First Sunday in Lent

The text: Mark 1-9-15

Today’s sermon is about baptism and Lent. It’s about our journey of life and Jesus’ journey to the cross.

In Mark we hear of Jesus’ baptism. One thing that we should notice about Mark’s account of Jesus baptism is that everything happens very fast, ‘immediately’, the spirit descends and the Father speaks, ‘immediately’ the Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness.

Then comes Jesus’ temptation by Satan. Jesus is tempted to deny God and rely on himself, and worship Satan. Jesus does not succumb to temptation, and he resists temptation for us.

Our journey of faith also begins in baptism, by water and the spirit, but in contrast to Jesus journey our journey begins with death. The death of the sinner, in the water and by the word, the union of each Christian to our Saviour’s death and resurrection for us. This death continues for the whole of our life until we breathe our final breath, as Luther puts it in the hymn ‘Lord Keep us steadfast in thy word’, we are taken out of death to life.

As Christ was tempted after his baptism, so too are we. For in our sinful state, before our baptism, before we are claimed by Christ and have the gospel proclaimed to us, temptation is not a factor. For sin reigns before we are claimed by Christ. We have no regard for doing God’s will, we have no desire to resist evil, so we are free to sin without the need for temptation.

After baptism, after Christ has placed his mark on us, after we have heard the Gospel, temptation begins. Because Satan knows that he has lost another soul and wants to win it back.

We should be reminded here of the petition from Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation.”

In his explanation in the Small Catechism, Luther taught this to mean: “God tempts no one to sin, but we pray in this petition that God may so guard and preserve us that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into unbelief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, but that, although we may be so tempted, we may finally prevail and gain the victory.”

For Luther, and for St Mark, it is not God who does the tempting. God leads us on his path of truth. But it is the devil, the world and our flesh that tempt us to sin. They tempt us by saying:

Jesus’ words are not trustworthy;
You don’t really believe that do you?
How could one man’s life 2000 years ago be relevant to you today?
You don’t deserve his gifts!
He doesn’t really love you;
It’s not a big deal, the world has changed and that sin doesn’t matter now;
You must work harder for your salvation, it’s up to you!

Many of us even become complacent in our faith. Satan can take a holiday. We look to the world and find in it such compelling evidence that we walk away from our Saviour who suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. So after being brought to God by our Saviour we walk away and follow the ways of the world.

Others of us are so turned in on ourselves that Satan need not do any work at all. We continue in our sin, happily breaking each and every commandment, succumbing to our own fleshy temptation and refusing ever to repent.

Or we do repent with the best intentions, yet when we walk out the door we slip back into our sins again?

Brothers and sisters, we must return to our Saviour, to our walk of faith. When we are tempted, by Satan, the world or our sinful self, we must flee to our Saviour. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

We must return to the Cross, for that is the task of Lent. To turn away from our own sins, temptations, agendas, and turn back to our Saviour on the cross. Lent is about repenting of our turning away from God, and turning back with a good conscience granted by our Saviour Jesus Christ in our baptism. The task of Lent is to repent of our unbelief and lack trust, believe that he has done all this for us; that he has taken on our flesh, been baptized, walked through the wilderness, experienced and resisted all manner of temptations and even in the face of death did not turn back, but turned his face to Jerusalem and followed the path all the way to the cross, all for us.

Our journey of Lent follows Jesus’ journey. We follow him through our baptism, into our temptations, right to his Cross. Yet our journey doesn’t end in death—our journey ends in resurrection, as Jesus shares his own resurrection with us. We don’t receive what we deserve, that is eternal death, we receive what he deserves, eternal life with God.

As we take this journey of Lent again, and we lift our eyes to Jesus our Saviour on the Cross, we must always be aware that Lent is really a condensed form of the Christian life.

Our baptism is not just relevant in Lent;
Our temptations are not limited to Lent;
Our sin is not limited to Lent;
Our spiritual disciplines are not limited to Lent.

Lent is a chance to hone our spiritual disciplines, to be reminded of them so that we might make them a habit throughout our years of dying to ourselves and rising again to new life each day, in righteousness and purity forever.

As you join Jesus on his journey to the Cross, you might consider how the disciplines of prayer, fasting and giving to the needy help you focus on Jesus during Lent. Fasting, for instance, helps you focus on Jesus because you have free time when you would usually eat, time that is free so that you can read and meditate on his word. By reading the word, (you might focus your reading on Jesus’ suffering and death) you are immediately looking to him and away from yourself. You could also be free in that time to serve your neighbor with acts of service. You also free up some money by not purchasing food and this too could help you focus on the needs of others rather than your own needs.

The spiritual disciplines were never meant to focus you on yourself; we are good enough at doing that already. Spiritual disciplines are supposed to make you look outside of yourself, to look to Jesus and to your neighbor, to see in Jesus Christ the pain and suffering he endured for us, the temptations he resisted, so that he could bring us to God with a pure and clean conscience. What an incredible gift!

Amen.

Ash Wednesday

Be merciful to me

The text for tonight’s message is based on Psalm 51. Under the heading of this psalm there is sub-heading. “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba”. Ouch! That seems a bit blunt putting that kind of a heading on a song that was used in the temple for worship. It says that David wrote the psalm and now every worshipper was reminded of his sin whenever they opened their hymnal scrolls to Psalm 51. Can you imagine the worship leader saying to his congregation, “Let’s now sing the hymn that was inspired by the king’s confession to murder and adultery”? In certain periods of history saying something like that would certainly have meant “off with his head”.

David had become the greatest king that the land of Judah and Israel had ever seen. He had defeated the enemies both within and outside the land and brought wealth and prosperity.

One day David caught sight of the beautiful Bathsheba from his palace roof, began an affair that led to a pregnancy, and to the death of Bathsheba’s husband. The prophet, Nathan confronted David with his transgressions, telling a parable of two men, one rich and one poor. The rich man, who had many lambs, took the poor man’s one lamb and slaughtered it to put on a feast for his friends. David was furious, and then Nathan said to him, “You are the man!” This revelation led to David’s act of repentance that is expressed in Psalm 51. The psalm opens like this –

1 Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love.
Because of your great mercy wipe away my sins!
2 Wash away all my evil and make me clean from my sin!
3 I recognize my faults; I am always conscious of my sins.
4 I have sinned against you—only against you— and done what you consider evil.
So you are right in judging me; you are justified in condemning me.
5 I have been evil from the day I was born;
from the time I was conceived, I have been sinful.

These words are not some casual throw away lines that David rattled off to ease his conscience – perhaps a prayer that he has prayed many times as a kind of ritual that has lost its significance. Rather this prayer expresses deep anguish and repentance. He looks into his own heart and at his life and the way he has acted and he only sees evil.

I use the word ‘evil’ deliberately because it gets across the idea of perverse wickedness and sinfulness that is so opposed to what God wants and expects of his creation. We are not talking about mistakes or errors or slipups or blunders that can easily be dismissed with an excuse or explanation or something like, “I can’t help it” or “Oops!” as if that makes everything go away.

David is talking about ‘transgressions’ here. He has gone to places where he should not have gone. He has stepped over the line coveting another man’s wife, being overcome with lust, plotting and carrying out a man’s murder to get her – this is evil at its worst and David knows it as he says to God, “I have sinned against you—only against you— and done what you consider evil. So you are right in judging me; you are justified in condemning me”.

He offers no excuse. Not even his words, “I have been evil from the day I was born; from the time I was conceived, I have been sinful” are an excuse as if to say, “Look, God, I can’t help it because I was born this way”. He is simply saying that he is a sinner through and through even from moment when he was first given life and not even conscious of the world around him yet. There is no part of him that is not a sinner and there has never been a time when he has not been a sinner.

It’s true that many of us would say that we haven’t done anything as wicked and horrible as David did but the prayer that David speaks here in Psalm 51 doesn’t pick out the ‘big sins’ to bring to God in repentance. He is talking about all sin, all transgressions. Whether big or small in our eyes they are all sin in God eyes; they are acts of stepping over the line – transgressions – or trespassing into places we ought not go. That’s why he even includes the sin he wasn’t even aware of when he was a new born child, even the sin that was part of him while still in his mother’s womb.

Sin isn’t a matter of individual acts; it is a condition; it is broken relationship between God and us. We may not even be conscious of the sin in our lives and yet it is still part of us. It is part of our being. We are all tainted with sin. It is something that has been handed down to us from generation to generation from Adam and Eve.

This inbuilt desire to sin becomes clear when we say and do things that are so wrong, so far away from the way God wants us to speak and act.

The apostle Paul doesn’t beat about the bush and calls a spade a spade when it comes to sin. In Galatians (5:19-21 CEV) he writes, “People’s desires make them give in to immoral ways, filthy thoughts, and shameful deeds”. He then goes on to describe how sin causes people to hate one another, to be hard to get along with, to be jealous, angry, selfish, argumentative, say harmful things, lie, and so on. He concludes, “No one who does these things will share in the blessings of God’s Kingdom”. Paul makes it quite clear that a sinner cannot stand in the presence of God and cannot expect to inherit eternal life.

In Psalm 51 David poured out his heart to God. He knew that sin had taken control of his life. In this prayer he admits that his sins are always there and that he can’t fix them. He can’t hide them. He thought he could because no one noticed what he had done. But even though no one else knew what had happened, God knew. God could see into his heart and knew that David, the one who was supposed to be a model to the whole nation of what it meant to be one of God’s people, had committed some terrible things.

We might be led to think the same thing. Because no-one else sees our sin it’s okay. It’s hidden away and it doesn’t matter. But nothing is hidden from God and it does matter to him because sin destroys the happy relationship that God intended for us to have with him and the world he created for us and the people he placed in our lives. He wants us to be happy and for us to be happy he has to deal with the evil in our lives.

With such terrible guilt weighing him down and knowing how much he had let God down and being aware how angry God must be, how come David has the nerve to approach God in the way that he has? Why is David so bold in his prayer after making so many disastrous choices? We see the answer in the opening line of his prayer where he says,
“Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love.
Because of your great mercy wipe away my sins!”
Caught up in sins of jealousy, lust, adultery and murder he had forgotten God but now he had come to his senses and realised anew what a powerful love God has for him and it is only in that love that he can even dare to come before God and own up to his sin. Because of this love of God he can pray with confidence and without fear, “Create a pure heart in me, O God, and put a new and loyal spirit in me”.

David’s prayer expresses very well our need to be made clean, to be washed and be made whiter than snow. David knew that even though God is a holy and righteous God and is opposed to sin of every kind, he also knew that God is merciful and his constant love for even the worse sinner never flickers, dims or is extinguished. David’s confession of the evil in his life is actually a response to the grace of God. When we confess our sin before God we do so confidently because we know how much God is committed to us and is faithful to us.

When we see the bleeding, dying Jesus we see what the grace of God has done for us and to what extent God was prepared to go to make things right again between us and himself. Through his dying in our place the guilt of our sin was removed; we have been made new and clean and fresh again – holy and spotless in the eyes of God. David uses the words “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” to illustrate the total removal of the stain of sin and the renewal of our lives with God.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the season of preparation leading up to Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter. As we begin this journey we do so knowing that even though we are sinners “God is gracious”. Without this knowledge we despair. With this knowledge, we have the confidence to continue the journey, knowing that God’s steadfast love is ever present with us.

Transfiguration Sunday

The Text: Mark 9:2-9

Today’s sermon is brought to you by the numbers 6 and 3, and the word ‘listen’.

Six days.

God made the world in six days…and on the seventh He rested.

We’re to work for six days…and then on the seventh we’re to rest in what God does for us.

The glory of the Lord surrounded Mt Sinai in the wilderness for six days before Moses could enter into His presence on the seventh day.

Six times Joshua and the people of Israel walked around the city of Jericho, and on the seventh the walls came down in a shout.

And the transfiguration of our Lord happened after six days.

When St Mark has a habit of saying everything happened immediately, it should surprise us when there’s a break in this pattern – in fact we hear there’s a six-day break in the immediacy of Jesus’ work! But as we’ve just heard, the number six is significant in God’s story of salvation because it sets us up for what happens on the seventh day. We should stop and witness what God is doing on this seventh day.

So, while we’re surprised there’s a break in Mark’s narrative, it shouldn’t come as a surprise there were six days between what happened just beforehand and this seventh day where He was transformed in front of the disciples; where God revealed Jesus to be His beloved Son whom we should listen to.

But what happened beforehand?

Well, it was six days ago when Peter had confessed Jesus to be the Christ. No sooner had he made this Spirit-led confession that Jesus announced He would suffer many things; be rejected by the elders, priests and scribes; be killed; and then rise again after three days.

But this troubled Peter. After all, Peter had witnessed all the miracles of Jesus – all the healings (including the healing of his own mother-in-law), raising people from the dead, and how Jesus cast out demons – which no doubt had led him to the conclusion Jesus is none other than the promised Messiah spoken about in the Scriptures.

So, what Jesus was talking about shouldn’t happen. Peter figured this is now the time when the Scriptures would be fulfilled and when everything was set right. This is the time of Israel’s freedom and glory! This is the time when the glory of God is revealed so the nation of Israel could rule and bless all the nations!

So, this is why Peter tells Jesus off!

But in response, Jesus tells Peter off! He said Peter’s got in mind the things of man and not the things of God. The work of God isn’t all about health and wealth and glory and power, but it also includes suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection.

So, it seems Peter pondered Jesus’ words for six days, and on the seventh he saw the glory of God reflected in the person of Jesus Christ. But he still didn’t get it.

And neither do we. We often struggle to understand what it all means, which is why the number three enters our meditation.

You see, there were three.

There were three disciples: Peter, James and John.

There were three people in front of them: Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

The number three is a number of community – just like there were three visitors who visited Abraham before God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, and it’s also the number of persons who form our Triune God.

But it’s also a number of completeness – for example, a complete journey of three days between one place and another (which is mentioned many times in Scripture), a three-day meditation for Jonah in the belly of a fish, and it’s also the number of days before Jesus would rise from death.

Peter, not quite getting the significance of what it meant for Jesus to be the promised Messiah, offers to build three shelters – one each for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. After all, this is a great place and great time for God’s people! Here we have a gathering of the greatest prophets of all time: Moses the Law-giver, Elijah the mighty prophet who was taken up into heaven, and now Jesus the powerful teacher and miracle-worker!

So, let’s retain and preserve this holy moment in time and space! Let’s all come to hear the wisdom of these mighty men! Let’s all come near this holy place to have our diseases healed, our demons cast out, and our loved ones raised from death! Let’s all bask in the glory of our mighty and awesome God for the rest of time!

If only!

Isn’t this what we also want?

Wouldn’t we love to meet Moses, or Elijah, or Jesus face-to-face?

I mean, wouldn’t we love to ask them questions on what it’s like to have such strong faith? Wouldn’t we love to know more about their mighty victories over Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the prophets of Baal, or about Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and the devil?

Wouldn’t we love to come near and have each of them teach us, touch us, and encourage us in a world gone crazy? Wouldn’t we love to go to one of those shelters to have our bodies restored to its youthful vigour, or to have our bodies healed from cancer or tumours or from dementia? Wouldn’t we want to bring our departed loved ones to the tent of Jesus, so He could raise them from death for our pleasure and comfort?

But Peter doesn’t know what he’s asking…and neither do we.

So often our wishes are all about us—what we want. So often, sinful human beings have in mind the things of a rebellious humanity.

But this isn’t what Jesus is about. He’s here to do the will of God; not the will of men.

God’s plan seems backward and strange to us. We see or hear a moment of glory thinking this is God’s plan for us which is supposed to last, but it doesn’t – at least, not on this earth. What often lasts are our troubles, sicknesses, fights, and deteriorating bodies as age takes its toll .

The moment of Jesus’ transfiguration was a glimpse of God’s glory to strengthen Jesus for His journey through His own suffering and death, but it was also for frightened, confused and slow-to-learn disciples like us who look for assurance of God’s glory and power during our own sufferings and journey toward death.

When we see or experience suffering and rejection and death, we often reckon this isn’t part of God’s plan. We want the glory and health and strength and power and joy to last, but it doesn’t. God’s glory doesn’t match our own ideas of glory. Jesus told us His glory comes through suffering and rejection. His glory comes through sacrifice and death. His glory also comes in resurrection and restoration for those who trust Him.

Which brings us to the word of today: listen.

In this case, it’s not supposed to be a passive word where we just listen and not respond. It’s intended to be matched with a trust in what we listen to which also responds in obedient action.

You see, when God speaks, things happen.

When He speaks: light appears, waters divide, and worlds are created. When He speaks, people like Moses and Elijah respond in faith and pass on the Word of God.

Similarly, when His holy name is spoken over the waters of Baptism sins are forgiven, faith is stirred, people are adopted as God’s own, our bodies receive the benefits of Jesus’ resurrected body, and the promise of eternal life is given. When Jesus’ Word is spoken over bread and wine it also becomes His body and blood to bring to troubled sinners His forgiveness, life, and salvation.

In other words, the Word of God is powerful and active. The trouble is, we often don’t listen, and if we do listen, we don’t always respond in faith and trust.

We’re more likely to listen to our own fears and believe them. We’re more likely to listen to the latest feel-good motto or advert. We’re more likely to listen to what our itching ears want to hear. We’re more likely to listen to the lies and deceptive whispers of the devil who still asks: ‘Did God really say…?’

In other words, the call for us to listen to Jesus places us on a collision course with spiritual warfare which is just as volatile as the battle between Moses and Pharaoh and between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Because of our selfishness, our flesh resists God’s Word, and so does the world. In the end it’s a question of who we’re going to listen to, who we’re going to trust, who we’re going to follow, and who we’re going to obey.

So, the call to listen is a call to deny our own selfish will and let God’s will be done in our life, even if His will involves suffering for His sake, patience in times of trouble, endurance in faith when the world criticizes and condemns, willing service to the outcast and troubled, and forgiving those who don’t deserve such grace.

It’s also a call to believe something we struggle to believe. That Jesus did this for you and me. That we’re not as good as we make out we are. That our actions, words and thoughts are motivated by selfishness, greed, pride, and fear. That Jesus would choose to come into this cruel and heartless world to suffer and die at the hands of His own faithful people. That He wouldn’t defend His innocence or call for justice from the cross, but instead cried out to His Father to forgive us because we don’t know what we’re doing.

While God spoke His Word through Moses and the prophets like Elijah, He now speaks to us through Jesus. We’re made His disciples through faith and we’re to respond to His teachings of glory through suffering, love through service, and forgiveness by grace.

We listen to His words of forgiveness, and through faith we learn to forgive those around us. We listen to His sufferings and learn our own suffering serves a purpose to strengthen our trust in Him. We listen to His death and learn death no longer has a claim on you or I because we believe in the resurrection of the dead through Christ.

Yes, after six days Jesus is transfigured before his three disciples, and in this momentary glimpse of His true identity we’re called to listen – to listen to what God is doing for us as Jesus journeys toward the moments He was betrayed, denied, whipped, crucified, died, and rose again.

We listen as the glory of God is revealed through blood and sacrifice and as His love pronounces everything is finished. We listen so we can rest from our own work and witness what God has done for us through Jesus, the Son of God, with whom the Father is pleased.

And, as we listen to Him, we’re called to respond in faith, because it’s through trusting the words and actions of Jesus that the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

The text: Isaiah 40:31

Ever wondered what it would be like to fly? I don’t mean flying in a plane or dangling beneath a kite or parachute. I mean sticking your arms out like a bird, or out front like superman if you like, and soaring above the earth; banking over the forests; skimming over the rivers; darting through mountain canyons; diving down and scaring the living daylights out of the members of your family; breathing deeply in the fresh air of free and effortless flight! And if you are someone who is scared of heights, imagine if you had no such fear. You could come and fly with the rest of us.

From the early pages of history people have looked at the birds and wanted to fly. You have seen people jump out of perfectly good planes and ‘fly’ at least for a while, but gravity does its job and the skydiver has no choice but to pull the ripcord on his parachute.

I’m sure every kid at some time has wanted to fly. Maybe it’s been a theme in your dreams but like all dreams there comes a rude awakening when you wake up and discover that you are still a prisoner of gravity. As much as we really wish we could fly, we have to walk to the bathroom, walk out to the kitchen for breakfast and walk to school or work. We aren’t built for flying.

As adults we don’t think about flying as we did when we were kids. Not only aren’t we built for flying but we also carry a lot of baggage – we carry too much weight. Not only the kind of weight that shows up on the bathroom scales but the weight of worry, anxiety, paying bills, keeping the boss happy, and how our health crisis will turn out. All this weighs us down.

Then there’s your family. The people you love. You see your parents getting older; perhaps becoming infirm. You see your children struggling in this or that. Perhaps you’ve hit a rough patch in your marriage. When you were a kid love wasn’t so difficult and so demanding. But that’s because you were mostly on the receiving end of it. And now you are called to be the one who gives it; called to be the one who loves. This too can weigh you down.

So what about those dreams of flying high above the world in complete freedom and in the open spaces where there is not a worry in the world? Nah! Not anymore! Life is way too heavy to entertain such thought. Flying – that’s okay for kids to dream about because they don’t have the worries we have but for us the world is too real. A bit like gravity – we can’t ever get away from it.

And yet, what does the text from Isaiah say? “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary.” Hmmm. “They will rise on wings like eagles”. With renewed strength they will soar above the earth with the powerful wings of an eagle. I don’t know about you, but Isaiah’s got my attention! Suddenly my childhood interest in being able to fly is renewed. Floating, drifting, circling, free as a bird. Is there a way to overcome the gravity of our lives, a way to lighten our loads, a way rise above it all? Is this just a dream, wishful thinking, belonging to the world of fantasy along with fairies, flying dragons and magic carpets?

Just to put these words about flying like eagles into context. The prophet Isaiah was writing to the people of Israel during a time when they felt like their strength was sapped and they had no hope. Like us, they were worried. The news wasn’t good. The dreadful Assyrians were breathing down their necks, and later it would be the Babylonians who would take them all away to live in exile. As they thought about all the stuff that was happening around them, they were weighed down and overwhelmed by the seriousness of their situation.

They started to say things like, “God doesn’t really care about me! How can he? Look at all this bad and difficult stuff that is happening all around us. He’s not really in charge of things!” (Isaiah 40:27).

You see what was happening here? They began to see their problems as being bigger than God himself. They forgot that the creator of everything, the everlasting Lord, whose love for his people means he will never grow tired of helping them, just might be able to help them with all their worries.

You see over the years a subtle exchange had taken place. They exchanged their faith in God for a kind of do-it-yourself kind of attitude. We do the exact same thing! This DIY kind of Christianity excludes God from certain areas of our lives. I know God is there but I can handle this myself.

“Let’s see, my work, hmm, no that’s not God’s problem.

Finances, no. I can fix that.

Relationship problems, no. That’s my responsibility.

My love life, no God doesn’t know anything about that, that’s my area.”

Without even giving it too much thought we exclude God from different aspects of our lives. We can fix it we say and maybe it works okay for a time. But then we begin to feel the weight. Our blood pressure rises. We toss and turn. We get sick. We become depressed. The joy goes out of our lives. We despair. We slowly realise that the DIY approach isn’t all that successful after all.

I’m sure that a lot us, including myself, have to admit to doing this at some time, if not more often than we care to admit. We sideline God and try to be our own god. We believe that we can do it alone, but that’s something God never intended for us. God didn’t make us to stand alone against everything that threatens our safety and happiness. God made us to rely on him.

This is where Isaiah comes in and we have this wonderful passage that was read earlier. He asks, “How can you be so dumb. Don’t you know who stretched out the heavens, made the earth and filled it with people? Don’t you know that it is God who created the stars? There are millions of them, and yet he knows when one of them is missing and if God knows each individual star, it follows that he knows each one of us personally and calls us by name. He knows when we are in trouble. No one can ever accuse God of turning a deaf ear to our needs.

Then comes these wonderful words,
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God; he created all the world.
He never grows tired or weary.
No one understands his thoughts.
He strengthens those who are weak and tired.
Even those who are young grow weak; young people can fall exhausted.
But those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed.
They will rise on wings like eagles;
they will run and not get weary;
they will walk and not grow weak.” (40:28-31)

Jesus affirmed what Isaiah said when he said: “Come to me, all of your who are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”.

Jesus assures us that there is not a moment when we are not under his love and care. Yes, there will be times when we could have saved ourselves a heap of stress and pressure if only we had trusted in the Lord for help and realised that he is ready, willing and able to give us renewed strength and a fresh outlook on life and its problems.

The apostle Paul realised that he knew what he ought to do and trust God more, but found more often than not, that he did what he knew he shouldn’t do. There were times when he was physically exhausted and drained, not knowing what would happen to him next. But in each case he came back to this one point, “God can raise me above all this. His love is so powerful that I can be confident, content, and certain no matter what the circumstances. The Lord will help me to face each thing that terrifies me and give me the strength to continue”. In the end Paul says, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

As Isaiah said, “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak”.

In other words, trusting in God to give us the strength that is beyond our own strength to deal with any situation, we can rise on wings like eagles. We can fly. We can soar high above our problems; we can fly free with the sky as the limit. God wants us to fly like eagles.

When we trust in God and his love for us and entrust our lives to the one who gave his life for us on the Cross, everything else is dwarfed in comparison to the largeness and authority of the Lord. He is bigger than any problem we might face. And as we learn to trust him, we begin to see things from his perspective. He draws us upward in faith, so that we begin to get a bird’s eye view of things, or more correctly, a God’s eye view of things.

Remember the dreams about flying, the fantasy stories like Peter Pan where children could fly? Well they are not too far off the mark. We too can fly even though our feet never leave the ground. We can rise above everything that threatens our security with a strength that comes from God. “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles”. Amen!

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Like the first book of the Bible Genesis, the most ancient text of the Gospel,
St Mark, upon which the other two gospel writers Matthew & Luke base their narrative, it begins with the word Άρχη. The beginning of the gospel Mark is Άρχη τού έυάνγγέλιου. After mentioning the work of John, the Baptist and his arrest, He introduces Jesus announcement concerning the fulfillment, the fulfilment of time, the basic structure of created nature. Time is fulfilled when Jesus comes into Galilee and says, ‘The time is fulfilled, repent and believe the gospel’. Then on the seventh day, again a reference to the creation narrative, for the seventh Day is the fulfillment of creation. On this day as God rests and rejoices in Creation’s goodness. But on this Seventh day, representing the goodness of creation, Jesus is confronted in the Synagogue at Capernaum with the fallen creation, it’s being subject to sin and death. He meets the demoniac. In the healing miracle that follows we see what the fulfilment of time means in Jesus.

In the creation narrative this fulfilment of the time is witnessed to by the seventh day of God’s creative action; this is the Sabbath rest of God’s peace and reconciliation with His creation. This promise of God’s rest and peace with His creation is the promise witnessed to by the seventh day. This is time’s purpose. It is the created form, ‘on the seventh day’, of the purpose of creation. The rest and rejoicing of God with His creation. This time according to Jesus is now fulfilled. It is no longer lost time, time without purpose tumbling down into an abyss of nothingness. The creations time is now no longer determined by its guilt and its being subject to death and decay as is all our time.

Jesus existence in time as the Son of God who shares to the full the creations alienation from the source of its true life in God, the crumbling away of our time into what Shakespeare calls “dusty death”. But in Jesus humanity God recapitulates, recreates in Him the relationship creation had with its Creator at the beginning. His relationship with the Father for our sakes is the basis of times redemption and thus human redemption.

The ‘fulfilment of time’ witnessed to by the Sabbath, comes in Jesus, appropriately after his identification with Israel in the baptism of John. From John he receives a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It is at this time that His unity with the Father and the Spirit is revealed. He is then driven into the wilderness to be tempted by the suggestion that there is some other way for Him to be the Son of God than the way of penitential obedience which ends in the cross. As the One who rejects this demonic temptation for our sake, Jesus comes into Galilee and proclaims that the time is fulfilled. Consequently, our time is not lost time but full of promise for it is the sphere in which God is present with and for us for our eternal salvation.

All this is a background to understanding the meaning of the text which relates to the healing of the demoniac on the Seventh Day, the Sabbath. Further, background to understand the miracle which is the subject of the gospel lesson for today; I want to talk for a few moments about cosmology. Cosmology you ask. ;what on earth has cosmology to do with the lesson from the holy gospel of St Mark chapter 1? We get the word cosmetics from this word and it means something with meaning and intelligibility as opposed to Chaos, which is unintelligible, chaotic. God’s creation is intelligible, understandable. Einstein, it was who said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”.

The world view of the writers of the New Testament, their cosmology, is that of the Old Testament. Accordingly, they believed lived in a three-storied universe. Heaven, earth and hell under the earth. The space in between was inhabited by all sorts of spiritual beings, malevolent. In the creation accounts of the Book of Genesis God brings forth the dry land from a chaos which was composed of water. The dry land was established and safeguarded from the encroachment of the watery chaos by God’s promise and covenant witnessed in the story of Noah. So, water was an ever-present sign in creation of the threat of Chaos from which it was protected by God’s providential rule.

One of the more remarkable features of the accounts of the miracles associated with Jesus ministry arises from the fact that those who are the subject of his action are in need. They are sufferers. Jesus does not ask concerning their past or their present sin. He acts, and his action creates for them a new future. The help and the blessing that He brings are quite irrespective of their attitude to him. Jesus miracles are thus to be seen to encapsulate the fact that God in Christ acts toward us in our need by God’s free grace God moves towards the threatened and rebellious creature in the freedom of God’s grace.

What Jesus miracles reveal is that God has chosen to be God in such a way that He makes Himself responsible for the creature not simply in its need as a created, mortal and frail, but in its need as subject to the thraldom of sin and death. This is the God with whom we have to do in the miracles of Jesus, and it is this element that constitutes their strangeness; against which any questions we may have as to the nature of miracle as such pales into insignificance. That God is such a God never entered into the heart and mind of humankind. The true miracle of miracles is their testimony to this unheard-of reality

One of the difficulties in understanding the miracle is that so often it is transposed into a story about the general beneficence or goodness of God, an abstract notion whose content remains in the sphere of generalities, as so much of Jesus teaching when its meaning is divorced from His person.

I would suggest that we think of the miracles that Jesus performs as insights into His own self-interpretation of the way that he goes from Bethlehem to Golgotha. That is to cease separating the miracles from Him who speaks and acts in them: turning them into abstract moral ideas about God.

What Jesus saw and experienced of the human condition as He fulfils the purpose of His coming amongst us as God’s Son who assumed our flesh was an abyss of darkness that is not merely supposed, invented, or imagined. He saw and experienced the human condition as it really is; and as we have seen and experienced it in the space of our lifetimes. We have come to know our humanity and its capabilities through world wars, revolution, famine, genocide and terrorism. World War 1, the war to end all wars and make the world safe for democracy, then the Nazi terror and push for world domination, their genocide of the Jewish people in Europe, and before that as a consequence of the first word war the Turkish genocide of Armenian Christians, Stalin’s mass murder by starvation of Ukrainian peasants and the wicked brutality of the deportations of ethnic minorities and other undesirables to the death camps; the gulag archipelago, Mao Tse Tung and the millions he starved and killed in his so called great leap forward, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Laden Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung, so we could go on. We have come to know our humanity and its propensity for evil.

Jesus saw and experienced the human condition as claimed and imprisoned by the actuality of visible and invisible powers of darkness and death. He understood human beings to be possessed by the negative power of evil, delivered up to it and corrupted by it.

In this miracle it is not the sufferer in his need who speaks. But on the tongue and lips of the sufferer that which imprisons and torments him, the demons. Sickness does not speak. Death does not speak. But the demons speak, the indefinable concretions of chaos: the true enemies of God speak and cry out. They do not do so on behalf of or in the name of the sufferer; they are the sufferer’s tormentor. They are the sufferer’s enemy not his friend. They speak out on their own behalf; in the form of cries and shouts of blasphemies because they see and know themselves threatened by the presence of Jesus. The inspirer of fear and torment is now itself afraid and tormented. What is shown in the presence of Jesus is that the trans-personal concretion of evil and chaos has nothing to say in its own cause; it can only seek to flee from the presence of God in Jesus.

Jesus ranges himself alongside the demoniac who in his torment epitomises the concretion of evil and chaos which are the true enemies of God, because they hold the human creature in subjection. Here, in Him, the life of the threatened and enslaved creature becomes the personal cause of God Himself. By means of His identification with the creature’s need and torment Jesus’ action brings forth a new human being. Not simply in the healed demoniac, he is but a sign of the healing of our humanity that Jesus has taken to Himself.

It in this new humanity of His that we are given to participate in God’s own eternal life. The miracle of the healing of the demoniac in the synagogue on the seventh day, is a sign of this new human being, our humanity present in the world in Jesus Christ. In Him humanity is endowed with a new being whose future is determined by the action of God Himself.

In this and similar miracles of Jesus God himself defies the power of destruction that enslaves human beings. God’s power revealed in Jesus is not a neutral force; it is the omnipotence of His mercy. Not quiet and passive mercy but active, vibrant and hostile to that which enslaves the creature. It is with this that we have to do in Jesus. What is new, incomprehensible and miraculous is that God is a God who victoriously combats evil in its banal negativity for our sake. In worship today, it is the same One who meets us here; we who are immersed in and struggle daily with the causes and effects of evil, He meets us with His same healing and saving power. He meets us in His Word and in His holy sacrament.

Dr. Gordon Watson.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

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

Luke records in his record of the Acts of the Apostles that after Pentecost, ‘Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church. They joined with the other believers and devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, sharing in the Lord’s Supper and in prayer. And each day the Lord added to their group those who were being saved.’

Let’s join in a word of prayer: Loving God, our Father, today, we join with believers around the world to devote ourselves to hearing your Word, to fellowship with each other, to praying, and to sharing in the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. As we worship You, guide our time that we may understand the reality that your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, has shown us great forgiveness and acceptance. Help us to show great love for one another, and acceptance of others. God our Father, hear our prayer we offer in the name of our risen Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The new disciples who heard Peter’s message on Pentecost, devoted themselves to relating to God in a new way. As people in a new very personal relationship with their creator, their saviour and their comforter. As people who are forgiven.

Peter instructed them to repent over their sinfulness and to be baptised as a sign of their new life in Jesus Christ. These were the first converts to the new Christian Church. Their lives were changed forever. They began to live up to their Christian challenge. They became God’s family of the Church. They cared for each other, they shared with each other, they praised God for Jesus Christ and for each other. What a time of rejoicing it must have been. They lived the experience of their forgiveness.

We join them today, caring for each other, sharing salvation and new life with each other, praising God for each other, and celebrating the Lord’s Supper with each other. What a time of rejoicing it is for us today. We can live the joy of our salvation every day. …. And yet, we still live in the brokenness of our humanity.

If we paraphrase Paul’s words to us today: “every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, we are announcing the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes again.” A death that redeems our sins, and a resurrection that brings our eternal life. All this by our faith in the Son whom God has sent.

As Christians, we are reminded that we hold two truths in tension. In these truths the mystery of God’s grace is revealed in the reality of his love for us set against the reality of his hatred of sin.

On the one hand we have the truth that sin enters our lives as the fruit of a wrong relationship with God. God takes the damage we do to each other very seriously.

But on the other hand lies the truth that we are all forgiven our sins at the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus entered humanity to reconcile us to God and repair the damage of our broken relationship with God.

As we hold the Scriptures in our hands and in our hearts we hold onto the understanding that this is God’s message to us about his love for us. His relationship with all of creation, and especially with each one of us.

As we discover in the Scriptures, when Jesus Christ took the bread and the cup of his Supper, he gave us a living reality. That God’s relationship with us is lived out in the very personal and very real presence of Christ Jesus in our lives.

“This is my body”, and “This is my blood” were not words of a parable. They were not words of a presumed hope. They were words of truth and life.

The Augsburg Confession, Artlcle 10, states: ‘Concerning the Lord’s Supper, it is taught that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed and received there.’

That is why we take the Lord’s Supper so seriously. Seriously enough to take a few weeks to prepare our youngsters to join us at the table of our Lord. This preparation is purposeful to ingrain the reality of our relationship with God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

When we hear the words to eat and drink the elements of bread and wine, we join this to the act of eating and drinking, with the faith we have in our Saviour. And they become the real presence of the body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, just as he said.

As the Large Catechism explains: ‘everyone who wishes to be a Christian and to go to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should know .. what they seek and why they come.’

In our Step Up To Communion preparation process, we look at the five steps of the Lord’s Supper. The Invitation of our Lord, our acceptance of this invitation, our gathering together, our eating and drinking, and our giving thanks to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ for this wondrous gift.

In Holy Communion, the Holy Spirit is present as well. He reminds us that we are receiving forgiveness of sin and renewal from Christ Jesus every time we share the Lord’s Supper. He also reminds us that we compound our error when we hold onto our guilt over every wrong, and every unforgiveness of wrong done to us, as we rise from the table. We can trust Jesus when he says, “for the forgiveness of sin”, and we can have faith in our Saviour. Let the past remain in our past, and look to every future moment with confidence and peace at heart.

As Lutherans, we respect the thoughtful and spiritual dialogue of Martin Luther. He was caught in the middle of the dialogue between the strict understanding of Holy Communion by the Church at Rome, and the radical reform movement to distance from that established Church of the day. But Luther, as always, turned to the Gospels with faith-filled vision of Christ’s words, and his intentions.

‘The Lord’s Supper was very important to Luther his entire life, because God’s promises and the bond with Christ became concrete for him in the bread and wine. Just as it can become for us. In a sermon about the right use of the Lord’s Supper, from 1518, Luther says that “needing the Lord’s Supper is the most important condition of receiving it”.

Luther believed that Christ was bodily present in Holy Communion, trusting in the words of Matthew 26: 26 and 28: ‘This is My body’ and ‘this is My blood’. But he suggested, against Rome, that Christ does not remain present in the host after the Lord’s Supper, and that the host can not be worshipped.

When, in the 1520’s, Luther again had to think about the liturgy. Big differences of opinions rose to the surface inside the reforming movement. Luther turned sharply against the ideas of radical reformers, who suggested that the Lord’s Supper was a memorial meal, and that the words of institution are not meant to be taken literally. According to Luther, that would be a violation of the plain meaning of the Scriptures. Furthermore that the concrete presence of Christ through faith would be removed.

However, his Reformed opponents wanted to clarify their position, that only Christ Himself and not the elements of bread and wine provided salvation. They were also afraid of all kinds of superstitions around the Lord’s Supper. Unfortunately, attempts to reconcile the three Christian traditions ended in failure.’ (CheckLuther.com)

Even today, the Lord’s Supper has remained an important point of difference between the theology of Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed Christian traditions. But this does not overshadow our common faith in Christ Jesus and our love for every brother and sister in Christ. After all, Christ himself said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a hunted man during WW II who upheld authentic Christian principles. As a part of the German underground he was not safe to worship openly.

Bonhoeffer knew there was no other community and fellowship like that experienced within the Body of Christ. He said: “Baptism incorporates us into the unity of the Body of Christ, and the Lord’s supper fosters and sustains our fellowship and communion … in that Body”.

For a time before he was imprisoned, and during his imprisonment, Bonhoeffer was cut off from other believers, and it took a toll on him. Donald LaSuer says “Bonhoeffer’s painful discovery is instructive for us. Cut off from the nurturing fellowship of other Christians, he felt a deeper hunger for the fellowship that was no longer available to him. Like a hungry man who knows the taste of bread though he can no longer reach and break from the loaf, he knew the power of fellowship when it was painfully absent”.

When we come to Communion, we have the chance to experience a fellowship with our Saviour and with each other, a deep union that only comes when we realize the saving grace that must cover each of us. God forbid that we take this gift of grace for granted.

And so each one of us can look to Paul, that we should always approach the table of the Lord’s Super, honouring the presence of our Saviour in his body, his blood, and his Spirit. For nothing is impossible for God.

It is by God’s grace, that we are loved by him, saved by him, and given life eternal by him. It is God’s grace that sustains us every day of our lives.

May the overriding grace and peace of our Triune God, which passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in calm assurance of salvation in our living Christ Jesus. Amen.

Rev. David Thompson.

Second Sunday after Epiphany

The Text: John 1:43-51

The season of Christmas celebrates the coming of the Son of God in human flesh to save and rescue His people.

The season of Epiphany is about God revealing that this Jesus, born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, is the promised Messiah. Jesus in the long promised and much hoped for rescuer from God, and He manifests His divine power in the spoken word, and in signs and wonders.

Epiphany begins with the sign of the star in the sky which guides the Gentile wise-men to Bethlehem, and the rest of Epiphany shows how Jesus was revealed as the Son of God to all who would hear Him.

God must reveal Himself to us or we would not know where or how to find Him. Many people think they can find God through religious experiences, charismatic leaders, and even participating in non-Christian worship practises. But such things don’t lead us to God, they lead us away from Him and place us in spiritual danger.

God cannot be found by humans. God finds us. He often comes to us through someone who already knows Him. This someone trusts in God. They know His life changing love and they want us to have it too.

This is the pattern we see in the Bible. A Jewish servant girl told Naaman about the prophet of the Lord who could heal him and he was cleansed of his skin disease and given faith (2 Kings 5). Four friends brought their crippled mate on a mattress to Jesus and he was cured and made whole in body and soul (Mark 2:1-12). Philip spoke with the Ethiopian about Jesus and he was baptised (Acts 8:26-39). Believers in Jesus bring those in need of God’s grace to Jesus.

This is what we see happen to Nathanael when Philip asked him to come and see Jesus. Philip knew Jesus. The Lord had said, “Follow Me” and Philip did, and he knew the Lord. He heard and saw that Jesus is the One whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote about. The Spirit filled Word of God revealed to Philip who Jesus was. Everything he heard from Jesus and saw Him do confirmed it. His eyes were opened. His heart was transformed. Philip is so excited that he goes and tells his friend Nathanael that the promised Redeemer has come, and he wants Nathanael to know the Lord too.

Someone did that for you. It was probably your parents or maybe a friend. They pointed you to Jesus saying come and see. Come and see the Saviour who has fulfilled the Law and everything God’s prophets said He would. Come and hear what He has done for you.

Christian parents bring their children to be baptised, and in water and the word a child sees and hears Jesus at work—cleansing, forgiving, creating new life and giving a new identity. Without Baptism’s gifts of rebirth and faith no one could find God. The old nature is too strong for any of us to overcome.

In Baptism you received the most wonderful gift from God. You were found by Him. He gives you His salvation. The joy and comfort you have in knowing Jesus lasts more than that moment. Knowing Jesus means a life time of forgiveness and mercy. Jesus is the One who saves us, and in Him we see God.

The Jesus we don’t really want to look at, is the bloodied body of Christ hanging on the cross. Most Christians prefer baby Jesus in a manger or ‘Jesus my friend’ or glorified Jesus in heaven. And He is those things, but Jesus is no friend, and no Saviour, and has no glory, without the cross and death.

It is not pleasant to see Jesus suffer God’s judgment for us. To see Him dying. To see on Him all those sins we shrug off or consider a normal part of life. It’s horrifying. But take a look and see.

Because once you do, then you realise the immensity of God’s love for you. Then you realise that Jesus fulfils the Law of God and the words of the prophets, and to do that is no small thing. The Father gave up His Son into death, for you. The Son laid aside His divine powers, to die as an atonement for you. And He wanted to do that, so you can have freedom and life.

And so, Philip goes to his friend Nathanael to tell him that God’s Saviour has come. But Nathanael could not believe it. This Jesus didn’t sound like the Saviour he had been looking for. After all, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip doesn’t try and convince Nathanael of who Jesus is, he simply invites him to, “Come and see.”

But before Nathanael sees Jesus, the Lord sees him. Jesus knows Nathanael. He knows his heart. Jesus knows all our faults and yet in love He still welcomes us.

We heard in Psalm 139 today that God knows us. He knew us before we were born. He knows our words before we speak them. There is no where we can go to hide from Him. This can sound threatening, because God can see our darkest sins and desires. But despite this, He welcomes us that we may be made holy, washed and forgiven.

And so, Jesus sees Nathanael, and Nathanael will speak the Gospel because he saw and heard the grace of God and was changed by it. Like the patriarch Jacob, Nathanael will see heaven open before him, but not in a dream, it will take place when he sees Jesus die on the cross and be resurrected three days later. Jesus comes from heaven to open its doors by shedding His blood, so that sinners like Philip and Nathanael and you and me may believe and enter into paradise.

How often do we desire God like Nathanael did, and yet overlook Him because we can only see our problems and hurt and shame? Turn your eyes from them and look at Jesus on the cross. That’s how He wants you to see Him. Look and see your condemnation and judgment on Him, because if it is on Him, then you are declared righteous. If your sins are laid on Him, then they are not on you—you are free of them. If your death is laid on Jesus, then you will no longer die, but live. If His rising again is for you, then salvation and life everlasting are yours. Heaven’s doors have been opened wide for you to one-day pass through them. In God’s eyes you are already there.

But we are not there yet; living in eternity. We live here and have no end of troubles and pains. The sins of others impact us and we hurt others with our sins. We have fears and worries and sometimes we wonder, “where are you now Jesus. I can see you on the cross, and I’m thankful for that, but what about now; in my pain, carrying my crosses, living life here?”

The Good News is that Jesus is here now, for us. He is here, speaking, washing, feeding, forgiving. He is here strengthening our faith and growing us in hope and trust. This doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. Life is never a breeze, the devil makes sure of that.

But He who has called us is faithful. He has made us a part of His body; He cannot forget us or abandon us. He has overcome the darkness of death and He will lead us through every dark time we face.

This is the Good News of Jesus on the cross. Forgiveness and salvation are ours as a free gift and this has changed us. We are comforted by our crucified Saviour. We have joy that God smiles on us, and this shapes the way we live now, desiring others to come and see Jesus, that they would know Him too. As a child of the heavenly Father we can pray for His Spirit to open their hearts to know Jesus, even as we ask them to come and see.

The invitation to come and see Jesus is for all His disciples, throughout our whole life. There is always something new to discover, or something old to learn again, and the depth of God’s love for us is new for us every day.

And so, we need to come and see Jesus, often, and not dwell on our sins and or focus on our troubles. Come and see and hear the Gospel and be assured that He has opened heaven gates for us. Amen.

First Sunday after Epiphany

Mark:1:9-11

Down in the valleys

When you think about it, the Christmas story has a lot to do with people looking for the baby Jesus. Shepherds go looking for the baby the angels spoke about. Strangers from the east travelled long distances looking for a new born prince. Even Herod sent his soldiers out to look for this new born prince and in the process looks for every small boy in Bethlehem to have him killed.

John the Baptist didn’t have to go looking for Jesus. Jesus suddenly appears in front of John. John is bit surprised to hear Jesus say, “Baptise me too”. This confuses John. He’s not even worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, in fact, Jesus should be baptising him (Matthew 3:13). “Jesus, you’re the great Messiah we’ve been waiting for. You don’t have any sins to repent. You don’t need to be baptised.”

John baptises Jesus. The Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove and God makes a grand divine pronouncement, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.” Here, being baptised, is the very Son of God. This man, with water dripping from his head and face, is God himself.

No sooner had Jesus been baptised, the descending Spirit casts Jesus not upon the throne up at the palace, but alone out in the wilderness. There he meets, not the Mayor who gives him the key to the city, but Satan who tests and tempts Jesus with “If you are the Son of God then do something to prove it”.

The next time Jesus hears those words “If you are the Son of God then do something to prove it” will be when he hangs on a cross and hears the taunts of a howling crowd.

What happens to the man who proclaims the good news that God has sent the Messiah? He falls victim to the whim of a murderous king and his head is served up on a plate at a party.

Look how quickly the mood has changed in the Gospel story. From the glory of angels telling of a new born Saviour to the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, the gruesome beheading of John the Baptist and much closer to Jesus’ birth is the slaughter of the baby boys of Bethlehem.

Excitement and mountaintop experiences are great but they don’t last. They are precious and special because of the very fact that they don’t last. Eventually we come down off the mountaintop and resume life down in the valley. All the hoopla of Christmas has gone. The Christmas decorations have been packed away. There are no more angels, and stories about a miraculous birth. We are here at church and there’s not the same excitement as at Christmas. We are back into the ordinary days of the year and the very ordinary problems that come with life that is very ordinary.

Today we hear about Jesus standing in the very ordinary muddy waters of the Jordan River with John the Baptist pouring some of that water over him. In that act of baptism Jesus, God in the flesh, is identifying himself with the ordinariness of this world and ordinary people and their ordinary lives of sin and temptation and trouble and sickness and dying.

This is the great thing about our Christian faith. Christianity is not just about mountaintops and the glory and the ecstasy of being lifted up to places beyond the ordinary. It isn’t about always singing happy songs or always being filled with so much faith that nothing can trouble us or get in our way. Our Christian faith is also for the valleys.

Most of us don’t live in a world of perpetual bliss and happiness; we may wish we did; we would like to but in reality we don’t. We live down in the valley, where there is work to be done, laundry to be washed and folded, people to deal with, troubles to be confronted. And here’s the good news: that’s where our God meets us.

And isn’t that exactly what the angel Gabriel had told Joseph in a dream. Mary’s child would be the presence of God among his people – that he will be known as ‘Immanuel’ which means “God is with us”. Jesus’ baptism becomes the occasion for the Holy Spirit and God the Father to state that Jesus is God’s Son who has come into the world, and through his baptism in the Jordan he is also revealed as an ordinary bloke who identifies with the ordinariness of our world.

In our baptism, God meets us in our very ordinary world. He comes to us. He embraces us. He encounters us in the very ordinary matters of every day, not just the mountaintop moments and exhilarating spiritual experiences which we have every now and then, but he comes to us in the far more frequent ordinary moments of every day – the struggles, the boredom, the questioning, the pain, the grief, the torments, the doubting and the temptations. That’s where he meets us. Down there in the valleys where we wouldn’t expect to find him – that’s where he is ready to embrace us and remind us that he is our loving brother and saviour.

The heavenly Father meets Jesus in the undignified muddy waters of the Jordan saying, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you”.
He meets us in our baptism and says, “You are my own dear child. I am pleased with you”.

Baptism is God’s work, not ours. It’s God’s grace coming to us and adopting us as his own. In becoming God’s own dear child, God’s grace claims us, loves us, saves us, restores our friendship with God, rescues us from Satan’s power to kill us, gives us eternal life.

The beauty of the Christian faith is that, yes it does give us some high times of spiritual fellowship; of divine experience – what I call, mountaintop experiences, and these mountaintop experiences are different for each person. For some the closeness of God might come through an “Aha” moment when reading the Scriptures or listening to a live rendition of Handel’s Messiah or sitting quietly in a magnificent cathedral. For others these occasions leave them cold with no experience of God’s presence. For some it might be a vibrant hand clapping, beat thumping, contemporary Christian band playing to a large crowd of arm waving people.

But more importantly I believe, our Christian faith gives us strength and comfort in those rather inglorious moments when we struggle and are on the brink of defeat. In the dark valleys our God says to us, “You are my own dear child”,
I am with you;
I will not give up on you;
I will hold you up when you are sinking;
I will carry you when you are too weak;
I will walk with you through the dark shadows of death into eternal life.

We need that kind of assurance because we are tempted to limit God’s presence in our lives to those times when we can feel his presence. It is during these highs that we really feel that God is near and sense that God has had a powerful impact on our lives. We are excited about this.

It’s fine that we have these stirring feelings related to our Christian faith, after all a relationship with someone is an emotional experience. But these emotional experiences are more the exception. God’s presence in our lives is not limited to the times we are consciously aware that God is with us. He is with us whether we are aware of him or not.

In the 1970s the people of El Salvador were down in the dark valleys of suffering. Thousands of people were unjustly imprisoned, beaten, tortured and murdered. Many simply disappeared never to be heard from again. Priests and nuns were tortured and murdered. The people of El Salvador were in a dark valley and must have wondered why God seemed so far away.

Bishop Oscar Romero said,
God is not failing us when we don’t feel his presence. God exists, and he exists even more, the farther you feel from him. When you feel the anguished desire for God to come near because you don’t feel him present, then God is very close to your anguish. God is always our Father and never forsakes us, and we are closer to him than we think (‘The Violence of Love’ – A collection of quotes mostly from sermons by Romero). Oscar Romero was assassinated in 1980 for speaking out against the injustice in his country.

When Jesus endured the agony of whip lashes and taunts of the people and then suffering on the cross, he was encouraged by the voice that he heard from heaven on two occasions, at his baptism and then on the Mount of Transfiguration. On both occasions the voice of his heavenly Father assured him, “You and my own dear Son”. These words gave him the strength and courage to keep on going through the darkest of all valleys as he carried the sin of all the world. To know that in the very ordinary world of suffering and pain that he was experiencing, the Father in heaven had an extraordinary love for him, enabling him to endure all things and to show extraordinary love for all humanity.

The One who calls us his own dear children enables us to walk through the darkest valleys of our ordinary worlds. In the water of baptism he calls us “my dearest child” and he promises to walk with us through thick and thin, even when we fail to be whom we should be as his children.

It’s easy to appreciate Jesus’ presence up on the mountain tops of glory and praise but it’s down in the valleys, that’s where we really need Jesus and we really need to hear our Father say, “You are my own dear child”.

Second Sunday after Christmas

Text: John 1:10-18

‘God’s Glory’

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There was once a gentleman who would drop into a church office asking questions about God and faith. The people who worked for the congregation didn’t know whether this gentleman was honestly searching for answers to his questions, or whether he was just looking to have a religious argument with someone. Whatever his reason might have been, his questions were good and challenged the people in the office to search for a deeper understanding of God and the way he is at work in the world.

One question this gentleman asked was one that has perplexed humanity for thousands of years: if God is all-good, all-loving and all-powerful, then why are children and other innocents dying everyday all around the world from war, hunger, abuse, preventable diseases, and other evils? The thinking behind his question was that if God is actually all-good, all-loving and all-powerful, then he would somehow eradicate evil so that everyone, especially the innocent victims of human hatred and greed, could live safe, happy, lives that are free of suffering.

We can understand this gentleman’s struggle with the paradox of God’s love and power because we can see it playing out in a wide range of different circumstances, from personal struggles to global issues of justice and peace. The problem with simply getting rid of evil is that, if God were to do that, God would also need to get rid of human will which is often the cause of the evils in the world. We would end up with a God who controls people instead of a God who gifts people with freedom. People who have no will are people who are unable to love, and if God’s desire is that we live in loving relationships with him and with others, as we hear Jesus teach in passages such as Matthew 22:34-40, then taking away our will also means taking away our capacity to love. In fact, because we are all sinful in our natural condition, and the wages of that sin is death—God would have to get rid of everyone.

Rather than do that, God deals with the problem of evil in a different way. Instead of magically getting rid of suffering in the world, God shows us his glory by doing something that we don’t expect and that no-one else could do.

We would expect God to display might and power and obliterate evil. Instead, God comes hidden in the vulnerability of the manger and the cross. He empties himself of all His heavenly glory and experiences all our vulnerabilities (at his birth, in his ministry and in his suffering, torture, shame and even death).

This is God hidden from the proud and self-reliant who makes himself known through humility to those who trust in him.

That God should do the unthinkable coming to as a child in a manger, go to the Cross and die for the sin of the world is the only way we know that God does care. It’s the only way we know that he rolls his sleeves up and gets his hands dirty. That he should be become one of us and for us. This is not a ‘pie in the sky’ God of our own imagining. This is God that surpasses all human understanding.

So, God enters into the suffering of the world as an infant. In Jesus, God joins us in our suffering, meet us in our pain and confusion, and then gives us the hope of something better.

This might sound a bit too depressing or philosophical for a message during the Christmas season. We expect and look for Christmas to be light and happy most of the time. If we just want to have a good time at this time of year, then we miss the real significance and power of the Christmas story. Jesus wasn’t born in a sanitized, air-conditioned birthing suite at a hospital. He came into a broken world still tearing itself apart, a world captive to sin and blinded by it, a world paralysed by selfishness so much that some people stop at nothing to get their own way—even the murder of innocent people. Jesus came into a world such as this. He was born in a dirty, smelly, unhygienic cattle shed. The circumstances of Jesus’ birth were shameful in their culture as his mother became pregnant before she was married to her fiancé. At the time, the people among whom Jesus was born were living under the oppression of the Roman Empire which maintained control through brutal and oppressive violence. We can sanitize the Christmas story so much that we forget that God entered the world in a humble way, immersed in shame, and into the suffering of an occupied and oppressed people. The Christmas story is really a story of shame, dirt, and conflict.

We see God’s glory in the story of Jesus’ birth because when we are suffering from shame, dirt or conflict, God is with us through the birth of Jesus to give us hope and peace, love and even a deep sense of lasting joy. Jesus shows us the glory of God who isn’t removed or distant from the realities of our lives. He is right here with us, walking with us every step of the way, because he has been there before us in the person of Jesus. God doesn’t just leave us there either. In Jesus, God promises us a life that is free from shame, in which we are made clean through his forgiveness and healing, and is free from the oppression of sin, death and all the evils of this world.

When that gentleman went into the office and asked where God was when the innocents are suffering and dying, the Christians in that church could tell him that God was right there with them in the person of Jesus. This is not an empty platitude to try to win a philosophical argument, but the glory of God at work in the world. In Jesus, God shows us his power by joining with everyone who suffers, including us. God surrenders his power to meet us in the middle of the circumstances of our lives, and then gives us the hope of a better life in this world and in the next. We see the love of God in Jesus as he sacrifices everything – his heavenly glory as well as his own life on the cross – to suffer at the hands of evil in order to free us from the power of evil. We encounter the glory of God in Jesus who meets us where we are, journeys with us to carry our shame, dirt and conflict for us, who sets us free from their control, and gives us life that never ends.

Where is God when the world, or when we, are hurting? Through the birth of Jesus, God is right there with us.

First Sunday after Christmas

The Text: Galatians 4:4-7

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Time is one of the world’s deepest mysteries. The ability to measure it makes our way of life possible; the ability to use it properly makes our life fulfilling or frustrating. God has given each of us the same amount of time, and holds us accountable for our use of it.

Our use of time reveals our attitude to eternity. Musicians mark time, historians record time, prisoners serve time, loafers kill time. In the Bible, time isn’t money; time is given so we can love God and our neighbour. God has His own timetable for important events. Our Creator walks with us at our pace.

A long time passed from when God promised Abraham that Jesus would be sent to our world, to the time of His birth. God educated the Jews during a period of 40 years wandering in the desert. Approximately another 1400 years of additional education and preparation passed before the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

God works slowly, because God is love. Love has its own pace, and cannot be hurried. Love focuses on time as a quality, rather than on time as quantity. More important than how long we live, is how well we live. What we love to do, we find time to do. Time has been given to us to prepare for eternity. As we use it, so shall we be. Our constant danger in life lies in letting things we think are urgent, crowd out the things that are really important as far as God is concerned.

We show our love for God by the time we set aside to be in His presence. There is no greater gift we can give someone than the gift of our time. We are to ‘redeem the time’, because we ourselves are redeemed. The greatest story of all time is the story of God’s love in Christ, a love that reaches its climax at Christmas. Nothing matches this story for beauty, for love and for care. When our ancestors wandered away from God, God didn’t give up on them or stop caring about them. Humans may have failed God repeatedly, but God didn’t fail them.

Jesus came at the best time possible for the reception and rapid spread of His mission and message. All the Mediterranean Sea was united under Rome with free access over the whole area, via a superb road and communications network. There was one common language – Greek – an admirable medium for the Gospel’s transmission. People keenly felt the bankruptcy of paganism and the failure of pagan religions to offer real help and hope to ordinary folk. A network of Jewish synagogues existed throughout the Roman Empire that were attracting a growing interest by people disillusioned with the lack of high moral standards. Jewish expectations of a deliverer, of a liberator from Roman occupation and oppression, were at their highest pitch. Above all, there were the faithful folk like Simeon and Anna who were praying daily for a Saviour to appear.

After nine months of waiting by His mother Mary, the same amount of time most mothers have to wait, Jesus was born of a woman, as we all have been. Jesus’ birth marked the all-important turning-point in the story of God and human beings. His coming is the heart and centre of human history. It gives meaning to all that happened before, and to the lives of human beings ever since. Christ’s appearance on the scene of human history made the world seem young and fresh again, as He gave a new start in life to all who followed Him. By filling time with love and hope, Jesus Christ gave time new meaning and purpose. The Church Year, which is different from the secular calendar, seeks to give expression to the difference Jesus makes to our lives by each year celebrating the events from before His birth to His ascension. We march to a different drum, we live by a different timetable, from that of the world.

Christmas and Easter are important to Christians for different reasons than for those who don’t know Jesus personally. “Now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! (2 Corinthians 6:2b).” Christians don’t need to engage in nostalgia for the “good old days”, because they believe the best is yet to come. We believe with St. Paul: “For me to live is Christ, and if I die, I will gain even more.” Christ’s birth of Mary was a guarantee of His humanity, which He’s proud to share with us. The essence of Christmas is our Saviour’s complete identification with us.

“Born under the law” means Jesus submitted to the laws of His people. From the time of His circumcision onwards, He observed the religious practices of His day. Every Sabbath He went to a synagogue, and He diligently kept the religious festivals of His nation. He especially kept the First Commandment perfectly for us, so that He could offer us His perfect obedience in the place of our disobedience. Jesus kept the law for us, to redeem us from the curse of the law.

Jesus shared with us the laws and limitations of human growth. Within these limitations, He lived a full human existence with dignity and distinction. Our Lord became what we are, in order to make us what He is. He involved Himself in life’s great celebrations, like the wedding of Cana, as well as its tragedies. As a baby, Jesus was born to a young woman whose heart agonised at the oppression of her people. As a child, our Lord walked streets occupied by foreign troops. As a teenager, He had parents who didn’t understand His life’s calling and mission. As a carpenter, He understood the difficulty of getting paid for work done, and of sharing in the financial burdens of his family. No doubt the tax-man would have come regularly, seeking exorbitant taxes for a foreign colonial power. As leader of a new community of twelve men, Jesus was pained by their slowness to understand His mission and His message. He felt the rising tide of hostility towards Himself and His work.

But no price was too high to pay to redeem us from the curse of the law. “Redemption” is a wonderful word. It means “to buy back”, “to re-possess”. It means “emancipation”. Christmas marked the beginning of buying us back from our state of alienation and estrangement from God. “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18).” We were ransomed and redeemed so that we might be adopted into God’s family with full rights as His children. “You are not your own. For you were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19).”

Christ has claimed us as His own. We belong to Him. He challenges us to live as His people in today’s world. Our bodies, our time and our possessions aren’t our own to use as we please. We use these good gifts from God in a way that pleases our Lord. Psalm 90 prays: “Teach us to make the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.”

The good news of Christmas is that you can live as if today is the first day of your life, as you prepare for that day when time will give way to eternity. Today we thank God for eternity’s great gift of time, and His gift of our Saviour to us in the fullness of time, at the right time.

Amen.