Readings
- Jeremiah 20:7–13 To You I have Committed my cause
- Romans 6:1–11 Died to Sin … Alive to Christ
- Matthew 10:24–39 a Call to Witness in the face of Opposition
Daily, Ordinary, Life
Today is the Second Sunday of Trinity, that great season of ordinary time in the Church’s calendar. And its also my penultimate Sunday as Rector of the parishes of St Keverne, St Ruan w Grade and Landewednack. I have a feeling that these last two Sunday’s ought to be more important and yet they occur in the Church’s Ordinary Time.
But, perhaps, this is as it should be. We can all rise to the occasion of a special season (whether its Christmas, Lent, Easter or Pentecost), but it is in our ordinary days that we show our true life. The reality is, of course, that all of our days are lived in Ordinary Time. We may take time to remember the great seasons that are the grounds of our faith and life, but we live that life now, day by day, between those foundational beginnings and the great hope that is to come when Christ returns and fulfils all his promises.
Lent may touch on this, but it has an unusual intensity and limited duration. Jesus has called us to live in him and for him in the ongoing ordinariness of our lives. Other seasons flow through our lives – childhood, becoming adults, working life, perhaps marriage and parenthood, retirement and old age – but these are the ordinary seasons of life that we share with all our friends and neighbours.
What is it, then, that shapes and fills your ordinary days? What is the fountain of life in them, from which your daily living flows? And what sustains you when living is itself an exercise in perseverance – more like walking through mud than surfing the crest of a wave?
Costly Christianity
Our readings this morning set a challenging context for such thoughts.
Just Like Jesus
Jesus tells us clearly that being a Christian – in anything more than mere words – is going to be as difficult for us as it was for him. People will try to stop you living that way, to oppose what you do and say, or to try and make you keep it private – hidden and personal – not part of ordinary life. And some of that opposition will come from your closest friends and family.
Sometimes that is the hardest place to be true to Christ’s calling, amongst your friends and family. I read, as I was preparing this, of a young man in India murdered by his fellow villagers because he and his family converted to become Christians. That is extreme for us, but it reminds us that living as a Christian is as hard as Jesus told us it would be, even for us.
And yet, even here, there is another dynamic. The Father sees, the Father knows, and he loves it when his children show themselves to be his children.
Struggling with this
And Jeremiah illustrates this so powerfully.
He struggles with his calling, because it is so hard – “everyone mocks me”. He feels deceived even. Perhaps, when he felt that call to be a prophet, he had hoped that it would be a good and honourable thing, and now his experience is anything but. He has become a reproach and derision, not honoured. And people are threatening his life.
And yet he cannot but speak as he does; it is like fire in his bones and he can’t keep it in. Being a prophet, rather than good and honourable, feels more like being a slave. God has overcome him – “you are stronger than I”.
Perhaps, sometimes for us, being a Christian can seem like a burden; something we feel forced to do. I think that God gives us times like that. But as Jeremiah pushes through – as we push through such times – he comes to a deeper entrusting of his life to God and a deeper hope in God.
So, he comes to say – “to you have I committed my cause”. And he comes to trust in the one who – “has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers”.
Always a Slave
And then, in Romans, we see a hard truth. None of us are as free as we think that we are.
There is a freedom in Christ. It is the freedom from being enslaved to a way of life that is killing us. But is comes at a price, being enslaved to a way of life that leads to enduring life. It is a hard truth to take in, but it is the reality of life whether we like it or not. All of us must commit ourselves to life – slaves, is not too strong a word – in order to live.
The difference that Jesus makes is that before him we had no choice in whose slave we would be. We were born into slavery to sin and death. And it is only through death – his death, and our death in him – that we are freed from that slavery. We were helpless and hopeless, even the faith that unites us to Christ in the benefits of his death and resurrection life, is a gift to us from God.
So, now, we have a choice – a choice we make and live each day. Whose will I be? Sin no longer has any claim over us, but we can still present ourselves to is as if it did. Or we can present ourselves to Christ, alive to God in Jesus Christ. It may sometimes feel like a new slavery – just as it did to Jeremiah – but it is one of life and freedom.
An Ordinary Glory
What is it, then, that shapes and fills your ordinary days? What is the fountain of life in you, from which your daily living flows? And what sustains you when living is itself an exercise in perseverance? Perhaps, in my penultimate sermon, you might indulge me sharing something of my answer to those questions.
If I look back at my ordinary life – and it has been ordinary – three things have had an enduring impact from God and fulfil what those questions are looking for.
God Is
First comes an encounter in a railway carriage – it could have been a brief encounter, but it has stood at the heart of my life ever since.
I was not brought up as a Christian and had no encouragement to seek Christ or become a Christian. But I suppose I was looking for something, a meaning and purpose to life, something spiritual. In that I was very ordinary, like so many people then and now looking for s spiritual reality.
In my sixth form college I met a young catholic boy, I can’t even remember his name, or whether the encounter was really significant. But we discussed what we believed in – I with my mixture of eastern philosophies and he with his faith in Jesus. I don’t remember anything that you would call gospel or doctrine, it was just a discussion, but perhaps it stirred something.
Whatever, one morning following this I was alone in a railway carriage on my daily commute to college, and I had an extraordinary experience of God’s presence. It was the most real thing, but completely inexplicable. I just experienced a presence and reality and knew that God is, God was there, and I could not deny that he was.
As a result of this I sought out Christians at the college and sought out a local church to join. That’s another story. But what I want to emphasise is that realisation that God Is. There was no burning bush and no sound saying, ‘I am”, but there might as well have been.
The thing about God is that you can’t make him up. He is what he is. He is the reality behind all reality, the life behind all life. The only choice is whether you accept him as he is and seek to know him, or whether you reject who he is and try and ignore and hide from his reality and truth.
Word and Spirit
Once I had encountered this reality and said yes to him, two other things became real and central.
The first was his word, the Bible. I had read bits of the bible before. I had a very good RE teacher at secondary school, even though it did nothing for me at the time. But now the Bible came alive. The more I read it the more real and clear God became to me.
I have heard many rational arguments for the reliability and truth of the Bible. But the greatest for me is John Piper’s description of its peculiar glory that is self-authenticating. Reading it with enlightened eyes it is just satisfyingly true. And so it was for me. I kept finding more and more that just seemed to fit with the reality that I had first encountered.
Then, whilst all of this was going on, I stumbled upon the Holy Spirit. I was still searching for a church to join – I am afraid that I found the BCP and chanting of the local parish church too impenetrable – and I came across an advert for a meeting at the local Baptist Church with Arthur Wallis, speaking about the Holy Spirit.
I went. I did not know, as some Christians might have told me at the time, that the Holy Spirit was controversial or dangerous. I went, and that evening I both made my first public commitment to faith in Christ, and was baptised or filled with the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps without that, my first experience of God would have faded and become a mere memory. But in the Holy Spirit I found a daily renewal of that encounter and reality. That is not to say that every day since has felt Spirit filled. I have grieved him many times since then, and he has given me the gift of his apparent absence at times to increase my hunger.
But, in all that, the Holy Spirit has been an abiding presence and an ever-flowing fountain of life. If there is anything of Christ visible in me, or any understanding of his word, I know that it his doing as he has opened his word to me.
Glory
The third thing I need to share, is in many ways of a piece with the first two. But, somehow in my mind and heart, it seems to have its own life-giving experience.
It was given to me through the gift of a book by John Piper. His most famous book is probably “Desiring God”, but the one I came to first was “The Glory of God in Preaching”. I was not preaching at that time and I am not sure who recommended it to me (it might have been my father-in-law), but I am eternally grateful.
It begins with John Piper speaking about a preaching series he felt led to give. It was focussed on the Glory of God. It was unusual in that it contained no practical applications or exhortations, and preachers have always been taught that you must give people practical applications and make the preaching relevant to their lives. But this series was just about God.
It was a series about the God, just that – who he is, what he is like. It was about how glorious God is in all that he is; majestic, almighty, faithful, true, good … etc. It was just about the glorious reality that is God.
And in the midst of that series one family in the congregation were going through hell. Any normal pastor would have thought that they should preach words of comfort, about God’s love for us, about what he has done for us, about how he can meet our needs. But the experience of that family was that seeing God like this, seeing his glory, was more sustaining and healing than any practical teaching.
And since then, I have come to know that God in the glory of who he is, is everything. Unless God is my glory, unless he is the one who captivates my heart with the sight of him, no amount of me-orientated comfort means anything. I know, I also have been through times of hell.
In them I knew that God loved me and my family, but at the heart of that love was not me, but him. It was not that he loved me and would take away my pain and suffering, but that he would use them to bring me closer to him. The words of Asaph come to mind:
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. (Ps 73:25-28 a Psalm of Asaph)
Is it Just Me?
All of which seems very self-indulgent of me and too much about me. But if this God is as real and glorious and present as I have come to know, surely it can’t just be me? Surely, others must see this and know and live this as well.
I have to believe that he is doing this in others as well. Though you might describe it with different words – God is more than any one can see and even the whole church of Christ is going to need eternity to explore his unfathomable riches – this glorious reality is meant to be shared.
At the same time, it has always seemed to me that this glorious God is mysteriously non-transferable. I can do nothing to make others see or share what I am talking about. All my words and deeds are just that, my words and deeds. Only God can give anyone an experience of his glorious reality.
But, equally, no one can see and remain silent. And neither can I.
So, as I am preparing to lay down my place amongst these churches, I hope that you will forgive my indulgence. I hope even more that you will worship with me and know the one whom to know is life. And that, in the ordinariness of your life his extraordinary glory will shine.
Next week, God willing I may share something about what I believe happens when we shine with his glory.
May God show us the path of Life.
In his presence alone is fullness of Joy
At his right hand is everlasting pleasure