I am with you always.

Loneliness is probably the biggest affliction that besets human beings and it comes in two forms – one much more apparent than the other – but they are related to each other.

One is the loneliness one feels when we have no human contact or inter-action – that sense of isolation and lack that can eat into your soul.

There is also a kind of cosmic loneliness where as a human being we feel alone and isolated in a cold unfeeling universe where no-one cares, no one loves us and in the end all we ever were is just destroyed by our own death anyway. 

At it very root you know, Christianity addresses those two kinds of loneliness head on. In the end, Christianity is not so much a set of rules to follow and creeds to recite, but at root a relationship.

A relationship with God the Father through Jesus His Son, and maintained by the power of the Holy Spirit. We get access to God through a relationship with Jesus. How is that achieved but through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

So you see the Holy Spirit is indispensible to the Christian faith. Without the Spirit in your heart you cannot see the truth of Jesus who leads us into the mystery of God.

When the disciples had Jesus with them I’m sure everything was bearable even if things were difficult because it was like having your big brother always there with you to shield you, guide you, fight your battles for you, give you advice etc..

When Jesus was killed in the flesh can you imagine what the disciples must have felt like? Well, we don’t have to imagine, because it is well documented. They were grief stricken, frightened and demoralised and they fled.

What brought them back together and galvanised them into the greatest evangelistic force the world has ever seen? Two things!

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead and Jesus sending the Holy Spirit in his place to be with us for evermore.

And that second bit is what Pentecost is all about. We are celebrating the fact that God Himself is with us for evermore and will never let us go. It is the Holy Spirit that brings Jesus close to us as our brother and friend. It is the Holy Spirit that comes alongside us, guides us, strengthens us and mentors us in the same way that Jesus did for the disciples when He was alive in the flesh.

It is the Holy Spirit that accomplishes Jesus’ famous promise at the end of Matthew’s gospel “I am with you always until the end of the age”. It is the Holy Spirit that accomplishes this which is also known as the Spirit of Jesus. 

This essentially is what the passage in John really means in real terms.

Jesus also says that the Holy Spirit will convince people of the sinfulness of their actions in engineering the murder of Jesus, and that He will convince us of Jesus’ righteousness, and the fact that we will have to face God face to face one day to account for our actions.

Of course as Christians, we have no fear of this because we know that the love of God demonstrated on the cross is so all forgiving, all knowing and righteous that if we place our trust in his atoning sacrifice we have no fear – only love and gratitude.

The Spirit - by working in us and through us will bring glory to Jesus. Achieving that one thing is the most extraordinary achievement of the Holy Spirit

It is the most glorious work of the Holy Spirit that He has convinced Christians that the executed Jewish criminal Jesus was and is the son of God. An extraordinary thing when you think about it.

So the Spirit is in our hearts and reminds us that we are never truly alone but always connected to God, the creator and redeemer of the whole universe.

And in the church we are called to remedy that other bane of our lives, the spiritual loneliness that keeps us separate from others.

We are members, one of another, of the church which is the body of Christ. How? We are one body because of the Holy Spirit that binds us.

“Remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.”  

I have made his name known

In this confusing environment where there are competing religions giving different accounts of God and where the prevailing orthodoxy is secular liberal humanism, which tells us that all religions are to be treated the same and of equal value - how can we be confident that to put it bluntly that Christianity is true? Is Jesus’ account of who God is, the definitive and true account? There may be several things to take into account but in the end it comes down to - well who and what you trust? When you hear the words of scripture do you hear and recognise the voice of the good shepherd?

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life”. In today’s gospel Jesus says “Father I have made your name known”. Now “name” is used in a very special way in the Old Testament. It doesn’t mean a name by which someone is called it means the whole character of a person.

In the first few verses of our gospel reading today that is what Jesus is saying to the disciples – that in his body and speech He has revealed the whole character of God as far as we can understand it. He has made His name known.

So we should know that our Christian discipleship is based on the realisation that in Jesus’ words we hear God’s voice, and in Jesus’ deeds we see God’s action. So when we hear Jesus’ commands we obey them for we recognise God’s voice.

When we begin to trust, we can be confident that in following Jesus we are following God.

After three years active ministry we could say that the results of Jesus’ life were pretty meagre. True there was a wider circle of followers but the inner circle consisted of twelve Galilean peasants – one of whom betrayed him and Jesus ended up being executed.

And yet Jesus was confident. He had confidence in God but He also had confidence in humanity. He trusted God and He trusted us to carry on the work he started to spread the truth of God throughout the world. As Bishop Mark said at the confirmation service last Thursday – He is counting on us!

And it is for us disciples that he then prays. A Christian disciple is a person given to Jesus by God by means of a movement of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

Jesus prays for us who are “in the world”, and in John’s gospel “world” means “human society without God”.   We are in this world and Jesus is praying for us that we may keep faith and win the world for God by bringing it back to the way of Christ.

Jesus doesn’t call us “out of the world” he wants us to get stuck in and wants to equip us to lead a Christian life within it as faithful witnesses. It is in the world that we live out our faith. We are not to disown the world or try to retreat from it but to affect it as salt and light.

We don’t do this on our own. We do it in the strength of the Holy Spirit which is the Spirit of Jesus.

Jesus also says that “He has been glorified in us”. How do we do that? In the same way that a successful athlete brings honour to their trainer, or a great scholar brings honour to his teacher, a transformed human being bearing the fruit of the kingdom brings glory to Jesus. It is a testimony to the truth.

Christianity is in essence a missionary faith. Jesus was sent by the Father, and in turn Jesus sends us.

To be sent effectively means we must have something to proclaim, something to give. The first and most important thing we can give is an accurate picture of what God is like. The full truth of God is in Jesus Christ and no other.

Jesus said. “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

"You did not choose me, I chose you"

We did not choose God, God chose us and made us a wonderful offer to accept or push aside;

How are we to respond? In order to make our choice we have to consider what has been offered;

We are chosen for joy! However hard the Christian way might be we are offered joy and there is a joy and satisfaction in doing the right thing. Gloomy Christianity is a contradiction in terms, and the image of Christianity of a dour, joyless person dressed in black has done untold harm to us down the ages. We are sinners, but we are redeemed sinners. We have forgiveness and walk the way that leads to eternal life

We are chosen for love! We are sent out into the world not to compete, and argue and bicker with each other but to model a new way of relating to each other. Some might say, how can He order us to love each other? His answer is to say that “No one can show greater love than this – to lay down his life for his friends” and Jesus did just that. He earned the right to tell us by going before us to the cross.

Jesus chose us to be his friends! Some of the greatest figures in the Bible were proud to be called servants, or slaves, of God but Jesus offers something much more, a friend of God. We no longer have to gaze on God from afar but have unlimited direct and personal access to God. We are no longer standing in the crowd watching the king ride by in his magnificent carriage in the distance – we are in the carriage, by his side.

He chose us to go and bear fruit; To be adverts for Christianity certainly but simply as an end in itself to enhance and improve the world. Not to bully people into becoming Christians but to attract them to it – that they would want what we have.

So Jesus chose us to be privileged members of an extended family that could approach God in prayer that whatever we ask the Father in his name it will be granted.

Now we must approach this last saying about prayer with a right attitude. Now that sounds as if we can pray for anything and God will grant it but there are definite Biblical laws concerning prayer we must take into account.

Prayer must be a prayer of faith (James 5:15) and not just a formality, a repetition of words. It cannot be hopeless. There is little use praying to be changed, if we don’t believe it is possible to be changed.

Prayer must be in the name of Christ. This means we cannot pray for something which we know Jesus would disapprove, like personal gain or vengeance.

We must pray “Thy will be done”. We never know better than God, so real prayer must often be not send me the thing I want but make us able to accept the things he wills.

We are chosen for joy, chosen for love, chosen to be his friends, chosen to bear fruit and to seek his will in prayer.

He chose us. What do we choose?      

I am the good shepherd

“I am the good shepherd”

Probably the only knowledge most people have nowadays of shepherding is “One man and his dog” on BBC2 some time ago, but the role still retains a romantic place in the imagination of many of us.

In the middle east in Jesus’ time shepherds were common and extremely important to the economy even though socially they were pretty much at the bottom of the pile and epitomised a rugged no-nonsense, down to earth quality. That was the point of the announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds rather than kings and princes. They had no airs and graces.

Shepherds in the middle east also led from the front, knew their flock well, protected them by shepherding them into sheepfolds at night and guarding them. Every one of the flock was valuable so if one of the sheep strayed, the shepherd would go and try and find it.  The flock in turn knew the voice of their shepherd and responded when they heard him.

So a shepherd provided leadership, protection and because the flock knew and trusted their shepherd, they followed where he led them.

Jesus said “I am the good shepherd” While any shepherd would take a few risks to protect or get back one of his flock who strayed, Jesus promised to go even further. He said he would even “lay down his life for the sheep.” 

This is where the metaphors and symbolism start to become entangled. As well as being the good shepherd Jesus is also known as the “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. He identifies so completely with his flock he becomes representative of them and offers himself as the perfect sacrificial lamb used in Temple worship.

The good shepherd would gladly swap places and become the sacrificial lamb offered to save all the others. This is the kind of servant leader that we are asked to follow. He can hold two roles together at once. He is both shepherd and lamb, both servant and king.

As I’ve said before, I think it is significant that Jesus never asks us to worship him even once in the New Testament. But he does ask, on many occasions that we follow him. This tells us how important following Jesus is. You can follow him and trust where he leads us because he is the “Good shepherd” the perfect shepherd, leading his flock forwards.

Do we recognise his voice? It is the voice of God speaking through Jesus who is calling us forwards, to follow in the way that Jesus trod.

Do you trust him? “Believe in me, believe also in God” He says. “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”.

Everyone has a choice. Do we recognise and trust the voice of Jesus? We can choose to follow where Jesus leads because we trust that he is who He claims to be “the way, the truth and the life” or we can choose not to, because we don’t really trust him. We don’t recognise his voice. We need to recognise his voice and understand what he requires of us.

As a part of his flock there is only two ways that this will recognise his voice. By acting on the prompting of the Holy Spirit in prayer and by reading the Bible to understand what is required of us. Both are closely related to each other.

Bible reading and study of the text has been much neglected in the church of England and the recent reports just publishes on our health, prompted by our decline, has pointed out that this is something the C of E needs to address if it is to flourish again.  The Bible is God’s revelation to us of his action first through the Jewish people and then decisively through the person of Jesus Christ.

Who do you trust. Who do you choose? The choice was ever before us but in the days when Christianity was the only choice out there, the choice was more obvious and the church got lazy.  In a pluralist society with lots of religious options out there discerning and making that choice is much harder and requires much greater effort, discernment and real commitment that ever before.

Christians believe that Jesus is the decisive and full revelation of God to humankind. So when another revelation appears, like Islam that overturns and contradicts the voice of Jesus, that claims to supersede Christianity and presents itself as the final and definitive revelation of God, and indeed says that we have perverted the gospel of the prophet Jesus – we have a massive personal choice to make. If we are confused, think how confusing it must be for our children and grandchildren, especially if there is no strong example to show them.

Addressing Biblical literacy and fostering discipleship are the ways in which we learn to hear and recognise the voice of God amongst many other voices and following where that voice, that person leads.

Jesus said “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me”.   

Life after death

If you take all the accounts of the resurrection together, including Saint Paul’s conversion and his own writings about resurrection we are certainly in the realm of deep mystery. In our gospel reading today Luke insists that Jesus had a body of flesh and blood and yet on the other hand he could walk through walls and be in different locations at the same time which tells us that it was not a normal body.

In fact his body did disappear or dematerialise and return to God soon after the resurrection and we celebrate that event at a day we call the Ascension. Saint Paul on the other hand writes about “spiritual bodies” and insists that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. His encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was a spiritual one, with a disembodied voice asking Paul “Why are you persecuting me?”

We have to take all these things together to gain some kind of purchase on what is being conveyed here and what it means for our own future beyond the grave.

Nothing is crystal clear but we can be clear enough to be certain about some things. Luke’s insistence of physicality is there to tell us one thing certainly ; that the person that is raised after death is exactly the same person who died.

People don’t like talking about death but if and when they do one question that pops up regularly is will I be “me” and will I recognise others? Luke’s insistence on a physical resurrection gives an emphatic answer to that question. The answer is yes, you will.

You will remember also that Jesus’ resurrection body bore the wounds of his death on the cross. What can this mean except that not only are we recognisably the same person but we bear the marks of our experiences here on earth.

In a spiritual sense, pre-figured here by Luke in a physical sense, we take the sum of all we are and all we learnt, all we did and all we didn’t do with us.

God will perfect and use all those experiences for the good, because we believe and trust in a God of goodness and light.  

Depending on whether we accept our culpability for our wrongdoing or not and whether we turn to God in Christ for forgiveness will determine what happens then. God forgives all who truly repent.

There were two thieves on the cross. One mocked Jesus and one acknowledged his guilt and threw himself on God’s mercy. Jesus said to the repentant thief. “I tell you the truth. This day you shall be with me in paradise”. It is not recorded what would happen to the other thief. Whatever his ultimate destination was, the implication is that, you are outside of God’s presence until you yourself turn to be saved.

I can find no timeframe for when that turning must take place in the Bible but I do understand  why people think that our ultimate destination is fixed by our decision in our lifetime. But to be true to a God of Love as well as justice and to encompass all the people who had no reasonable chance to hear the message and “turn and be saved” in this life I believe we have an opportunity to turn after death.

Some may then say. Why would we bother to worship and evangelise if everyone eventually has a chance to turn and be saved anyway? Well that is a curious and illogical thing to say. If you know what is true. If you know the saving love of God. If you know the peace of God now in this life, if you know the path you should be walking on, if you can know your ultimate destination now, why would you deny yourself those riches? If I believe that to be true, why would I deny Jesus and turn away from Him, in a fit of pique because others might eventually receive what I can enjoy right now – that is the picture of the eldest son in the parable of the prodigal son.

And remember Jesus says to us in Matthew 10: 33 “If you deny me in front of men I will deny you before the Father”

We can enjoy God and all His benefits forever, and it can start right now. We have the advantage over other people because we know what is true. When we repent (Metanoia – Go beyond your mind) and are born again, we recognise and embrace the gift of Life that God offers to us.

Preaching Salvation for all without repentance is often called peddling “cheap grace” though of course the revelation of God’s deep love for us did not come cheap. It came at a huge cost, borne with grace on the cross on a desolate hillside in Palestine 2000 years ago. The appropriate response to that sacrifice is gratitude and the determination to turn around our lives in response.

I’ll end with some prophetic words from Saint Augustine that I love because they concentrate the mind so well and so we might do well to meditate upon them. I’ve already commented that the the destination of the second thief is not noted. But Augustine assumes the worst......

Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved.

Do not presume, one of the thieves was damned. 

True Resurrection

So what was the resurrection? What does it mean to us and How does it affect Christians?

I think there are three aspects to that question and they all relate to each other.

Firstly of course the resurrection is something that happened to Jesus about 2000 years ago – a historical event.

Using the word miracle in its colloquial sense it is to my mind the second greatest miracle ever but linked to the greatest miracle.

The first and greatest miracle is creation itself.

But then we have annihilation – death – all things die.

But in the resurrection we have re-creation.

So for Christians we believe not just in the cycle of life and death but in Life, death and new life. This leads us to our second meaning. Not only is the resurrection a historical event that happened to Jesus it is something that can be applied to us.

When we die we will be resurrected to eternal life. How do we know? Because that is what Jesus promised us in the Bible.

 ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

All authority in the world is suspect. Thousands of different voices all telling us different things. But if I am being asked to place my trust in one man in this world I choose to place my trust in Jesus and follow him, as well as I can.

So the first two meanings of the resurrection are a historical fact and a future hope, but if we are not careful that is where our resurrection faith ends, locked in the past and the future. What about now – our present life?

Emerging from those first two meanings the resurrection gives us a way of seeing and perceiving the world. It gives us eyes and hearts of hope. There is no situation so bad that something good cannot grow from it. There is no relationship so broken that it cannot be healed and transformed. In every situation from a stubbed toe to bereavement, from the darkest of situations light can emerge. It is a way of seeing the world through eyes of hope, through the lens of resurrection. We see more deeply and look more closely for the signs of a God who raises up, working in any and every situation.

That light may be slow coming. Between the tragedy represented by Good Friday and the New life represented by Easter Sunday there is Easter Saturday, a day of darkness, desolation, fear and unknowing. For many of us, we can sometimes be locked in an Easter Saturday that seems unending, but eventually, and often, not in the ways we expected, light and growth does come! 

Turning over the tables in our hearts

In our Bible study group we are studying the prophesy of Zechariah which was written after the exile of the Jews to Babylon and was a book that encouraged the re-building of the Jerusalem Temple, a building that represented the meeting place of heaven and earth in the Holy of Holies at the very centre of the Temple.

This building, the Jerusalem Temple, in Jewish religion is where God and humanity meet and where once a year the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies to offer a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. 

The Temple, in the same way as the Jewish people themselves were to be a light to the gentiles – something that attracted. Something that was compelling.

It was a monument to something other – something spiritual. Something to do with the Holiness of God, as I say, just like the people.

In its dishevelled broken state in Zechariah’s time (about 500 years before Christ) it had become a metaphor for the state of the Jewish people themselves and by the first century AD, in Jesus’ time it had again become a metaphor for the corrupt state of the Jewish religion.

Jesus’ righteous anger about the state of the Temple, which had become a compromised market place which had accommodated itself to secular power and values was a reflection of the state of the Jewish people in his time.

The people needed cleaning up, repentance and renewal  and the turning over of the tables of the money changers is a kind of acted parable.

Remember the whole thrust of Jesus’ preaching was “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”

If the Temple and people were corrupt and no different from secular society then there is nothing there to attract anyone. The light to the gentiles had gone out.

Is there a lesson today for the church?

Well Jesus did warn us. He told us that we are to be salt and light. But as he said if salt loses its flavour it is useless. Its whole raison d’etre is removed. It is good for nothing and fit just to be thrown out.

Is perilously close to just being a reflection of secular society? If we share the same values and the same concerns and reflect almost exactly the same views on money, sex and power and every other issue with society at large, the only difference we are left with is that we spend our Sunday mornings in a medieval building.  We become the spiritual wing of English heritage.

If we are not different, and have nothing about us to attract people, people will not come because well why would they? 

This is why a clear Christian vision needs to be articulated afresh to each generation. Proverbs 29:18 says “without a vision the people perish”, but this isn’t a cue to write a new vision statement. In its context, the vision the writer of Proverbs was referring to was a return to observing the Law. He is saying that apart from the word of God a people can very quickly fall into moral chaos.

For us, that translates as a return to the living word, and a life of seeking God’s will for our lives and guidance for our actions.

Where is our Holy of Holies today – the place where heaven and earth meets? It was first and foremost in the person of Jesus of course. As he is recorded saying at the time, “destroy this temple and I will raise it up on the third day. At the time people did not know what he was talking about but later the disciples understood, that he was speaking of his own body.

And by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the place where heaven and earth meets is in the human heart of every Christian.

Do the tables in our own hearts need turning over and cleansing to be the people we are called to be?