We are filled with joy because of what God has done

I was listening recently to Bishop Tom Wright on YouTube, who was talking about the use of Scripture in worship and why it matters. He basic case was that we need to know and understand the basic narrative of the Bible, so that we can understand what it is that God is doing in this world and more so, so that we can understand what it is that God is saying to us. Without that, we do not understand what God is doing and how we are to respond to God and his mission in this world. Wright suggests that we need to be like children who go up to a shop window and press our noses hard against the glass to see what is going on and know the bigger picture.

I want to tie this together with the Christmastide (The feast and season of Christmas) for it will soon be upon us again with all the usual complications. There will be the usual complaining about credit card debit; about how commercial Christmas has gotten and how there aren’t any good modern Christmas songs anymore, forcing one to go back to the old days and listen to Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Perry Como. In the days ahead, we will express a desire for the days when Christmas was more real and simply better. It is all too common this time of year. Isn’t it weird that those times we long for, are the times when we were kids?

In contemplating the words of Bishop Wright along with the year that has been and the words of the Scriptures for Sunday, there was a line in the Psalm this week that captured my eye and then mind that I want to share a bit about with you:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. – Psalm 126.1-3

We don’t often put the whole story together to see what it is that God is doing where Christmas is concerned. I need to ask, what great thing has good done for you lately? What kinds of things do you see God doing and how are you responding to them and participating in them? The Bible opens for us as human beings, vision of the creation that was in the time of its infancy, and then the fall of humanity and God’s work to bring about the new life in the new creation. Scripture reminds of the fact that while sin is an issue and God in Jesus deals with that, the real issue is who or what we have at the centre of our lives, personally and collectively. If it is not Jesus Christ, then what idol are we holding on to? We need to recognize that God is speaking to each and to all of us. We need to spend more time in the Bible and to allow the Spirit to speak to us so that we can increasingly live more of it. The Bible is so much more than the recorded heroic acts of a few people who are, from our perspective long since dead in a society that is, compared to us, relatively primitive.

Pressing our noses to the glass, we can see how things used to be and, also to see how things will be when the new life in the new creation finally comes. We started in the Garden with a close relationship with God and with each other: we were creative and building community until the Fall. But know we can also see the new city with the new Life where we will be the royal priesthood and God will be our God. He will be the Temple.

Taking time to read Scripture in worship, as Wright points out, is the Christian equivalent of the burning bush on Mt. Sinai or the pillars of cloud and fire, the parting of the Red Sea. Reading the Bible is the invocation of the people of God into presence of God almighty so that we might remember and celebrate the mighty acts of salvation that God has done over the centuries, and that in doing so, he has saved us, and given us the joy we celebrate. Reading the Scriptures allows us to enter and to inhabit our story which is God’s own Gospel. And in living into what the Scriptures teach us, we can see and know what idols we are hanging onto so that we can rid ourselves of them. Allowing for idols in our lives degrades our worship and messes up our lives, personally and corporately.

So, if God has done great things for those who have believed in the past and is undertaking for us in the present, is he going to stop? Will he suddenly abandon us because he has had enough? Did he not use Abram, so that the faith of one man is shown to be more powerful than the rage of all the nations put together? Didn’t God lead his people out of bondage in Egypt into the Land he promised them. Did he not tabernacle at the Temple? Did he not punish the people for their idolatry and disobedience, sending them into exile? Did he not say, ‘Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days?” Has he not restored, time and again the fortunes of his own people? Does this not encourage, even compel us to pray, knowing that God will answer? Does not our future with God arrive as a gift in a manger? Will we not proclaim all that God has to others so that they will receive and participate in it?

In sending Jesus to us, God has done this great thing for us and we are filled with joy at what God is doing. Thanks be to God!

Marantha!

Jason+