• Jeremiah 28:5–9                Few Prophets speak of Peace
• Romans 6:12–23               Be Slaves to God not Sin
• Matthew 10:40–42           Whoever receives you receives Me
• Psalm 89:8–18                   Mighty, Righteous, Faithful; our Shield

Introduction

Well, here it is, Trinity 3 and my last sermon amongst these churches. Last week I shared something of my personal testimony to the glorious reality that is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This week I want to say something about that reality in the people that he calls to be his treasured possession amongst all his creation.

In doing so I am aware of the extraordinary times in which we now live and the challenge of being Church in them. As I retire others will take up the responsibility of leading these six churches across the south-east Lizard coast and it is an impossible task. I commend them to you with love. Pray for them.

But Church has never been about the people who lead. It is nothing less, or more, than the body of Christ, a gathering of Christians together in relationship to Christ and one another. What Church is, is what those Christians are, whatever institution or leadership they are involved with.

God is Serious about His Church

Whoever receives you receives Me

So, Jesus, as he sends his disciples out ahead of him can say, “Whoever receives you receives me”. When they knock on a door it is as if Jesus is knocking on the door. Some will receive him, and others will not, but either way it is Jesus, not the Disciples that they are responding to.

That is an extraordinary statement. Sometimes people have tried to distinguish Jesus from his church and say something like ‘come to Jesus, not church’, but that is not the way Jesus sees it.

There is a real downside to this, as scripture shows, when people get the wrong idea about God because of his people:

“For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’” (Rom 2:24)

But the upside is that the church will display God’s name, not only to friends and neighbours, but also to the whole of creation:

^“ … and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:9-10)

That is why God will reward anyone who gives even a cup of cold water to one of his little ones, because they are Christ’s disciple/representative.

When we have an idea of church as something separate from us, something we can join, we may think that we can hide in what that ‘church’ is. We may act like supporters reflecting in is glory or accomplishments. But not before God. Church is not a club we can join or attend, it is a body we are born (again) into.

God is serious about this. God did not withhold his own Son; he held nothing back, as he pursued his plan to display his glory in human disciples – a church, body and bride – together in Christ. And he will hold nothing back in bringing that body to the perfection of Christ, formed in them.

Nor can we think that he will deal kindly with those who “destroy the one for who Christ died” (Rom 14:15) in the way that treat the members of his body.

Judgement Begins with the Household of God

God is serious about church. He is serious about church being Christ’s body. So, when as Christians we may look down on the world and think ourselves ok, we should remember the scripture:

“… it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet 4:17)

God will not turn a Blind Eye

That, I think, is what underlies Jeremiah’s words to the false prophet Hananiah. Hananiah had been telling God’s people that they were ok. He said that the people who had been captured and sent into exile in Babylon would soon be returned. But God has exiled them for a reason, because he was serious about his church (his people). God was not going to let them go their own way and cause his name to be blasphemed.

So, Jeremiah sarcastically says “Amen”. But, he says, that is not what God usually has to say. If God warns “many countries and great kingdoms” to turn and repent, who would think that he is going to turn a blind eye to his own people’s rebelliousness?

God will Prune

And Jesus, himself, tells us that the Father prunes his vine, casting off the dead branches and pruning the fruitful ones (Jn 15). If we are being faithful and fruitful, the loving judgment of pruning will still come, so that we may bear more fruit – so that we may display more of Christ in us. Pruning is not comfortable, but it is an act of love – God’s love for his vine, his church.

But, especially with what is going on in the church at this time, we ought to be careful to ensure that it is God’s pruning, not ours. There is too much history of well-meaning Christians taking it into their own hands to prune away what they see as wrong with the church.

It is not that the church lacks things that need pruning. But when we do it in our own wisdom and strength, we are apt to miss the log in our own eyes and do as much or more damage than good. It is a much harder thing to build up in truth and love, than to tear down.

So, Present yourselves to God

We are called much more to build up than to tear down. And the work of building up the church always starts with ourselves. As our Romans reading reminds us, the one bit of the church we can make a real difference to, is ourselves. As we present ourselves to God, the fruit that he gives us “leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life”

As Ephesians tells us, building up the body (the church) comes from Christ, but it comes through us as we are joined together by him – with all the joints that he supplies – and as “each part is working properly” (Eph 4:15-16). Jesus promised to build his church, but he uses his people to do so. In Christ, his body builds itself up in love.

In that passage in Ephesians, Paul speaks of this building up as each one of us “speaking the truth in love”. But “each part working properly” is a greater thing that just what we say and the way we say it. So, he goes on to urge us all to be imitators of God, by walking (i.e. living) in love and righteousness. The way we live, each one of us, is either building the church up in Christ or stunting its growth and bringing it down.

As a mundane example, I remember my pastor advising me as a young man in search of a godly woman, to look to myself. ‘Be a godly man, and you will attract a godly woman’. The same is true in the church. The more each one of us pursues Christ in our own lives, the more we will encourage others to do so. It is a hard thing to live faithfully as Christ’s disciple in this world (as our Gospel last week reminded us), we ought to be making church an easier place to do so.

Each one of us has a part to play, as God calls us and equips us. It is not for us to compare ourselves to others, or to mistake public exposure for importance. God says, ‘present yourself’, and as we do so he will build his church.

Pilgrim Church

What all this means at this present time is a real challenge. As I am preparing to move on to God’s next thing in my life, it has never been harder to see what is the way forward for the churches that I have been part of here.

A Weak Church and a Hungry People.

The institutional church that many of us have known is weak and in danger of collapse. At the same time, the hunger for God among our communities seems greater than ever.

If people do not find that hunger satisfied in God, they will seek satisfaction elsewhere (even though it is no satisfaction). But God’s design is that they find him in the company of his people.

I am convinced that being church is at the heart of all this. God’s desire is for a church that is so full of the life of Christ that, even in its imperfections (of which there will always be many), the church is both salt and light in its community.

A Passionate God

I believe that God is passionate about this church and is moving heaven and earth to bring it into being. But I do not think that he is passionate about church buildings, or the Church of England, or any other institution, or any idea of our church that sets itself apart from other Christians

I do believe that God is passionate about you, each and every Christian whom he has purchased with the blood of Christ. And everyone in our communities whom he knew before he made the universe, whom he chose and has purchased with the blood of Christ, though they do not yet know him.

God is at work amongst us, in our churches and outside them. And he is at work in all the challenges that we face. He is working everything according to his wisdom and plan. And he is calling us out to journey with him as his Pilgrim People.

Pilgrim Church

We too easily forget that God has always called a Pilgrim People out to journey with him to the fulfilment of his promise. Because we use church buildings that have stood for generations organised by an institution that is just as old, we forget that we are a Pilgrim People. Our buildings, no matter how old, are just tents – temporary structures for the journey. So are our institutions.

Even the newer churches that have grown up in recent years are apt to become too fixed. The first generation sets out as pilgrims with nothing but a sense of calling, but traditions, buildings and institutions grow. Too often people can settle into maintenance mode and forget that we are pilgrims, we are called out. Like Abraham, we are “looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10)

God know that we need tents, whether they are made of stone or canvass. He knows that we need organisation, the church is a body after all. Worshiping together needs liturgy, we need common hymn sheet. But when any of these things become more important than the call and the journey, God will shake them up. Just as he is doing.

So, What Now?

Though so much seems uncertain and unclear, God’s word and his promise still stand. The work of Christ for our salvation is eternal. The Holy Spirit is amongst us and working in our world. God’s call on your life and his promises to you, will not be taken back – they are guaranteed in Christ himself.

Each one of us must play our part in love and truth, bearing with and encouraging one another in Christ.

May God bless you all, as you pursue his upward call together in Christ.

• 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

• Matthew 9:35–10:8[9–23]         Disciples Called and Sent
• Exodus 19:2–8                                A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation
• Romans 5:1–8                                Rejoicing in Hope … and Suffering

Introduction – the Importance of Names

Names can be powerful things when they are given to us with care. How many parents have agonised over the right name for a child, as yet unborn – unknown but full of hope? And, amongst friends, nicknames tell us something about how our friends see us and our place in the group. Surnames may say something about our place in society, a trade, location, or parentage.

In scripture, names have always carried meaning, throughout the old testament and the new. Amongst the disciples, James and John were known where they came from as ‘the sons of thunder’. One wonders what this says about how their friends saw them. Yet John came to see himself in later years as ‘the beloved disciple’. Simon, for all his impetuousness and volatility, was named Peter (Rock), by Jesus, and became so in the early church.

Revelation tells us that those who is faithful in Jesus will receive a new name, that is not given or known by others, but a personal gift from God himself known only to the one who receives it (Rev 2:17). Imagine that, a name that is not about who we are in our community, or who we have come from, but all about who we are to God himself.

In our Gospel reading today, we have the names of the twelve followers that Jesus called to him and sent out before him; twelve disciples, who become apostles, representatives of the one who sent them. Whatever they had been – tax collectors, zealots, fishermen etc. – they were now his disciples. They had received a new name. And now, the way that they are received by people will be treated as if the people had received or rejected Jesus himself.

In our old testament reading, the people are called a ‘Treasured Possession’, ‘Priests’ and ‘Holy’ (set apart for God). And in the epistle, we are called sinners whom God has loved. Names are important, and what God calls us is most important of all. Let us pause and look again at what God calls us.

Called

Jesus had many who followed him in various ways. The crowds followed him about, perhaps intrigued or entertained. Some followed him out of a need to be healed or set free. Some followed him in order to test him. And some had left everything behind to follow him.

Chosen and Called

But all of those who truly followed him were first called by him, and none more so than the twelve disciples whom he called apostles. We see this truth in this passage as these twelve are called out from the rest of his followers as disciples. But we could also have seen it in the way each of them was called, one by one, to leave their old lives and follow him.

This has been the pattern of God’s way of salvation since Abraham and even, you might argue, since Adam, whom God called into being. So, Jesus can say to them in the upper room, “you did not choose me, but I chose you” (Jn 15:16). And Romans tells us

“And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Rom 8:30)

A Liberating Blessing

This is a glorious truth that has blessed and sustained Christians through the ages … He chose. Whatever choice we made was in response to his first choosing, so it depends in his choosing not ours. But those whom he chose he also called; and he called them to be, and to become … something new.

In the normality of this world we are all called into being, by our parents, by the friends and community in which we live, by what we do. And we also call ourselves into being, as we pursue our own vision of who we are, and who we can be.

So, for example, John was called one of the sons of thunder, and may have lived up to that reputation. But as he followed Jesus call, he came to see himself as – and to be seen by others as – the beloved disciple. What does it do to you when you leave behind a sense of thunderously imposing yourself on life and come to know above all other things, that you are loved by God?

Or, Matthew, who was known to everyone – and judged by them – as a traitorous tax collector. He would become a father figure to many as he shared his master’s words in the Gospel and the growing churches for which it was first written.

Christ in You

And, what of us … what of you? Who are you? Each one of us, he has called, one by one, name by name. Part of our discipleship is allowing him to name us, to call us into being who and what he wants us to be. The Holy Spirit is at work in us so that Christ is formed in us (individually and together). Christ is the pattern and goal, but he is calling you to be ‘Christ in in you’. A name he gives to you, alone.

Nevertheless, since Christ is the pattern, there are some names that we share.

Treasured

So, God says to the people he called out with Moses – “you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples”.

Among all his possessions

To make it more clear, he says “all the earth is mine”. It is not as if we are his possession and the rest of the world is not. We are not God’s people in that way. All people are, in a real sense, God’s people. They are his whether they reject him or ignore him. We need to remember this in all the divisions and denigrations of racism and nationalism (or whatever) that beset our world. Every single person is God’s, made by him and for him.

With No Intrinsic Value

And amongst all these, God has not chosen the brightest and best, the wisest, strongest, or most skilled.

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor 1:26-39)

But, though there is nothing in us that deserves it, God has called us Treasured. Out of all his possessions we are, in Christ, his treasured possession. For me, that says more than that God loves me. We can love people that we don’t like. We are called to love our enemies. But God calls you treasured – cherished, rejoiced over.

Whatever the world says, whatever your heart says, this is what God calls you!

God’s Eternal Choice

And we are Treasured by the one who sees all things. At his command, Jesus called twelve disciples, knowing that more than one would betray him. But only one was choses as a betrayer. Peter and the others were chosen as treasure.

We may have let him down, and may disappoint him in the future. We may have given him every reason to regret his choice and calling. But he has determined that we will be his treasure, so that he sanctifies all whom he calls, and he glorifies all whom he sanctifies. And, if we can begin to feel what it means to be treasured, to be called a joy and crown, by the one who made all things, perhaps we can begin to find – in him – the way to become what we are called.

Holy

We are called Treasure, and we are Treasured. But we are also called Holy.

Holiness speaks of God’s uniqueness, in goodness, purity, power and wisdom. But the root meaning of the word is about separation. So, God in his holiness is not like us – he is certainly not made in our image – he is different, set apart, holy. And when God calls us holy, we too are set apart, to be his people, to bear his image.

Abraham: Called Out … to be a Blessing

So, from Abraham and his children, God called out a people for his won possession. They were part of the same overall people group as their neighbours, but they were called to separate themselves and live differently as God’s people. They were given religious markers – including circumcision, clothing & food – to mark them as separate. But the heart of their separateness (their holiness) was there love and worship of God alone and their moral way of living.

They were not entirely separate. They were to live among the other peoples surrounding them. But they were to have a different hear, and a different way of life from them.

Ultimately, from Abraham’s first call, they were to be a blessing to those amongst whom they lived. This was not an exclusive isolation. They had a duty to strangers and especially refugees. And what they were called to be was meant to be seen by the nations, who would wonder at the God who gave them such laws and instructions

And we also, in Christ

And when Christ came and the gentiles were included in this calling, some of the religious markers were fulfilled and left behind. We are no longer called to be circumcised physically, to avoid certain foods, to dress in a certain way, or to worship in a particular place or way. Now Christ is being formed amongst all the nations and cultures of the world. But the heart of our call remains the same, God has called us out from what and where we were to be his.

So, what does this mean for you and for me?

Christian British or British Christian

Fundamentally, it means that we belong to God in Christ. Whatever else we may also be in our relationships (husband, wife, parent, child, neighbour etc.), or in our nationality (British, Cornish or whatever), in our occupation (people always ask ‘what do you do?’), or even in our own identity – whatever else we are, first and fundamentally we are Christ’s.

So, if we are British and a Christian, are we a Christian British person or a British Christian person. The English language emphasises the last adjective as fundamental, so I would say that I am a Christian who is also British – a sort of dual nationality in which my fundamental identity is Christian.

New Person, New Roots, New Identity

This also means that I am a new person in Christ. I may have been a sinner, but now I am freed from sin and a new person (2 Cor 5:17). I may have been abused in my childhood, but now I am freed from any claim that abuse has on my identity, I am new in Christ.

When God calls you Holy, it is a liberating thing. You have been called out and set apart. So now you are free to live in wholeness and fulfil all God’s calling for you

But it is a freedom that does not entirely detach you from what you have been. Because God wants you to be a blessing. So (for example), if you have been abused, that abuse no longer defines or controls you, but you may have a special ministry to share with the abuses – to comfort with the comfort which you have been comforted with in Christ (2 Cor 1:4)

Sent

Which leads to a final part of our new calling and name. We are Called to God to be sent out by him. Just as the Twelve were called by Jesus to be sent out. The Apostles are special case for what is a general calling for all Jesus’ disciples.

Our Gospel reading records the calling of the twelve who were called Apostles – a word which means a representative, sent in the place of their master. But Jesus called other disciples and sent them out (Lk 10:1). And all of us are sent to make disciples (Matt 28:19)

Sent and Called

And as we go, we will discover that being sent is not merely a part of our calling, one aspect only. As we go, we will discover more of what it means to be called.

So, Jesus tells them not to take extra possessions. We are called to God in Christ and now belong to him, set apart and holy, and he is the one who now looks after us. So, going without extra supplies and resources, we will discover how much we are treasured as God supplies our needs.

And, whilst we are sent out as sheep amongst wolves, we will discover – in Christ by his word and Spirit – wisdom to overcome all their wiles. God will reveal Satan’s devices to us so that we are not left unaware and vulnerable. And, when we are tested by courts or kings, we will be given the words we need.

We cannot rejoice at being called and given a new name, or at being set apart and treasured, without also being sent and going as he directs us. Without the obedience of going, we ill not truly discover what our calling and new name is, or how set apart and treasured we are.

Called for Glory

Ultimately, we are called to be what Adam and Eve were made for – to bear and display the image of the God who made us. We are called for display –

• to be for the praise of his glory (Eph 1:12)
• a display of God’s wisdom (Eph 3:10

Just as God has delighted to display his glory in the extraordinary variety and beauty of the physical creation, even more he has purposed to display his deeper glory of wisdom and truth in a people that he has called and made (rescued and re-made). We should not be surprised that we are sent and called to go out into our communities and world rather than hide away. God wants his grace in us to be seen.

A New Name

Who is like God, and who is like the Son who he has given to be our saviour, and the Spirit whom he has lavished upon us in his grace? He has chosen us when we rejected him. He has called us when we were not looking for him. He has treasured us when we were less than worthless; loved loveless sinners. And he has given us a new name, a new calling and purpose, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Let us finish this morning with words from Romans (Rom 11:33-12:2)

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

So, may each of us, brothers and sisters, by these mercies of God, present our bodies as a living sacrifice, each one of us called holy and acceptable to God. What other worship can we give? Let us not be conformed to this world, as we have been called out of it. But may we be transformed by the renewal of our mind, as we obey his call and so discern his will in all its goodness and rightness and perfection.

• Matthew 28:16–20 All Authority … Go and make Disciples
• Isaiah 40:12–17, 27–31 Behold your God
• 2 Corinthians 13:11–14 Grace, Love & Fellowship

Introduction – Behold your God

The Old Testament speaks of a time when:

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Isa 11:9

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Hab 2:14

And in the coming of Jesus, the fullness of that blessing is revealed

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Jn 17:3

On the Sunday in which, above all Sundays, our focus is on the fullness of God in his glorious Trinity and Unity, we ought to reflect on the God that we know.

Behold Your God

Our Isaiah reading begins, before the section we have in the lectionary, with this:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God … Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Isa 40:1,9

Behold your God. How well do you know him? The riches of his glory in Jesus Christ are unfathomable. But to know him is eternal life. And we should know him.

Good News

The Gospel is Good News; good news concerning Jesus Christ. But in its Old Testament roots (as we see in these verses) it is expressed as the heralds’ cry of good news – Behold your God. God, himself, in all his glorious trinity-unity, is the Good News. To speak of him, to see him and know him, is comfort and strength to God’s people.

By his grace we have been given eyes to see and hearts to know this God. His Glory has been made to shine in our hearts in seeing the face of Jesus Christ – the image of the invisible God (2 Cor 4:6).

He is the Good News. He alone is the comfort that we need. Anything else is fake news, comfortless, “a broken reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of the one that leans on it” (Isa 36:6)

Your God

The heralds of Good News proclaim, “Behold your God”. Yet, I wonder how many Christians see and know him as they should. From the beginning, Satan’s weapon of deceit has been aimed at the nature of God and his word. In the garden he says to Eve and Adam, “did God say?”, and he questions not only God’s word, but also his character.

Today, I wonder how many Christians have been deceived into seeing God as something less than he truly is. We may think that idolatry has to do with statues and carved images, but as A W Tozer says, it is much deeper than that:

“Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes God is other than He is—in itself a monstrous sin—and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness …

Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place. “When they knew God,” wrote Paul, “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”[1]

Only the word of God and the grace of the Holy Spirit can truly enlighten our darkened hearts.

Go … and make Disciples

Our Gospel is familiar as the ‘Great Commission’ to go and make disciples. But it is founded on an awesome statement that Jesus makes:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

One God, over All

This is the one who is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life, and he has authority over ALL things. We dare not present Jesus as other than he truly is. He is full of grace and truth, and we must not so emphasise the grace that the truth is lost, or so emphasize the truth that his grace is lost. Sometimes that will be hard, especially when the Truth is challenging, but we must seek always to proclaim Jesus in the fullness of his grace and truth.

And, as this Sunday should remind us, we must present Jesus as he is in the fullness of the Godhead. There is no place for setting the Father against the Son, or some idea of the Old Testament God of wrath against a New Testament idea of the God of love. Jesus tells us to baptise these new disciples,

“in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.

One Name, one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – throughout eternity; revealed in his one word (both old and new testaments).

Disciples of the Word

And this one God, over all, calls us to be disciples of his word – “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”.

The word ‘observe’ (gk. τηρέω tēreō) has its roots in a word for guarding, keeping watch over, or preserving. So, it speaks not only of obeying, or believing, but holding closely to, and passing on with care.

If we call ourselves disciples of Christ, we must cherish his word, being careful to keep it, to hear it, live it and pass it on, just as he has given it to us. Throughout history there have been those who sought to accommodate his word to their circumstances, their feelings, their group, or institution. But God has kept his word remarkably unchanged and available to us.

Every generation is charged to keep this word. And we must faithfully put this word at the centre of our discipleship, testing every tradition and new thought against its challenging plumb line.

Our Comfort in His Glory

Isaiah keeps this focus on God as the good news and our comfort in troubling times.

Is God Impotent or Uncaring

In the second part of our reading, we see the issue from the people’s point of view. The people are troubled and wondering about God:

• Can he not see the trouble we are in – “My way is hidden from the Lord”
• Does he not care about the trouble we are in – “my right is disregarded by my God”.

These two questions have worried Christians over centuries, when they are facing troubles; either God is not powerful, or he doesn’t care. You may have faced them, yourself. Certainly, they have been at the heart of philosophers’ criticisms of God, faced with the problem of suffering

So, what is the answer?

Who is Like God?

In our modern view of things, you might be quick to assert that God does care. You might point to the suffering of Christ for us? But this is not the answer that God gives. Whether you look at this reading, or in that great treatise on suffering, in Job. Again, and again, God does not tell us that he loves us (though he does). His first answer seems always to be to point us to his glorious fullness. ‘Who is like me?’, he says. Who has made all this, who understands and measures it, who taught him the wisdom?

We might look for God to affirm his love for us, to say that we are valuable to him and that he cares for us. But instead he says, “the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales”. If all were offered as worship to him, they would still come to “less than nothing and emptiness”.

Our Comfort is in His Glory

It is not that he does not care. God is love, faithful love. But when we see God’s love as a reflection of some value in us, we are on shaky ground. So, God establishes his love on the solid ground of who he is, not who we are.

He is the everlasting one, the creator of everything, the unfainting, unwearying one. There is no limit to his knowledge or understanding. And, from this limitless fountain, those who wait on him receive strength. Those who see Gods love as a reflection of their own worth or value are doomed to faint and fall, but those who wait on God will fly – They

“shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint”

He works for those who wait

Is this your God? Too many Christians seem to have a view of God as the one who loves them, but when troubles come, they have no answer to them. In times of trouble the cant see that God loves them. They ask, does he not see, does he not care?

When we are like this, we may not realise, but it is as if we have made everything – including God – revolve around us and our cares. But the truth is that everything revolves around God. He is the centre; he has to be for our sakes. And for us to learn this, he may bring us to troubles, and to the pit of Ps 40, where we learn to wait patiently for him.

That may seem hard, but it is glorious and liberating. Every other god, every other religion seems to depend on us; we serve and look for blessings. But as Isaiah tells us elsewhere, this God is the one who works for those who wait for him:  

“From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.”

Isa 64:4

So, let us put God at the centre and look to him to be God amongst us, as he wills.

Let God be God amongst us

And, finally, our short reading from Corinthians, speaks of what it looks like when we let God be the centre, when we let God be God amongst us.

When it is no longer about us, or our group but about him, we can begin to experience what it is like when his grace, his love and his fellowship is the reality of our being church. Rejoicing in him, we can pursue restoration and peace.

• His Grace – a faithful mercy that is founded in truth, freed to us through the sacrifice of Christ.
• His Love – a love that reflects who he is more than who we are, faithful and full of wisdom that flows from his holiness to meet our real need
• His Fellowship – bringing us to be with him in the mysterious fellowship of the eternal trinity, where we find our place, identity and meaning in him.

Going back full circle, we are those who are baptised, together, into his name and his word.

Behold your God

Now we see, dimly and imperfectly as in a mirror (1 Cor 13:12), but as be we see we are changed by what we see (2 Cor 3:18), from glory to glory. Now we see imperfectly, but one day we will see and know, just as truly as we are seen now by him. And when we see him, out transformation will be perfected (1 Jn 3:2).

So, let us take care how we see. Let us not let our own desire, or any tradition, replace the one who IS, with any idol. To see him truly is comfort and strength in our troubles. To know him is eternal life. Accept nothing less.

[1] AW Tozer, The Essence of Idolatry from ‘The Knowledge of the Holy’ 1961 Harper Collins

• Acts 2:1–21                         The Spirit Comes on the Disciples

• 1 Corinthians 12:3–13      The Spirit of the Lord on his Servants

• John 7:37–39                      The Promise of the Spirit awaits his Glory

• John 20:19–23                    The Promise of the Spirit for Mission

• Psalm 104:24–35               The Spirit creates anew

Introduction

On the day of Pentecost, they were all together – as they had been since Jesus ascension, devoted to prayer. The Holy Spirit came, as Jesus had foretold in his dramatized prophecy[1], like Jesus breathing on them. The wind was accompanied by fire that rested on each of them, echoing both the fire that accepted Elijah’s sacrifice, and the bush of God’s presence to Moses that burned but was not consumed.

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit (all, not just the Apostles). And the first thing that the Spirit brought was worship. They spoke in tongues; the tongue of all the nations that Jesus had commissioned them to witness to, but what did they say in these tongues? Later the crowds tell us, they were “telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” They were worshiping.

Worshipers, before Witnesses

This outpouring of the Holy Spirit would lead to the mass conversion of 3,000 people. Scripture does not say where the disciples were gathered, but they attracted quite a crowd. Just as Jesus had said, the Holy Spirit when he came, convicted them of “sin, righteousness and judgement” because of Jesus (Jn 16:8-11).

But what started it? Crowds probably gathered at that time in Jerusalem when anything new or unusual happened. It was part of their entertainment (much like social media today). When they gathered, they were asking questions. Some would, eventually, ask whether they were drunk. But the first question was how and why these Jews were praising God in every sort of language? Why were they worshiping like this, and in a way that we can understand?

And what were they saying in their worship? They were praising God for his mighty works, but what works? Surely, they were praising God for all that he had done in and through Jesus; they were praising Jesus! And they were doing so in a way that all the people who gathered could hear and, potentially, join in with them in praising Jesus.

Today, the church remembers and celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit in his first outpouring. Those first disciples were instructed to wait for the one who would equip them to be witnesses. We see the outcome in Peter’s first sermon, and we have one of the scriptural lists of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But before we focus on those, we need to see something that the Holy Spirit does at a deeper and more foundational way.

The Spirit of Faith and Love

When Jesus first introduces the promise of the Holy Spirit in the upper room (Jn 14:15ff) it is all about seeing and knowing Jesus and his Father. The Holy Spirit is given to those who love and follow Jesus as the presence of God in them – a seal of love on a relationship of faith and love.

• He will be the one who leads us into truth, as faith is filled with understanding.
• He will be the one who brings fruit in lives of increasing Christlike righteousness – as we abide in Christ in the Spirit of Christ.
• He will convict the world, but to the disciples he will be the gift by which they see and know Jesus. And perhaps, he will convict the world as the world sees Jesus in his people.
• And, as they live more and more in Christ, he will be the gift of prayer that is answered, because it is in Jesus’ name.

The Spirit of Life in Christ

Every blessing that we receive from God is in Christ as we are united to Christ in faith. But the reality of that being in Christ is mediated to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, in us. He is the gift of the life of Christ in us, like a well of living waters springing up in our hearts (Jn 7:37-39). Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col 1:27).

No wonder, when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost, their first response was praise and worship. They were not just praising God for his mighty works; they were praising him for his mighty works in them.[2]

The Spirit of Worship

The true presence of the Holy Spirit in a disciple, as Paul reminds us, is not works of power, but a heart of worship.

“Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:3)

The evidence is twofold. Anyone who truly has the Holy Spirit cannot curse Jesus; that much is understandable, how can a heart that has been so endowed with love, speak ill of the one it loves. People may be forced to speak against their heart, but words spoken in integrity reveal what is truly there in us.

But, if anything, the second statement is even more forceful. You cannot truly say that Jesus is Lord unless you have the Holy Spirit! Many people may say that Jesus is Lord and believe that it is true. But only those who have received the Holy Spirit in them can truly say it:

• not just as a statement of general truth, but as statement of personal reality – Jesus is my Lord; and
• not just as a statement of reality, but as one of joy-filled love in that reality. It is no great statement of his lordship that speaks of one who has forced us to submit. But when we rejoice to call him Lord, his Lord indeed.

The Holy Spirit is at heart a spirit of worship. Just as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well; the Father is seeking those who will worship in Spirit and truth. This is his first and greatest gift to us … and everything else flows from it.

I do not think that it is too strong to say that if the Holy Spirit is not dynamically at work in us as a Spirit of worship, and of the transformed lives that grow from worship (2 Cor 3:18), we will never truly be witnesses, nor will any of the other gifts manifest their true purpose.

Witnesses more than Heralds

But you can’t keep this gift to yourself, as the disciples found on that Pentecost day. So, Jesus says “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses …” (Acts 1:8).

This reinforces the personal heart work of the Holy Spirit I have been emphasizing above; you will receive power, and you will be witnesses. Jesus does not say that you will receive power to witness. You will receive power, for all that he has spoken about above. And, in the outworking of that power you will be (or, perhaps, become) witnesses.

Witness are Evidence Bearers

Witness is a special description. It speaks of one who gives evidence, as in a court. When you stand as a witness, you are not asked your opinion, but to testify to what you saw. It is no good saying I believe that she did it. You must be able to say, I saw him do it.

When the Apostles sought to find a replacement for Judas, they looked only amongst those “who have accompanied us during all the time that Jesus went in and about amongst us” (Acts 1:21). They needed someone who could witness to what they had seen and heard.

Now, as we are called to be witnesses, the same criterion applies. We need to be people in whom Jesus has come ‘in and about’, so that we can witness to what he has said and done in us. Only now it is not the physical Jesus of his ministry amongst those first disciples, but his Holy Spirit ministry in and amongst us.

Heralds are a Particular Appointment

There is a role and gift of being a herald (gk. Kēryx), which is often translated as preacher in the New Testament. Paul says that he was appointed a preacher (1 Tim 2:7), or herald, just as the Spirit gives different gifts to different disciples. Not all of us are appointed heralds, but we are all appointed as witnesses.

This ought to be a liberating truth. We don’t all need to be evangelistic heralds. We are called just to be witnesses. To say what we have seen, what has happened to us – ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us (1 Pet 3:15)

But we can’t do that unless the Holy Spirit is in us and we have truly come to know Jesus as Lord. We are witnesses, more than we are heralds.

That can be hard enough, because even witnesses have to get their thoughts in order. We must learn to speak about things that are often deep and personal. We must put words to things that are sometimes hard to find the right words for. And it must be about us, because we are witnesses, not purveyors of hearsay. Nothing less is truly honouring to Jesus. And nothing else will satisfy the hunger of our friends and neighbours for the reality of Jesus.

Only the Holy Spirit will do

And in all this, only the Holy Spirit will do.

The disciples had been with Jesus all the time that he went in and about amongst them, but even they had to wait for the Holy Spirit before they could truly become witnesses to him. If that was true for them, surely, we must be eager for the Holy Spirit, and once we have received him, eager for more and more of his work in us.

Somehow, in the centuries since that first Pentecost outpouring, much of the church has lost sight of the Holy Spirit. He has been replaced by creed, liturgy, legalism and much more. He has been assumed as a given for all who call themselves Christians, when the clear witness of scripture is that his presence is visible and transforming.

So, much of the church has become a poor shadow of what it was called to be. Its people have been robbed of their power and confidence in Christ. And the world has been robbed of a witness to the only spirituality that is life-giving, true, and eternal. Liturgy has become passionless and a mere shadow of the worship that drew the crowds that day. At best it evokes s spirituality that is natural and human, rather than one that is inexplicable and supernatural. And evangelism; it has been relegated to often to eloquent wisdom, emptying the cross of Christ of its power.

Perhaps that is an exaggeration and simplification, because there has been a revival of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in recent years. But still there is much ground in the church that needs the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to soak into it with new-wine life and fruit.

That means You and Me

And this is true for you and me, this Pentecost. Only the Holy Spirit of Christ will do. If he is not at the centre of life for you or me, we need to pray and ask and wait – as those first disciples did – until we know his presence and power in us.

And if he has come, we need to be filled more and more. We need to kill those things in us that grieve his presence and stunt our life in Christ. We need to walk with him in more of what we do and say. And, most of all, we need to let him lead us in worship of the one who is all in all. Only the Holy Spirit will do.

If we celebrate Pentecost, however we do so, without the Holy Spirit, we have totally missed the point. Let us seek him and welcome him. Read the bible with him, pray with him, listen to him and follow him. And let him bubble up as a living spring of faith-filled joy in Jesus Christ.

New Wineskins

And, finally, if he is living us like this, let us do all we can to live in him together. If the church has become a shadow of what it is called to be as the Holy Spirit has been neglected, what will his welcome bring to us.

As Jesus said:

“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (Matt 9:16-17)

As we seek answers to the challenge of being church, we know that will mean changes. May they be inspired and shaped by the Holy Spirit, as we allow him to make us, together, a dwelling place for Jesus Christ in his Spirit.

What would that look like? That’s for another sermon, but one thing is certain it will be full of the Holy Spirit.

[1] One of the ways that Old Testament prophets used (for example Ezekiel)

[2] This is where the greater part of the Holy Spirit’s work is, in us. Imparting the life of Christ to us and growing that life in us, as Christ is formed in us by his Holy Spirit presence. And not just in us individually, but in us together as his body.

Jesus’ Work of Salvation

I wonder how you would describe Jesus’ work of salvation. Many Christians would focus on his death and resurrection as his saving work for us. But, though this is the critical centre of Jesus work for our salvation, it is only part of a much bigger and more glorious whole.

Jesus work of salvation encompasses at least:

• His Incarnation – taking on our humanity
• His Life of Holiness – perfecting our humanity as an offering and expression of love to the Father
• His Teaching – revealing the Truth of God to awaken faith
• His Miracles – demonstrating the saving power of the kingdom to awaken faith
• His Suffering and Death – to deal with our sin and death
• His Resurrection – to become Life for all who united to him by faith
• His Ascension – to …?
• His Return – to fulfil salvation in a new heavens and earth

It is one work, with a single goal. Its purpose is the whole creation might be filled with the Glory of God, expressed in Jesus Christ, and magnified in millions of human expressions of Christ. Every part is necessary and meaningful.

This Sunday we celebrate part of that work in Christ’s Ascension. So, what does that mean? What is the ascension for? And what does it mean for you and me?

The Meaning of Ascension

I am sure that the Disciples would have preferred Jesus to stay with them, even though he said that it was to their benefit that he was going to the Father. We may feel the same way, but in God’s wisdom and providence it was necessary and right that Jesus ascended to the Father.

There are so many glorious implications of Jesus ascension, it is hard to say what we need to know most. Perhaps four key things would be enough for today.

• It has enabled the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
• It has demonstrated the perfect completion of his work of salvation here on earth
• It signifies Jesus rule and authority over all things
• It empowers and directs the growth of his kingdom in every tribe, tongue, and nation

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit was in all that Jesus did on earth, from his incarnation to his ascension. He was known to the disciples through Jesus – so that Jesus could say that the Holy Spirit had been with them. But, until Jesus was glorified, the Holy Spirit was not poured out into his disciples.

They could know Jesus with them and not with them – so, for example, they had to look for him and find that he had got up before them to pray. They could know Jesus awake, and asleep in the middle of a storm. Even after his resurrection, when locked doors could not keep him out, Jesus was not always with them.

But now, he has given himself to be in us, by his Spirit. We may still acknowledge him or turn from him, but time and space cannot separate us from him. In his Spirit, Jesus is in us as:

• Teacher – to lead us into all truth, reminding us of all that he taught and breaking its truth open to us. So, he is the one who makes the Bible come alive for us.
• Life – imparting a new life to us. So that we may live in a new way, not driven by our own human thoughts, desires and needs, but led by his Spirit.
• Assurance – in his Spirit he has given us a guarantee and foretaste of the life to come. So, we have a new peace and confidence in him.
• Unity – we are not merely followers of the same Lord, but sharers in the same Spirit. Our identity – and our Unity – is not in the quality of our faith, but in our having his Spirit in us.
• Worship – in the Holy Spirit we are introduced to a new reality in worship. It is no longer bound to and particular place or form but is now, in Spirit and Truth.

It is hard to overstate what it means that his Holy Spirit is in us and not just with us. And none of this would be possible unless Jesus had ascended to his glory in heaven.

It is Accomplished

When Jesus rose again it demonstrated that his sacrifice had been acceptable to the Father, it affirmed his dying words “it is accomplished”. Even though there was clearly much left to do with his disciples and with this world.

In his ascension and glorification, Jesus demonstrated the perfect completion of his work of salvation here on earth. Everything else was merely the outworking, or overflow, of that completed work. Nothing now could undo what he had achieved, or impede its fulfilment.

The accuser has been thrown out of heaven. He has no place to bring any accusation against any of God’s people or God’s work in this world. In the past, Satan brought accusations against God’s people and God’s work into the heavenly council. But he no longer can. Jesus stands in the perfection of his humanity as the perfected vindication of all that God does.

It is not that we have been perfected – yet. In us you might think that Satan has plenty of ammunition to bring accusation. Looking at my own life, I am sure he has. But, in Christ, there can be no accusation:

“Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”

Rom 8:33-34

It is because Christ is ascended and glorified, that nothing can separate us from his love.

Jesus is Lord and King

Jesus ascension is not merely his return home after his job has been done. It is his glorification, just as he prays in our Gospel reading. He is glorious from eternity, “before the world existed.” But this is something different and more glorious (if that is possible).

Jesus ascension is an enthronement, the enthronement of a victorious conqueror. He has sat down, just as was prophesied, and as Peter proclaimed to the crowd at Pentecost:

“For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” ’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Acts 2:34-36

Given the way that the world looks, you might think that there is still conquering to be done. But these words reveal an extraordinary passivity in the one who has conquered – it is done, and now it it’s just a matter of time until his enemies become his footstool.

Even the prophecies regarding his return, and what we think of as the end-time battle, do not speak of a real battle. There is no fight, Jesus just turns up and his enemies fall before him.

Jesus ascension demonstrates that his is King, now. He is ruling, with complete authority now. The Book of History has ben handed to him and he has opened its seals. Whatever evil and rebellion he now permits is either a merciful patience by which he calls us to repentance, or a holy demonstration of the hardness of people’s hearts, by which he affirms the justice of his judgement.

Jesus is Lord!

I will Build my Church

And, his ascension empowers and directs the growth of his kingdom in every tribe, tongue and nation.

The ascension raises the locus of the kingdom of God, from any particular place or people in this world to omnipresence of heaven. As Jesus said to Pilate, “my kingdom is not from this world”. No one can say, ‘here it is’. No one can call people to fight for it to defend it. It cannot be encompassed by any human organisation or institution. It is not limited to any culture, or language.

Perhaps, if Jesus had not ascended, if he had continued to gather disciples around him on earth it would have been different. But that was not God’s plan. Jesus’ ascension calls forth and builds a church that is truly international, from every tribe and tongue and nation. There are no Christian nations and never have been. There is no Church of England. We may speak of the Church in England, but we are all strangers and aliens here, citizens from another place.

Because of Christ’s ascension the church is all the more clearly not from this world or of it. We are defined by his Spirit and his Name. So, Jesus prays to the Father for us, “keep them in your name”

It’s Meaning for Us

I feel that I have barely scratched the surface. But before I finish, I must ask one further question. Given all of this, what does Christ’s ascension mean for you, for us, in our here and now?

Can I suggest three final things to ponder on.

His Glory

First, in all of the above, Christ’s glory is no incidental thing. Clearly it was so important to Jesus, that it was the first thing that he prayed for. In us, praying for our glory might seem odd, but not for him. It is only right and proper.

In our current circumstances – both in the state of our world, and in the particular challenges facing us as church in this place – we need a glorious Christ. We need to know that he is great – in his power, his love, his wisdom. Where else but to a glorious saviour, can we take our anxieties, or fears, our confusion, our grief? We need to know how great is our God.

We need to know that whatever happens to us, he will never forsake us, and that nothing can pluck us from his hands. We need to know that whatever happens to us, in the end he “will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish” us. Unless he is big enough for this, life may crush us.

We need to know that when we step out in faith – in our limited faith and understanding – he will catch us. We need to know that he will work all things for good. Unless he is big enough for this, we will never have the courage to do what he calls us to do.

We need to know that, when we forsake the pleasures that this world offers, he will satisfy us with a weight of glory that makes them look like dust on the scales.

We need to know his glory.

His Purpose

Second, when the disciples wanted to know times and seasons (don’t we all), Jesus said that these things were not for us to know. But he gave us a purpose to pursue. As he said to Peter at the lakeside, regarding John – “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (Jn 21:22)

God has called us to follow Jesus. He has given us a purpose, and for each one of us a part in it. It does not matter if we cannot see clearly where this is leading, we are called to follow him.

Those first disciples, after Jesus has ascended, returned to Jerusalem. They did not have a clear plan, just instructions to wait for the Holy Spirit, and the assurance that the Holy Spirit would show them what to do. So, they gathered together and prayed – they devoted themselves to prayer.

In his ascension, the work that Jesus has accomplished has begun to be unfolded and fulfilled. The times and seasons are in his hand. We are merely called to follow him and fulfil our part. Nothing less than a life that is devoted to prayer will accomplish his purpose in us.

His Presence

And finally, though the ascension may seem to be about Jesus leaving us and going to heaven, in reality it is all about his presence. Jesus was leaving us in a physical way – a way in which he could be with us sometimes and not with us at other times. But he was coming to us in a new way, by his Spirit, in us.

In Christ, each one of us now is a bearer of his presence. We are temples of his Spirit presence. What should that mean for our lives, our thoughts, our words?

We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor 4:7) – and many of us are cracked pots – but what a treasure. Let us not grieve his presence in us, but rather cherish him and pursue knowing more and more of his glory.

In revelation, we see the bridegroom coming to receive a bride who has made herself ready. We so need to take seriously the reality that he is in us and among us together by his Spirit. In our own lives, we need to hunger for the holiness and righteousness that befits his presence. And among us as church, we need to pursue the truth and love that unites us in him and reveals him to the world.

Set your minds on things above

So, let us all, recognising Jesus ascension and glory, set our minds on the things that are from above. He has left us here for a purpose, as ambassadors and representatives of a new kingdom. And he will return, just as he promised.

I believe that we are facing a momentous season of change in church and in the world. Things that we, here on earth, have regarded as precious may fail and go. But we are not from this world, and our Lord is not of this world. He is glorious I heaven, lord over all the heavens and the earth.

Let us devote ourselves to Prayer, to the Word of the Spirit, and pursue the purpose that he has given us. May he return to find us active in his service, passionate in our worship, a bride ready for her husband.

• John 14:15–21 Jesus promises his Spirit, to those who love him
• Acts 17:22–31 Proclaiming the ‘unknown’ God that we seek
• 1 Peter 3:13–22 Christ Suffered to Bring us to God

If You Love Me …

So much depends upon this, “If you love me”. On this depends –

• the gift of the Holy Spirit:
  • receiving the divine help that we desperately need,
• whether we live, or are merely walking towards our death.
• knowing the reality of Jesus and God,
  • seeing what the world can neither see, nor know,
  • knowing the love of God in us, and us in God.

Such is the weight of this test, that it is not left uncertain. Though it seems to be about our feelings, it is not left to our feelings. Jesus says, you will know that you love me, by the way you respond to my commandments.

What Jesus is saying here, is more than a reward for obedience. And it is more than just believing in him (as most people think of it).

It is not about Doing Better

This is so much more than a reward for obedience; salvation by works. Jesus is not saying that you receive these blessings as a result of keeping his commandments. Too many people have a Christianity that is based on the hope that – in the end – they will be good enough to merit God’s forgiveness and life.

When we think like this, we balance our sins against our obedience and hope that our goodness will outweigh our sins. It is a lost cause. Those whose hope is like this, have entirely underestimated the weight of their sin before a holy God. And, as for our goodness, it is always less perfect and more tainted, than we imagine. As scripture says, all our good deeds, are really like filthy rags.

Off course, none of this makes any sense until we have truly encountered, and come to see, God in all his holy goodness. But it is true whether it makes sense to us, or not.

It is not about what you believe in

And it is so much more than believing in Jesus, or God, or anything – in the way that most people think of belief.

As scripture so succinctly puts it, even the devil believes … and trembles. Indeed, anyone who believes in Jesus or God and does not tremble, does not truly believe in God. Perhaps they believe in something that they call God (or Jesus), but it is the palest excuse for God.

Words are so slippery, and our hearts even more so. To believe in Jesus, if it is not truly Jesus that we believe in, or if it does not cause us to tremble with awe and wonder … and ultimately bring captivate us with love; its not the belief that Jesus calls us to.

This ought to make more sense. We know that people can say they believe in all sorts of things, but their lives demonstrate what they really believe in. And, we know that there is a difference between belief (which we may wish otherwise), and belief that loves what it believes in.

Belief, as Jesus looks for it is filled with love and deeply personal. Such loving-belief is not only far more motivating, its belief is deeply woven into the truth of who we are (as the devastating effects of betrayal in a marriage demonstrate).

If you Love Me … it will show

So, Jesus is looking for something more personal than obedience, and something more personal than mere belief. And so much depends upon this that we cannot afford to get it wrong. Nor can we afford to get it wrong for those that we call to Jesus.

It captivates you

What Jesus is looking for is something like the life changing encounter that 2 Corinthians 4:6 speaks of –

The God who said “let light shine out of darkness” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And it is what John spoke of when he said, “we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth”.

When such an encounter draws out belief and love together from you, the one in whom you believe and what you believe about them becomes the most important thing in your life. Is this true, are they really like that (those who find their ‘soul-mate’, know wat this is like)? And, Jesus promises that in loving and believing in him, we will know.

It is a seeing and knowing that spoils your heart for anything else. And when Jesus becomes like this to you, you will do what he calls you to do out of love – because he has become everything to you.

It shows in your life

So, it shows in your life. It does not mean that our doing is perfect, there is too much of the imperfect in us that needs dealing with. But when doing springs out of such faith-filled love (or love-filled faith), even when imperfect, it is acceptable to God. It is made acceptable by the perfect love and obedience of Christ himself, through his death for us.

It also means that when our doing is imperfect, Jesus call is not for us to try harder, but to love better. I know that when I fail him, it is not just a failure of my will, but – more deeply – a failure of my love … I have loved something else more than Jesus. So, the antidote is repentance that seeks reconciliation and the renewal of love, more than it seeks forgiveness.

God does not respond to repentance that only seeks forgiveness – no more than we would. He responds to repentance that seeks restoration of a relationship.

And its reward will be … the One that is loved

And when we love Jesus like this, the blessing we receive is nothing else than the one that we love. The only appropriate reward for love is the object of that love.

So, Jesus says:

• If you love me … I will come to you
• If you love me … I will show myself to you

And when Jesus is loved like this,

• the Father – who loves Jesus above all – will love you,
• the Holy Spirit, will help you

And Jesus, who is alive in a fullness that we can barely imagine, will give you life, in him.

Our Deepest Longing and Purpose

Our other two readings echo this truth. They show how the need to know and love Jesus like this is our deepest longing. And, for those who come to such faith, it shows that it is our deepest purpose in life.

Our Deepest Longing

Our world is so much like the one that Paul came to in Athens. For all its exaltation of rationality and science, we have populated it with more and more things that we treat as God and worship. Isn’t it one of the most extraordinary things that, the more we try to undermine religion, the more people seek out things to believe in – until people will believe in anything?

And, in all this chaos of belief, there lurks something that is unknown, and unseen, but we can’t deny it a place. Paul noticed a statue ‘To the unknown god’, and though we don’t erect statues, all our longing and seeking points to the fact that we have yet to see and know what we are truly looking for.

The Gospel – the good news of Jesus Christ – is eternal and unchanging. But, just as we need to translate our words into the native language of our hearers, we also need to translate the Gospel into the language of the society that we are speaking to. That is what Paul was doing in Athens.

The Gospel is about God’s forgiveness and his love, but it is about more than that. And it may not be enough to say that God forgives you, or God loves you, without offering what people really need. The heart of the Gospel is the offer to us of God, himself, in Jesus Christ – the unknown god, for whom we are seeking. He is the hole in our reality, that will not be satisfied by any other.

Without him no one is truly satisfied. No matter how complete their lives may seem, there is always something missing – unknown and unseen, but longed for.

As to knowing God’s love – it is not so much that we may feel loved, but that we may be welcomed to love him. If God loves us, anything else that he gives to us, or does for us, that is not freeing us to love the only one who will satisfy our longing souls – it is not love.

And as to forgiveness – If there is any sense of sin and guilt, it is not so much because we have broken God’s rules, but that we have hidden from him and sought out other gods. We have failed to see and love the glory of the one who made all things. And we have loved, instead, the things that he made.

God has withheld judgement so that we may seek him, but when judgement falls it will be in the person of Jesus, and based on how we have responded to him. God has given his greatest treasure, his beloved, to die for us. He has given his love to us, that we might love him. He is our deepest longing.

Our Deepest purpose

In contemplating the mystery of suffering, Peter takes us to the one who suffered for us all. And he shows us Jesus’ purpose in his suffering:

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet 3:18)

Christ’s suffering, and our suffering as we share with him, has purpose to it. Its purpose is to bring us to God.

On the night of his betrayal, Jesus expressed this differently, when he said, “No one comes to the Father except through me”, and then more positively when he said to Philip, “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:6,9).

To this purpose he lived and died and rose again to life.

• He took away the guilt and judgement that keeps us from God.
• He lived a life of perfect human righteousness, to enable us – in him – to come to God.
• And he became the way for us to be changed (in our whole being and living) and made a holy people, fit to live in God’s presence.

And if that was the ultimate purpose of Christ’s incarnation, ministry, suffering, death and resurrection – how can we live as if it is not our greatest purpose too? Consider the testimony of Ephesians 1

• He chose us in eternity “that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love”
• He predestined us for adoption as his own sons and daughters.
• He redeemed us, through Jesus shed blood, from all our sins and guilt that keep us from him.
• He has given us an inheritance in Christ, so that we might be (in all our being and living) to the praise of his glory

We live our lives so aimlessly. We are surprised when suffering comes, as if it makes no sense. But we have been chosen, called, redeemed and lavished with grace. Our lives have a meaning and a purpose that should shape all of our days, motivate all our efforts, fill all our hopes. To be live before God, in his presence, holy and blameless, in love and praise, in the fullness of joy and eternal satisfaction.

Stir Up your Heart, Mind and Strength to this

If you love me, says Jesus … that is our calling; to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength.

God is love and he is the greatest thing that we can love. Let us stir ourselves up to respond to his call – stir up our hearts in worship, stir up our minds in understanding and seeing, stir up our souls in dissatisfaction with anything less, and stir up our strength in imitation of him. What a promise we have when we do – even in our imperfect doing.

He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. And in that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

John 14:1–14                  I am the Way the Truth and the Life

Acts 7:55–60                  The Stoning of Stephen

1 Peter 2:1–10               Grow Up – Living Stones & Holy People

Introduction

There are reasons for fasting and there are reasons for feasting – but the greatest reason for fasting is feasting.

Be Hungry Children

Peter urges us to feed on pure spiritual milk.

He is not, like Paul (1 Cor 3:2), contrasting milk with solid food, but simply using the example of new-borns and their singular focus on feeding to urge us to be like them.

We, like new-borns, have a great deal of growing to do; growing up into Christ, growing up together into s spiritual house, growing up into our calling to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Issues with Food

But there is an issue revealed in this call. You don’t have to urge babies to feed, it is instinctive. We, however, require encouragement, and Peter identifies two issues that we must deal with if we are to feed and grow.

• The first is that we already have an appetite for the wrong food, unwholesome rather than pure. So, we need to learn how to wean ourselves off the wrong food.
• The second, is that we need to discover a taste for the right food. Unless we find this food good to taste, we will not hunger for it or feed on it as we should.

There is, perhaps, a third issue – that of wanting to grow up into what we were born to be – but I think that the desire for this is bound up with our developing taste for the pure food.

Weaning ourselves off Junk

We know Junk Food. One of the issues in much of western society is the prevalence of junk food and its role in creating obesity and other health issues. There is undoubtedly lots of advertising behind it, but if we are honest, they are pushing against an open door – we have a taste for it.

A Complex Deceptive Relationship

You only have to explore the issue of obesity to realise how complex this relationship with junk food is. It is not simply eating too much, or greed. Our bodies seem to have a natural taste for it. It is deceitful, offering goodness, but ultimately, withholding satisfaction. And it can easily become a self-medication for ills that we are not able or willing to deal with.

These appetites compete with our spiritual food – the food that feeds our inner being. So, when God wants us to hunger for pure (wholesome) spiritual food, he first urges us to put away deceptive and unwholesome food.

“put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander”[ii]

1 Peter 2:1

The call is repeated in the last part of this section of scripture [iii]

¹¹ Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. ¹² Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

1 Peter 2:11-12

Fasting from Junk Food

This is not just about abstaining from sin, as an act of will, it is about our appetites, about our hunger. God’s word recognises the way that such things are a deceptive food. They wage war against our souls, but like junk food, they are deceptive – offering something that seems satisfying at first, though its satisfaction fails, leaving a bitter after-taste.

Nobody sins without desiring. As James tells us –

“Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

Jas 1:15

Putting away “malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander”, is like fasting. We should recognize this and not be surprised when they surface as desires within us. They can be as tasty as junk food and as hard to put away. Our minds may understand them and reject them, but we still need to retrain our heart’s appetites.

So, treat this like fasting. When you fast it is hard. All you can think about at times is food, and especially junk food. But, as anyone who has persevered will attest, cutting out junk food can allow you to taste real food in a new way.

That is why we fast in order to feast – we fast from the things that wage war against our souls and stunt our Christians growth, so that we can feast on pure spiritual food.

Taste and See that the Lord is Good

But it is not enough to fast from sin. We must also develop a new taste for God. So, it says – put away the junk and long for the good stuff … “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Have you tasted that the Lord is Good?

Have you tasted that the Lord is Good?

Faith is at the heart of being a Christian, but it is not just about believing certain things. It is so much more. It is about coming alive to God in Christ –

• like a glorious light shining in your heart, captivating you with his beauty and glory (2 Cor 4:6); or
• like a new taste in your heart, that previously seemed as nothing and now tastes like nothing else.

Is this your experience of God?

God is to be Enjoyed

The deepest call on mankind, the command of God, is to love God with all that you are. Love, in its beginnings, can be an act of the will. But true love, authentic love, is always more than that – it is a joy and delight in the one loved; it is a deep satisfaction that pours itself out in love … and yet is always most fulfilled when it does so. That is the sort of love that God is calling forth from our hearts.

Jesus pursued his mission to rescue us, despising all its costly shame and sorrows, because of the joy that was set before him (Heb 12:2). And it was a joy that he longed, and prayed, to share with us (Jn 17:13,24).

Too many Christians miss out on this vital truth. God is meant to be enjoyed. He is meant to be the ‘light of our eyes that rejoices our heart, and the good news that refreshes our bones’ (Prov 15:30). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), but it is not its end or goal – that goal is love, when perfected it casts out fear (1 Jn 4:18).

The steward that failed and buried his talent, did so because he thought that his master was unfair and demanding. God is no man’s debtor (Rom 11:35). In the end, we will find that all our suffering and sorrows are dust in the scales compared to the weight of glory that he will share with us – and at the centre of that joy-filled glory will be God himself (Ps 16:11).

Even in the middle of Sorrows

But it is not just in the final consummation that God will be our joy. Something of that joy is meant to be our sustaining experience, even in the midst of sorrows. So, Paul – who experienced more suffering than most of us ever will – said that he was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10). In life we may know days of joy and days of sorrow, but in Christ we can know days of sorrow in which (in our sorrows) we also experience a real and deep joy.

This is meant to be a sustaining experience – the joy of the Lord is your strength (Neh 8:10). The joy of the Lord, is not just God’s joy, but your joy in him. Read Nehemiah, they were meant to party with God and share in his joy.

Learn to Taste and Enjoy

There are plenty of tastes that are ‘acquired’. Children’s palates may not enjoy tastes that later in life are a real joy to them. And we are not born with a taste for God – quite the opposite. In fact, we need to be born again for the taste of God to be a joy to us. And, even then, we need to wean ourselves of the junk that we have enjoyed, to truly savour God.

If you have not yet tasted and discovered the goodness of God, he will answer your prayers: “satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love, that I may rejoice in you all this day” (Ps 90:14). God wants to give you this joy, for you to taste him as good.

Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14:13). And God is never more glorified in us, than when we enjoy him

Fast to Feast

So, let us put away the junk and hunger for the pure spiritual food that God himself gives us. Let us fast, to feast I Him.

[i] All scriptures (unless otherwise specified): 2001. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

[ii] Verse 1 is not in the Lectionary reference but is a key part of what God is saying in these verses. So, I have included it in our readings

[iii] Again, not included in the Lectionary, for reasons that are beyond me.

• John 10:1–10 Jesus’ Purpose – Abundant Life
• 1 Peter 2:19–25 Walking with Jesus, in Suffering and Faith
• Acts 2:42–47 United in Gladness & Generosity

The Good Shepherd

I have often found this teaching parable confusing; Jesus enters by the door, but is the door. He leads his sheep out, but emphasises himself as the door by which they must enter. There are layers to what Jesus is teaching us here.

Sheep Penned In

First, there is a picture of sheep who are penned in. They need someone who will lead them out. There is a gate, but none seem willing (or able) to enter by it. Everyone who offers hope of escape, metaphorically goes over the wall. It makes you wonder, what is this gate, guarded by a gatekeeper who only opens to the good shepherd.

The sheep, nevertheless,  cannot truly go out unless a true shepherd enters through the door and leads them out.

Helpfully perhaps, for our understanding, many of us are feeling what it is really like to be penned in right now. It may be for our safety, but it is not the abundance of life for which our hearts long. We know something of the reality of being penned in, but there is a deeper reality here. Beneath all the practical experience of the current lockdown, we are all penned in – away from the fullness of life – by something in us that keeps us from the fullness of life for which God made man in the beginning.

Like our present isolation, this deeper penned-in-ness is not really a good place to be. By God’s grace we are hemmed in by law and conscience. God has kept man from the worst of the consequences of its godlessness, in a place of relative safety. But it is short of the life for which our souls yearn.

In this pen we know life, but it is a life of shortage and constraint. It is a life without abundance, in which everyone competes (some violently), and in which even those who have most still are not satisfied. It is a place of anxiety and sickness in mind and heart as much as in our bodies.

It is a place that Ephesians 2:12 describes as “alienated” and “strangers”, “having no hope and without God”.

Mostly, people are blind to this deeper alienation from life and penned-in-ness. Bot perhaps this current crisis can open our eyes to its reality – if we take time to let our current feelings of restriction and half-life, illuminate the normality of life we knew before, and will know again when it ends.

Many Shepherds

The sheep, as Jesus tells us, are not without potential shepherds to lead them out. It seems that there are always those coming to the sheep with the offer of something better. Jesus describes them by their methods and their motives.

By their methods, he says, they go over the wall. They are not willing, or able, to enter in by the gate. Nor will the gatekeeper open it to them. Their way is wrong.

By their motives, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Thieves, they only come to “steal and kill and destroy”. At their best, they are in it for themselves, but at the root of what they do is one who only wants to steal and kill and destroy. Their hearts are wrong also.

The reason why they avoid the gate is because it is a way of suffering and, ultimately, of death. The sheep are held from life by this gate – as those “who through fear of death are subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb 2:15). This is mankind’s predicament, and in this pen (without Christ) we live our lives in futility.

However, it is amazing what you can do in this pen. We can be very good at making the best of a bad job. And just as in our present situation, there are always those offering ways out; voices proclaiming life in this way or that. They are thieves, all of them, but they can sound very persuasive. It is going to take some effort of faith and hearing the true shepherd to protect us from these deceptive sirens.

The Good Shepherd

But there is one who is truly Good. He has come to us to set us free and lead us to life in abundance. And he became the gate for us by his own entering through the gate of suffering and death. Only he could. Only he was willing …. and the gatekeeper opened the gate to him, accepting his suffering and death on our behalf.

So, now, Jesus is the gate. He is able to lead the sheep out, and into life. He calls, and those whom God calls in Jesus, he gives ears to hear and to recognise their true shepherd. He is both the gate through which the sheep go out and enter in, and he is the life that they enter into. The sheep who go out and in with him are no longer strangers and aliens, no longer without hope and without God.

And in him there is real freedom “to go out and in”. Not out and into the old pen again; “out and in” expresses the freedom of those who live in Christ to live unconstrained by the pen and gate that had held them. And Jesus leads them to pasture, the food that they were made for … in God himself.

This parable is about Jesus, the good shepherd, but it is meant to open our eyes first to our own predicament – we are penned in away from the fullness of life for which we know we were made, and for which we yearn. We ought to take time to see this and feel this, or we will not recognise the goodness of the shepherd when he calls.

Learning to Hear, learning to Follow

But, we should be careful to hear all that Jesus teaches us about the way of life. If we heard only this parable, we might think that all the sheep need to do is hear Jesus call and follow him out to life.

More than One Event

In one sense, that is true. Jesus himself describes this experience for the sheep as being born again. He says that those who hear his voice and believe in him have already passed from death to life. There is a real and glorious truth in the gospel that, hearing and believing, something fundamental changes in us; we become his sheep, and no one can snatch us from his hand.

But that is not all the truth. The new flock (church) that comes out to Jesus as Acts starts, has much to learn, challenges to face and – as Paul will later tell them – it is through many troubles that they must enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22). Paul, himself, when he was called was shown how much he must suffer for this new life. And Peter, as he was reinstated as a key under shepherd was shown his own suffering also.

Whilst coming out with Jesus, through the gate that is suffering and death, to life and freedom is, at one level an event (like being born), it is also a process of growing up into a new life and leaving the old life behind. While we do now taste the life of the world to come, we do not now its fullness; we still live in a world that rejects God, awaiting the new world of righteousness that Jesus will bring. And we ourselves are not yet fit for that new world, we have lots of growing and changing to do.

Suffering with the Good Shepherd

So, one of the realities of hearing and following Jesus is that we must go out by the gate that he has opened for us. And that gate is one of suffering and death. Its reality is shown in the initiation of Baptism, which is into his death (Rom 6:4), and in the ongoing sharing in his suffering by which we press on into the hope of eternal life (Phil 3:10).

Paul and Peter (especially in his first letter which we read from today), speak eloquently of this. And yet, too many Christians regard suffering as surprising, as something to be avoided, and as questioning their trust in God. In reality, when we suffer for Jesus sake, it is “a gracious thing” as Peter says. Such suffering is like the pruning of fruitful vines that Jesus speaks of in John 15. It both helps remove dead wood from our lives and deepens our spiritual life and hope in Jesus.

When we chose to follow Jesus, even through sufferings, it deepens our trust and strengthens our hope, because it says that we regard knowing him as more precious than avoiding suffering, which we regards as “light and momentary” compared to the “weight of Glory” promised in Jesus (2 Cor 4:17). It also glorifies God in Jesus as we value him mor highly than any worldly comfort.

So, let us not be surprised by suffering when we are following Jesus. It is a gracious thing and a promise of blessing (Matt 5:11). It is the narrow way that leads to abundant life

Discerning His Voice amongst the Voices

Notice also that the one who leads us out to life does so by his voice. If we hear Jesus and recognise that God is speaking to us, that is already a gift from God to us. Like the Emmaus disciples, are hearts are strangely warmed when he speaks to us.

But we should not take such hearing for granted. There are many voices, loudly clamouring for our attention. Jesus sheep can discern the Good Shepherd’s voice and should indeed flee from any other voice that calls out, but we must not underestimate the deceiver –

“For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” (Matt 24:24)

We have a part to play in hearing. To be “all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Pet 1:10). It is as we continue to hear, and respond faithfully as we do hear, that we renew our minds (and hearts) and learn how to discern the will of God (Rom 12:2). By testing, that is by hearing and doing, we become better hearers, better at discerning his voice.

Part of this comes from spending time in his word and letting it abide in us; meditating and chewing it over. The more we hear, understand and shape our hearts and minds with his word, the more we are able to reject the false voices. No matter how reasonable, plausible and persuasive they may sound, if they don’t sound like Jesus, we should flee from them

Growing up Into Christ

The Good shepherd enters by the door and becomes the door – the Way – by which his sheep, responding to his call go out from the pen that had held them in half-life. Going out they are also called to go in – to go, more and more into the new life that they have come to in Jesus. As new sheep they are to feed on the pure spiritual milk that Jesus offers and to grow up into him. That is our calling

Look at 2 Peter (as I have already referenced above), it is a picture of this growing up into Christ –

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2 Pet 1:5-11)

Faith is the foundation, the root, but true saving faith grows – in virtuous living, increasing knowledge of the truth, self-control with steadfastness (even in suffering).  It grows to look more and more like the God who calls us and shows itself in godly love. And thus, we are richly provided with an entrance into the abundant life of the “eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

Not Going Back

So, finally, we need to remember where we started; the pen in which the sheep lived before the Good Shepherd came. The way to life is hard and there is always the opportunity to turn back. We need to remember what the pen was really like.

When the Israelites faced hunger in the wilderness on the journey to the promised land, they remembered the cucumbers that they had in Egypt – Cucumbers!! It seems ridiculous that life with Jesus, as we journey out to enter into life, could be so hard that we look back wistfully on past cucumbers. But times will come when we may think the way too hard and long for the life we knew in the pen. We need to remember how futile, hopeless and Godless it was.

And we need to remember what we are journeying out towards. Life in all its abundance in Christ. Like Joseph, who “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” (Heb 11:26).

Perhaps, then, our feeling of being penned in right now, is a gift. Let us not miss its precious lessons – or forget them when these restrictions are released.

Jesus has spoken about dying and rising again on many occasions in his last months, but they had been so fixated in his entering into Jerusalem as King and conquering Messiah, that they could not grasp what that might really mean. Now, Jesus was telling them why he had to “suffer these things and enter into his glory”

• Hebrews 11:8–16 He was looking forward to the city, whose designer and builder is God

What does it all mean?

This is not just a speculative historical question; it is real for us too. We must grapple with the reality that Jesus is alive and reject purely spiritual and metaphorical explanations – he is alive. But we must also grapple with what this means for us today.

The disciples had misunderstood what Jesus had been teaching them, because they had made him part of their own imagined story. Theirs was story of a conquering king, enthroned and ruling in Jerusalem with places of honour for his disciples. As they would come to discover, his was a story of conquering through suffering, and they would indeed have places of honour as they suffered with him.

I wonder what story we have put Jesus into in our lives. I suspect the we, too, are missing something of what he is telling us, because it does not fit with our story. Perhaps he is drawing alongside us – even as we wander of in the wrong direction – to say “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”

We had hoped that he was the one to …

And now we have an extraordinary opportunity given to us by God. Like those first disciples our world has fallen apart. A way of life that seems so solid has been brought to nothing. A way of being Christians, of being Church, has been closed down. Who know when normality will return and what it will look like when it does?

We are in Transition

And, in our particular context, this is magnified. It seems likely that church services will not have started before I retire at the end of June. Our churches are facing a period of real transition. I do not expect that I will be replaced by another Rector any time soon. It seems likely to me that, when someone is appointed to replace me, it will not simply be to look after the existing six churches.

Transition does not simply mean drafting a profile and advert for what you all want in terms of church and potential leader. It means grappling with what is possible and what is not. It means grappling with what God is calling you all to be, and become, and with whom. It means facing deep financial challenges, and deep spiritual and life choices.

Are we willing to consider that “what we had hoped” may not be what Jesus is about?

Museum or Mission

After Jesus had died the disciples had not entirely given up. Some were wandering off home (to Emmaus and elsewhere), but others continued to stay together. You can imagine that they might have become a group who gathered from time to time to reminisce and remember.

Even after that realised Jesus was alive and saw him taken into heaven – with a promise to return in glory – they could have continued as a waiting group, keeping alive the memory and the hope. In their communion meals they would remember. And they would keep alive the hope, keep the faith.

But Jesus, being alive, also called them to live and gave them something to live for, a mission and purpose. And it would need Jesus living in them, for them to accomplish this calling, so he told them to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit. We will get to that in a few weeks, but today we see something of what a difference he would make in our reading from Acts – as Peter stands and proclaims Jesus “Lord and Christ”, and calls the crowds to faith and repentance.

Every generation the church faces the same choice. Are we going to be a museum of faith or a memorial society – reminiscing and keeping the faith and hope alive. Or are we going to live. Are we going to pursue the mission and purpose that Jesus has given us; making every attempt to live as citizens and heralds of the kingdom in this world as we await its coming with Jesus. If we do, we know it will not be easy or comfortable. We still live in a world that is fundamentally opposed to this kingdom. Like Jesus it will welcome us up to a point, but like Jesus we will also suffer when our hope does not fit, or our faith treads on the wrong toes.

Museum or Mission, do we have a choice?

At some stage, the present lockdown is going to begin to be relaxed. I suspect that churches will first be allowed to be opened for private prayer, and eventually for church services. However, we are being told that those over 70 may need to keep self-isolating for some time beyond this. Thinking about our churches, what would they look like if over 70’s were asked to self-isolate; who would lead, who would come?

End of Life Care or Nappies

This reminds us who we are; who we have become. There are churches with younger people and families where there is a real sense of all ages pursuing church together. But we are not there, and it is hard for young people and families to join us in ones or twos, without feeling apart as if they don’t belong. And some of our older member may rightly feel that they don’t want to cope with a more ‘family’ orientated church. That is where we are. We might want to be a more family church, but you might even question whether it is a choice that we can make?

God will always build his church. He will always pursue his mission. But I have wondered whether some parts of his church may be more like end of life care, whilst something different grows elsewhere or alongside it. It’s a serious question, and one that we should be praying about earnestly.

The alternative, if we can achieve it, will radically shape what we know of as Church. When we welcome new life into our families, it is always messy and chaotic. The needs of that new life demand to be met and that we bear the cost – of putting up with nappies, of living tired, and of living in new ways that mean learning on the job.

Not many of us have experience of true multi-generational households. They are possible, but everyone has to give way and give up some comfort, and everyone has to learn to treasure one another young and old, for what they are. Having granny move in with you, or having the children move back home, are both metaphors that demonstrate the costliness of living in a multi-generational church

Nostalgia is not what it was

And part of recognising our reality, must acknowledge that nostalgia is not what it was. Our villages and communities have deep roots. More than many places we have large numbers who have lived here for years – some born and bred. It is natural that many may look back at what church used to be like, when many more of our neighbours regularly gathered with us and wonder whether it could be like that again.

I often speak to people who tell me that they used to be in the choir, or that they used to come when they were younger. And, it is natural for those who do still come to look back at a time when church was a bigger thing. But we should be careful about such nostalgia. However, we remember it, that church was the one that failed to keep all those people who do not come now. However big it was, it was not deep and real enough to sustain real worshiping faith in significant numbers of its congregation.

Nostalgia is not what it was, and we should be wary of trying to build that church again.

Church, but not as we know it

So, where do we go? How do we pursue the meaning of Jesus being alive – and calling us to life – in our context? I am not sure I know. It is easier to see where the answers do not lie – like going back to what church used to be like – than to see where they do.

I do believe that the church that Jesus is building in this generation is going to look messy. And, we need to see what our part is in the church’s transformation: we need to be honest in recognising our situation (who we are, and where we are); and we need to see where God is moving, willing to let go of structures that are getting in the way, and to form new relationships and partnerships.

• At the heart of this church is going to be people who don’t just go to church because its normal, but who have come to know Jesus and love him; whose hearts and minds and whole lives are captured by all that he is and what he is doing. But, together, those people are going to look messy.
• And it needs to be a church that is not defined by the way it worships (high, low, or whatever), but by the one it worships and by the Spirit and Truth in which it worships.
• It needs to be a church in which every human barrier is broken down (race, age, class, ethnicity …), but that is not merely inclusive. It must seek to include all in Christ, to be shaped and defined by his truth and love – open to all but utterly costly to be part of.
• It will need to bear with messiness. When new life comes into our lives it brings sleepless nights, nappies, enormous amounts of bearing-with. It is going to bring tensions, and disagreements that must be overcome. And it must have a place for everybody that God brings to faith and adds to its number; the young treasuring the old, and the old making space for the young to grow.
• And, it will need to really discover how to journey together. In the Exodus, the whole company journeyed together; young and old, those with faith and those struggling with doubts. Some died on the way and others entered in to ‘the promised land’. But they did not split off into different camps, they journeyed together.

Do we have a choice? Can we do this?

That is a hard question to answer. In one sense we always have a choice in Christ – God is the God of the Impossible. And, in a sense we do not have a choice’ God is going to work his purposes out and build his church, whatever we chose. Perhaps out true choice is to hear what he is saying and play our part in what he is doing.

I do wonder, sometimes, whether the Church of England as an institution is capable of responding to what God is doing with his church in our time. But, while it is stiff and over-structured, it also has a spirit of working together built into its DNA. Growth and change has often come best when, at a local level, people are willing to forget some of the structural stiffness and rules, and simply get on working with those around them in who they see God working.

So, I believe that we (or I should say, You) do have a choice. But the one choice we do not have is to do nothing, or to simply try and carry on as we have always done.

Crisis is Opportunity

It may be that the coronavirus is an extraordinary God-given opportunity for us to become more like the Church that God wants us to be. That our churches are facing a period of Transition at the same time is a real challenge, but may also be a blessing.

There is an old Irish tale of a traveller asking directions from a local and being told “you can’t get there from here”. In God, at least this side of Jesus’ return, that is never the case. The way may be hard, but if he has set where we are going to in our heart – if we are not willing to settle for anything less, even if it is hard to describe what we are looking for – God will bring us to journey’s end in Jesus. We are, after all a Pilgrim People. Christians were first called (before they were called Christians) the Followers of the Way.

Let Abraham be our example

• By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.
• And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
• By faith he went … living in tents … for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
• By faith they died, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
• they are seeking a homeland.
• They could have gone back or settled down, but as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.
• Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.