Ordinary Time, tend to focus on different aspects of our Christian life, and how what we think we believe informs, or should inform, the way we live.
And today is the fulcrum, the changeover day
the one day in the year when we are expected to stop and think about God as Three and God as One.

The concept of the Trinity isn't really found in the Bible.
The bit about doing things in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is as near as it gets.
It's really the early church's efforts to put things into words that don't really go.
They knew, as we know,
that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit,
the Son is not the Father or the Spirit,
and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
But the Father is God,
the Son is God
and the Holy Spirit is God.
And yet we don't have three Gods, we only have one God.

That's basically what it's about, but it's very confusing.
And the trouble is, most illustrations simply don't give you more than a tiny glimpse of it, if that.
You can, for instance, think of three tins of soup –
maybe you have lentil soup, mushroom soup and chicken soup, which are all different but all soup.
But that doesn't really help, as soup is soup, whatever flavour you drink.
Some people like to think of an egg –
the yolk, the white and the shell.
Or an apple –
the core, the flesh and the skin.

My own preferred illustration is of water, ice and steam –
all H₂O, but very different from each other and used for different purposes.
Water is not ice, and water is not steam;
ice is not water, and ice is not steam;
steam is not water and steam is not ice.
But water is H₂O, ice is H₂O and steam is H₂O.
Water is about drinking and washing;
ice is about skating and cooling injuries.
Oh, and cooling drinks, too, of course.
And steam is about clearing your head when you have a cold,
and showing you that the kettle is boiling....
So it is quite a good illustration.

But even that is merely a tiny glimpse of what the Trinity is all about.
Maybe we shouldn't even try to explain the Trinity –
it's what's called a mystery, meaning that while we can get a good working image of what it's all about,
we know that it isn't more than an image
and our conception may well change over time.
We'll never know exactly what it's all about, because we are not God!

But, as St Paul points out, we can think of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit!
That makes it easier, I think.
We might not understand how we can have three Persons, as the technical term has it, in one God,
but we can understand a little about the Grace.
We will close this service, as we close so many services, by wishing one another God's grace in these very words.

I wonder, then, what we are actually wishing each other.
Again, when you start to unpack it, it isn't as easy as it looks.
After all, what, exactly, does “Grace” mean?
We think we know –
we have a working model of it –
but again, it's one of those concepts that really doesn't go into words,
as so many of the things of God don't.
Oh, we say glibly that it's “God's riches at Christ's expense”,
and of course that is very much part of it, but it's only part of it.
Grace is about all that Christ gives to us in the package we call “salvation”.
We can't earn grace, we can only accept it as a freebie.
It is everything that Christ poured out for us on the Cross.
And it is that that we pray for one another!

And then Love.
Again, how can we put this into words?
We know what love means –
we think.
But then, we love strawberries and we love our children and we love our spouses or partners, and it's not the same sort of love, is it?

If you want a general definition of love, one can say it is the condition whereby the happiness and safety of the beloved is of greater concern than your own.
The happiness and safety of the beloved is of greater concern than your own.
That, of course, can't apply to strawberries!
And I would have difficulty in applying it to our love for God, I think, wouldn't you?

But I have no difficulty whatsoever in applying it to God's love for us.
God's love for us is quite beyond our imagination.
It is constant, unremitting.
God loves each and every one of us as though we were unique.
It doesn't matter who we are, or what we have done, or whether we serve Him or not –
God loves us.
In a way, our prayer ought to start with the love of God,
for it is from that love that the rest stems.
If God didn't love us, he would not have sent Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit.

Some of us here this morning have children, maybe grandchildren.
Anybody have great-grandchildren?
Well, I don't know about you, but I do remember that when my daughter was born,
I began to have a glimpse, just a tiny glimpse of what God's love for us is like.
That was over 40 years ago, and I am a grandmother now,
but I still remember it.
That realisation that this, this is something a tiny bit like how God cares for me!
Amazing!

So, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and then, of course, the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Some translations say the Communion of the Holy Spirit.
You notice it's “of” the Holy Spirit, just as it is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God.
The Holy Spirit sends, among other amazing things, fellowship, communion.
Both with God and with one another.

Yes, of course, we are friends.
And there are always going to be people in the church we are more friendly with and less friendly with, if that makes sense.
But by our very human nature, we're going to like some people more than we like others.
That's okay.
But we are given the gift of having fellowship with everybody in the Church, whether we like them or whether we don't.
We can sit beside them in worship,
we can study the Scriptures with them,
we can pray for them and their concerns,
we can lift them to the Throne of Grace.
And that is the gift of the Holy Spirit here.

And we can also have fellowship with God.
That sounds even more amazing, doesn't it?
Fellowship with God himself, the Creator.
The Father –
Jesus said to call God “Father”,
but I know that isn't helpful to everybody, if they have had a poor relationship with their own father, for instance.
You may prefer a totally different name for God, and that's okay, too –
and often, your preferred name for God changes as you travel along your Christian journey.

We know the Old Testament was full of different names,
from the plain basic “El” that meant “The Lord” –
you still get this in names like “Michael” or “Rachel” or “Gabriel”, or any of those Bible names that end in “El”.
They all mean something about God –
Michael, for instance, means “Who is like God?”,
which is a rhetorical question, of course, because nobody is!
Gabriel means “Strong man of God”, and so on.....
Anyway, names for God –
the plain basic “El” that I mentioned, and then a lot of other ones –
shepherd, judge, redeemer, king, rock.
Or there is “El Shaddai”, which has several different possible meanings, including God the Destroyer, or even God with breasts –
but is mostly used to mean God Almighty.

And talking of God with breasts, there are a few feminine names for God, which you may or may not find helpful,
including Lady Love, and Lady Wisdom.
Some people refer to the Holy Spirit as “She”,
on the grounds that the Hebrew word, Ruach, is feminine.
There’s that lovely hymn you may have sung last week – we did at Stockwell – with the image of a female dove brooding on the water.
Do so if you find it helpful, but if it irritates you or feels gimmicky, then don't.

I seem to have wandered rather far from “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit”.
But today isn't really a day for understanding, you see.
It's much more of a day for rejoicing.
I said at the beginning that it was a day to celebrate the whole Godness of God, and I rather like that definition.
We will never even begin to understand who God is, and that's okay.
We know that we have a loving Father in God –
or whatever other title we wish to use.
We we know that we have a Redeemer and a Brother in our Lord Jesus.
And we know that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, who enables us to grow into the person God created us to be, and who gives us all we need, and more beside, to become that person.

And then, there is the fact that it is a mystery.
That we can't understand or explain it.
And that's great, too!
So let us rejoice, and give thanks to God.
Amen.

Pentecost 2023

 

I wonder what it must have been like.
It almost beggars imagination, doesn't it.
There they were, in that upper room.
One hundred and twenty of them, they say,
including Mary the mother of Jesus
and several other women.
Waiting.
Waiting for what must have felt like simply forever.

They'd been told, in Luke's version of the story, to wait in Jerusalem and they would receive power when the Spirit came upon them.
So they waited, and waited.
At least ten days,
we don't, I think, know exactly how long,
until the Day of Pentecost dawned.
I wonder how many of them had felt like giving up and going home,
and celebrating Pentecost,
which back then was a sort of Harvest Festival,
celebrating the first fruits of the harvest,
celebrating Pentecost with their neighbours?

But they didn't go home.
They stayed.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
the Spirit came on them.

It must have been a pretty dramatic visitation.
The tongues of flame,
the rushing mighty wind.
And the immediate explosion of praise,
and when they ran out of words those other words,
words of praise that, in this instance,
turned out to be words "in our own native language?

Parthians,
Medes,
Elamites,
and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene,
and visitors from Rome,
both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabs –
in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."

Thus the bystanders.
They might not have seen the tongues of flame,
or heard the rushing mighty wind,
but they certainly saw the results.

But some people were more cynical
And they said,
oh, these people have been on the booze;
they're bladdered;
they're lathered.....
And I can think of several rather ruder things they might have said,
and so, I expect, can you.

So Peter, glorious, wonderful Peter,
who never used to be able to open his mouth without putting his foot in it –they used to say he only opened his mouth to change feet –
Peter jumps up and lets out this terrific bellow which shuts everybody up, sharpish.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he goes,
"we're not on the sauce –
come off it, it's only nine am, what do you take us for?
We're not football fans!"
And he goes on to explain that this is what Joel was talking about,
this is what they'd all been expecting.
And, as you know, he preached so powerfully,
and God's presence was so overwhelming,
that three thousand people got converted that day alone!

Thus the story.
We know it so well, don’t we?
Every year, this passage from the book of Acts is read.
We could probably quote a great deal of it off by heart, and the bits we can’t quote –
all those nationalities, I can never remember them without looking –
we know what they say, even if we don’t know the words!

Obviously, then, it is an important story –
as important as those other stories we hear every year,
the stories of Jesus’ birth,
the coming of the magi,
the presentation in the Temple,
the visit to the Temple the year Jesus was 12,
and then the gap to the adult Jesus,
his arrest,
death,
resurrection,
and ascension into Heaven.
And then the coming of the Spirit.

One way of seeing it is that it’s the Church’s birthday.
The day we celebrate the anniversary of the explosive growth from a tiny handful of believers –
barely more than a hundred –
to several thousand,
and on down the millennia to the worldwide organisations and denominations that is the Church today.
But there again, that’s just history, rather like we celebrate our own birthdays.
Pentecost is more than that.
I think that much of it is one of those things that doesn’t go into words very well –
what is officially called a “mystery” -
the Church’s word for something that words can never fully explain.

After all –
a mighty wind, and what looked like tongues of fire?
We know the damage that both wind and fire can do –
hurricanes seem to be increasing in both frequency and strength, and have caused terrific damage over the years.
And we all know what terrible damage fire can do.

But the wind and flame from God were not sent to destroy,
but to cleanse, to heal, and to empower.
Some of the empowerment was pretty spectacular –
the speaking in other languages,
the healings,
the preaching that brought thousands to Christ in one go....
some of it, of course, would have been less so.

And then there were the other side-effects –
the changes in people’s character to become more the people God meant them to be.
The fruit of the Spirit –
Paul, in his various letters, reminds us both of the various gifts he saw in use (the tongues, the prophecies, the healings and so on) and the fruits he saw develop in people’s characters:
"love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
generosity,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control" .

The thing is, of course, that it wasn’t and isn’t just those few people in the Upper Room in Jerusalem who received the Holy Spirit.
Nor was it just the three thousand people who were added to the church that day!
Right down throughout history, and right down to today,
God has sent his Holy Spirit on to believers.
And that includes you and it includes me.

But some of us will say, oh, help, no, not me,
I'm not worthy.
I'm not clean.
Well, you're no more and no less worthy than anybody else.
But there are things that can stop you being filled with the Holy Spirit.
The first is if you are not walking God's way.
You do need to be God's person
and that is not something that happens automatically.
You have to consciously commit yourself to God.
We Methodists do this formally each year in the Covenant Service,
but you don't have to wait until then!

And you may say, well, yes, years ago –
but these days?
I’m all dried up and God doesn’t use me any more.

Well, look at my cup.
I get very thirsty when I preach, and like to have my water-bottle with me – we do try not to use single-use plastic bottles unless we know we have another use for them afterwards.

But supposing I wanted to put some coffee in a cup like this?
(waves reusable coffee cup with lid)
I can’t, can I, as it has the lid on!

Okay, let’s take the lid off.
Hmmm.... still can’t put any coffee in here, just look at it.
All sorts of bits and pieces in here......

think this mug must be rather elastic!

(removes bits and pieces from mug)

The point is, it doesn’t really matter what’s in there,
but they shouldn’t be there.
Perfectly good, valid and worthwhile things in themselves,
but they don’t live in a coffee cup.

And thank you, but I don’t fancy drinking my coffee out of a mug that has been filled with all these things.

So we need to wash the mug, and rinse it, and dry it....

and now, at last, we can put coffee in it!

(Mimes these actions).

That’s a very old illustration;
I first heard it about fifty years ago.
But it’s still valid today.
You see, we can thwart God completely by refusing, if you like,
to “take the lid off” yourself and allow God in there to work.
And yes, it’s scary doing that.
Horribly so.
We really do have to trust God and trust that He loves us.
And once we have “taken the lid off”,
we have to allow God to search for those things that are filling us up wrongly –
perfectly valuable, valid things in their own right,
but things that aren’t right for us.
John Wesley, for example, said that while there was absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with a career in mathematics, it wouldn’t have been right for him.


That, too, is hard.
We are so afraid that God will take all the things we love from us, and leave us with boring Church things....
I doubt it.
Most of us love what we do, or we wouldn’t do it!
God doesn’t call us to be bored and miserable, but to be fulfilled and happy.

And then finally we need to be washed –
cleansed, forgiven, made whole.
Again, sometimes it’s difficult to allow that to happen, which is largely because we often find it very hard to forgive ourselves when things go wrong.
And that makes it hard for us to believe that God has forgiven us.

But when all that has happened, then we become fit for purpose.
We can be filled with God’s Spirit....
not only filled up, as we would fill a coffee cup, but filled to overflowing,
pouring out everywhere, a sort of coffee-fountain, if you like....

And once we are filled, what then?
That, of course, is up to God, who knows us far better than we know ourselves.
He knows our characters, our desires, our needs, our failings....
It’s not our job to worry about the “what then”.
If there’s something specific God wants us to do,
you can be sure we will know it, one way or the other.
Otherwise, we go on with our lives, just being!
God does the rest –
we very often don’t know

So –
how?
That one’s easy –
just be willing!
That’s all we have to do –
be willing.
God does all the rest.

To help us find the words to be willing, let’s stand and sing hymn 385: “Holy Spirit, we welcome you”

Coronations and Vocations

 

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

This Eastertide, I have been thinking a lot about how Jesus deals with people as individuals. You can see it during his ministry, of course – far too many instances to go into here. But what I have been thinking of specially was how he came to people after his resurrection. I mean, you have Mary Magdalene crying in the garden, and how lovely he is with her; then there was the walk and chat with Cleopas and his wife on their way to Emmmaus, when he went through the Scriptures with them to show them how the Resurrection was foretold – and agreed to stay the night, but then vanished after he’d broken bread at the supper-table. Then he comes specially to Thomas when he had missed the original appearance to all the disciples, and had trouble believing it had really happened. And, perhaps finally, he speaks to Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, forgiving him for denying he knew him, and reinstating him.

All these people needed a different touch from Jesus, and they all got it. And that holds true for us, too. Jesus comes to us through the Holy Spirit, but our experiences of this will all be different. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Many rooms. They will all be of different shapes and sizes, according to our individual needs.

I wish, in a way, that the Epistle set for today was that lovely passage from 1 Corinthians about how we are all part of one body, but all different parts.

Today, you see, is Vocations Sunday, when I think I’m supposed to urge you all to offer for ordination, or something like that. Don’t worry, I’m not going to! Although I will just say that if you do think you are experiencing a call to offer for ordination, or indeed to become a local preacher, worship leader, or another role in the church, do go and talk to Rev R about it! She will be able to tell you what your first steps should be. And, by the way, if you think you might be feeling such a call, you haven’t gone mad! It’s always worth exploring, even if the call turns out to be for something quite else. I mean, look at me – I’ve been a local preacher for over 30 years now, if you count time spent on note and on trial. They still haven’t discovered they made a terrible mistake….

Seriously, though, our vocation need not necessarily be for a role within the church. Some people are called to be teachers, or medical professionals – and, goodness knows, given the way the Government sees fit to pay public sector workers, it would have need to be a vocation, as you certainly wouldn’t be in it for the money! And in other roles, that aren’t necessarily anything to do with the church, or a profession, for that matter. God needs Christians in any and every role, from doctor to decorator, judge to janitor, lawyer to labourer, professor to plumber, rat-catcher to retired, and so on. We need people to stand as local councillors, or maybe even get more involved in politics, if that is something that interests you. And our schoolchildren and students need to be focussing on their studies and their play, and on finding out who they are as beloved children of God.

From youngest to oldest, we all have our role to play in God’s plan for this world. We all fit in the community in our various roles. We all have different needs, different gifts, different preferences, different dreams.

It can be instructive, sometimes, to read how God dealt with his prophets and leaders who really didn’t want to answer God’s call. Moses said he was crap at public speaking, so God gave him Aaron to be his mouthpiece. Jeremiah also said he was hopeless at it, and anyway, he was far too young for anybody to take him seriously. He needed God’s reassurance that “I am with you, and I will protect you,” plus a special touch from God, a special gift of the Holy Spirit, if you like, for him to be able to speak.

Isaiah, too, was horrified when he saw God’s glory in the Temple and realised that God was calling him to be a prophet. “Oh, no! I will be destroyed. I am not pure enough to speak to God, and I live among people who are not pure enough to speak to him. But I have seen the King, the Lord All-Powerful.” And he needed a cleansing touch from an angel before he could say “Here I am, send me!” to God.

Three different men, with very similar concerns – they simply weren’t good enough for God to use them. And God basically said “Rubbish!” and gave them the reassurance they needed that they could, indeed, do the work to which they were being called.

And it’s the same for us. No matter what we are being called to do – and don’t forget that most of us, probably, indeed, all of us, are doing exactly what we are meant to be doing – no matter what it is, God will enable us.

Whether we are called to actively preach the Good News, or whether we are being asked to pray quietly at home, we will be given the gifts we need to do so. All our gifts are given to us as individuals, and, of course, God isn’t stingy! In fact, given half a chance, God would give us far more than we are able to cope with.

We are, after all, God’s children, not his servants! Jesus reminds us, also in our Gospel passage, that nobody can come to the Father except through him. There may be – there are – other paths to God, but only Christians can know God as Father. And Jesus reminds us that earthly fathers don’t – or most don’t, we see exceptions in our newspapers all the time – give bad things to their children; they don’t give a stone instead of bread, or scorpions instead of fish.  “If you, then,” Jesus concludes, “though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

How much more! More than we can ask, or even imagine.

God deals with us, then, as individuals – but, of course, we are part of a community, of a family, and our gifts and calling will reflect that. We are all one body, with many parts. We are, as our first reading reminded us, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Yesterday, of course, was a very special day in the life of our nation, as our King was anointed and crowned to his office. I know our late Queen felt that God had anointed her as Queen, and this meant being Queen was who she was, not what she did. I rather suspect our new King feels the same way. Certainly he, like his mother before him, believes that he has been appointed to serve the various countries of which he is King, and has sworn an oath to that effect. The crowning and anointing, so we were told in the service yesterday, set him apart and consecrated him for the service of his people.

There is, of course, only one King. But we are all consecrated by God for his service, as our reading from Peter’s letter reminded us: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” God does not call without enabling. Of course, that doesn’t mean our service – whatever it may be – will always be easy and trouble-free; you know as well as I do that it won’t be! There are always rocks along the way – as Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And, finally, many years ago now I knew someone who had served as a medical missionary in Burundi. She told me once that, when she had been getting ready to leave, she got worried, as she was so looking forward to going she started to wonder whether it was really God calling her to go there, or whether it was just what she herself wanted. And when she took this worry to her advisor, she was told, “Why on earth would God call you to do something you would hate? You wouldn’t do a great job if you were unhappy all the time, quite apart from anything else. And the God who loves you gives good gifts to all His children!”

It won’t always be easy. Often we will wonder whether we’re on the right track or not. Often we will wonder why so-and-so is called to be a worship leader and we aren’t, or vice versa. But “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” and each and every one of those rooms has been specially designed. There is one for you, and there is one for me! Amen.

Going to Emmaus

 

The text of this sermon is substantially the same as the one preached here.

Jesus and Thomas

 

So it is the evening of what we now call Easter Sunday.
Jerusalem is quiet, shocked still by the happenings at the end of the previous week.
Not so much by the executions –
they seem to be two a penny these days –
but by the fact that that rabbi, the one they called Jesus, the one who had come into the city on a donkey with a huge crowd shouting and cheering him on –
they had killed him!

And his disciples –
most of them, anyway, had locked themselves in the upper room of a house, as they were afraid, with good reason, that the authorities who had taken Jesus to his death would be after them, too.

There were odd rumours going round.
A couple of the women said they had gone to the place where he was buried, and found he wasn’t there.
An angel had apparently told them that he had been raised from death.
Mary Magdalene even said she’d seen him and talked to him.
Well, you can’t trust what women say, can you?
But then Cleopas and his wife come rushing in, breathless and exhausted, saying that they had seen Jesus on the road and walked with him, and he’d come in to supper with them.

And then, suddenly, Jesus himself is there, standing in the middle of the room.
He hadn’t opened the door –
they had been careful to lock it again once Cleopas had arrived.
But he was there.
Alive.
Real.
You could touch him,
see where those terrible nails had been hammered through his hands and feet,
see where the soldiers had stuck a spear into his side to make quite sure he was dead.

But he wasn’t dead.
“Peace be with you!” he said.
And they were no longer afraid.

He said he was hungry, and shared their supper with them, just like in the olden days.
But it wasn’t quite like that, he was different.
His body was just as solid as ever, but somehow, not quite the same.
And in his manner, he seemed far more sure of himself, far more certain.

“Receive the Holy Spirit” –
what did he mean by that, they wondered?
“If you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven;
if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t.”

Again, what did he mean? The disciples, at that stage, had no real idea.
And then Jesus wasn’t there any more, although nobody saw him go.

And then Thomas arrived.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
“Got held up.”
And, all talking at once, they try to tell him what has happened.

But Thomas is sceptical.
Can’t really be true, he says.
You must have been dreaming, or a mass hallucination or something.
And even though they tell him over and over again, he still has trouble believing.
“I’d need to touch those wounds you say you saw, need to put my hand on his side where the spear was.
Then I might believe, but really, no –
people don’t come back from the dead!”

Poor Thomas.
It seems less than ten days ago that he was the one who said to Jesus, “Well, if you insist on going to Jerusalem, let’s all go with you and die with you!”
and now he seems to have missed out on all the excitement.
People don’t come back from being dead,
no matter how much you would like them to.

But then, on the other hand, there had been those miracles, people healed –
the time Jesus’s friend Lazarus had died,
and Jesus had called him to come out of the tomb, and he had come.
Or when that little girl had died, only Jesus had said she was only sleeping.
Or that time when….
Thomas remembers all the times Jesus had healed the sick or done other miracles.
But then, he couldn’t be alive, could he?
And so on, round and round, on the treadmill of his thoughts.

This goes on for a whole week.
It must have seemed an eternity to poor Thomas,
with the others, although still cautious and hiding from the authorities –
indeed, some of the fishermen were talking of going back to Galilee and getting the boats out;
safer that way, and Jesus had apparently told the women to tell them to go back to Galilee –
the others, still cautious, yet fizzing and bubbling that the Teacher was alive!

A whole week.

But at the end of the week, they are still in the locked room.
They have been gathering there every day to pray and be together,
and trying not to come to the attention of the authorities.
Thomas is beginning to seriously wonder whether they’ve gone mad, or whether he has.
Maybe he should just leave them, and go on home to Galilee.
But maybe, one last time, he’ll join them.

And he’s so glad he did, because Jesus comes again, specially to talk to him,
to show him his hands and his side, and say
“Go on, you can touch them if that’s what you need to do to believe in me!”
Thomas doesn’t seem to need to, he believes anyway and worships his risen Lord.

And then later on, tradition tells us,
he goes to India and founds the church there,
and many denominations there say they trace their origins back to his ministry!
So what do we learn from this story.
We sometimes call Thomas “Doubting Thomas”,
as though that was the only significant thing about him.
It wasn’t, of course.
He was a brave and bold disciple, and he went to the furthest reaches of the known world, and beyond, to tell people about Jesus.

What’s more he was brave enough to say that he didn’t believe it.
That took a great deal of courage, if you think about it.
All the others seemed to be totally convinced that Jesus was alive, even if they did privately wonder if they had dreamed the whole thing.
But Thomas was the only one brave enough to say he thought it was all rubbish.

But in a way, the story isn’t really about Thomas, is it?
It’s far more about Jesus, and the way Jesus deals with Thomas’s doubts and fears.

I wonder why Jesus felt it necessary to wait a whole week before coming to reassure Thomas?
It does seem odd, when you think that Thomas had been one of his most loyal followers.
Some people might think that he was punishing him for doubting, but that doesn’t seem very probable.
Not when you look at the way he treated him when he finally did turn up.

Jesus has form for delaying, if you remember.
When Lazarus was so ill, and then died?
And we know that Jesus loved Lazarus, and was badly upset when he saw his tomb.
And Mary and Martha were upset, too:
“Lord, if you had been here, our brother wouldn’t have died!”
But Jesus delayed, so he said, that God’s glory might be revealed –
and he raised Lazarus from death.

I’m not just so sure why he had to delay in this case, though.
But perhaps it was to show us that it’s okay to have to wait.
So often we want to see God at work now.
We want to be healed now.
We want answers now.
But God doesn’t seem to work like that.
Sometimes we need time to work through our feelings about something.
Sometimes we need to be certain that we really do want God to work –
do you remember how Jesus would always ask people what they wanted, did they really want him to heal them?
Were they sure?

After all, when God acts, life changes.
Thomas’ life was irretrievably changed.
Well, obviously, so were all the other disciples’ lives changed.
Jesus said “Receive the Holy Spirit”, and although nothing much seemed to change at that moment –
they were still hiding away in the upper room the following week –
later they were able to receive the Holy Spirit in a more dramatic way, and were changed forever more.

But for Thomas, the change was immediate and dramatic.
He went from unbelief to faith in the course of a single moment.
And his life was changed.

I do like the fact, too, that Thomas was still hanging with the others.
He could have walked away, gone back to Galilee, or wherever it was he came from.
But no, he stayed with the others, and they all saw Jesus come to him specially, they all saw Jesus inviting him to touch his hands and his side.
They all heard Thomas exclaim “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus came to Thomas and gave him a special touch, a special visit.
Later, he came to Peter on the shores of Lake Galilee, and spoke to him, specially, making sure Peter knew he had been forgiven for denying Jesus on that dreadful night when the authorities had arrested him.

The author of John’s Gospel reminds us, too, that Jesus did many more things than that, and that his book is a carefully curated selection
“in order that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.”
Jesus said to Thomas that people would be able to believe in him without necessarily having seen him.
“How happy they will be!”

And down the years, Jesus has come to us in many different ways.
Some of us may have experienced his presence unmistakeably, no matter how short a time.
Others may never have experienced him directly, but have met him through the words of a friend, the actions of a stranger, a random sermon.
We are all different, and Jesus treats us differently –
he meets us in the way best suited to our nature, the way we would be most inclined to trust.

Thomas needed a special visit from Jesus.
And Jesus paid him that special visit.

We all need a special visit from time to time;
maybe we will have to wait, as Thomas had to wait, as Lazarus had to wait.
But Jesus will come to us in the end.
He will come, he will forgive us, heal us, reassure us, and enable us to use our lives to his glory!
Amen.