Tell what God has done for you

The man who sat at Jesus' feet and who was healed (or if you wish saved) by Jesus wants to go with him and his other disciples. After all there is room in the baot and just look at his options! He is standing on the beach with Jesus, with the disciples in the boat in front of him and the townsfolk who chained, shackeled and jailed him at his back. He wants to go with the one who freed him, the one who wasn't afraid to come near him, who wouldn’t tolerate a life to be consumed by evil. He wants to go with his Master and learn more about the kingdom of God. He's ready to follow Jesus. There's room in the boat, and he'll leave without looking back -- there's no one to say good-bye to. Seemingly there is no one and nothing left behind. But Jesus To others along the way to the cross, Jesus issues the invitation, "Come, follow me," but to this one he says, "Go home and declare how much God has done for you." At the very end, we see isn't simply a story of one man's healing, but a story of one man's calling. It is more than about one man being set free, it is about the world hearing what God is doing in terms saving the world.


Therefore, Jesus doesn’t bid this particular man to follow; he can proclaim God’s wonder and greatness from where he is. In this case the call is to ministry and to proclaiming the good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind release of the captives and the year of celebration of God where it has not been heard before. And it is a sign that the proclamation of the kingdom is not just for a chosen few or even a particular nation. It is for the whole world. And this ministry involves staying rather than leaving. Jesus does not reject the man's application for discipleship, but accepts it fully. “I even have a first appointment all lined up for you,” Jesus says from the boat.”Your congregation is standing right behind you. You need to stay here and you must go and tell...

No doubt there is going to be a struggle. This man is going to have to turn around and face all those people who were much more comfortable when he was chained and under control so to speak. We aren’t told how this man faired in the days after Jesus left that beach and when back to the other side of the lake. There were no plans, no schedules, no money and no rules except that this man now had to declare to those same people what God had done for him. The people had seen what Jesus could do and they were genuinely afraid of what he could do. They had two thousand pigs to feed the occupying force of the Roman Army. He had cost them their livestock and their economy. And now there is that possibility that as they listen to what God has done for this man that their lives are going to be transformed too.

So let us turn around see our congregation and our community and go and tell what God has done for us this week and let us do so for Christ’s sake and the building up of his kingdom.

Whose coming to dinner?

“Who is coming for dinner?” There are times in our house where that question gets asked because things change from what they normally are. And it will usually come from the younger members of the household who want to know the plan and where they might fit into it. There of course will be another familiar question that also gets asked,” What are we having?” and the implication there is “will I be satisfied and will there be enough? Such a question is always directed at those who are hosting such a dinner.    

“Simon the Separated” is the host. Pharisees were the religious elite in the land and they were picky about who they invited to supper. They were very careful about who they allowed themselves to be associated with. And at the same time let us remember that in the ancient Middle East there were people who were invited to the table to participate in the meal and the discussion and then those who simply showed up. They could listen to the conversation but did not participate in the meal. Like the time that Jesus and the disciples showed up at Simon Peter’s house and Peter’s mother in law was sick, in bed with a fever. Jesus went to her and healed her and then the meal began in earnest as the mother in law took over the household. By the end of the evening the whole of the town was outside her door wanting, pleading to be healed and to be near Jesus.

Simon had another reason to ant Jesus under his roof. Simon had every intention of testing Jesus to see what Jesus was like and if they would agree on things. Simon wanted to know if Jesus was like him. Simon was not the most generous of hosts to Jesus he did what he had to be hospitable to this guest but nothing more. There was no one to wash his feet or kiss of greeting. There was no oil (the equivalent of deodorant in this case) offered. There was nothing that said that Jesus was welcome in this place. There was nothing between these two men that suggested that the relationship was anything more than a polite dinner invitation and that it would not be anything more than that. Simon wanted to evaluate Jesus before he made him welcome and made him a friend. Jesus was simply escorted to his place and Jesus reclined with others at the table.

As the meal begins, an unnamed woman, an uninvited guest to Simon’s home, comes from within the crowd and takes the place of a servant at Jesus’ feet. This woman had a large and powerful reputation as a sinner. And as she knelt down beside Jesus’ feet she did two things. First, she began to cry. Not a loud sobbing so as to attract a lot of attention but a steady flow of tears that feel on the feet of Jesus. Tears made Jesus feet wet and she removed the dirt and grime from his feet with her hair. She kissed his feet as a sign of gratefulness and devotion. Then she took a long necked, globular bottle of nard and broke it open and began to rub Jesus’ feet with the ointment. Simon the host watched all of this wondering if Jesus was judging her; wondering if he was any kind of prophet at all because he allowed this reprobate touch him. And Simon passed judgment on them both.    

The interesting thing is, Jesus knew not only who the woman was, he also had Simon’s number as well.  And so he told Simon a parable about making the right call. “Who loves more Simon?” Jesus asked his host, “The one who has little to be forgiven or the one who has been forgiven much?” Simon rolled his eyes and sighed, “The one who has had much forgiven.” Jesus smiled and confirmed, “Simon you have judge rightly. Simon do you really see this woman, she has greeted me and welcomed me in ways that you have not. Simon, this woman has cared for me and shown her devotion towards me when you, my host have not. So she is showing that her sins, and they are many, have been washed away because she has found forgiveness. She has been forgiven and she is going on ahead of you. Simon will you learn to love more?”

Then Jesus did something else he turned to the woman and said, “Your faith has saved you, now go and live in peace.” Why is that important? Jesus sends her on her way so that she can go and live the life God intended to live, at peace and in relationship with him. It is why God created her and why Christ sets her free. And because she is free from the chains of her despair and the desire for revenge, she is free to proclaim what God has done for her – that God has visited and is redeeming his people and raising up his salvation for his people in the house of his servant, David.   

But where does this leave us? I think the best place for us to start is at our table here with Christ. We too need to have the kinds of encounters that both Simon the Pharisee and the unnamed woman had at the table with Jesus. We need to hear and to heed the call to repentance – not because we have been bad but because we are chosen and we are loved.  And out of the experience of being at table with Christ, we need to bring to bear everything that we receive from the Scriptures proclaimed, and everything we hear and receive from preaching as an exhortation to Christian life and living and to pour it out in confessional prayer, in intercessory prayer and in praise and thanks giving because we are people both of freedom and of hope. Too often we have experienced liturgy as: “You’re bad. Yes I know I am bad and there is no health (salvation) in me. You are forgiven. Yes, I know that I am forgiven and that Christ offered himself for me.” We know the theology and we know the words: new let us allow those very thoughts and words to fill us up that God might through them, transform our hearts and minds that we might live life on a new and higher level.  So let us go in peace, to love and to serve the Lord knowing that our faith is making us both whole and new.       

We need to remember: God is with us!

There are times when we need to remember that God is with us. Those times are often not when we are happy and content, they are moments when life is hard and we have suffered loss. These are times when we seem to be without hope and feel totally lost and alone. It is in those moments that we need to see God and to know his presence. We want to know not only that God is here with us and that God actually cares about what is happening to his people to us, to me. Jesus’ earthly ministry, the presence of the Spirit and the witness of Scripture all point to a God who cares about his creation and that God desires to bring not just health but total salvation for the whole of his creation.

And to highlight what God has done in the past in small ways, Jesus demonstrates publicly and in powerful ways. Where there were only a couple of witnesses to see what Elijah and subsequently Elisha did for boys who were the life and the futures of their respective families, now there are hundreds of witnesses for what happens to a young man from Nain and his widowed mother. In the case of the prophets, the people sought them out as men of God while in Nain, God seeks out the widowed mother stops the procession to the cemetery and consoles the mother. It needs to be considered that no one expected God to intervene in this desperate situation. It was death. And death comes to us all. And more than likely people had tough of divine action as being a thing of the past.

It is like a man who after spending some time reading his bible and about all the great things that Jesus did decided to go back to Church. He had not been in Church since he was a boy. He was greeted at the door with the welcome and the usual papers at the door. He sat through the serve not quite sure what to do but he followed as best he could. H e went home a little disappointed that he had not seen some of the things that he had read about in Scripture. So he went back the following Sunday and the Sunday after that hoping that he would see some of the things he had read about. Finally one Sunday, at the door after service, he asked the clergy about not seeing some of the things that were in Scripture but that weren’t in the Church – where were the blind to receive their sight, the lame being made able to walk and the deaf to hear and the dead to rise he asked. The clergy responding by telling the man, “Oh we believe in these things very much. We love to hear all about them but we don’t do them here.” The Church never saw the man again.   

How does the world know that God is here and that God is acting in this world if the Church does act like it? Remember what we were told from Scripture, “Jesus saw her”. Jesus looked and encountered this woman in her deep grief, her protection from the ills and nastiness of society stripped away and her ability to care for herself driven away in her old age because of the loss of her only son. We know what Jesus would do – he moved to stop the tears. The question is, faced with the same kinds of circumstances, what would you do? The only way that the world is going to know that God is amongst us is if we begin to act like Christ; to in some foolish sense dare to stop the tears and raise the head and get the eyes of those we encounter to look for the presence of the Saviour.

And do we know where people are hurting? Needing? Crying? Where can we move to, not only to find them, but to bring the presence of God into those moments, into those places and spaces where we can pray and be an answer to prayer as God sees fit. Jesus moved to bind up the broken hearted.  He acts to give the mother her son back. It did not depend on her faith or how the young man had lived his life. In this particular instance Jesus chose to act and to restore not just one life but two.

So at the beginning of this long, green season, let us remind ourselves and those around us that “God has visited and is redeeming his people and has raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant David”. Let‘s go and make it known that God has remembered his promises to us and is fulfilling them so that we know he is near. And let’s do so in Jesus name.       

In the joy of the dance

In speaking of the Trinity, there always comes a point when words fail us. Supposedly, Saint Augustine of Hippo was walking along the beach one day, puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity, when he came across a little child who was running back and forth with a bucket, pouring water from the ocean into a hole he had dug in the sand. (I myself remember spending hours of summer days engaged in exactly this activity.) Augustine asked the boy, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole." Augustine abruptly realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind.  Let’s take a moment and allow the rest of our reflection to be in that place beyond words, imagining that joyful dance and our part in it, in gratitude to the God who invites us into the divine dance with one another.

This Sunday we celebrate this funny kind of day called “Trinity”. It’s the only day of the Christian calendar that celebrates a particular doctrine of the Church. It is not about Easter or Christmas. It is not about a saint or a martyr. It is about what we believe in terms of doctrine. And what is doctrine all about? It is about the relationships we keep and how they have worked out over time. For example we acknowledge that there is one God who is known in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How do we know God is there? Because God has through time revealed himself to us as human beings. We know and understand him best in the earthly life of his Son Jesus who came and showed us who God is. And we have become aware that God has a mission: to draw in all those who will believe in him through Christ so that they can live with him in the new creation forever. God has revealed that he is not only the Creator and the Redeemer of this creation, but that he through his Spirit, sustains and maintains his creation, his universe. And I have to stop in this moment and acknowledge the bucket in my hand as I run back and forth, trying to fill my particular whole with water from the ocean. That it why I am draw back to my relationship with God and with the Church so that I might marvel and wonder enough that I might be of some use to both God and my neighbour.

You might be wondering why I might take the time to consider doctrine and what it might mean to us. After all sermons need to breathe and to bleed at least a little do they not? Why should I care about the Trinity? Doctrine should cause us both as individuals and even more so as a community to consider carefully how it is that we encounter the other, whether it be God or another person. The doctrine of the Trinity should remind the Church that we are not just a collection of individuals but rather we are a tightly knit community bonded (and occasionally crazy-glued!) together by God. That the peace bought for us between God and us and even salvation itself is not found apart from a relationship with God and with the Church. God nourishes community because that is his desire not ours. When we were yet still powerless and helpless, Christ sacrificed himself that we might be forgiven and then raised from the dead that we might live and be empowered to participate both in the new creation and in the kind of life that God lives. God shows us his love for in the dying and rising of Christ and through all that begins the new community of the Church which he creates and enables to be and to do.     

What does the Church need to do?

We need to tell the world the truth – that God delights in his creation and that they are invited to come and to receive all that God has to offer. We need to tell the world that God takes delight in and enjoys his creation. We need to be people who are going to claim the promises that have been made by Christ, (1) that the Spirit will be sent to us and will be with us forever, (2) that the Spirit will teach and remind the Church of who Jesus is, (3) will bear witness to who Jesus and thus to who the Father is, (4) that the Spirit will convict the world in terms of sin, righteousness and judgment. In short, we communicate the truth reliably and by the work of the person of the Holy Spirit and allowing God to be God.

And in all this we need to admit both to ourselves and to God that we don’t always know the way and we don’t always have the answers. We as a community need to admit that we need to be led by our God into those spaces and places where we can faithfully serve and proclaim that Jesus is Lord – and that to the glory of the Father.  We can celebrate that the presence of God through the Spirit is not bound to whether we always understand everything and know every bit of doctrine. The God is with us through the Spirit to continue guiding, encouraging, empowering and emboldening the Church to be the Church. Together God and the Church work towards that new creation and that new day in that new kingdom where those who participate in it will know the full reign of God.

In this moment we are a people who are on the way to that time and that place. And we are being led and sustained by the Spirit to participate in that great dance between the hole and the ocean, doing our part to make God’s presence know and felt. And this dance is not a futile act, never being able to contain the waters but as a moment of pure joy and worship in the act of making all things new again.    

And also with you!

Breathe on me breath of God fill me with life anew That I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do. There is a story told of a little boy who went faithfully with his parents very Sunday to Church as became well versed in the liturgy. He especially liked it when he got to talk. The clergy would say to the congregation “The Lord be with you” and the boy would loudly proclaim, “And also with you!” one evening the family went to take in a showing of the original Star Wars movie. And when the teacher, Obi wan Kenobi said to the young Luke Skywalker “May the Force be with you,” the young lad in the audience shouted out “and also with you!”

Without the coming of the Holy Spirit where would the Church have been? If the Spirit had not come on the Church thee people would have been left in confusion, under threat from outside their group who opposed them, having being betrayed by one of their own and most of all they would have been left in growing fear that they were about to be killed themselves. They would have remained as long as they could have behind closed curtain and locked doors waiting to be gotten and dealt with by those who opposed Jesus. Could it be that is why we are allowed to see Jesus in the room and breathing on his disciples?  So why suddenly did they become bolder and stronger, willing to preach the risen and ascended Jesus and taking risks and putting their lives on the line?

They must have found and awful lot more than forgiveness for their lives. They must have found a deepening relationship with God. The Easter season is more than just about Jesus rising from the dead and returning to the Father, completing the incarnational cycle. Resurrection moves people not just into repentance which leads to the forgiveness sin and thus potential relationship with God. The risen life of Christ also necessarily moves people into personal and public vocation concerning the kingdom. And to enable this to happen,  Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to not only be with but also within the Church to continue doing for the Church what had been done for him – empowering ministry. We are made three simple promises by Jesus according to the Gospel:

1.       That the work of Christ will continue on an everyday basis through the Church and be enabled to do greater things than Christ has done because he is at home with the Father enabling us to do it.  

2.       That prayers will not only be heard, they will be answered in order that life and mission in the Church is sustained and maintained. Thus the Church needs to stop and realize that God’s work done God’s way, will know God’s supply.

3.       That the Church will not be orphaned but that the Spirit is sent to be alongside and with the Church for the rest of eternity: that the Church, that we as his Church, his Body, will never be abandoned and left orphaned.  

The Spirit moreover marks us as Christ’s own and enables us to be in community with one another in ways that we could not have otherwise imagined – we are God’s slaves, his sons and daughters. All of us are adopted – chosen by God. And we are called to be filled with the Spirit so that we can show whose children we really are. Speaking to people in another language not about how bless some people were in that moment. God cleared away the things that were getting in the way of us boldly telling the nations of the earth how Great God is and what God has done for us in Christ to bring us home too.

The Spirit within us as Church compels us to tell all of creation about the good news of God in Christ and that Christ lives and is Lord. While we like to have our programs and people to do things, and we like our rules, our theology and our liturgies what the world needs most is for the Church to be the Church. For the Church to show its heart and declare boldly that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. The Church needs to show its lives that are filled with the Spirit and are being lived out faithfully and with hope for what is to come in the present and in the future. 

Let us recognize that this same Spirit is here in the Church today and the power to propel us into proclamation is still there – the power to demonstrate that Jesus is alive and is Lord is available to the modern Church as it was to those early believers. That is worth something in terms of celebrating so let’s go live it. And the Lord be with you!

Can you celebrate being left behind?

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking upward to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1.11)

Can you celebrate that we have been left behind? I cannot help but reflect the words of those men dressed in white and how they encouraged those Men of Galilee to move forward again now that Jesus had departed; but forward into what though? Here they are after spend three years with the man they thought was going to restore the mighty kingdom of Israel and now he’s gone and they are left standing there, gawking in awe and wonder and what has been. The men in white encourage the Men from Galilee to look around them now and to begin to move back to a point where they will be bless and will be sent to take up the proclaiming of the coming kingdom, caring for the poor and the sick, clothing the naked, releasing the captives proclaiming sight to the blind and declaring the year of the Lord’s freedom and salvation from debt and slavery.

Lest we think they did nothing until that moment when the Spirit came on that morning of the Feast of Pentecost, let’s keep in mind that they weren’t just twiddling thumbs. They were praising God for all that had happened, worshipping in the Temple and actively praying. So what did they have to pray about? They needed to pray about what’s next: what is it that God wanted them to do. In prayer they decided to have someone take Judas Iscariot’s place among the Twelve.  They reminded each other of the things that Jesus did and said. They began to see that they could be together and be with one another as Jesus had commanded them to. They read and considered the scriptures together. They told stories and laughed together. They made meals and celebrated their fellowship together. They strengthened the bond of affections with one another.

And when the Spirit came, he did not just come to bless a group of individuals, he came to the community of Jesus whom he not only blessed but empowered for what was next – to proclaim, and restore and heal as Jesus had done and to do so together in Jesus’ name. The Spirit came to move the Church into what it needed to do: draw the world to Christ so that the world could declare Christ as Lord. It does mean that there were struggles and hardships, attacks made by wild animals and angered people. It does not mean that there weren’t things that needed to be overcome or shipwrecks to be survived. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t trials and stonings, whippings and beatings that had to be endured. There was all that and more! We can celebrate that we have been left here so that we can actively proclaim the good news that God has acted through Christ to make all things new and bring them to perfection in Christ, through who all things were made. Our challenge in this moment and through the warm days of Spring and into the summer is to remember who has given us life and be ready when he sends, to go with him wherever he leads. Welcome to the party that is the kingdom of God and welcome to the long, green season!  

Not left as orphans now

There is a lot of angst in the life of the Church at this moment. People are worried that the Church will leave them alone. People are afraid that there will not be a church for them to go to, to have children baptized, to get married in or to bury family members from. And because there are so many apparent threats to the longevity of the Church people naturally worry if the Church is going to be there.

Maybe it’s time that we considered the ancient Church and all that they went through in establishing themselves in the life of the wider world. After all, look at the people Jesus called to be his disciples: fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors and even a thief who was ready to martyr himself to get what was coming to him. Not many of them were respectable, or learned, or incredibly rich. In fact, when the Church began, all they had was each other and the city thought they were drunk because of the way in which they were acting. And they had one thing more that the rest of the world did not have: the presence of Christ to embolden them in their lives and work. In this moment as in that moment we are assured of Christ’s continuing presence amongst us that we are offered his love and his trust to live out each and every day for him. In addition, we also carry the hope of new life and the new creation forward because we have a home and a Father we are heading towards.

We do not make that journey alone. We have the Paraclete, the One who is called alongside us by God to help us, to remind us of the things and life in Christ, and to enable us to effective proclaim Christ as our Lord. And oddly enough in the going and living of the life we are called to live, we get to know Jesus better. We don’t always know where we are going to be led or what we are going to be asked to do. Those things can change ever so rapidly. Nevertheless we can know who leads us through it and to do the thing God has asked us to do. We are called to witness to the reality of the resurrection of Christ to the rest of the world. The primary work of the Church is to make it know to the world that Jesus is our Lord and they are invited to come and see him and to know him. The Spirit emboldens and enables the Church to do this very thing: We are called to make it know in the world that he is raised from the dead and that he is Lord.

We live our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit we also live in the great anticipation of the gathering of the community of God. And maybe it is time that we stop worrying about the quantity of worship and started concentrating on the quality of our worship. We need to stop worrying about how many are in worship and what has been put in the plate and start thinking about how much God has given to us and therefore how we are going to respond and what worth are we going to assign to our relationships both with God and with each other. We are not called to be heroes but to be faithful followers, living the common life with uncommon courage and extraordinary love through the comfort of the Holy Spirit. So even we don’t know where exactly it is that we are going or where it is that we are being drawn to.

How will the Church go on? The Church needs to live like the oil lamps of yesteryear. The oil is not consumed all at once. It is consume drop by drop, as it is drawn from the reserves through the wick to the air where it is burnt. Each drop takes its turn and in doing so brings the burning of a lively flame. The Church needs to be aware of being drawn and used to shine God’s grace and glory on this world. And in this moment we through prayer, through bread and wine, through seeing and sharing with each other, seek to know Christ’s presence that we would know it and be blessed as we move with him to make the Father known in this world. We are not alone and we were not left as orphans. Thanks be to God for that.