The Text: Matthew 14:22-33

Has someone ever offered you a helping hand when you needed it most? The writer of this sermon relates this story: I was mountain-climbing with a couple of friends when I developed a cramp. We were near the top of the mountain, and my friends said it would be easier to help me to the summit, rather than go down the way we came. Why? Because they knew that the slope on the other side of the mountain was very gentle and gradual. I have experienced our Lord’s protecting hand on many occasions. On our farm, it was a miracle I escaped being savaged by our bull. In Melbourne, I was involved in a car accident in which I felt our Saviour’s protecting hand guarding me from serious injury.

Don’t we sometimes go on our way, confident that we can meet any kind of danger? What really throw us are the unexpected dangers that we never anticipated. There are people who, when they fear for their life, cry out to God for help. God, for them, is like a fire extinguisher: “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY”. Our Lord wants to be our first resource in any and every difficult situation in daily life, rather than our last resort when all else fails. Jesus isn’t simply an optional extra for those with time on their hands. The busier we are, the more we need to seek His blessing on what we do well, as well as seeking His help when things go wrong. When dangers loom, we sometimes feel we’re left to our own devices. We can be too overwhelmed by fear to even remember to pray. A good prayer to pray each day is, “Lord, if I should forget you today, remember me.”

In last week’s Gospel, our Lord had shown immense concern and care for 5,000 hungry people by feeding them. After this extraordinary act of kindness, witnessed by His disciples, Jesus sends the twelve on a boat trip across the lake while He goes elsewhere to pray. When a storm threatens the twelve apostles’ lives, they panic, thinking that Jesus has abandoned them. Overwhelmed by fear, they fail to realise that Jesus was near. In fact, while they were battling the wind and the waves, Jesus had been praying for them.

Just when we think we’re all alone, our Saviour’s prayers for us may be surrounding us with His guiding hand, though we may not be able to see it at the time. For us Christians, things are never quite what they seem. The main concern for many of us is not to be able to “walk on water”, but simply to keep our head above water. “

We don’t always recognize Jesus when He comes to our aid. The twelve apostles, too, imagined Jesus as an apparition that would only make their perilous situation worse, rather than shouting for joy at the sight of Him actually walking on the water to come to their aid. Haven’t we sometimes felt the same? When Jesus approaches us with His help through an illness, setback or greater responsibility, we fail to recognise Him, and instead of being certain that He hears our prayers, we panic.

Only Christ’s word of comfort can give us assurance of His presence and silence our fears. “Be of good cheer, have no fear, it is I”, Jesus says. Jesus’ disciples needed nothing more than our Lord’s reassuring voice. Full of joy, Peter now acts on impulse, as he so often does, and asks if he too can walk on water. And all goes well at first, while Peter stays focussed on Jesus. It is remarkable, isn’t it, what we can do when we forget our problems and dangers, and place our whole trust in Christ alone. Peter had faith strong enough to get him out of the boat, but not strong enough to cope with the storm. Peter’s faith bounces back when he realises he cannot manage on his own, but that everything now depends on Jesus. “Lord, save me”, Peter cries out. Jesus let this happen so that Peter could experience our Saviour’s protecting hand.

As we go about our daily duties, we sometimes see examples of our Saviour’s protecting hand, sparing His people from what could have been very dangerous car accidents. In heaven, we’ll all learn how often Jesus protected us from harm and danger from day to day, when we were least aware of it.

A man involved in a terrible train accident told a friend how he thanked God that he emerged unscathed. His friend asked: “How often have you travelled safely along that train line?”  “At least 50 times” was the reply. “Have you thought of thanking God for all those times you travelled safely?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer found that God gives us the help we need when He sees it is best, and not before. Bonhoeffer writes: “I believe that God will give us the staying power we need in each situation, not before, in order that we rely not on ourselves, but Him. With such faith must we overcome all fear of the future.” We may not know what the future will bring, but we do know Him who holds the future in His hands, and we can trust Him to care for us.

Our Saviour sometimes seems to abandon us. He does this so that we cling all the more firmly to Him. Jesus can use our fears and anxieties to draw us closer to Him. Nothing can separate us from His almighty love. Faith means realising that our Saviour’s protecting hand hangs onto us when we can no longer hang onto Him. Divine grace is more like a mother cat grabbing its kitten by the scruff of its neck, rather than like a baby monkey which clings to its mother. We stake our lives on the Lord’s promise: “I will never leave you or forsake you … underneath are the everlasting arms.”  Some 366 times, God says to us in the Bible: “Fear not.” That’s enough times for every day of the year, including leap year. We haven’t been promised a life of ease and comfort, or a trouble free existence. Maturity in faith and love develops as we face life’s discomforts and troubles with God, who has promised to be “a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1).”
Troubles are the tools God uses to shape us for better things. We’re safer in a storm with Christ, than anywhere else without Him. The boat in our Gospel reading represents Christ’s Church. I would rather face life’s challenges with Christ and fellow Christians, than to be on the outside trying to cope with the storms and stresses of daily living on my own. When the pressures of daily life get too much for us to cope with on our own, Jesus gives us fellow Church members to lean on, to uphold us, and to pray for us. Our Saviour extends His protective hand to us through His Church. His Church is His protecting and sheltering hand over our faith, guarding it from doubt and despair. Through His Word and sacraments, Jesus continues to strengthen our faith from all the attacks it faces week by week.

God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea / And rides upon the storm
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; / The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break / In blessing on your head.
Hymn 414, v.1 and 3
Amen.

The Text: Matthew 14:13-21                                                   

What do you have? Do you have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear and food to eat? Do you have a car or have access to some form of transportation? Do you have a bank account and does it have any money in it? What luxury items do you have and what other odds and ends are lying around your place? Could you pack all of your possessions into a suitcase or would you need a removalist van to make a shift?

In 1964 Donald Horne, a Sydney journalist, referred to Australia as the ‘lucky country’. This phrase stuck and has since been used to describe everything from our weather and wide-open spaces to our overall quality of life. Many don’t realise Horne’s quote has been taken out of context. He actually said: ‘Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck’.

You may sometimes think the people running our country are still second rate, but most of us would agree that we are blessed to live here. Australia consistently ranks in the top countries in the world in terms of our quality of life. It has always been seen as a land of opportunity, a desirable destination for migrants and refugees alike who are seeking to start a new life.

But there are still the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our society. The gap between the richest people in the land and the poorest is significant. Where do we see ourselves on the wealth spectrum? Is it easier for us to focus on what we have or on what we do not have?

Our Gospel reading deals with the very well-known incident in the life of Jesus where he miraculously fed a crowd of thousands. It features in all four Gospel accounts – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which is why it is very familiar to us.

Jesus had just heard news of the death of John the Baptist so he had withdrawn to a remote place to regroup and grieve. But the crowds came from the surrounding towns and followed him out there. Despite his grief, Jesus had compassion on them and still set about healing their sick. The day passed and evening came. Jesus had met their needs and it was time for the people to go home and get some dinner. But Jesus said they didn’t have to go away and he instructed his disciples to feed them.

The disciples didn’t have the resources to feed this large crowd – 5,000 men, with the women and children to be added to this number. In addition to this, it wasn’t actually required. You could see this as an ‘unnecessary miracle’. This wasn’t a life or death situation of poverty-related hunger. The people could easily go and get their own food.

No one asked to be fed. No one expected to be fed. There was no need.

But Jesus insisted. He took the food they had – five loaves of bread and two fish – and miraculously turned it into a meal that fed all of the crowd of thousands. There were more leftovers than what they had to begin with. So what is the moral of the story?

Is it a call for us to meet the needs of our hungry world – ‘you give them something to eat’? When you think of what we do have here in Australia then it is easy to see this miracle as an encouragement to share what we have with those less fortunate than us.  

It is easy to use this account to focus on what we have, to be reminded of how richly blessed we are in comparison to elsewhere in the world. The moral then becomes one of counting your blessings and sharing your blessings. No one is going to arc up about such a conclusion. It’s only fair and reasonable to expect us to give from what we have, whatever that is.

Only…that’s not our text! It is not how the story played out.

What did the disciples have? They had nothing really – only five loaves of bread and two fish. And in John’s account we hear that even this meagre amount wasn’t what they had at all. It belonged to a boy (John 6:8-9). This miracle is not about getting us to give from what we have. There is nothing especially miraculous about that. We do that all the time to varying degrees: depending on our generosity and on the perceived need.

Most of us are moved to give from what we have when we hear about an urgent need: a severe famine in Africa; a child requiring life-saving surgery; a natural disaster that devastates a community. We respond to these crises and so we should! But again that’s not what our text is on about.

In the Old Testament book of 1 Kings (17:7f) we hear of how the prophet Elijah miraculously provided oil and flour for the widow at Zarephath [pronounced Zar-eh-fath]. On that occasion, the life of the widow and her son were at stake. With the feeding miracle in our Gospel account there was no such crisis; no life was at stake. There was nothing urgent or special about the situation.

As the disciples said: the crowd ‘can go to the villages and buy themselves some food’. It is because the miracle is so unnecessary that you start to wonder why Jesus did it and what is he trying to teach through it.

The natural order of things is that we take care of ourselves. We try and get ourselves to the point of self-sufficiency; to the point where we have enough. If we have more than enough for ourselves then we can share. But this mindset and natural order of things is such a limiting one really. It is limited not only by what we have but also by what we are willing to release, to let go of what we have. And we are notoriously bad at doing that.

This miraculous feeding occurred once the disciples realised what they didn’t have; that they had nothing to offer. In Matthew’s Gospel account, we see the greatest miracles occur when people bring with them the least. It isn’t what we have that makes us effective disciples in God’s kingdom.

Earlier the religious leaders presented their credentials to John the Baptist by saying: ‘we have Abraham as our father’ (Matthew 3:9). But John wasn’t overly impressed with that, telling them that God could produce children from stones. It isn’t about what we have but about what God can do with what we don’t have.    

We see this throughout Jesus’ ministry. He was brought those who had diseases, those who had severe pain, those who had demon possession, those who had seizures, those who had blindness and those who had paralysis (Matthew 4:24; 15:30). It is not the greatest list of attributes to bring to the table; and yet Jesus healed them all.

For, what did Jesus have? In the world’s terms he didn’t seem to have much at all. He told his followers: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). So he didn’t have a roof over his head. And when he came to Jerusalem to claim his throne as king all he had was a borrowed donkey (Matthew 21:3).

But he did have authority: he had the authority to teach the truths of God’s kingdom (Matthew 7:29) and he had the authority to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6). And in the lead up to this latest miracle we see that he had compassion on the large crowd that had come out to see him (Matthew 14:14). We have a God who loves us and cares for us. We have a God who wants to give us each day our daily bread. We have a God who wants to heal our hurts and bring us life and make us whole. It turns out that he doesn’t need a whole lot or even anything from us in order to make these things happen.     

So what do we need to have? We need to have ‘ears that hear’ (Matt.13:43); that is, the ability to perceive that God’s kingdom follows a different pattern to that of the world. And we need to have ‘faith as small as a mustard seed’ (Matt.17:20). And God has provided even these to us because we don’t have them naturally. For even when we have so little (or nothing at all) God can still move mountains. God can use us to feed the hungry and heal the broken through what he provides, rather than through what we have. God will see to it that his kingdom comes, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.       

The Text: Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52

Christians around the world love to pray the Lord’s Prayer both personally and with other Christians. Can you imagine how many times the Lord’s Prayer is being shared around the world on this day alone? This prayer is being prayed millions of times.

Amongst other petitions, the Lord’s Prayer includes the petition “your Kingdom come.”

We say this often, but what exactly do we mean by “Your kingdom come?” It is God’s Kingdom we want to see come.

Luther says: in his explanation: “God comes to rule as king even if we do not ask for this to happen. But in this prayer we are asking: “Father come and rule over us”.

Luther goes on to pose a question: “How does God’s kingdom come?” Luther answers his own question by saying: “God our Father comes to rule over us by giving us the Holy Spirit, so that by God’s goodness to us we believe his holy word and live as his people on earth now and in heaven forever.”

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus helps us grow in our understanding of God’s kingdom—God’s eternal reign of love.

In Matthew’s gospel, God’s rule is called the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’.  And each of today’s parables give us another glimpse of what his kingdom is like. What we discover in these parables is that God’s kingship changes everything about our world, our values and our priorities. These parables may look simple on the surface, but when understood in their original context they are full of surprise!

In order to fully understand today’s parables, we need to recognise just how controversial they were when Jesus first shared them. It is then that they will bring new vision to our world, our values and our priorities. Let’s start with the parable of the mustard seed—v31-32.

On first glance this is a charming story about how God might make use of things beyond our common expectation. The mustard seed, a tiny seed becomes a home for birds to nest in. We might quickly conclude that God can use even the smallest of faith to grow something great—even abundant, enough to bless others.

The Mustard Seed parable might be easily reduced to the saying: “From little things big things grow.” But there is much more in this parable: You see, the mustard plant is closer to being a weed than it is to being a precious valued plant. When we think of mustard we often think of the yellow squeeze bottles of mustard sauce that we might add to hamburgers and hot dogs. That might make the mustard plant sound palatable.

But in reality the mustard plant grows like a weed—more like soursobs or thistles or dandelions.

Once one mustard seed gets a corner in your field—watch out—it will take over!  Maybe the strangest part of this parable is that the mustard seed will never grow into a big strong tree like a cedar tree. Yet, Jesus chooses to use it as a picture of God’s kingdom.

The Mustard seed has a natural ability to reproduce and spread far and wide—it is hardy.

If we look back over the history of the world over the past 2000 years we can see how the rule of God in Christianity has spread like a mustard seed weed around the world! It has transformed the world bringing God’s love to life for many and it continues to do so in a humble earthy way.

Let’s move onto the next parable—he parable of the yeast in verse 33.  Again, this parable would have immediately grabbed the attention of those who first heard it.

Why? Because of the yeast. Elsewhere in scripture yeast is used to represent the world and is almost always used as a negative symbol of corruption. Here yeast is presented as something good!

And the amount of bread being made by the woman would have also surprised the hearer. Usually they would make just enough for themselves, but here the woman is making enough bread to feed more than 100 people at once!  We could simply conclude that this parable shows how a little can make a lot. But deeper, it also indicates that God’s rule may take hold in hidden and unexpected ways and bring about change in ways that are beyond our imagination.

Our text then jumps to verses 44-46 and shares two more parables. One about the treasure found in the field and the other about a precious pearl.  In these parables we could focus on how the labourer cunningly went and sold all he had just to buy the field where the treasure was hidden. But maybe more importantly we can focus on how the treasure in the field changed his life! God’s rule in our life transforms our life for the better!

There is also another way we could read these two parables: In the parable about the pearl and the treasure, we easily focus on how the person sold everything in order to obtain the one prized thing… But what is this treasure? And who is this person who gives up all so that the treasure can be his?

What if we were to understand God as the person making the discovery and we are the treasure he wants to have as his own?

Think of who Jesus is. We confess Jesus to be God’s one and only Son.

God gave up his one and only Son to suffer and die as the payment for sin so that we could be his prized treasure forever!   This might be how we could understand our baptism. In our Baptism God has come and found us and valued us so highly that he paid the price so that we could be his forever!  

You are God’s great treasure and by the Grace of God alone all who are baptised live with the promise that they belong to God forever. We are part of God’s eternal family.

How exciting! What a joy that God now says to us: ‘you are my treasure’.

Together as we encourage one another, we can help each other grow to know that we are loved by God and that we are part of God’s eternal family. For Jesus has paid the price to claim us as his!

In our fellowship we can lead one another to know that – there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love. We can give thanks for the ministries of the church here on earth that help to nurture our identity as people who are precious to God and belong to God’s kingdom.

Our regional and church wide Children youth and family ministry teams do so much to help our young people grow in their identity as children who are loved and treasured by God. The many Christian Life week camps that are held in many places each year bring this blessing to many.  At these camps our youth are encouraged and mentored by Christian young adults to see themselves as loved by God.

God’s kingdom has come to us in the mystery of baptism and his word. God brings us community and connection, life and light. And he continues to transform our world in unexpected ways!

May the Spirit that God gives you lead you to believe his word and live as his people on earth now and in heaven forever. Amen

The Text: Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

 When it comes to parables like the Parable of the Sower, there are some things that are a bit surprising, especially for any gardeners or farmers amongst us. For how many of you would be as reckless with your precious seed as this unnamed sower. Did you notice? He doesn’t seem to care much where it lands. He doesn’t drop a seed here and a seed there into carefully cultivated holes, but instead he scatters his seed to fall wherever it may – on the road, in the rocky ground, amongst the weeds, in good soil.

The Sower, of course, is God, and the seed is his word, by which God’s Spirit comes and takes root in human hearts. And God doesn’t let his word fall only on those who are prepared to hear it. He scatters the seed of his word to fall wherever it may – on the devout, the sinner, the religious, the sceptic – people like you and me gathered here this morning.

The point of this apparently reckless sowing is that, with God, there always is more than enough seed to go around. There is enough forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ death for everyone. There is enough Bread of Life come down from heaven to feed the whole world, with baskets of leftovers. There is no need for God to be careful about where he sows the seed of his word and who receives it – he sends it out with this promise: “[That] as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Is. 55:10-11).

Sadly, the church today seems to be more interested in spiritual agronomy than in seed-sowing. We are told that what we need for the church to grow these days is to conduct soil studies to tell us the needs and wants of people and where God’s word is most likely to take hold. Contrast that with the picture of the Sower who sows his seed with reckless abandon, broadcasting the death and resurrection of Jesus to the wind, letting it fall wherever it lands.

The Sower sows his seed, and some of it falls on the path. Here the gospel is heard with a hardened heart; a heart that says, “I have no need for this word, for this Jesus, for this forgiveness”. This is an unbelieving hearing. The words are heard, but they ping off stubborn hearts like seeds bouncing off cement.

Now this sclerosis of the heart to the word of God is at work in each of us. This is the effect of what Paul calls our sinful flesh – our inborn pride and stubbornness, our efforts to justify ourselves by putting others down; our selfishness and spiritual laziness. Which is why we get bored with church and find it hard to read our Bibles. It’s also why we want novelty in our worship services rather than the steady reliable liturgy week after week. The angels don’t mind singing the same hymns day and night before the throne of God; but we need options and alternatives, lest the word of God go in one ear and out the other.

The seed that falls on the hardened path is eaten up by the birds (that is, the devil). God forces no one to listen to the gospel, and so he permits the devil to come and snatch it away from those who don’t want it. Luther once remarked that the gospel is like a little local rain shower that is in one place today and moves on somewhere else tomorrow. That’s the way it has gone down through history.

Consider the Middle East, for example, at one time the cradle of Christianity. Now the gospel is barely heard there today (except in a few persecuted pockets). Or consider Europe (and especially Germany), the land where the Reformation took hold with such power over 450 years ago. Look at how little Christ is heard in those great churches today, and how few come to hear it.

And think of our own land, Australia. For all the churches, for all the revivals, for all the religious talk out there, there is less of the gospel heard today in Australia than at any other time in our history. Oh, there are still plenty of churches to go to on Sunday morning, with services designed and scheduled for everyone’s convenience, but unless they go with an open heart to the hearing of the gospel, the precious seed will get pecked away before it has time to take root.

The Sower sows his seed and some of it falls on rocky soil. This is the shallow soil of emotionalism and superficial joy. This is religion based on wants and feelings rather than facts and faith. It is a kind of “lite” Christianity; all of the bubbles but none of the substance; spiritual milk rather than meat. This is the religion of faith without repentance. Everything happens immediately in shallow soil – the seed sprouts immediately and just as immediately it grows. But without root, without depth of soil, the tender shoots are vulnerable. They cannot survive the heat of the noon day sun, but quickly dry up when the cross of suffering comes.

Christianity “lite” doesn’t like to hear about suffering or pain. It doesn’t want to be disturbed by the idea that the good news of the gospel also involves some bad news for our sinful flesh. But the irony is that the churches throughout the world (and throughout history) that grow the most are those that are most persecuted. For only if the gospel is worth dying for, is it worth living for.

The Sower sows his seed, and some of it lands among the thorns, that choke out the young seedlings. This is a conflicted hearing. The gospel is preached and heard, but it is just one voice among many others clamouring for our attention. There are two types of thorn bushes mentioned: 1) the anxieties and cares of the world, and 2) the deceitfulness of riches. The first is the worries that come when a person doesn’t trust God to provide. Anxiety is the prayer that is prayed to the false gods of our own making when they aren’t coming through for us, choking out our prayers to our heavenly Father, who is our only help in times of trouble.

Growing along with anxiety is the thorn bush of greed; the endless pursuit of riches; the desire for more, better, faster, bigger, brighter. St. Paul says that many have wandered from the faith and pierced their hearts on the sharp thorns of greed. Greed consumes our time and energy and resources and attention, until we are no longer able to hear God’s word, to pray, to praise, even to come to the church.

You and I are that field into which the heavenly Sower sows his seed. Our hearts are that soil that he would make into good soil. But no soil (as far as I am aware) is self-tilling, and no human heart is self-softening. For the word to be planted and grow into a good crop, our hearts must first be prepared to receive it.

God does this through the difficulties and disappointments, the disasters and diseases, we face throughout our lives. He does it to clear away the stones of our pride, envy, anger, greed, sloth, lust and gluttony; to break up our hardened hearts and to uproot every weed that threatens the fruitful growth of his word. In this way, he teaches us to trust him, to receive everything as a gift from his gracious hand, to recognise his presence and his working, even in the most painful things. And then he sows his seed and waits to reap an abundant crop – a hundred, sixty, thirty-fold.

So when it feels to you sometimes as if God is ploughing you under, let the Parable of the Sower be a reminder that what he is doing is sowing Christ into your hearts. Expect a harvest from the seed that is sown. For the word of God will not return to him empty. He has bought you with a great price and given you his Spirit as a guarantee of good things to come. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then be assured that he will also give life to your mortal bodies – like seed sprouting in good soil – through his Spirit who dwells in you. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Text: Matthew 11:28-30

 

Jesus said: Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Something strange has happened in the way we live our lives.

Once upon a time most people spent most of their lives doing things that were physical—working the land with hand tools; running the household with great effort; making things with hard physical labour.

We can think of God’s word to Adam after he was thrown out of the Garden of Eden: Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. By the sweat of the brow you will eat food, until you return to the ground.

People would work hard all day, and by the end of the day they were exhausted. People would work hard all their lives, and by the time they were old, their bodies were worn out.

Then people started to get cleverer. People invented all sorts of machines that took over many of the hard tasks – machines for the household, and for working the land, and for manufacturing things in the factories.

I think that most of you would agree that our lives today are much easier than the lives of previous generations. Much of the burden of hard physical labour has been lifted off our shoulders.

But then something strange happened. We have realised that we need physical activity. We need physical exercise to keep us healthy. We need to do things that make us tired.

So what did we do? We invented some more machines, machines that we use to exercise, and we put them in gymnasiums, and sometimes in our own homes, and we use them, not to take away the physical efforts of life, but to give us the sort of physical effort that will help us to stay healthy.

Our text today talks about hard work, about the burdens of life, that leave us exhausted, worn out. It talks about relief from your burdens, and rest, and refreshment, and recuperation.

But then it also talks about a new burden, a new exercise that you need for the good of your health.

Jesus says: Come to me all you who are weary and weighed down with heavy burdens. Jesus promises: Come to me, and I will give you rest, and refreshment. But then he challenges us: And now pick up my yoke, and learn from me. Learn how to live a life that is healthy and strong.

What are the burdens that weigh people down? What makes you tired?

Do you get tired physically? For all the labour-saving devices that we have, life can still be physically demanding. At the end of the day we may feel tired and worn out.

Our bodies have their limits, and when we have been doing physical work, we reach the point where our bodies tell us. If we are ill, if we are carrying injuries, then we become even more aware of our physical limits. We feel tired. We need rest.

As you grow old, you become more and more aware of the loss of physical strength. You cannot do the same tasks you used to do. You appreciate rest and quietness more and more.

But there are other kinds of burdens and other kinds of weariness.

Today, when we spend less time and effort on physical work, our levels of mental stress have grown at least as much. As life has become more and more complicated, our emotional stress keeps going higher. We talk about the pressures of life. There are pressures all around us—we are expected to succeed, to be able to manage new tasks, new technology, and we often get to the point when we cry out: I can’t cope with it all. Give me a break.

We have financial pressures—all the things that we want to get, the security we hope for. We struggle to make ends meet.

We have relationship pressures. We want to love and be loved. So often our relationships become difficult and we carry disappointments and regrets.

There are pressures within us. We want to be successful. We want to be able to manage. We want to be independent. But again and again we are reminded of our own limitations. We feel that we have failed.

But the greatest pressure, and our greatest failures, are spiritual.

If we are honest, we know that we are not the people that we would like to be. We do not live the life that we know that we should live.

I know that I am not the person that God wants me to be, and expects me to be, and commands me to be. I know I should obey my God, and I should live according to the life that God has set up for me. But I don’t. I fail. I disobey God, and I break God’s commands. The greatest burden we carry is our moral failure.

We try to get around it and think that as long as we do our best, that should be OK. But it does not work. We carry a great and terrible burden of guilt. We have sinned against our God.

If we think back to Paul’s words in Romans 7, it is one of the most honest cases of facing the guilt within our human hearts: I am a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body. What a wretched man I am! We can hear his frustration, his anger, almost despair. If we are honest, we know that we all share in the same sort of struggle.

I once shared this passage with a person who was struggling with addictions—gambling addiction, alcohol and drug addiction, sexual addiction. This person wanted to break free, but the reality is that an addiction keeps grabbing you and dragging you back.

So you have the burden of terrible frustration and guilt. You want to do what is right and healthy, but the urges to do something to satisfy your desires is so great that it keeps dragging you back.

Sin is an addiction. We don’t want to sin – but we do. Those desires to do something, even if we know that it is hurtful—they keep grabbing us and dragging us down.

That is what Paul is speaking about, and we feel it too: I don’t understand what I am doing, and why I keep on doing it. I don’t do what I want to do, but I do what I hate. I know that God’s law is good, and I want to do what is right. But sin is living in me, and I keep on giving way to sin. I have the desire to do what is right, but I do not have the strength to carry it out. ….I don’t do the good I want to do, but I do the evil I don’t want to do.

We hear his great frustration, and we share that frustration. Who will rescue me from this body of death?

But Paul also has an answer. Paul knows where to go for relief, for release, for rest. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

That is also the answer that Jesus himself has given. That is the invitation that Christ gives to us: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Come to me and I will give you rest.

One of the great gifts of God is rest. Rest is peace, relief, refreshment. When we have rest, our bodies, and our minds, and our spirits, have the opportunity to recover, to gather strength again.

When we are tired, we just want to stop, to put our feet up, to crawl into bed, to go to sleep. When we are rested, we are ready to start again. Our energy and our strength have returned.

We have been made in a way so that while we rest we are made strong. Our bodies and our minds are refreshed and rejuvenated. If we are sick, often a good rest is the best medicine, so that your bodies can heal themselves, and overcome fevers and infections.

There is a beautiful psalm verse: “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for God grants sleep to those he loves” (Psalm 127:2)

Jesus Christ offers rest. But now it is rest that brings health and recovery from our spiritual weariness, from our burdens of sin and guilt. Jesus Christ offers to take our burden. Jesus Christ has taken the burden of our sin and guilt all the way to the Cross. He has carried that burden and he has paid for that guilt with his own life. So Jesus says to us that we do not have to try to prove your own goodness—not to God, nor to ourselves, nor to anyone else. Jesus takes away that pressure.

And Jesus tells us that as we come to him in repentance, he forgives us. He takes away our sin. He sets us free from the burden of guilt, and that terrible frustration when we can never avoid following our human sinful desires.

Jesus gives us that deep rest and peace, for we know that our sins are forgiven. With that rest we are refreshed, rejuvenated, recuperated. We are ready to live again, with the strength and energy that comes from God’s Spirit.

But just when we think that all of our problems have been solved, Jesus comes back and says: But now I have something for you to carry. Take my yoke on upon you. A yoke is the big heavy beam of wood that was placed over the shoulders of a team of oxen, so that they could pull heavy loads. Jesus is putting a load on us.

Is it easy to be a Christian, to follow Jesus, to live for Christ? No, because Jesus also has very high expectations on us. Jesus calls on us to be totally dedicated to our God, to serve God with our bodies, minds and spirits. That is demanding, and it can mean a huge effort, a deep sacrifice.

Has Jesus lifted off one burden, and replaced it with another? Yes—and no! Jesus takes away the real burdens that wear us out and threaten to destroy us. But remember how we spoke about another sort of effort, about work, about exercise, which is part of healthy living that creates a healthy tiredness.

That is the sort of task and challenge that Jesus gives us. Jesus says: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

If you look at a yoke, you will see that it is not meant to be carried alone—it is always carried by a pair of oxen. Jesus tells you, I am giving you a burden, but I am not expecting to carry it by yourself. I am not plonking it on top of you to weigh you down and oppress you and destroy you.

No, I am gentle and humble in heart. I am giving you something that is going to help you and build you up.

Jesus says that he is carrying that burden with us. Learn from me. When you share the tasks and challenges of Christian life, you are sharing in the life of Jesus Christ. You are sharing the life that comes from God. That is a privilege, not a burden. And it is a challenge that makes you stronger, that builds up your faith. The more you respond, the more you grow, and you appreciate more and more what God is doing through you and what God is doing in you.

With Jesus Christ, this yoke is easy, this burden is not too heavy. As you commit to God’s tasks, yes, you do get tired. You know that you have been putting your body and mind and soul into it. But it is a healthy tiredness. It is the tiredness that brings refreshment and new life.

Until you finally have finished all of your tasks. Then you have a new rest and an eternal peace. Then you are living in the peace of your heavenly Father. For Christ has given you the rest for your souls. Amen.

Text: Colossians 1:15, 20 

Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all created things…. Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s blood on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.

Things are not always what they seem.  What seems to be the most obvious can be awfully wrong. The gospel reading today is another one of those cases where things are not what they seem to be. 

We heard the account of Jesus’ crucifixion as recorded in Luke’s gospel.  We are told how Jesus was nailed to a cross between two criminals. 
He is weak from all the beatings; his clothes are stripped from him and soldiers gamble for his robe; he suffers the mockery of those standing around the cross.  They call out, “If you are a king, then save yourself”.  They laughed at his weakness and inability to save himself, they joked about his claim to be a king and now his unkingly naked body was nailed to an instrument of torture – what a joke and what a good laugh they had – a king on a cross – what a ridiculous idea!

But there was one person who saw something in Jesus that no one else saw.  In spite of the gashes in his flesh from the whip, the nails, the wounds, the blood, the nakedness and the shame, one of the criminals crucified with Jesus recognised a king.  He said to Jesus, “Remember me, Jesus, when you come as King!”  Jesus promised him, “Today you will be in Paradise with me”.

A strange king indeed – suffering, weak, humiliated, despised, rejected and dying.  But the death of this unlikely king made us friends with God through his death.  God was going to stop at nothing to break down all barriers between him and all people.  He was even prepared to let the King of king and Lord of lords die in order to make everything right again between him and us.

This is where Paul’s letter to the Colossians picks up the theme of the kingship of Jesus.  The apostle goes to great lengths to emphasise that Jesus is God’s Son; he is everything that God is.  Through him “everything in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen things, including spiritual powers, lords, rulers, and authorities” were created.  If he is the creator of all these then, he is also lord and king of everything in heaven and on earth.  Paul goes on to say that Jesus is not only king of every part of creation, he is also head of the church; “he is the source of the body’s life”.  

Things are not what they seem.  This king is all powerful, above all things, the lord of all and master of the whole universe, with multitudes of angels at his beck and call, living in the perfection of heaven.  Yet it was not above this king to get down and get dirty.  Jesus doesn’t just dress up to be like us, he is one of us.  He takes on our human nature and lived among ordinary people especially sinners and outcasts, including lepers and the demon possessed.  What happened to him could hardly be regarded as being kingly. 

He died on a cross.  Just grasp the magnitude of this.  The King of kings and Lord of lords, God’s Son, died on a horrible human instrument of torture and death.  Not only that, he died for all those who are enemies of God because of the evil things they did and thought (Col 1:21).

In his usual clear and precise way, Paul says, “By means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence” (1:22).  That’s worth repeating to make it sink in.  “By means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence”.

Today is the last Sunday of the church year and it is traditional to talk about the end of the world, the end of our life here on this planet as we know it and the certain judgement of God on the Last Day. 

This image of the servant-king that Paul and Luke paint for us is so important as we face the prospect of coming face to face with the holy and righteous God.  There’s no denying that we are sinners. 
There’s no getting around the fact that right up to the last day of our life we will continue to sin in thought, word and deed.  The Bible makes it quite clear that our sin condemns us and we would have no chance of surviving the judgement of God on the last day. 

But Paul makes it clear that there is nothing to be afraid of.  Christ has died for us.  Jesus is master and king over sin, death and the power of Satan to condemn us.  Jesus’ death has made us friends with God again and made us holy, pure and faultless.  Our sin has been wiped away.  Forgiven.  Forgotten.  We will be welcomed into heaven.

Isn’t that what happened to the man dying next to Jesus.  In his moment of deepest agony, Jesus tells the criminal who sees in Jesus a king that his sin will no longer be held against him.  “Today you will be with me in Paradise”.  At a moment when all would seem to be hopeless and without a future, Jesus is truly a king.  He pardons and assures the man that he will be with him in Paradise. 

Without a doubt, there is a future after death and after the end of this world.  Jesus promised the man next to him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise”. 

We have a servant-king who died for us and rose from the dead, who has done everything possible to ensure that we need not fear what will happen.  At the end of everything, we are safe.

Kings and crosses don’t normally go together but in the case of Jesus they do.  Jesus may have been raised to the highest place and given the name that is greater than any other name (Phil 2:9) but this mighty king cannot be separated from the cross on which he died saving you and me.  As Paul so nicely summarised, “His Son became a human and died. So God made peace with you, and now he lets you stand in his presence as people who are holy and faultless and innocent” (Col 1:22).

Worship this different kind of king, this Jesus, and trust him.
This is our king – nailed to a cross to rescue us from the powers of darkness and sin.

This is our king – risen and ruling, and “openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11).

Text: Luke 21:10-12, 18, 19

“Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines, and plagues everywhere; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky. Before all these things take place, however, you will be arrested and persecuted; you will be handed over to be tried in synagogues and be put in prison; you will be brought before kings and rulers for my sake. …. But not a single hair from your heads will be lost. Stand firm, and you will save yourselves.

Interruptions can be annoying.  You decide that it’s time to start your Christmas cards and letters but as soon as you put pen to paper someone in the family is hungry, can’t find something, or your phone rings there goes your good intentions. 

Sometimes interruptions, though initially annoying, can be creative and constructive.  The whole story of the Bible can be looked at from the viewpoint of interruptions.

The devastating effects of sin interrupt the peace and harmony of life in the Garden of Eden.  Sin interrupts God’s plans for the world.  God had created a beautiful world and had put beautiful people in it but sin interrupted the beauty of God’s world.  In turn God interrupts sin by becoming a human being who lives among us filled with grace and truth and dies for us.

Moses was happily looking after sheep and keeping out of trouble when his life was interrupted by a voice from a burning bush.  It was God who was challenging him to step out of his comfort zone and demand that the king of Egypt let the people of Israel go free.

God’s people were caught in sin and were drifting away from God and so he interrupted the lives of ordinary people and sent them as prophets to interrupt their drift away from him and bring them back into a relationship with their Creator and Saviour.

The announcement of the birth of Jesus interrupts a young girl’s life and her wedding plans.  The silence of the night is interrupted when angels announce the birth of the Messiah.

A traitor friend who needs to go and sell his Lord for the price of a slave interrupts Jesus’ celebration of the Passover with his disciples.  This same traitor and the armed guards interrupt Jesus’ prayers in the Garden.  And finally, the sadness and confusion after Jesus’ death is interrupted by the news that he has risen.  His tomb is empty.

Interruptions are events in our lives that can’t be forced back any more than we can hold back the tide.

Today’s difficult gospel text makes us aware of the interruption that will affect the whole world.  Jesus is leaving the temple and he is looking around at one of the most magnificent structures in the world at that time.  He tells his disciples that this grand monument will be destroyed.  We know that this happened at the hands of the Romans.  The history of the temple will be interrupted and brought to an end, he says, and it was. 

He goes on and says that everything we cherish, every institution and tradition, every treasure that we count on and store up will be interrupted and brought to an end.  Wars, earthquakes, famines, and other disasters in nature, persecutions when family members will rise up against other members of a family, will interrupt our way of life and the peace we enjoy. 

Peace and safety in our world and in our community are very fragile things and can easily be interrupted by hostility, bloodshed, robbery and fear. The interruptions that we experience almost on a daily basis are reminders that things in this world are very uncertain.                                                    

When you think about it, the interruptions that we experience in life can make us feel very insecure and uncertain.  Everything that we once considered solid and secure; what we once thought to be the centre of our happiness and peace can suddenly be interrupted and we are left with nothing.  Take the story of Job in the Old Testament who had everything and in an instant it was all gone.

But Jesus wants to make it quite clear in our reading today that there is one thing that will never be interrupted, that is, the love that our Father in heaven has for us.  Jesus says, “Not a single hair from your heads will be lost”.  Regardless of what may happen to interrupt our peace and happiness in this life, nothing will interrupt God’s love for us.

 “Stand firm”, Jesus says in the last verse in our reading.  Trust and believe in that love for you.

“Stand firm” and believe that Jesus’ love has forgiven all your sin and prepared a way for you to eternal life.

“Stand firm” and believe that he will stand beside you and help you no matter what kind of interruption will disrupt your happiness and peace in this life.
                                                                                                                                                                    “Stand firm” in the knowledge that even though all kinds of disasters may come  God loves you and he will not allow anything interrupt that love and care for you.

On the day we die or when Christ bursts into this world on the last day (whichever comes first), that will be the last interruption that we will ever experience.  There will no more interruptions by sickness, death, wars, natural disasters, accidents, crime or whatever.  We will be taken into God’s presence and join those gathered around the throne of God. 

In the meantime we need to deal with the interruptions that take place in our everyday life. How easily is our trust in Jesus interrupted?
How readily do we allow our pet sins interrupt the newness that we have in Christ?
How often do we allow or even try to find interruptions that keep us away from reading God’s Word, praying and worshipping together with our fellow believers?
How willingly do we allow our sinful nature and Satan interrupt our walking God’s ways?

God grant that the Holy Spirit would interrupt every sin, every temptation, every fear and doubt, and remind us every day that God’s love for us is uninterruptible.  God grant that our commitment and faith be as uninterruptible as God’s commitment to us.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22  2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18  St.Luke 18:9-14

The Pharisees were dedicated to the preservation of Jewish culture in terms of the Mosaic law and its traditions relating to life and worship. They were jealous for the sacred history of God’s people; God’s unique provisions for the Jewish people. Israel as God’s people, made to be who they are as distinct from the rest of humanity by God’s gracious call of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who is renamed Israel. This call took the form of a covenant- including the gift of the Law, the ten commandments. The unique identifier of the Jewish people and religion through their entire history to the present day. The Pharisees were the guardians of this tradition and the understanding of its significance for the survival of Israel as the people of God. Their description as Pharisees comes from the Hebrew word פרושים   prushim from  פרוש parush, meaning “separated,” that is, one who is separated for a life of dedication to law and purity.

When this story was told by Jesus, we very often overlook the fact that the original hearers far from being offended by the self-conscious righteousness of the Pharisee would find it wrong indeed, obnoxious, that a Pharisee should be unfavourably compared to a Publican. The publicans were the “tax collectors” for the Romans in the state of Israel. The word came from the Roman word “publicani.” Because the publicans were representatives of the pagan Roman conqueror, their work was detested. A Jew who chose to become a “publican” was viewed as a betrayer and a servant of the occupying power of Rome. He was about as far opposite to a Pharisee as one could be.

The publicans were also hated for stealing from their own people more than what was required by the Roman’s tax laws. They took advantage of their official position to coerce and cheat people. They were people looked down upon, as amongst the lowest of the low in that society, people who were despised, whose company one would not want to cultivate.

In fact, we too generally believe that like the Pharisees for Jewish people who upheld Israel’s tradition there are groups in our own community who sustain the threads which hold the fabric and continuity of our community together. The farmers who farm, the teachers who teach, the parents who sacrifice their self-interest to the interests of their family and we could go on and name the numerous groups of people in the community who by their dedication to their calling are the ones that make a civilised society possible, who sustain the lasting essential structures that make life possible in a civil society.

The Pharisee in the text before us today with his pious faithfulness and predictability intends to serve God. He does in fact give thanks to God for His being who he is, for having made him such in his difference from the Publican. He does not make out that it is he who has made something of himself. He acknowledges that it all depends upon God as to who he is as a Pharisee.

Indeed, it is not the point of Jesus’s comparison to disparage or deny the piety of the Pharisee, in another place (St Matthew 5:10) Jesus says unless his disciple’s righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, they shall not enter the Kingdom of God. But what Jesus indicates is that the kind of obedience the Pharisee offers God vitiates, destroys, the goodness of the Pharisee’s whole life’s meaning.

In comparing himself to the Publican in the very act of thanking God for making him who he is; the pious Pharisee shows that he himself is not in the doing of his good work.  His doing of good works, his keeping of the Law of God is done not for the sake of the goodness of the action itself, but with one eye on God, whose judgment he recognises as the highest court. He has one eye on God recognising his action and one eye on the action itself. His vision of being and doing good according to God’s Law is divided. In St Matthew 6:22-23 Jesus says of such a human situation,

 “ The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye is single, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

 It is the divided nature of the Pharisee’s action that destroys its value in terms of obedience to God’s will expressed in the Law . His action is not unselfconscious but very self-conscious. His eye is not single but divided as he lives before and with God.

The Publican, on the other hand, turns away from who he is in what he does, and remember what he does is betray his people by working in support of the pagan Roman regime: whilst defrauding his fellow citizens. As distinct from the Pharisee he does not look at his works, his deeds, whether they be good or bad; he looks only to God’s mercy as that which is the basis of his life before God and before his contemporaries. He looks only to God’s mercy as that which makes Him who he is, the only basis of his future hope. He looks neither to the right nor the left but only to God’s mercy as the truth of His life before God and other people. He pays no attention as to whether his conscience accuses or condemns him. In other words, in contrast to the Pharisee he trusts alone in God’s mercy. He looks at himself and his deeds, not with a divided eye but a single eye on God’s promised forgiveness; he seeks his righteousness outside of his work, in God alone, His mercy, now made visible in the One who is speaking. The Person of Jesus Himself is the manifestation of God’s mercy on his way to the Cross.

So, the difference between the pharisee and the publican is not to be considered on moral grounds. On moral grounds the Pharisee is regarded as a far worthier citizen than the Publican. The difference is the question which confronts us all in the One in whom the mercy of God ceases to be an abstract category. In the person of His Son, God confronts us as the crucified One, whose life is determined by absolute trust in God. It is the law of the cross, God’s incomparable mercy. This is revealed in Christ’s absolute obedience, for our sake, to the Father’s purpose for His life fulfilled in the cross. It is this that establishes the Publican as righteous and condemns the Pharisee. This action divides and judges not on the basis of what we can see or feel,  but on the basis of God’s grace and His grace alone.

But who are the Pharisees today. We live is a quite different society/community than that which is depicted in the New Testament. I mentioned before, we may look to those who, like the Pharisees, hold the community together and express their vocations by serving in the structures of society that keep it functioning as  a liveable civil society. The health care workers, the farmers who farm, the teachers who teach, the parents who sacrifice their self-interest to the interests of their family and we could go on and name the numerous groups of people in the community who by their dedication to their calling are the ones that make a civilised society possible, who sustain the essential structures that make life possible as a civil society. But these people do not function in our society as the Pharisees once did for Israel, being the source of guidance as to living life before God as God’s people.

The Pharisees today are those self-appointed individuals and groups that seek to control and to manipulate peoples’ thought and behaviour with their  post-modern critical theories as the source of all insight and wisdom to which we must not only pay attention but obey.

(The Australian 070922) ‘The teacher at a Church of Ireland school was jailed for an indeterminate time after refusing to address a transitioning student as ‘they’. Enoch Burke was arrested yesterday morning for breaching a court order.

After Judge Michael Quinn made his ruling, Mr Burke said: “It is insanity that I will be led from this courtroom to a place of incarceration, but I will not give up my Christian beliefs.” He now lives in Mountjoy prison.’

Or the widely reported dismissal of the recently appointed CEO of the VFL club Essendon. The former CEO of the National Australia Bank he held his new position for 30 hours and then he resigned at the request of the Board because they came to the knowledge that he belonged to a Christian Church whose doctrine banned Abortion and was against Same Sex Marriage.

In recent times the Archbishop of Hobart was dragged before a court because he published for use in the education of students in Catholic schools a small book containing the Catholic doctrine of marriage as between a man and a woman. Someone who read it was offended by what it says about Christian marriage but also what Christian marriage excludes.

Whether it is in the UK, Europe, Australia or New Zealand not a week goes by without yet another example of a book being banned, ideas being censored, the past being rewritten, statues being demolished and authors being vilified and held up to ridicule. Political correctness, represents a threat to the existence of society as we know it. Including such basic ideas as rationality and the public expression of religious belief.

In schools and universities as a result of post-modern literary and post-colonial theory students are taught that our society is inherently racist, there is nothing beneficial about the Western Christian tradition, and, if they are white, they are told they must atone for the crimes committed against people of colour. Our culture is plunged into ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance, and individual liberty is crushed by group think. The post-modern world is the world of double think as described by George Orwell in his books like Animal Farm, and 1984, and others. In them the Orwellian world is the world where Big Brother controls citizens thought and anyone, particularly Christians, who question the thought police is victimised, punished and silenced. In totalitarian societies like China and present-day Russia we actually see what Orwell so remarkably predicted would happen once human ideologies replaces the open and free societies of the Western democratic kind. The ideologies which inhabit the politically correct guardians of our community, who censor and victimise anyone who trespasses over the boundaries of their ideology, whether it be militant feminism, Marxist interpretation of history, the black arm band view of Australian history and race relations, or secular humanism which denies any rational narrative or purpose to the human story, they all lead us in the same direction as  those already established in communist or fascist states.

As Christians in this context, we have the responsibility to tell the truth about the human condition on the basis  of God’s action toward us in Christ. That human beings are not an accidental conglomeration of atoms thrown together by a cosmic accident, beholden to a blind fate that only has the meaning that I or my group give to the human condition. That there is a purpose in life derives its meaning not from us but for us in Christ. This purpose invites us to trust ourselves to One who in the cross dignifies our humanity by actually bearing our brokenness in himself and thus giving us freedom to live truly human lives, serving each other as we have been served in Christ, and in that service to find the true basis of human freedom.

Dr. Gordon Watson.

Luke 18:1-8

In the New Testament, love and prayer belong together. If you love God, you can’t help but communicate with Him.

It’s a sheer joy to communicate with those you love dearly, isn’t it?

In the face of all the discouraging things that happen in our modern world, it’s amazing that so many people keep praying regularly.

The problem of prayer becomes acute when God seems to be in no hurry to answer our prayers, for whatever profound reasons He has in mind. If five people pray that they’ll get a job, say, as a chaplain, the prayers of four will seemingly go unanswered, because only one person will get the job.

How do we make sense of this? Prayer is first of all, all about getting to know God better. Prayer is of inestimable value even if it does no more than remind us of who we are before God, that is, sinners in need of all the help we can get from Him.

Lack of prayer may indicate a lack of hunger for God. It thrills God most of all when we want Him more than we want things from Him. How marvellous when our Creator is more precious to us than anything else we might desire; when God is better than our hopes, better than the best we’ve dared to imagine. Our praying can be greater and better than the things we pray for.

Prayer involves more than asking for what you think you want. It involves asking to be changed in ways you cannot imagine; to be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you’ve been given, instead of grieving over what might have been. Our ability to love is sometimes reflected in our ability to pray.

If you don’t pray, everything can disappoint you by going wrong. If you do pray, things will still go wrong, but not in a way that will disappoint you. Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tyre? We can never make it on our own, no matter how clever we are, how much luck we may have, how many strings we pull or how hard we work. Even when we have everything going for us, God is still our primary need. Who else would we want to go to, except the God who loves us, who treasures us and who wants us in spite of our inadequate prayer life, in spite of our failure to love others as we ought, and in spite of our failure to live as God would like.

When we feel discouraged, we’re directed to “take it to the Lord in prayer”, and persist in that prayer until we get a response. Our greatest temptation in prayer is to give up too soon.

The young widow in today’s parable is a model of persistence for us. In Jesus’ time, widows often had to go to a judge to get justice. When a husband died, his property often went to his brother, leaving his widow helpless. Widows often lacked someone to help them. Jesus shows a passionate concern for the plight of widows, a concern that most likely flowed from seeing Mary, his widowed mother, struggling to make ends meet.

Jesus tells us of a widow who refused to give in until she got justice. To make matters worse, the judge in charge of her cause is a callous magistrate, lacking any compassion for this woman. Furthermore, she had no money with which to bribe him. Persistence was the only weapon she had to secure her inheritance and her future. And she was shameless in her persistence.

She didn’t give the judge a moment of peace. We have the picture of a powerless widow threatening to box an all-powerful judge. Though this judge has many men at his beck and call, he can’t shake off this one persistent widow. It would be like our Prime Minister trying to ignore the verbal harangue of a homeless bag lady until she hits the Prime Minister over the head with a water bomb, dousing him until he takes notice. The unjust judge fears this widow will pester him forever. Verse five literally states, “I’ll hear her case or she’ll give me a black eye.” You can imagine the newspaper headlines: “Powerless Widow Wins!”

We’re often in as much need of help, with a need greater than we can cope with alone, as this widow was. Jesus reassures us that God is more ready to hear us than we are to pray. We fail to persist in prayer as our Lord wants us to, maybe out of a false sense of self-sufficiency.

When we don’t get answers as soon as we think we should, we shouldn’t despair. F.B. Meyer once said, “The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” God wants us to pour our hearts out to Him over all the things that churn us up and upset us.

The story is told of a woman of humble origins who was saving her coins for “a treat”. Then she met her future husband. He was the personification of her dreamed-of hero. She couldn’t believe it when he asked to marry her. They moved to a large house; her dream home. And they had children. It was all she had ever wanted. Then she became ill.

The news from her doctor was: “Your liver has stopped working.”

She almost screamed at him: “Are you telling me that I am dying?”

“We have done all we can”, the doctor said as he left her.

She felt a fire of anger ignite within her. She wanted to tell God off. As best she could, she struggled to the hospital chapel, preparing what she was going to say to God:

“Every time anyone finds a little happiness, You pull out the rug from under her feet. Well, I just want You to know that I have had it. I see through You.”

But when she got near the front of the chapel, she fell. She was so weak, that she could hardly see.

She could just read the words woven onto the step into the sanctuary that read,

GOD, BE MERCIFUL TO ME, A SINNER.

Suddenly, all the angry words, all the desire to tell God off was gone. All that was left was, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Then she put her tired head down and listened.

Deep within her, she heard: “All of this is a simple invitation to ask you to turn your life over to Me. You have never done that, you know. The doctors here do their best to treat you, but I alone can cure you.”

There and then, Jean turned her life over to God. Finding her way back to her hospital bed, she entered a deep sleep. After further tests the next day, her doctor gave her good news: “Your liver seems to be functioning again.” Like Job in the Old Testament, God had led her to the brink, but only to invite her to surrender, to Him.

Through prayer, God invites us to place our whole life into His hands. When we pray, God works. Time spent in prayer is never wasted. A bad prayer is better than no prayer at all. God delays His answer because He knows we need to spend time with Him more than we need the things we pray for.

God either gives us what we ask for or something better. Like a wise parent who withholds certain potentially harmful presents from a child who desperately wants it, like a bow and arrow, until the child is old enough to use it safely, so too God, in His infinite wisdom, withholds things that may harm us rather than help our faith now.

God delays in order to . . .

first, teach us patience;

secondly, to increase our gratitude for what we already have;

thirdly, because God has a greater blessing in store for us;

or fourthly, for a reason we would not yet understand.

For example, a failure to forgive others may be the reason our prayers are not being answered.

St. James reminds us, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.” Look at all the blessings that are ours as a result of Christ’s unanswered prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Unanswered prayer there in the garden didn’t stop Jesus from continuing to pray on the cross. Moses, Job, Jonah and Elijah prayed that they would die. This request wasn’t answered because God still had blessings to bring to us through them.

A woman in hospital suffering from cancer had her pastor pray regularly for healing. When healing didn’t come, she said to her pastor,

“Today, let’s not pray that I’ll be healed. God knows that I hate this illness. God knows I want to be healed. Let’s pray that, whether I’m healed or not, I’ll feel close to God because even if I’m not healed, especially if I’m not healed, that’s what I really want – GOD.”

She was a reminder to her pastor that in the end, we don’t simply want peace, bread and health. We want God. God grant that the more you pray, the more real God will become for you. Jesus asks us that when He returns, He will find in us the kind of faith that persists in prayer like the widow in the parable.

This is the only parable of Jesus that ends with a question, indicating that our Lord wants us to go home today with this question firmly fixed in our minds: “Will the Son of Man find such faith on earth when He returns?”

Our faith in our Lord moves us to pray, and prayer feeds and sustains our faith, making it indestructible. Our age is one of “compulsive talking”, but not to God. There are gifts God won’t give us until we ask for them. When you’re too worn out to pray, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. We’re always in better shape after a heart to heart with God.

Martin Luther said, “Prayer is the most important thing in my life. If I should neglect prayer for a single day, I should lose a great deal of the fire of faith. … Guard yourself against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, ‘wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.’” 

Prayer contains too many marvellous blessings and benefits for you to want to ever delay for a day. Do your prayers make a difference? Yes, yes, yes! Forever and ever. Amen.

“Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)