Text: Hebrews 4:15-16 (CEV)
Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin!  So whenever we are in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God. There we will be treated with undeserved kindness, and we will find help.

God knows One of the complaints often heard about our politicians is that they lose touch with what is happening in the ‘real world’. What we mean is that the longer women and men spend in the elite “corridors of power” the more likely they are to lose an awareness of what it is like to be an ordinary citizen. The announcement that the Prime Minister will make a flying, rushed, two day visit to a rural area to become acquainted with the “grass roots,” is met with a good deal of cynicism. The same goes for the occasional visits of cabinet ministers to a factory floor or a steel mill. It might be a good PR photo opportunity for the politician but does little to acquaint the person with what is happening in the lives of ordinary people.

This sort of comment is made about the hierarchy of the church across all denominations as well. Maybe it’s part of what we call the “tall poppy syndrome” but there remains the perception that church bureaucracy regardless of the skills of the leaders can so easily lose touch with the hopes and fears of ordinary Christians.

Is it possible that the same kind of criticism can be levelled at God?
How can the God of the heavens be in touch with the ordinary lives of you and me?
How can God empathise with our little minds, with our fierce hopes and nagging anxieties?
Isn’t God too big, too far away, too almighty (if you like) to know and appreciate what it is that bothers us and fills our hearts with fear.

Many feel that way. They feel it, even though they may never be game to say it aloud. Some of the great people of the Bible, people like Job, the writers of the Psalms, and Elijah, have expressed how God seemed to be so distant and uninvolved in their problems. At one time we find Elijah escaping into the desert hunted by the soldiers of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He collapsed under a large tree exhausted and disillusioned, believing that God didn’t care or didn’t understand what was happening to him. He exclaimed, “I’ve had enough. I just want to die”.

Have you ever wondered why praying to Mary and the saints is so popular to so many Christians. One of the reasons is that such souls are able to understand what it’s like to be human, struggling in this unpredictable and often unjust world. Many of the saints lived in complicated and unfair circumstances and received what they didn’t deserve even though they lived godly lives. So it’s easy to unburden your heart to your favourite saint trusting them with your prayers because they know what it’s like to feel life’s injustices.

I believe at some time all of us experience the gulf between God and us and we shouldn’t just pass it off as a moment of doubt or weakness. Especially those moments in our lives when things happen that we don’t understand. There are certain events and circumstances that happen that don’t make any sense to us at all. They seem unfair, unreasonable, irrational, unkind and cruel. We can’t see any good in what is happening at all. It is just at this time that God and his love seem to be so distant.

We call to God. We want answers. We want to understand. We want things to change. But we don’t hear what we want to hear; we hear only a still small voice whispering to us as it did to Elijah assuring us that in spite of everything God has not abandoned us. That small voice of God might be a friend trying to reassure and comfort us but in the confusion of the moment that’s not the answer we are seeking.

Is it true that God doesn’t understand what we really want and need? Is he really out of touch?

How can God know what it’s like to be a teenager constantly confronted with drugs and alcohol and wild parties and raging desire?

Can God appreciate how it feels to be 48 years old and to lose your job where you have worked your guts out for years? And when you look for another job you’re regarded as “over the hill” because of your age and unemployable.

Or how can God comprehend what it’s like to keep up with our money centred culture?  What does God know about paying the bills, scrimping and saving to educate children, being confronted with the runaway cost of living?

Or how can God, who’s not had a day’s worry in all of eternity, know what it’s like to worry? What does God know about being anxious waiting for a doctor’s report, or waiting for a rebellious teenager to come home, or to worry about the future?

How can God truly be on the same wave length as us and know what it’s like to be a mere mortal with all that goes along with our mortality? It would seem most unlikely. Job complained about God’s lack of appreciation of his troubles saying, “I cannot find God anywhere in front or back of me, to my left or my right. God is always at work, though I never see him. … If I knew where to find God, I would go there and argue my case” (Job 23:8,9,2,3).

In the Jewish religion it was only the High Priest who could approach God on just one day of the year. There was this ongoing wall of separation between God and the people. God was considered unapproachable to the ordinary person.

Then something amazing happened.

God came from heaven to earth. He was born as you and I. His earthly name was Jesus, a commoner, and preached his Gospel throughout the province of Galilee. It was the ordinary everyday people who flocked to listen to him. He taught them about a loving God who was near at hand;
a God who treasured the name of each vineyard labourer or woman toiling in the home or child playing in the street;
a caring God who numbered the hairs on the head of even the lepers, prostitutes, and the unpatriotic tax collectors;
a loving God who was like a shepherd to his people, knowing each one personally, watching over them, protecting them, guiding them and always by their side.

Jesus brought a whole new perspective on how God views each one of us. Not only did Jesus teach them that there was no gap, his life embodied that teaching.  The Word became flesh. Slowly the disciples began to suspect that there was more to Jesus than met the eye. Slowly they came to see that Jesus was God and so they came to experience God in a totally new way. God was not remote. He was in the world in Christ and then in the world and in them personally in the Holy Spirit.

The gulf was bridged; bridged forever. And so we have this text today from Hebrews chapter 4
“Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin!  So whenever we are in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God. There we will be treated with undeserved kindness, and we will find help”. 

These are words of confidence. They tell us that through Christ Jesus, the gracious God is readily available to each one of us. These words tell us that God is not out of touch with what is happening right now in our lives but that he knows what it’s like to be in our shoes.

God knows from firsthand experience.  God is closely acquainted with the temptations of the teenager and of the middle aged and the elderly, with the pressures of work and opponents, acquainted with our health and our pain, our fears and our dearest hopes. He understands. He feels. He has compassion.

Paul said to the people of Athens, “God isn’t far from any of us, and he gives us the power to live, to move, and to be who we are” (Acts 17:27,28). Through Jesus we have direct fellowship with God, and through Jesus, God has direct understanding of what it means to endure the joys and hardships of life in this world. In short, our God understands.

He understands when we don’t understand and begin to question his wisdom. When we ask those questions that start with “why” or make statements that start “it’s not fair”, God knows and understands the pain that cause us to question his plans for us. He simply says,
“Trust my love for you. There are a lot of other uncertainties in this world but there is one thing that is an absolute certainty and that is my love for you and I will never do anything that will contradict that love. It might look as if I don’t care from your perspective but, from where I sit, I only want what is best. I can’t explain it any simpler than to say, ‘Trust my love for you’.

Even though Jesus has ascended to heaven and now sits on the throne of heaven in all his godly glory, he hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be human. We are encouraged to trust God even in those times when we don’t understand what is happening in our lives.
When we are hurting;
when we are bewildered;
when we are physically, emotionally and spiritually drained and we have no reserves left,
we can be certain our heavenly Father knows exactly how we feel.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Jesus suffers with us. We say that in baptism we are joined with Christ in his death and resurrection. I would contend that we are joined in such a way that when we weep, he weeps with us; when we cry out in pain, he cries out with us. He feels what we are feeling. Jesus understands us completely and so we are invited today to come confidently to God in prayer. Because he understands, we will find help.

The help he gives will come in a multitude of ways and we need to keep in mind that one of the ways that he helps us is to give us perfect healing – the perfect healing that is given when we leave this life and enter the new life in heaven and given a new body. That is the perfect healing we all long for and it’s the goal of our faith because there with Jesus there will no longer be confusion, doubt, anxiety, pain and all the other things that trouble us now.

Until that time, as we travel through this life, we can be certain that we have the loving arms of God around us. They are there even when we think they aren’t there because we have a God who is touched by our human weaknesses, who really knows what it is like to be you, or to be me.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy

Read by John McLean

St Mark 10: 17 – 31
There is a remarkable correspondence between the account in Genesis:2 from today’s lectionary reading and the issues raised by the conversation between Jesus and the rich man and the disciples regarding salvation or eternal life. In trying to understand this connection we also see the truth of Martin Luther’s words in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians

Therefore, whoever knows well how to distinguish the Gospel from the Law should give thanks to God and know that he is a real theologian (Luther LW Vol 26 p115.)

 What Luther is saying is that in one way or another we are all theologians, we all have views about ourselves, the world and God. But what distinguishes real theologians from fake theologians is their knowledge of the difference between God’s Law and God’s Gospel. This ability consists in the right use of both the Law and the Gospel. God’s Law confronts us with God’s commands. It constantly reminded us just how far we are from knowing and loving God. It tells us that in fact we hate God, we would rather be free of God’s commands and be the judges of what is good and evil for ourselves. How very post-modern is that!

The Gospel on the other hand is God’s Word of free forgiveness in Christ, the covering of our waywardness and hatred of God by God’s gift of Christ’s righteousness; whereby we are set free from being haters of God’s law to embracing his will for us and our neighbour, in which we express our thanks to God for His grace toward us in Christ. 

In the scriptures from Genesis to the Gospel of St Mark read today, we see how the difference and unity between the Law and the Gospel has a very drastic effect if they are not understood or rejected.

In the garden of Eden man (Adam/Adamah means ‘earth’ from which God created man) Adam is put amid a flourishing garden planted with all manner of edible fruits which are there for his benefit and sustenance. There is however one important proviso or exception. He must not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says if man eats the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on that day, “you will surely die.” So, the fruit of this tree has fatal consequences and thus God’s command to avoid the fruit of this tree is a prohibition to safeguard and protect the Adam’s life. God’s command is life giving and life preserving. In this command God’s protective hand is stretched out over man. God wills to protect what He has created from death, with all its negative connotations. God’s command concerning this tree is a powerful promise of life and abundant nourishment for Adam in the garden.

The threat posed by the fruit of the tree, which man is forbidden to eat, is that God knows that once eaten man will have his eyes opened and he will have the knowledge of good and evil. For Adam this is the fatal threat that this tree poses. It promises the knowledge of good and evil. Once man has this knowledge God cannot stop the fatal consequences flowing from the decision to eat the fruit, this occurs in Chapter 3 of Genesis. But once the fatal step is taken man will become himself like God. He will possess in the knowledge of good and evil that which distinguishes the Creator from the creature. The knowledge of creation established in its lawfulness as good. God’s act of creation consists in the establishment of that which is not God within the limits of creaturely being, as created. In relation to God and this limitation of the creature is being a creature is as part of the good creation that the Lord God makes and loves. God knows the creation in its earthly reality as created is limited, is not divine, it is not unlimited but limited, it has boundaries set by God’s act of creation and which is declared ‘good.’

In transgressing the commandment that is meant to save and secure the creaturely life of the creature, man becomes the possessor of divine knowledge; man become as the Bible puts it “like God knowing good and evil”

But such knowledge, once attained, cannot become unknown. Man is burdened with it and it becomes the seed of his destruction as the creature God has made from the dust of the earth. For the creature makes the impossible attempt to be like God and therefore rejects the gracious life preserving truth of God’s command regarding the tree of knowledge. In seeking and achieving this knowledge man hates the limit of his creaturely being and life as the one who God had created and willed to relate to in love. But instead seeks to be equal with God; man grasps the impossible possibility for a creature of being “like God”. Adam thus embraces his own death as a creature in his rejection of God’s good command to “not eat of the fruit tree of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Instead of allowing God to be God and rejoicing in the promised goodness of God’s commandment towards him that wills to preserves life; Adam and all his subsequent generations hurtle headlong to destruction in hatred of God’s commandment and reaching for the unattainable goal of being like God. Possessing the ability to know good and evil, having a conscience, being the judge and therefore being like God. Rejecting the love of God encapsulated in the command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; rejecting this love, rejecting the life-giving life preserving commandment, Adam chooses the death of separation from God as a would-be god with all its awful consequences. This is immediately revealed by the book of Genesis in Adam’s family. His descendants multiply and destroy each other as generation succeeds generation.

When we come to the New Testament, the reading from the holy gospel of St Mark 10, we are presented with the difference between those who are obedient and those who are disobedient to Jesus. Who’s in and who’s out of the kingdom. It has two main sections: one dealing negatively with the disobedience of the rich man and the other positively dealing with the nature of the disciple’s obedience.

We shall begin by trying to see the difference by looking at the second section first: The obedience of the disciples. They ask Jesus, “Who can be saved”, for they are “astounded” and “amazed” at Jesus saying that it “is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than that rich man should enter the kingdom of God.” When the rich man seeking eternal life says he has kept the commandments turns away from Jesus when confronted with the meaning of God’s commandments.

Contrary to the rich man who departs and goes away from Jesus. The saying of Peter in v.28., is not contradicted. That they indeed, the disciples, have left all and followed Jesus. They have done in fact what the rich man could not do. But to their amazement Jesus does not then say that therefore they inherit eternal life, as opposed to the rich man. Surely, we may think, Jesus is over emphasising the situation of human beings before God. Haven’t the disciples done precisely what the rich man was unable to do and in so doing, leaving all and following Jesus, haven’t they by doing this shown that entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is after all a human possibility.

But Jesus words in v.27 puts an end to this illusion. That even they, the disciples, the obedient ones, should enter the Kingdom of Heaven is an impossibility for men. So, Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ urgent question, “Who then can be saved” is effectively – ‘No one’ can, ‘Nobody can be saved’. The disciples, standing as they do before the disobedience of the rich man, are forced by Jesus words to see themselves as standing on a par with the rich man when it comes to reckoning up “Who can be saved.” They are forced to see that their only hope, as it is also the hope of the rich man, that with God, “all things are possible,” and therefore even their salvation as well. For this possibility of God is standing before them and the rich man in the person of Jesus, who as God’s Son is identified in his flesh with the godforsakenness of the human condition. He is God’s possibility which excludes both the rich man as well as disciples from salvation in terms of what they have done or not done: for He is in Himself not simply the divine possibility of salvation He is its actuality.

Even though it is true of the rich man that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of as needle than that he should enter the Kingdom of Heaven, this is also true of the disciples: those who have done what the rich man could and would not do. From the point of view of their own ability the disciples too lack precisely the same thing as the rich man. This is the discovery they are forced to make when, according to the text, they exclaim, “Who then can be saved!” The judgment of Jesus on the rich man, the affirmation by Jesus of the one thing necessary applies no less to the disciples.

These words of Jesus compel the disciples to see the disobedient in an entirely new light. Jesus’ seemingly harsh words directed at the rich man and indirectly to them as well, who have left all and followed Him, that they indeed are included in Jesus saying, “With men it is impossible.” With these words Jesus binds the disciples in complete solidarity with the disobedient rich man. In Jesus encounter with the rich man and in the consequent discussion the disciples are confronted with the yawning abyss of their own disobedience, the impossibility of their salvation apart from the actuality of the possibility of God’s grace present for them in Jesus. The presence of God’s grace in Jesus excludes all people from the Kingdom of Heaven in order that those who enter, enter only because of the gift of grace present in Him. Who can be saved? Nobody can be saved, the affirmation of the one thing necessary for the rich man applies no less to the disciples.

What is it then that distinguishes the disciples of Jesus from the rich man, the disobedient. The difference does not consist in their obedience, what they have done in following Jesus as opposed to the rich man’s disobedience. What distinguishes the disciples from the rich man is not who and what they are but who and what Jesus will to be for them in His call of them. In their following Jesus, their being with Him, they testify to the possibility of grace, the fact that with God all things are possible and that includes their obedience. They remain disciples only in so far as they continue to acknowledge this mystery to be the basis of their existence. For the conversation between Jesus and the disciples ends with the cryptic saying, “many that are first shall be last, and the last first.”

But this gift of grace present in Jesus was there not only for the disciples it was there for the rich man as well. The gospel writer adds the critical words in the context of Jesus conversation with the rich man: “Jesus”, he says, “looked upon him and loved him.” When Jesus goes on to tell him what he lacks, the freedom from his riches, he does so in order that he, the rich man, may see that Jesus is there specifically for him. Jesus call of the rich man to follow him and forsake his riches shows us, as in Genesis, that the command of God is life preserving and grounded in God’s love. It is that rich man, may give up what he has chosen as giving his life meaning and value, his possession and instead receive the gift of God’s grace as that which gives his life enduring meaning. Within the hard shell of the commandment that Jesus gives the rich man is the life preserving love of Christ which he chooses not to receive  

For who else is Jesus on the way to Gethsemane and Golgotha, but for the sake of those who are enslaved by all that negates true human life. Jesus hard words to the rich man, the demand that he lays upon him and which causes him to turn away, this hard demand is in order that the rich man may be set free to allow himself to be loved by Jesus. This was purpose of the command of the law which the rich man could recite but did not know. The rich man can certainly reject what Jesus wills to be for him and he does so. But his actions cannot negate or overthrow the Kingdom of Christ, the fact, so poignantly stated by the gospel writer, that Jesus looked upon him and loved him, loved specifically him with his hard and rebellious heart.

In Him God has taken to himself the sinful humanity of every one of us, children of Adam and become the One, the only one to live a human life before God that allows God to be God. To fulfil the Law not for his own sake but for ours. This involves Him confessing the sin of Adam and all his descendants by allowing God to be in the right in rejecting the foolish creature who sought to be God by knowing good and evil. Allowing God to be the judge. Allowing God to be in the right over against Him and thus embracing his journey to the cross and death in order that a new Adam may come to life in His resurrected glory and be the one who lives to give this new humanity of His to those who accept the gift of His truth and righteousness as the truth about the untruth of their lives and thus live by faith in Him. And we are promised this wonderful gift of Himself in Word and Sacrament

Pastor Dr. Gordon Watson.

WISDOM IS CALLING

We are joyful today

            Through God’s strength to direct us,

            God’s might to uphold us,

            God’s wisdom to guide us,

            God’s eye to watch us,

            God’s ear to hear us,

            God’s Word to speak to us,

            God’s hand to guard us,

            God’s way to lie before us,

            God’s shield to protect us,

            God’s angels to keep us from the snares of the devil.

            Lord Jesus, save us

            From temptation of vices,

            From everyone who shall wish us ill,

            Afar and near,

            Alone and in a multitude.  (Attributed to St Patrick. Mediacom, April 2000)

Introduction

            One of the saddest chapters in the Bible is Genesis 19. Here God sent an angel to warn Lot and his family to flee from the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The angel told them, ‘Flee for your lives. Don’t look back’ (Gen 19:17). However, Lot’s wife ‘looked back and she became a pillar of salt’ (Gen 19:26). How foolish was that?

            Our text, Proverbs 1:20-33, features no angel, but rather wisdom, personified as a woman. That is, a woman is featured as wisdom itself and calling out for people to flee wickedness and follow the Lord and so be wise. May God’s Holy Spirit enable us to hear the call of wisdom and so be wise.

I  THE FOOLISH DO NOT LISTEN

            Sadly many people do not listen to wisdom. They follow folly instead.

The book of Proverbs gives examples of how people follow their fleshly appetites. But it warns that although sin seems pleasurable at first, it has a deadly sting in its tail. It kills.

            For instance, Proverbs lists the abuse of alcohol as a foolish pursuit. Alcohol is a good gift of God when used in moderation. But when abused it has terrible results. I don’t need to go into detail here about the dangers of drinking too much. Alcohol addiction leads to stupid actions, deadly fights, memory loss and other physical problems. Moreover, in Australia 52% of road deaths are caused by alcohol.

I will never forget visiting a man in hospital who was addicted to drink. He told me that he was about to go home by ambulance and he would instruct the driver to stop at the first hotel so he could have a drink. How foolish. Indeed, a few months later he was dead. Alcoholism shortens one’s life by an average of 12 years.

            Sin is very sneaky. It seems attractive. It appeals to our human nature. For a time it is exciting. Maybe that’s why a company put out a perfume called ‘My Sin’. The promotion blurb said that it’s a fragrance ‘so alluring, so charming, so exciting that we could only call it “My Sin”’. Sin may seem exciting but as Proverbs says, ‘So then (you sinners), you will get what you deserve, and your own actions will make you sick.  Foolish people die because they reject wisdom. Stupid people are destroyed’. Proverbs also says that foolish people are even more stupid than birds which walk into a trap they watch being set. True, foolish people get caught in the trap they themselves have set! (1:17f)

            Foolishness abounds in our society. We think of people, even pensioners, who allow one arm bandits to rob them of nearly all their money. Or I think of a woman who divorced her abusive husband, but then ended up marrying another man who also abused her. Yes, foolishness is all around us!

            Wisdom calls out to foolish people. But they don’t listen. Their ears are blocked. So calamity rushes upon them like a storm. They cry out for help, but it is too late. 

            What about us? It is easy for us to point our fingers at others. But it is true we have often acted the fool too. That’s because we are sinners. ‘Sin makes us stupid’. You know how foolishness has touched you, and I know how foolishness has touched me.  Whether it is a careless word, angry response to some remark, even a scaled down version of road rage, annoyance at the checkout counter when someone lines up at the 12 or less items with 20 – yes we counted them one by one, or occasionally drinking too much, we have often let the Lord down and ourselves as well. As Proverbs tells us, sin ‘bites like a snake and stings like an adder’ (Prov 23:32).

            Most foolish of all is when people reject our Lord and Master, Jesus the Christ. It is sad that most Jews have rejected Jesus as Messiah. Many have given up all hope of any Messiah. Others are still waiting for the Messiah to come. When Helen and I were in Israel some years ago we were taken around the country in a small bus. As we were going along we noticed light poles that had arrows on them. The arrows finally pointed to a large house. We noticed that all the lights were on. We asked our driver what this meant. He said that many Jews believed that the New York Rabbi (Rebbe) Schneerson was the Messiah. After he died he would come back alive again as Messiah to Israel. The arrows on the poles were to guide him to his house. And the house had its lights on day and night so he would know which house was his! Some Messiah who needed help to find his house!

They are quite wrong of course. Since then Rabbi Schneerson has died and he certainly hasn’t come back to live in that house as the Messiah.

            Jesus is the Messiah. The only Messiah. Those who do not welcome him are fools. In the end they will miss out on life with Jesus in his eternal and glorious kingdom.

II  THE WISE LISTEN

            Wisdom. How does one become wise? Through education? Not necessarily. Some of the stupidest people around are very well educated. Think of Stephen Foster. He wrote such popular songs as ‘Sewanee River’, ‘Oh, Susanna’, ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, and 200 more. He became wealthy. But he ended up as a penniless drunkard, got into a brawl and died after someone slashed open his throat.

            There are also some very well educated people in jail. You see, education does not guarantee wisdom. Schools are deluding themselves if they think sex education, or drug education alone will ensure young people make the right choices. 

Nor does experience guarantee wisdom. Sure, many old people are wise and experienced. But it’s also true that there is no fool like an old fool!

True wisdom comes through being attached to Jesus Christ. As St Paul says, God ‘gave you your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, righteousness, holiness and ransom from sin’ (1 Cor 1:30). Jesus alone makes us wise unto salvation. Jesus alone died and rose for us and forgives our sins. Jesus alone is the way to heaven. Jesus alone took the poison from the cobra of death for us so that we shall not die but live. Jesus alone was slain and raised from the dead for us, so that God the Father does not condemn us but pardons us, stands by us, strengthens us, protects and preserves us and will one day take us to joy and glory in heaven that no mind can fathom or tongue can tell. There is no other, Jesus Christ is our true Wisdom.

We could go on: Christ dealt with our old self which makes us stupid. He took our foolishness to his cross. He forgave us the many times we refused to listen to wisdom. He gave us a new nature, one filled with the Spirit and therefore wise.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus asks his disciples, ‘“Who do you say I am?” The place where Jesus asked this question was Caesarea Philippi. It was here that the universal Greek god of ‘All’ was venerated next to a temple of Emperor Augustus who had claimed to be divine. This place was also near the source of the River Jordan, the river in which Jesus was baptised. So the place where Jesus asked his disciples whom they thought he was, was steeped in paganism.  Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, answered for them all, ‘“You are the Messiah”’ (Mark 8: 29). 

            Christ also asks us, ‘Whom do you say I am?’ What will our answer be? We who live in the midst of paganism and false religions? May God’s Spirit move our hearts to respond, ‘You are the Christ, the Messiah, the only wise Savior of all’.

            Christ our wisdom calls us to act wisely, morally and sensibly. Through Christ our actions are based on the fear of the Lord. For it is also true that ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Prov 1:7). Our whole life is thus controlled by the Lord. This touches every aspect of our life: the way we use alcohol, prescription drugs, speech, money, relationships,  sex, everything.

            A medical student was asked whether he ever went on binge drinking. What do you think of his answer? He said, ‘No, I hope to be a neurosurgeon. Alcohol kills brain cells. I need all the brain cells I can to get to get where I hope to be one day’. So was that a wise answer? It was, but an even better answer would be, ‘I don’t go on binge drinking because I am a follower of Christ. I need all the brain cells I can get to be a faithful disciple’.

I am also reminded of a High School student who was out with classmates. They tried to entice him into joining their binge drinking. Each time they tried, he answered with a word of Scripture. At last one of them said to the others, ‘Leave him be. He’s so full of the Bible we can’t do a thing with him! It’s great when young people do the wise thing for Christ’s sake.

In Christ we are wiser than the smartest intellectual without Christ. But thank God many Christian intellectuals are wise. Some of the wisest people were both great Christians and scientists. Isaac Newton – mathematician, the discoverer of calculus and the founder of classical physics – dedicated his life to Christ. Michael Faraday – the discoverer of benzene, electromagnetic induction and the generator – was a firm believer in Christ. William Perkin – the great organic chemist who discovered the first synthetic dye, known as Perkin’s mauve – was a great Christian. On his deathbed he said, ‘The children are in Sunday School. Give them my love and tell them always to trust Jesus. Louis Pasteur, who gave us pasteurized milk and other good things, was a Christian. Samuel Morse, who gave us Morse code and the telegraph, was a Christian, Charles Babbage, who was the forerunner of computers and the speedometer, was a Christian. I could mention many other famous scientists who believed in Christ. You don’t have to sacrifice your intellect to be a Christian. As Wisdom says, I ‘give you good advice and share my knowledge with you’.

Conclusion

            Alexander Grigolia emigrated from the former Soviet Union Georgia to the USA. He became a successful professor at a University. As a non-believer in Christ he had a longing in his heart he couldn’t pinpoint. One day while getting a shoe shine he noticed that the lad had a joyful heart. Dr Grigolia finally could stand it no longer. He asked, ‘What makes you so happy?’

            The shoe shine looked up and said, ‘Jesus. He loves me. He died for me so God could forgive my badness. He makes me happy’.

            Dr Grigolia could not escape those words. They were words that wisdom was calling out to him. The Holy Spirit later brought him to Christ and true wisdom. Later Dr Grigolia taught at a Christian College. One of his students was a young man called Billy Graham.

            True wisdom is to follow Christ, to live in Christ, to obey Christ. Those who listen to wisdom ‘will have security.  They will be safe, with no reason to be afraid’. Listen, wisdom is calling!

Pastor Peter Kriewaldt.

FAITH AT WORK

Introduction

Some things belong together: strawberries and ice cream, coffee and cake, horse and carriage, bow and arrow, love and marriage.

So also faith and works belong together. Faith and works are the two feet with which a person walks in Christ. One without the other produces a spiritual cripple. Our text from James 2 also proclaims this truth: faith and works belong together. You can’t have one without the other. Faith without works is dead; works without faith is not pleasing in God’s sight. May God’s Holy Spirit give us a faith that produces many good works.

I  FAITH ALONE SAVES

Although faith and works belong together, faith alone saves. What is faith? Basically, faith is trust. By using all the letters of the word faith, we get: ‘Forsaking all I trust him’. That’s FAITH.

Faith has to do with believing in Christ. The word ‘believe’ means to entrust your life to Christ. Another way of looking at the word ‘believe’ is given by Dr Paton, a Bible translator. He was translating the Bible into the language of some South Sea Islanders. He searched for a way of expressing the word ‘believe’ in their language. Just then one of the locals came in, hot and tired from a long walk. The man threw himself on a chair. He put his feet on another chair and used a local word which meant, ‘I am resting my whole weight here’. Instantly Dr Paton had the words he needed for ‘believe’. The people of that Pacific island now know that to believe in Jesus, or to have faith in Jesus, means that you rest your whole weight of mind and heart on Jesus.

Faith or belief in Christ is a gift of the Holy Spirit. As St Paul says, ‘No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor 12:3). If the Holy Spirit were absent from our lives, we would never come to faith in Christ. Our Spirit-less heart is too hard and corrupt to put its weight on Christ. But the Holy Spirit has called us to faith through the word of Christ and led us to trust him.

Through faith we believe that Jesus came to earth as sin bearer, devil- slayer, death destroyer. Jesus came as our  substitute. All that he did, he did for us.  He copped God’s judgment over sin in our place. He was tempted by Satan in our place. He died in our place. By trusting Jesus, we receive the fruits of his cross – forgiveness of sins, life with God and freedom from the power of Satan. More, Jesus rose from the dead for us. Faith brings with it the sure hope of our resurrection from the dead.

Faith justifies us or puts us right with God. As St Paul says, To be put right with God ‘is through faith from beginning to end’ (R. l:17).

The Bible makes it very clear that faith alone saves. Our works cannot save us. As St Paul says, ‘a person is put right with God through faith, and not by doing what the Law commands’ (R. 3:28). Indeed, ‘Those who depend on obeying the Law live under a curse. For the Scripture says, “Whoever does not always obey everything that is written in the book of the Law is under God’s curse!”’ (Gal. 3:10) Well, no one can keep God’s law perfectly. As St James says,  ‘Whoever breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all’. Apart from faith we would be doomed. Faith alone connects us to Jesus who kept the law in our place. Yes, faith alone saves. May God’s Holy Spirit give us such a saving faith in Christ.

II  FAITH IS NEVER ALONE

Although faith alone saves, faith is never alone. Faith always produces good works. It is always doing something. As Martin Luther says, ‘Oh, a living, energetic, active, mighty thing is this faith. It is impossible for it not to do good constantly. Nor does it ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is put, it has already done them and is forever doing them’ (Plass 1:499).

Works show the reality of our faith. This is shown by the story of the queen of Sheba who came to visit king Solomon. It is said that one day during her visit she decided to put king Solomon to the test. She brought artificial flowers so perfectly formed that no human eye could detect them from real flowers. She put them in a vase on Solomon’s table, in his throne room next to real flowers. As he came in, the queen of Sheba is reported to have said, ‘Solomon, you are the wisest man in the world. Tell me without touching these flowers, which are real and which are artificial’. Solomon studied the flowers for a long time and said nothing, until finally he said, ‘Open the windows and let the bees come in’. Only true flowers have a genuine scent which attract bees.

Brilliant. That, too, is how to tell genuine faith from dead faith. Only people with true faith give off the aroma of Christ. Dead faith gives off no aroma of Christ.

Works flow from true faith in Christ. Works come from a cleansed and redeemed life. We rejoice to produce works which please God.

How different is Islam. In Islam the only way to get to Paradise is through good works. But here is the catch: your good works have to outweigh your bad works. If your good works aren’t heavy enough, you cannot enter Paradise.  To ensure enough good works are done, some countries even have religious police. In Saudi Arabia you’d better carry your marriage certificate with you to show that the woman who walks alongside you is your wife. If she isn’t, you’re in big trouble. In Malaysia teams of volunteers patrol the streets of Kuala Lumpur looking for people who offend Islamic law – like Muslim couples showing affection in public like holding hands. The patrols cannot make arrests but will alert police officers to this so-called breach of morality (Cf Asia Focus March 2006). As you can imagine, one can never be sure one has enough good works to get you to Paradise.

How different is Christian morality and good works. We do good works because we are already citizens of heaven. We believe that no amount of good works will get us into heaven. That’s why we hang on to Christ. For Christ alone was perfect and he credits his goodness to us! Christ’s death and resurrection make us certain that we will go to heaven.

At the same time we believe that if faith does not produce works, it is dead. As James says, ‘If (faith) is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead’. It is a pretend faith. Even demons have that kind of faith (Js. 2:19).

What’s your faith like? Is it producing many good works? Or are your works few and far between? Is your faith alone, or is it accompanied by works? Your answer is one of life or death!

III TWO EXAMPLES OF FAITH AT WORK

James gives two examples of faith at work. The first one has to do with the treatment of the rich and poor. He says, ‘As believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, you must never treat people in different ways according to their outward appearance’.

Apparently members of the congregation were treating the rich and poor differently. The rich were feted and made welcome; the poor were neglected and left in the corner. Looks like money spoke in those days too.

James rebukes these Christians for doing this. He tells them, ‘You are guilty of sin’. ‘You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great’ (Lev. 19:15).

Actually rich people are often blinded to Christ by their wealth. They tend to invest their time in their business and trust in their wealth rather than in Christ. As Jesus said, ‘It will be very hard for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven… it is much harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle’ (Mt. 19:23-24).

At the same time poor people may find it hard to enter the kingdom as well. They may blame God for their poverty. Or waste their money on lotto tickets or one arm bandits in a vain attempt to get rich. They may try to milk the social security system by claiming money that is not rightfully theirs.

Whether we are rich or poor, we all need an active faith. For it is our faith in Christ that sends us with good works to serve others. Such service attracts people into the church. Generally people come into the church not because the pastor is a great guy or preaches great sermons. It’s not because the building is nice. It’s because someone cared for them. They saw Christ in that person. They felt at home, even if they were poor, or had little to offer.

James then gives a second example of faith at work. It also has to do with care for the needy. He says, ‘Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don’t have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!” – if you don’t give them the necessities of life?’

Good wishes and sympathy are not always enough. There’s a Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy is out in the cold. He’s shivering. Charlie Brown comes along dressed in a thick coat and gloves. He says to Snoopy, ‘Be of good cheer, Snoopy. Be of good cheer’. And then walks off leaving Snoopy to shiver in the cold. Snoopy needs a coat, or to be invited into Charlie Brown’s warm house.

If Christians don’t act, they harm the church. Scoffers see this and are quick to condemn. Thus it was that a needy lad wasn’t helped by fellow Christians. A skeptic tried to shake his faith. ‘How can you be a Christian when no one helps you?’ He replied, ‘God tells his people to help, but they forget.’ Do we forget to help? God forbid!

Faith active in good works is desperately needed today in our society. Our society is sliding further and further into moral decline. What can we do? We can write letters to the editor or to our politicians. We can speak up for good when the opportunity arises. But whatever the situation we face, may God’s Holy Spirit help us to maintain the good and be rich in good works. May the Spirit give us a faith that is active in good works.

Conclusion

Just as an ocean liner was putting out to sea, a young woman fell overboard, and was heard to scream that she couldn’t swim. No one jumped in to help her. Then, to the astonishment of all present, an elderly man of over 70 went hurtling after her. Eventually, amid rousing cheers, he brought her to safety. Such was the admiration felt for the old man’s heroism that a banquet was held in his honor at which the captain of the ship made a speech. Amid the applause which followed, the old man was urged to reply. He rose and said, ‘I’ve only one thing to say. “Who pushed me?”’ No one on board went to help the young woman. An old man did. But he had to be pushed!

No, faith never has to be pushed into good works. Faith has received the salvation Jesus won on his cross. A new life is received. A life which is always doing good things. Freely. Willingly. Faith alone saves. But faith is never alone.

So what’s our faith like? Alone? Or hard at work?

Peter Kriewaldt.

TRUE CLEANLINESS

Some people are obsessed with cleanliness. They are always dusting, cleaning, scrubbing and vacuuming. Now I’m not knocking that. I’d sooner live in a clean house than in a pig sty.

Before God, however, we have to be absolutely clean. We can’t approach God if there is the slightest sin in our heart.

How do we become clean? There are only two methods.
First, it is up to us to clean ourselves. We clean up our lives and hope such cleanliness is good enough.

Second, God cleans us. He gives us a new and clean heart.

Our text from Mark 7 shows us that the first method doesn’t work. We can’t clean ourselves sufficiently to come before God. Only Jesus can make us clean enough to enter God’s presence. May we come to Jesus for true cleanliness.

I:  NOT LAW OR TRADITION CENTERED

At the time of Jesus there was a group of religious leaders called the scribes. They dated from about 500- 400 BC. They were legal experts. They devised dozens of rules and added to the ten commandments. They thought that these additional rules would help them to keep God’s law perfectly. These became known as the tradition of the elders. By obeying them they thought they would have clean lives. They thought they were now good enough to come near to God. They were quite wrong, of course.

Let me give you an example of some of the rules they made up in connection with the third commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’. Women were forbidden to look into a mirror for fear they might see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it. You couldn’t trim your beard or finger nails, or carry a burden such as earrings or even false teeth. You could not walk more than 3,000 meters from your home. Parents could pick up a child, but not if the child had a toy in its hand. You were not allowed to eat an egg a hen had labored to produce on the Sabbath. If a wall collapsed on a person, it was permissible to clear away the rubble only to see if the victim were still breathing. And what could one carry  out of a burning house? Only the clothes on one’s back. You could rush naked back into the flames, however, to put on another set of clothes.

Orthodox Jews still try to follow some of these rules today. One President of an AFL football club was an orthodox Jew, hence he couldn’t attend the Grand Final on the Sabbath, the Saturday. Do you know how he got the football scores? He instructed two non-Jewish security guards to tell each other the match scores as they walked past his open window. Apparently it is all right to overhear such things on the Sabbath!

Helen and I discovered some of these rules in Israel one Sabbath. We had to drink coffee without milk because it took work to milk cows and so the hotel didn’t have any milk. Also some of the lifts in our hotel stopped automatically at each floor even if no one got on or off. The reason, orthodox Jews wouldn’t have to press the lift button to get to their room as this was regarded as work!

In our text Jesus and his disciples were accused of not observing the tradition of the elders. They were eating food with unwashed ‘hands’. This hand washing was not in the interests of hygiene; it was ceremonial cleanness. Before every meal, and between each of the courses, the hands had to be washed. The water for washing was kept in special large stone jars and kept clean.

First, the hands were held with the finger tips pointing upwards; the water was poured over them and must run at least down to the wrist; the minimum amount of  water was 1½ egg shells full of water. While the hands were still wet each hand to be cleansed with the fist of the other. This made the water on the hands unclean.

So, second, the hands had to be held with the finger tips pointing downwards and the water had to be poured over them in such a way that it began at the wrists and ran off at the finger tips. After all that had been done the hands were clean.

            The point is, if you didn’t wash your hands like this you were unclean in the sight of God. And you would be subject to the attacks of a demon called Shibta (Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, 166-167).

            You can see why Jesus often got into hot water with these strict Jews. He didn’t observe all the tradition of the elders.

            And you can also see why Jesus called the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites. They were more interested in their scribal laws than the laws of God. As long as they kept these man-made laws they were clean. It didn’t matter if they hated someone, or were full of envy, jealousy, pride and bitterness.

            Jesus said that what makes us unclean is not neglecting to keep these made-up rules. They are outward things. What defiles us is what comes from inside, from the heart. The heart is the source and center of life. It is the spring from which either good or evil flows.

            Take a child, for example. It might push or punch its brother or sister. Dad comes along and tells this child, ‘Say sorry’. The child says sorry, but it is clear that the sorry doesn’t come from the heart.

            So the orthodox Jews thought washing their hands would make them clean before God. How foolish. But we can also fall into the same sort of trap. We can think that clean living makes us right with God. If we go to church, if we give generously, if we work hard on the job, if we read the Bible, if we say table grace, if we live a decent life – then we are clean enough to enter God’s presence.

            A do-it-yourself religion doesn’t work. Our attempts to clean up our act are not good enough. We can never make ourselves clean enough to come before our holy God.

            On the contrary, our heart is full of sin. It is dirty. And that means all kinds of evil pour forth – evil thoughts, motives, interests and actions.

II:  GOSPEL CENTERED

            So how can we get ‘clean hands and pure hearts’ (Ps 24:4) to approach  our holy God? There’s only one way. And that is to confess our sinful attempts to please God and with a humble heart receive the  clean heart he gives us. When did God give us a clean heart? When we were baptised. Baptism links us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who has ever really lived a ‘good, clean life’ before God. He alone is the spotless Lamb of God who never dirtied himself with the stain of sin. Yet in spite of his own cleanliness, he chose to cover himself with all the dirt and filth of every other person’s sin. and God chose to give him our punishment for that sin, and us his cleanliness.

            In the waters of God’s holy washing, baptism, He gives us Jesus’ clean, holy life as our own and washes away the stain and dirt of our sin. That’s what you call cleanliness.

            Now, by the power of forgiveness in baptism we are enabled really to do what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and our own hypocritical natures can only mimic – offer a life to God that is clean or godly. Now, in Christ, our actions as God’s people – from the rituals of our worship to the duties of our daily tasks – are clean in God’s sight. No wonder St Paul calls baptism a ‘washing of regeneration’ and ‘renewing of the Holy Spirit’ (Titus 3:5).

            In the power of our baptism we can say daily, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me’ (Ps 51:10). That’s exactly what God does for us.

As you know today is father’s day. Their role is vital. There are three things fathers need to do with their children. Much of this applies to grandparents too.

First, take time with them. As one son writes, ‘When I was around 13 and my brother was 10, father promised to take us to the circus. But at lunch time there was a phone call. Some urgent business required his attention downtown. My brother and I braced ourselves for the disappointment. Then we heard him say, “No, I won’t be down. It will have to wait”. When he came back to the table, mother smiled and said to our Dad, “The circus keeps coming back you know”. “I know”, said father, “but childhood doesn’t”’.

Second, fathers need to teach their children spiritual truths. They need to teach children that we cannot make ourselves clean before God. We are all sinners. We all need to repent, that is to own up to our sins before God. We can only become right with God through the cleansing blood of Jesus.

Children will never forget what they learned from their fathers. They will follow Jesus. Some may for a time depart from the way of Jesus, but through God’s Spirit, most of these will come back.

Third, fathers need to model Jesus by the lives they lead. If so, the following incident should never happen. Two boys were walking home from church and sharing their reflection on the lesson. They had been studying the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Little James said to his friend John, ‘Do you believe that stuff about the Devil? Do you think there really is a Devil?’ John looked at him and said, ‘Naah, it’s just like Santa Claus – it’s your dad’ .

Ahh, model Jesus. And this goes for grandparents too. It means decent language, honesty, concern for others, a spirit of forgiveness, all laced with love. (This also means that you will monitor the internet when your children surf it. There is so much evil on the internet which is so readily available.)

This reminds me of some children who wanted to watch a movie on TV. The father said no. They came up with all the regular reasons as to why they should watch it. Everyone else was seeing it. The language was pretty good – the Lord’s name was only used in vain three times in the whole movie. They admitted that there was a scene where a building and a bunch of people were blown up, but the violence was just the normal stuff. The father still said no.

A little later that night the father asked his children if they would like some biscuits he had baked. He explained that he’d taken their favorite recipe and added a little something new. The children asked what it was. The father calmly replied that he had added dog droppings. However, he quickly assured them, it was only a bit. All other ingredients were of the highest quality. He was sure the biscuits would be superb.

The children said ‘Thanks, but no thanks’. The father acted surprised. After all, it was only one small part that was causing them to be so stubborn. He was certain they would hardly notice it. Still they held firm and would not try the biscuits.

The father then told his children how the movie they wanted to see was just like the biscuits. Our minds are telling us to believe that just a little bit of evil won’t matter. But, the truth is even a little bit of dog droppings makes the difference between a great treat and something disgusting and unacceptable.

Now, when this father’s children want to see something that is of questionable material, the father merely asks them if they would like some of his special dog biscuits. That closes the subject.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of fathers for the Christian upbringing of children. No one else has a greater effect on children than their father.  

Conclusion

            Some parents were visiting their newly married daughter. They noticed a turkey thawing in the kitchen sink under a dish drainer.  The father asked why the drainer was being used this way.

The daughter turned to her mother and said, ‘Mum, you always did it’. ‘Yes’, her mother agreed, ‘but you don’t have a cat’!

Traditions! Traditions may be good; but some are not helpful. The traditions in Jesus’ day were not helpful. The people thought that by keeping the traditions of the elders they were clean and their life pleasing to God. They didn’t realise that their traditions were drawing them away from God.

Only Jesus takes away our sin. Only Jesus makes us clean. Only Jesus gives us clean hearts. His death on the cross and his resurrection have made us altogether new. Through Jesus and his Spirit we walk in newness of life. That’s what you call true cleanliness.

It being father’s day I thought I would finish with this little piece: 

Dads Turn Out All Right – In Time.

 4 years: My Daddy can do anything.

  7 years: My Dad knows a lot, a whole lot.

  8 years: Dad doesn’t know quite everything.

12 years: Oh, well, naturally Dad doesn’t understand.

14 years: Father? Hopelessly old-fashioned.

21 years: Oh, that man is out of date; what would you expect?

25 years: He comes up with a good idea now and then.

30 years: Must find out what Dad thinks about it.

35 years: A little patience; let’s get Dad’s input first.

50 years: What would Dad have thought about that?

60 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad.

Rev. Peter Kriewaldt.

The Grace and Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 

I would like to begin the message with the words of the alternate Old Testament reading this morning from Joshua 24:1,2a,14-15.

24 ¹Joshua summoned all the people of Israel to Shechem, along with their elders, leaders, judges, and officers. So they came and presented themselves to God.  ² Joshua said to the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:   ¹⁴ “Honor the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. ¹⁵ But if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua spoke words of commitment, “As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord”.  And Peter echoed these words to our Lord Jesus Christ, “Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life. We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”
Let us pray together:   O God our Father, you have always held to your commitment to bind us together in your love and compassion toward us.  Help us to maintain our commitment to serve you and your Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.  Strengthen our fellowship with each other as we live our faith in you, your Son, and your Spirit.  Amen.

 There was a beggar who was found sitting at the doorstep of a baker. As the baker unlocked the shop door to enter, the beggar looked up and said, “I want bread.” “How wise you are,” the baker assured him. “Bread is what you need. And you have come to the right bakery.” So he ushered the beggar into the bakery shop front, and pulled his cookbook down from his shelf and began to tell the beggar all he knew about bread. He spoke of flour and wheat, of grain and barley. The baker’s knowledge impressed even himself as he cited the measurements and recipe. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that the beggar wasn’t so impressed. “I just want bread,” he pleaded. “How wise you are.” The baker applauded his choice. “Follow me, and I’ll show you our bakery.” Down the hallowed halls he guided him, pausing to point out the rooms where the dough is prepared and the ovens where the bread is baked.
“No one has such facilities. We have bread for every need. But here is the best part,” as the baker led him back to the front door of the bakery. “What I have to say next is very important,” the baker told him as they stood just outside the bakery. “Up and down this street you will find other bakeries. But take heed; they don’t serve the true bread. I know of one who adds two spoons of salt rather than one. I know of another whose oven is three degrees too hot. They may call it bread,” the baker warned, “but it’s not according to the recipe book.” The beggar turned and began walking away, shaking his head. “Don’t you want bread?” the baker asked him. He stopped, looked back, and shrugged, “I guess I just lost my appetite.” The baker shook his head and returned to his office. “What a shame,” he said to himself. “The world just isn’t hungry for true bread anymore.”

^{(From a sermon by Douglas Phillips, I Am The Bread Of Life, 1/25/2010)}
Jesus spoke with authority when he said, “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”  For us, we seek to witness Jesus Christ, Saviour to all, rather than just keep telling others about Jesus, until they lose their appetite.  We do that by living our faith with our attitudes, words and actions in line with the love of Christ. And yet, at this time in his ministry among us, Christ Jesus began to share the hard truths of his journey to the cross, his resurrection, and his return to his rightful place at the center of God’s Kingdom. Most of this was shared most vividly with his intimate Apostles.  But certainly, Jesus was calling his followers to understand their new relationship with God, initiated when he entered humanity and became one of us. By this time, Jesus had gathered three groups of followers.  The casual followers who met Jesus as he travelled, seeking healing, blessings, and comforting words.  Other Disciples followed Jesus wherever he went, with a level of commitment to him and his ministry among them.  Also there were the treasured Apostles, whom Jesus chose to carry on his message of Good News after he fulfilled his mission among us.
As we discovered in the Gospel today, many of his followers could not accept the hard truths of faith in a crucified Savior.   Even among his disciples, some said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”  Then it ‘appears’ from the Gospel that Jesus became unsure of even his Apostles.  He says, “Are you going to leave, too?” I am convinced that Jesus didn’t say this out of a sense of insecurity.   Instead, he said this to bring an awareness to the Apostles.  To strengthen them against the criticism of the casual followers who were abandoning Christ Jesus.  Many of the critics of the hard truths of the Saviour would one day turn against the Apostles too.    ‘Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life.  We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.” I’m sure those words would have brought a smile to our Lord.   But rebellion against the hard words of God didn’t begin with Christ Jesus. 

Scripture tells us that Joshua spoke to the people, “destroy the idols among you, and turn your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel.”   The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God. We will obey him alone.” ^{(Joshua 24:23–24 NLT)}
And they did, at least for a time.  The Bible tells us, ‘The people of Israel served the LORD throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him—those who had personally experienced all that the LORD had done for Israel.’
^{(Joshua 24:31 NLT)}
At the point when Joshua brought the people together, they had experienced a significant past.  Times of trusting and following God.  But also times of forsaking their trust and following false gods. The people faced an exciting future.  Nestled in the land that God had promised to Abraham.  Called to great tasks of clearing this land of idols and distractions, to subdue the peoples that occupied the land, and to establish God’s laws as their laws. But at the point when Joshua brought the people together, there was an even more important focus than the past or the future.  It was the present. Joshua spoke for God when he said, “choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.”

I am reminded that there is no tomorrow or yesterday with God.  God is always the present with those who trust Him, and in our time and place, those who have faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.  God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is present today. Here. With us. In every moment of our lives, we face the challenge  “Choose today whom you will serve.” That doesn’t mean that every day will be easy, meaningful, or purpose-filled.  But it does mean that we can choose to trust God in the hard decisions of our lives.  To let God lead us.  To let the Holy Spirit strengthen our witness of Christ Jesus with the fruit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  So that we can witness Christ Jesus, and not just talk about our Saviour like the Baker describing bread instead of sharing that bread to the beggar. Of course, that also doesn’t mean that every one will accept and celebrate the choice we make to trust God in the hard decisions of life.  We are seeing this in the news and the culture today. But, like Joshua, we are encouraged to serve the Lord.  To set our hearts and minds to worship God our Father, to live in the grace of our Saviour, God the Son, and to follow the leading of our conscience that is led by the Holy Spirit to stand up for Christ Jesus and for the Word of God. And like Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, we call out to God our Father, as the glory of the Lord fills our heart, as it did ‘the house of the Lord’ back then.    O Lord our God, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, “keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart.”

God gathers His chosen people today just as He gathered the Israelites. Just as Jesus gathered His disciples around him during His earthly ministry.   God gathers us today around the sacred person of Jesus Christ, around the vital and living word of God, around the holy sacraments, and around the fellowship of believers. Jesus said, “That is what I meant when I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father brings them to me.”  

We are drawn to our Lord Jesus Christ, by what we hear and accept in the Scriptures, what we see and discern in the life of Jesus Christ, what we experience in the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, and what we are led to recognise in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. We can accept and trust God in the way he extends his grace to us, and we can give thanks that God is part of our lives, every day, in every moment, as we confess with Peter, “Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life.  We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.” And we can follow in the footsteps of those who joined with Joshua proclaiming, “we, too, will serve the Lord, for he alone is our God.” Even with the best motivations, sincere faith will always be tested.  Our God is always in the present moments of our lives to help us if we let him.  In order to stand firm in our faith, we gird ourselves with the spiritual armour that the Holy Spirit provides, and we engage with evil in the world.  Paul reminds us to ‘Put on all of God’s armor so that “we” will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil.’   

We can look at our confession of faith, … at  the Lord’s prayer,  … at the ten commandments, … and at our sharing in the body and blood of Jesus Christ .. as our armour against deception.  And we all put on the armour of God as we celebrate our Christianity, live our faith, and  share in the fellowship of Jesus Christ in our worship.    Even protected by the armour of God, and covered over with the blood of Jesus, we will still be tempted and our faith will be challenged.  It is inevitable that we will fall to temptation from time to time.  When we do, we can call upon our Saviour Jesus Christ to be in the moments of our weakness, in the moments of our strength, and in the moments of our humble confession and repentance. Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world.  And He is the very personal sacrifice for our very personal and individual failure to meet our pledge to God.  We can take heart that we have a God worth serving, a Saviour worth following and a Holy Spirit worth listening to. Even as we endure the slings and arrows of a culture that stands against the hard truths of God.

My hope is that in all we say and do, the grace and peace of God will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.   AMEN

Rev. David Thompson.

  Jesus conversation with his disciples in the context of his feeding the five thousand comes to a climax in his declaration to the Jews and the disciples that their relationship to eternal life is dependent upon their relationship to Him, His flesh.

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” (v.53.)

This is an exclusivist declaration, some might call it an elitist claim. (σκανδαλον 1 Cor. 1: 21 ‘stone to trip over’ ‘to stumble’) It runs directly counter to the culture in which we live in the church and in the world. In contemporary post-modern culture we live in a world in which truth claims are not simply ‘50 shades of grey’, it is ‘a night in which all cats are grey.’ This is a foundational dogma of our world. As in Judges 17:6, ‘everyone does what is right in their own eyes’.Everything is relative; there can be no moral or ideological distinctions or judgments because individuals or groups rights or views are as good as or as valid as any other. This is the contemporary anti dogmatic dogma of inclusivity; some call it multi culturalism or the politics of identity or victimhood. It is the catch cry of contemporary ideologies generally categorised under the label of post modernism, for such there is no truth that is external to the knower; so to some feminist ‘all men are rapist’, to some ethnic groups ‘all white Anglo Saxons are racists; such judgments are held to be true by definition, because they conform to the individual or group think of the persons associated with such views. And so like ‘the many disciples who turned back and no longer went about with Jesus’, as we read in verse 66, we, and the world, are offended by this claim which ties eternal life to the person of Jesus. A person, external to us, who claims eternal life is not some idea which we imagine, not an idea about God, but an action of God in Him for our sake and the sake of the world. Such a claim is drastically counter cultural, it is offensive to our self-understanding and self-sufficiency and that of the world.

While it is true that in this same chapter Jesus says, ‘It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is useless.’ (v.63) This saying does not in any way qualify the particularity of the flesh of Jesus. For when Jesus says, ‘the words which I have spoken to you are Spirit and life’: What are these words which are ‘Spirit and Life?’ They are, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” (v.53.)

But this has not stopped some people at the time of the Reformation, and in today’s churches, attempting to establish an independent interest in the human Jesus; apart from the fact that He is the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. With these words of Jesus, ‘It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is useless.’ the ‘Jesus of history’ movement so prominent in 19 century Protestantism and again so much in vogue in many forms of Christian and secular piety today, promotes the idea that the most important thing about Jesus is that He was a historical figure, like Caesar Augustus, Plato or Aristotle. Jesus is understood without remainder, simply as a historical person with whom we can relate in terms of our self-understanding in either psychological terms (as a friend) or socio-political terms (as a social justice warrior). The Jesus of history movement was created or invented to indicate an approach to Jesus Christ that circumvents or avoids the embarrassment that in this man the Creator of the universe is present with and for us as saviour and judge. It was and is an attempt to make God’s action in Christ manageable in terms which we define and understand and feel comfortable with. It answers in the negative the decisive question Solomon’s asks in his prayer at the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple, “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee.” 1 Kings 8:27)

The gospel lesson insists we cannot understand the flesh of which Jesus speaks in verse 53, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you,” and that this flesh is the flesh of God”, apart from the gracious condescension of God’s incarnation in His Son for our redemption. If the flesh of Jesus Christ, His humanity, is not understood in terms of who the eternal Word of God is, then His humanity becomes a cipher, a container, for whatever religious disposition or feeling we care to put into it. We make Jesus Christ into our own image, into an image of our own religious or non-religious disposition and lose Him who, as the eternal Word of God, gives His humanity to be the source of our life before God and each other. It is the particularity of Jesus flesh, which defines the action of the triune God, and that is offensive to us and the world in our understanding of ourselves in relationship to God. For the scandal of Jesus’ claim is that our relationship to eternal life is conditioned by this unutterably miraculous free condescension of the triune God; and not by the decisions or experience of the divine with which we would want to qualify and define the truth of our relationship with God. This offends us because our relationship to eternal life is taken out of our hands and placed in the hands of another, who wills to relate to us in this unheard of and offensive manner. That is in the form of one who is on His way to the cross as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and therefore as One who has ‘no comeliness that we should look at Him and no beauty that we should desire Him”, is One, ‘from whom men hide their faces.’ (Isaiah 53:2-3)

The particularity of the relationship that Jesus establishes with people because of His condescension brings to expression Jesus relationship with the Father. Jesus’ scandalous words about our relationship with God “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me” (v.57): These words are grounded in and bring to expression Jesus exclusive and therefore unique relationship to the Father. The personal relationship of the Son to the Father which establishes the relationship the Son has with people as particular and personal. The eternal life of which Jesus speaks, is not participation in an eternal sea where persons are engulfed in an undifferentiated sameness. It is an eternal life in which the personal relationship of the Son to the Father, in which God constitutes His own being as God in the unity of the Spirit, this relationship in the person of Jesus is accommodated to the godforsakeness of our human condition in such a way that, through  the atonement and reconciliation achieved in Him, we are given to participate in the Son’s unique relationship with the Father. Jesus insistence upon the uniqueness of his flesh and blood being the basis of our relationship to eternal life is grounded in the uniqueness of His relationship with the Father and is given in Him to each one of us. His unique relationship with the Father is made ours at the infinite cost of His self-humiliation even to the cross.

A further consequence of this mystery of grace is that our relationship to eternal life cannot be thought of apart from the church, since those who are united to Christ in their eating and drinking of His flesh and blood are thereby constituted the Body of Christ. If Christ is the source of our eternal life by His gift of Himself and as such is the source of our relationship to the Father, then we must see that He is the mediator of our relationships with each other in the fellowship of the church which is His body. Our relationship to eternal life is not apart from our relationship to those with whom we are joined by Christ in Baptism and Eucharistic fellowship. These earthly relationships are the means that Christ provides by which we are enabled to understand the nature of eternal life as particular and personal. In their own way these relationships, as mediated by Christ, become the human created instruments of our relationship to Christ within His Body; and thus, also of our relationship to the Father, and consequently our relationship to eternal life.

It is in the central act of Christian worship called the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, that this reality of life in Christ, of which both the gospel and the epistle speak we are invited to participate.

Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” (St. John:6 v.53.)

Pastor Dr Gordon Watson

Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

In family life, it is paramount that parents give and show their children unconditional love. Our children need to be told and learn to accept that we love them unconditionally.  Could you imagine a family, however, where children were only told they were loved in words? That being told they were loved was all they needed to know? It’s clear that parents also need to show their children what love looks like in real life.  Parents lead by their example of loving attitudes and actions.  They teach children to practice such things as respect, truthfulness, honesty, courtesy, kindness and forgiveness, so that they know how to live in and respond to their unconditional love.
God our Father has made his unconditional love known to us in Jesus Christ and in the good news of our salvation.  We need to hear and learn to accept that God loves us unconditionally. Sometimes, however, the question arises among God’s children: Isn’t the good news of God’s unconditional love in Jesus all we need to hear?  Isn’t that all we need to know? Doesn’t the Gospel leave us free to choose our own behaviours and actions?  Just like in the human family, God our heavenly Father teaches us how to put that love into action.  He teaches us what his love means, not just for our salvation, but for our earthly life and relationships.  He uses his love for us, in Jesus, as an example or pattern of how to behave toward others.
The New Testament letters contain a considerable amount of teaching on the appropriate response to the good news of Jesus.  They outline patterns of behaviour that will show due honour and respect to God for what he has done for us.  Often, the apostolic teaching follows a familiar pattern.  A particular problem is identified, arising out of the local congregation or the wider Christian community. The problem is addressed by applying a broader principle – Scriptural truth – arising out of God’s Law and/or his Gospel.  The Scriptural principle gives rise to a practice or behaviour which is consistent with the principle.  Finally, a prognosis – or outcome – is often given, explaining the consequences of either ignoring or heeding that practice.
Our text from Ephesians 4 today fits that pattern exactly and helps us answer that question: Isn’t it enough that we simply know the unconditional love of God?  The problem being addressed is that, even in Christian congregations and relationships, the old human nature raises its ugly head.  Christians too are prone to telling lies, anger, dishonesty, a critical spirit, a hot temper, slander ‘along with every form of malice’.  This was obviously also a problem among the Ephesians.
The principle that Paul applies to address the problem is the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus.  It is summarized well in the verses immediately preceding our text: “You heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus… to put off your old self and to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:21-24).  God has made us ‘new people’ in Jesus!
Now comes the big ‘therefore’.  The good news of Jesus is all we need for eternal salvation, but that Gospel has a ‘therefore’ when it comes to living the new life we have in Christ.  It calls for a particular pattern of behaviour that is consistent with God’s unconditional love for us.  The word ‘therefore’ occurs over 100 times in the New Testament letters alone (i.e. the NIV.  Other translations have e.g. “So then”).  A familiar saying goes: When you see a ‘therefore’ in Scripture, you need to ask, “What is that ‘therefore’ there for?”  It usually leads from a principle to a practice.
Paul begins verse 25 with that familiar ‘therefore,’ addressing the problem by outlining the practices that arise from the principle of our new life in Christ.

• You “are all members of one body” (v.25) because of ‘the truth that is in Jesus’ (v.21), “therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak the truth with your neighbour.” (i.e. live like members of one body!)
• You have been shown God’s mercy and not anger for your sin, therefore “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (v.26).
• You have received God’s free gift through the work of God in Jesus Christ, therefore “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands” (v. 28).
• You have been made whole and built up in God’s love through the good news of Jesus, therefore “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs” (v. 29).
• You have been ‘sealed by God’s Holy Spirit for the day of redemption,” therefore let him seal your lips and your heart against “all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (v. 31).
• You have been shown undeserved kindness, compassion and forgiveness in Christ Jesus, therefore “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (v. 32).
• You have been loved by God who “gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (5:2) for your sin, therefore “Be imitators of God… as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love” (5:1)

The only proper response to the good news of Jesus is to take notice of that “gospel therefore” and pattern our lives on the practices that arise from the principle of God’s undeserved and unconditional love in Christ Jesus.
But does it really matter if we do this or not?  Isn’t God’s love for us, in Jesus the only thing that really matters?  Well, yes, it does matter because for each of the practices Paul teaches, he outlines the prognosis or ‘outcome’; what will happen when Christian people either follow – or fail to follow – them.  Therefore Paul writes:

• If we indulge in falsehood and fail to speak the truth to our neighbour, Paul warns that we choose to ‘injure’ or even ‘dismember’ the body – God’s church – of which Christ has made us all members (v.25).
• If we dwell on our anger, Paul warns that we ‘sin’ and ‘give the devil a foothold’ (v.27). We bring harm to our own relationship with God and allow the devil to wreak destruction both in our own lives and in the church.
• If we choose not to steal, but work honestly and usefully, the prognosis is good. We will “have something to share with those in need” (v.28).
• If we choose to talk in ways that build others up, the prognosis is also good. Our helpful talk will “benefit those who listen” (v.29).
• If we let bitterness well up to become anger, rage, brawling or slander, the prognosis is not good. By allowing ourselves to be so aggrieved, we also “grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom we were sealed for the day of redemption” (v. 30-31).  The Spirit gladly adopted us into God’s family in Baptism and sealed us with the promise of eternal life.  The ongoing sin of bitterness toward others breaks that seal and puts our very salvation at risk.
• If, on the other hand, we are “kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other,” the prognosis is again good. We will be found to be living in God’s compassion and forgiveness ourselves (v. 32).

The Gospel of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ always has a very big “therefore” when it comes to the practice of our faith personally and in the congregation. That is why the apostle continues: Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph 5:1-2).  The good news about Jesus’ loving sacrifice for us compels us to behave toward others in the same way God has behaved toward us – in loving, willing, humble service, sacrifice and forgiveness.  That is as desirable and as pleasing an aroma to God as was the loving sacrifice of Jesus himself.
In God’s family, as in the human family, the news of the Father’s unconditional love has a “therefore”.  The good news about Jesus does set us completely free from all sin.  It brings us the truth of God’s love and makes us new people in Christ.  Therefore, let us live according to our new nature, not the ‘old nature’ or the ways of the world. We have a compelling reason to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others as God has loved us in Jesus. 
So the question we must all consider is: What is “the gospel ‘therefore’” saying to us as members of God’s family?  As dearly loved children of God, how can we best imitate our heavenly Father, “walk in the way of love” and live lives that are a “fragrant offering and sacrifice” to God and to others?  Amen!

And may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Read by David Pfeiffer