Follow Jesus

The great theme this morning is “Following Jesus”

I’ve said before that never does Jesus actually say in the New Testament “worship me” which some may find surprising, but he says “Follow me” many, many, times.

Our O.T. reading seems to have been selected on the basis that it was the call of Elisha to follow in Elijah’s footsteps.

Over time Elijah came to represent the prophetic tradition as a whole and significantly when Jesus was transfigured he was seen speaking to Moses, representing the law and Elijah, representing the prophets.  and Jesus was of course the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.

Paul in Galatians speaks of the kind of character a follower of Christ is expected to exhibit.

Great play is made by Christians that we enjoy freedom in Christ, and we do, but Paul says sagely  - don’t misunderstand. Freedom in Christ doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like – that is not freedom – that is licence where you imagine you can do whatever you want despite the consequences for others and particularly yourself.

Immoral behaviour will harm yourself as well as others. Paul says ,” everything might be possible for me, but not everything is edifying”.

We have to keep in step with the Spirit and be imitators of Christ. Those who ignore this simple fact or teach others to do the same lie outside of the Kingdom of God.

Being a follower of Christ entails being an imitator of Christ. We should be working to take on his characteristics.

And in Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus say directly that following Jesus is costly and has to be our top priority. There is no time for looking back over our shoulders. In another place Jesus says, you should count the cost of following Jesus before you commit as it is not an easy option. 

In one of his most enigmatic sayings he tells one man “Let the dead bury their own dead”.

What can he possibly mean?

Well the people he is referring to are very much physically alive but are spiritually dead, unregenerate, not "born again" as Jesus says you have to be to see the Kingdom of God.

Don’t waste too much time with people who are spiritually dead. Don’t be forever casting your pearls before swine. Once you have made your decision your first loyalty is to Christ. There is a small burden to bear (Matthew 11:30)  but my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So as followers of Jesus we need to be spiritually fit and committed. We need to develop our spiritual muscles through engagement with prayer, Bible study and engagement with the Christian community which is the body of Christ.

The more we do that the more we are pleasing to God, the more we start to follow Jesus by acting on our faith by putting our hand to the plough and not looking back, the more we grow and the more the church grows. 

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb

There is no-one who doesn’t want to be made well in body, mind, or spirit or to be rescued from death and annihilation.

We want it for ourselves and we want it for all that we love.

God is the author of all life, all creation and when he created he declared it “Good” and declared us especially “Very good”. And it is the whole creation that will be redeemed. We are so anthropocentric that we scarcely raise our sights to consider the cosmic scope of redemption and re-creation.

I used to believe that when we died we went to a place called heaven but that is not the content of Biblical hope. When the first Christians talked about their hope is consisted of a bodily resurrection when the old heaven and earth passed away to be replaced with a new creation where heaven and earth became one entity, an embodied existence where the Lion would lie down with the kid. Heaven is the “sphere of God” and whilst that is where our immediate destination will be, our final destination is far more exciting than that.

Here Paul talks about this in Romans 8, the highpoint of his theology.

Romans 8:18-23

Future Glory

¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Our future hope is to be set free in a completely new creation and Jesus’ resurrection body is a glimpse of our future hope in historical time. In fact, if we follow Paul’s beliefs all things will be set free.

Every healing or sign or miracle that Jesus performs in the Bible is a little sign of that future hope which was even  more fully revealed when God raised Jesus from the dead.

In a very real sense everything from the stilling of the storm, from curing a blind man to turning water into wine, to the healing of the woman with a haemorrhage to raising Jairus’ daughter is a sign that points to the greater fulfilment awaiting all of the created order when the old separate heaven and earth are abolished and they become one, an embodied existence where there will be no more tears and no more pain, where Isaiah’s vision will be fulfilled;.

Isaiah 11:6-9

⁶ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
⁹ 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.

God forgive me.

The story of David and Bathsheba is one of those stories that holds a mirror up to all human foibles, our attempts to justify our own bad behaviour. It should remind us of ourselves   and yet doesn’t because just like David we are adept at lying to ourselves.

Our sense of self, self preservation, self interest, self obsession, self image stops us from admitting the truth about ourselves and blinds us to truth of what we have done.

We are equally adept at justifying ourselves and our behaviour with ludicrous excuses which after a while we convince ourselves are the actual truth.

As human beings we’ve all done it at some time.

In our story we heard today God used Nathan the prophet to see deeply into David’s heart and to connect with him, and Nathan used a clever parable as a device to get Solomon to convict himself. All the excuses that Solomon doubtless used to justify himself in his own eyes were stripped away and exposed as the tissue of lies they were, and David came face to face with himself and his own sin. He came face to face with his own true reflection.

One day that will be us – our souls will be bared and exposed to the searing white light of God’s gaze. There will be no-where to hide, no refuge except one, faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Or would you prefer to push Jesus to one side and fight your own corner perhaps and try and self justify just as most of us do in life? 

God knows all and sees all and can see straight into your heart so there can be no pulling the wool over his eyes. You’ll be on your own, defending the indefensible with someone who already knows the full truth about you.

In the gospel reading that same perception, the same wisdom that can see through outside appearances and reputations and see straight into the heart of things is also a property of Jesus Christ of course and using a similar device as Nathan, a parable, he attempts to show Simon the Pharisee that despite his outward appearance as an upstanding man he too is a sinner, or as Jesus says in the parable, a debtor.

Perhaps not as great a debtor as this woman, but it is she who is right with God because she knows she is a sinner and was undeserving of any forgiveness. She recognises her need, is sorry for her sins and comes to Jesus in a spirit of repentance and Jesus freely forgives her.

But Simon doesn’t know his need, he deludes himself, lies to himself, and he is convinced by those lies even though he truly strives to keep the law. He never fully did keep the law of course but he cannot admit that to himself, let alone Jesus.

Those are the two pathways that are open to all of us. That is the choice we all have to make – whether to admit our own need of forgiveness and put our faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus or to try and justify ourselves.

And this in a nutshell is what Paul is talking about in our reading from Galatians. No-one could fully keep the law but just as that woman experienced in that parable in Luke, through genuine repentance and faith in Christ, forgiveness is freely given.

I believe that it is pertinent that she is unnamed. She represents all of us.

By whose authority?

For me, there are two main strands working through the three readings today.

The first one is the universality of the gospel. This means that the Good News of the God of Israel is for all people at all times and not for a particular people at a particular time. Both the people of Israel – the Jews – and the modern church are and always were instruments through which God would reveal His Love to the whole world.

The second strand is really one of authority. By whose authority does Elijah, Paul and Jesus speak and act. Why should we pay any mind to them?

In terms of universality and authority, Elijah raises a widow’s son to life. The widow was both a foreigner and as a widow perhaps the most vulnerable people in their societies in their day. There would be scant opportunity to provide for herself so her son was her sole provider now her husband had died.

Elijah’s authority came from the fact that God worked through him to raise this woman’s son to life so demonstrating his care and healing love to people way outside the confines of the chosen people. And it was God working; for no man can raise another to life. This is the work of God alone. Elijah was being used as an instrument of God who was showing his concern to the world beyond Israel’s borders and being able to demonstrate this gave him his authority at the same time – because God saw fit to use him.

In an almost carbon copy of the raising of the widow’s son in 1 Kings, we read of Jesus raising a Widows son. In Jesus' day widows were still the most vulnerable of people (just as in the days of Elijah) and her life support system would be her son. In this extract, nobody asks Jesus to act, and nobody is said to have "faith". Jesus simply responds to great need, and his presence is enough and the power of God is given freely. The same validation that was given to Elijah is here given to Jesus through whom God acts in the way that only God can act.    

And where did Paul get his authority from? Well his defence of his authority as we heard last week is that his gospel (the good news) is the only true gospel because it was communicated to him direct by a personal encounter with the risen Jesus Christ Himself.

So Paul’s defence of his authority is that Jesus has personally sought Him and is working through him and has appointed Him as the apostle to the gentiles (i.e. foreigners). It is quite telling that it was through a direct intervention of Christ in his life that the gospel was revealed to him. He didn’t need to be taught it by any other of the disciples.

In fact it wasn’t until three years after his experience on the road to Damascus that Paul eventually travelled to Jerusalem to speak to Peter and James, and then not in order to be taught anything, though obviously Peter and James would have filled Paul in on some of the details of Jesus’ life and ministry but the gospel itself had already been deeply imprinted on Paul’s life.

In fact it was less about learning from Peter and James than engaging with them and explaining to them the full ramifications of the gospel of Christ.

Paul could be quite confrontational and in fact in one of his letters basically calls Peter a hypocrite for refusing to eat with foreigners when other conservative Jews were around (Galatians 2: 11 -14).

Authority is a still a hot issue today. On whose authority do we speak and preach? The Pope, church councils, Bishops, experience, the Bible, church tradition?

This is a very tricky area but evangelicals at least are clear. The final authority is the Bible, as the record of the dealings of God with mankind culminating in his revealing of himself and the fulfilling of God’s promises through Jesus Christ.

The Bible is therefore our final authority.

Doctrines may be developed by the church, so long as they don’t contradict the Bible, like the Holy Trinity, but quite often the church has corrupted and contradicted the truth of scripture which resulted in false religion which led to the reformation and through the reformation to the Church of England.

The Book of Common Prayer, seen by many as a safe and warm retreat from modernism is actually a radical Protestant response to the perversions of the Church of Rome. Just take a look at the 39 articles in the back of the prayer book!

In terms of authority the C of E has traditionally said that our authority is derived from an interplay between Scripture, reason and tradition.

I would agree with that so long as it is scripture that always has the last word, enlightened by the guidance and light of God’s own Spirit.

But in the end, by whose authority should preachers preach? Well if you believe that the Bible is the God breathed word of God, it is not a little scary.

On nothing less than the authority of God, as revealed in Christ, as recorded in the Bible and brought to life by the Holy Spirit through a preacher.

Law, Grace & Salvation

In the beginning, before Kings Saul, David and Solomon the presence of God travelled around with his people in the form of the Ark of the Covenant which carried the stone tablets and when they stopped the ark rested in a tent.

But after much controversy in Israel, when they became a settled people Solomon ended up building the Jerusalem Temple as a place for God’s presence to live.

Then when Jesus came, God’s presence was perceived by those who believed in him, to reside fully within Jesus Christ.

After Jesus ascended to Heaven he promised that God’s Spirit, his very presence, would be poured out on all believers.

The result over the three thousand year history since Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem is that the Temple of the Holy Spirit, his very presence is no longer in a building made of stone but in a people. God’s very presence again travels with his people just as He did in the days before the Jerusalem Temple was built – not in a box but in our hearts.

We are the Temple, and we are made up of people of every race, nation and language in the world, so the prophesy made by Solomon in his dedication address found its fulfilment in the church – the people of God.

At the centre of the Temple lay the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments representing the law of God. That law was fulfilled in Christ by the law of Love which is written on our hearts.

Now contrary to what some may think Jesus did not soften the demands of the written law, he actually tightened them up. The law of love is much harder to follow than the written law and is much more stringent and profound.

I think 99% of us can follow the command “Do not murder” or “Thou shall not kill” but Jesus says even if you are angry you have committed murder in your heart. How many of us genuinely love our enemies and pray for them from the bottom of our heart? Who amongst us if we have two of something will automatically give one of them away?

The law of love is much, much, harder to follow than the written law and goes so much deeper.

The law of love actually reveals to us just how far we are from perfection and it is the law of love that convinces us that we are all sinners in one way or another in that we all fall far short of the glory and the Holiness of God.

This new Temple of the Holy Spirit, the church community is a collection not of saints but  of forgiven sinners, who, knowing how far short we fall are filled with gratitude that God’s Grace and forgiveness have been showered upon us, whilst attempting always to reach to the heights all fulfil the demands of the law of love.

You know that we are forgiven and made right with God through faith in Christ, and not through fulfilling all of the law – either the written law or the law of love?

It is that gospel, that good news, that Paul is so angry about being smothered by people who are trying to water down and pervert the gospel in his letter to the Galatians.

The perverters of the good news were telling people that the only way they could be right with God is by obeying all the commands of the written law – in effect become Jews – before they could become Christian.

Paul was livid and tells them straight. There is no alternative gospel. The gospel he preaches comes direct from Jesus Christ himself, given to him in person on the road to Damascus.

It is your faith in Christ’s redeeming work on the cross that saves you, not adhering or fulfilling the law of either variety. It is God’s Grace, revealed on the cross, available to all that come to him that saves us. Limitless forgiveness and limitless love.

The result of Jesus revealing to us the depth and purpose of the law is to give us something glorious and perfect to aim for with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, but also to convince us that we need his saving grace because of our own efforts we just cannot do it.

The glory of God is that if we acknowledge our need of acceptance and forgiveness and his comfort he saves us and comes to live within us.

That is how the Temple of the Holy Spirit grows.  God’s perfection and holiness is set before us. We reach out to fulfil it as far as we are able, we fail, but have no fear, God will pick you up, dust you down and set you back on the narrow path, for another go.

We pray that when this happens we are being perfected as we try and fail, try and fail, and then try and try again. God is merciful but God is just. He needs us to keep looking towards the light.

God’s grace is Free but wasn’t cheap. To presume on God’s grace, to not even try, is what I think is meant by blaspheming the Holy Spirit and as Mark says in his gospel is the one sin that will never be forgiven (Mark 3:29).   

But we have no need to fear. Perfect Love casts out fear. Hear what Jesus says in John’s Gospel;

14 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God;^[a] believe also in me. ² In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?^[b] 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

The eternal three

Today is Trinity Sunday and the Trinity describes who God is as He has been revealed to Christians by Jesus Christ – a unity of character and purpose but with three constituent parts  and we heard three readings today which were included to lead us deeper into that mystery.

We started in the Old Testament in the book of Proverbs and in chapter 8 which is a description of Wisdom. Actually it is wisdom who is talking. Can wisdom talk?

Wisdom is a highly prized concept in the Bible. Indeed, in the Bible, wisdom is a divine attribute. But when you hear chapter 8 we see that wisdom is more than a desirable attribute.

Indeed the book of proverbs is attributed, if only in part to Solomon, who gained favour with God for asking only for a wise and discerning mind instead of fame or riches. God responded by bestowing great wisdom on Solomon and the fame and riches as well.

Wisdom was begotten by God and was present with God at the beginning of creation   articulated perfectly and poetically in chapter 8. Indeed, God created through wisdom who is called a master workman in verse 30 and in verse 31, wisdom “rejoices in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man”.

When you read this I hope you can see that far from being an “it”, or just a “concept” wisdom is described more like a person.

Someone who was present, who worked, who rejoices, who delights!

Someone who was there at the beginning begotten by God.  Genesis 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The first word for God in the Bible, Elohim in Hebrew is plural. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. A Christian can say that the Trinity is there in the opening verse of the Bible. And later in Genesis 1 verse 28 God says “Let us make man in our image”

I hope now some of you can begin to see why this passage is included for Trinity Sunday. And why Christians have always equated Jesus as the incarnation of wisdom who was there, as a person at the dawn of creation.

In John’s famous prologue “In the beginning was the word and the word was God” the word for Word is “Logos” which can also mean wisdom. In the beginning was wisdom.....and wisdom was made flesh.  

As I always say, the most important church in the whole of Christendom in the East, dedicated to Jesus Christ was the Hagia Sofia - the Holy Wisdom.

Now in chapter 5 of Romans we hear Paul say that we Christians have – not will have, or will inherit, but have as a present possession faith, hope and love. Hope as ever in the NT is used as a description of a confident conviction.

Its inclusion today of course is that this peace hope and love involves the three persons of the Trinity. These gifts come about as the result of the action of God, through Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. The three persons of God are essential in the story of our salvation.

And so finally to John, who the week after Pentecost wants to inform us about the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus sent by the Father.

This is a continuing project.

The Spirit will guide us into the truth. The Holy Spirit is our link, our continuing living access to Jesus and through Jesus to God the Father. The Holy Spirit is the promise of God given to all that ask.

Now Jesus said that He is the truth, so the Spirit leads us into the light and wisdom of Christ who speaks only what the Father says to him.

This means that if any supposed new revelation leads us away from what has already been revealed or directly contradicts what has been revealed to us in the Bible then we can be sure that it is a false revelation. We are to be guided into all that Jesus is because it was impossible in his short ministry to deal with every eventuality.

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and His spirit will lead us ever deeper into his wisdom – the wisdom who was there at the very beginning begotten by the Father and “rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man”

But if you can remember just one phrase this morning let it be this;

God is as Jesus is and we have access to God by the Holy Spirit.   

Cry Freedom

Freedom is the watchword of the day.

The slave girl was set free from an evil spirit, Paul and Silas were miraculously set free from prison, and the jailor was set free from his bondage to sin suffering and death by asking to be baptised.

Salvation isn’t a word much used outside of church nowadays so what does it mean to say “I am saved”?

One meaning is to be set free from our addictions, our fears, and our self-centredness.

Another clue is in our English word salvation. The root of the word is “salve”. A salve is an ointment that soothes and heals, so salvation carries the notion of being made well, being healed, and being made whole again.

We are healed from all that divides us. The division between ourselves and God is healed – we are one as the reading from John spells out today, the division between ourselves and  others is healed for we are all children of God, and all our internal divisions are healed.

Being set free can be being freed from a physical bondage like Paul and Silas , or more pertinently being set free from spiritual bondage like the slave girl or the jailor.

So salvation is personal wholeness and freedom. Is that not what everybody craves nowadays? That is what we offer and yet we are so bad at communicating that fact people would never think to look at the church for such things – they look everywhere else first – from Mindfulness to Buddhism, to self-help, to the acquisition of “things” to drugs, anything but in that boring out of date building called a church.  

We are absolutely terrible at articulating what we are about.

But Paul and the apostles and the witness of the early church is that the key to salvation and all the benefits that brings is found in the name of Jesus Christ alone. That is where you will find freedom and wholeness.

It was in the name of Jesus Christ that the slave girl was set free, and when the jailor asked “What must I do to be saved?” Paul says “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household”.

There is a past, present and future aspect to salvation. You are set free from all your sins by being forgiven and set free from all fear of judgement; In the present you are positively set free to live the life God wants for you in freedom and security, and the future aspect is that you can look forward to a glorious future – eternal life in the new Jerusalem, where heaven and earth become one.   

Salvation is fantastic news with great benefits. It is “Good news” which is what “Gospel” means.

It is worth having and in Revelation it tells us who this is for. And in verse 17 of Revelation 22 it tells us. It is for everyone that wants it – for the spiritually thirsty.

“The Spirit and the Bride say “come”, and let the one who hears say “come” (inviting others). And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”

And along the way we are transformed -  we have to shed one way or another the evil in our hearts. Just as Paul drove out the evil spirit from the slave girl, coming to the saving Grace of Jesus entails him driving out all evil from our lives.

The offer is free, but there is a kind of “cost” if you want to put it like that. We have to get rid of all the dirt in our lives, for God is a Holy and righteous God and cannot bear such evil in His presence.

Those who accept this free offer have the right to the tree of life and we enter the New Jerusalem by the front gates, but that passage continues in verse 15,

“Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood”

Everyone is welcome but you have to change and be transformed and ditch evil things as part of that invitation. And it is the Spirit that helps us in that task.

Spelled out in our reading from John 17. 20-23 is that the nature of our freedom, our healing, our salvation is being spiritually joined to God in Christ.

There is so much there regarding our mutual indwelling – I in them and you in me – the healing of division that I’ve already mentioned.

If we were to continue in our evil ways that would reflect on the character of God. We would be saying this is what God is like.

If someone were to say they were saved – at one with God -  and then proceeded to cheat on their wife, or undermine a friend, or worshipped money, or lied to people, we would be saying “This is what God is like”. Those who have ears to hear....

Salvation my friends is being set Free and being healed, made whole again. We drink freely from the fresh water of life without cost.

It is guaranteed, underwritten by the promises of God made through Jesus Christ.

“Jesus who testifies to these things says “Surely I am coming soon” Amen come Lord Jesus. The Grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen.”