Revived and restored 2024 06 02

2024  06  09   PROPER 5 (10)  Third Sunday after Pentecost  Year B

1 Samuel 8:4-11 and Psalm 138  •  2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1  •  Mark 3:20-35

“So Tell me what you want, what you really, really want”….  Are there any children of the 90s or fans of the spice girls?  These are the words of one of their first hit songs.  Tell me what you want, what you really, really want….  Well, our Old Testament reading is a part of the story where the people are telling the prophet Samuel what they really, really want.  They really, really, really want a King.  

Unlike our contemporary culture, the nations around Israel were not a democracy.  They all had Kings who ruled them.  Israel was different.  God was their King and the prophet Samuel was his spokesperson.  Israel looked around and saw that the grass appeared greener.  Samuel was upset about their request because it felt like a rejection and a dismissal of all the good that had taken place since God called him as prophet.  And he was right… it was a ridiculous oversight of the reality of the gift that God had given the people.

One thing we learn about looking at these stories, is how human nature is pretty much unchanging… we want what the other person has and fail to see the amazing things that God has given us already.  

When God was in charge, goodness and mercy ruled. God gave the nation the commandments in order to keep all safe, and thriving, paying particular attention to the weak and vulnerable, yet it seemed to these people, that the grass would be greener with a King.  God says it this way, “they have rejected me from being king over them”.

The whole story of our faith is about this statement; “They have rejected me from being King over them.”  Human kind rejects God as King.  

Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, were tempted and ate of the forbidden fruit because they wanted to be like God.  That was what it was all about; rejecting God as King…  the grass looked greener on the other side.  But it wasn’t.  It never is.  

The Psalmist says of God, “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.”  Would an earthly King do this for us?  Not usually.  An earthly King is looking after himself first. 

We all have free will and God respects our free will always.  Even though the nation of Israel had previously declared that they would follow God and be His people, they then decided, of their own free will, to reject his wisdom and goodness and ask for an earthly King like the other nations.  The grass looked greener – It certainly wasn’t!

…

It isn’t that anyone deliberately sets out to turn away from God.  This nation still called themselves God’s chosen nation, but they figured they knew better…. Better than God.  In their actions, they proved their deepest heart’s desires and they didn’t listen to the wisdom of God and His spokesperson.  I bet that they didn’t really comprehend that they were rejecting God.   Yet, in their actions they proved that they didn’t trust God…. They didn’t trust in His goodness, and the grass looked greener on the other side.

There is a saying about the grass…. The grass is greener on the side you water… 

Saint Paul tells us; “ For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”  He also tells us that what is seen is passing away and temporary.  The Kingdom of God is eternal.  For this same reason…  looking at the physical rather than the spiritual truth, …we see that Jesus’ family is trying to restrain him…. Talk sense into him.  To them, the grass was not looking very green…. Jesus was getting himself into trouble with the authorities and there was such a fuss about him that they didn’t seem to think he was properly looking after himself…. It didn’t seem sensible.  

Jesus’ family was looking at the way of life that was temporal, but Jesus’ vision was eternal.  He therefore, says something interesting…. Those who do the will of God are my mother, brothers and sisters.  

We enter the family of God through our baptism.  We become spiritually born of God by acknowledging God as the King of our lives.  It is an acknowledgement that the grass that is temporal is not greener than the Kingdom of God and in our baptism, we acknowledge that God knows best, we choose to follow God and accept Christ as our King.  

Just like that Israelite nation, who was saved from the slavery in Egypt by the hand of God, we are saved and belong to God.  We are God’s chosen people, but we do still have free will and God forever respects our free will.  Though we are his and he loves us, will we water the grass in the kingdom of God, or will we live in the delusion that the grass that is temporary is greener?

Those who do the will of God are the family of God.  Each moment we make a choice, and the reality is that it will always be a struggle, but this is why we need to support and encourage each other.  We remind each other that God is King.  With God as King, mercy and love rule.  The grass in the Kingdom of God is the best green that there is.  This is where we will find goodness and true life. 

So there is really just one thing to say; Will you accept Jesus as the Lord and King of your life?

To SEE the Kingdom of God HOLY TRINITY 26th May 2024

                                               TRINITY SUNDAY Year B  May 26, 2024

Isaiah 6:1-8 and Psalm 29  •  Romans 8:12-17  •  John 3:1-17

 

What does a three-leaf clover, three overlapping circles, and a triangle all have in common?  All have been used to try to illustrate the Holy Trinity; one God, three persons.  And probably there have been various other analogies also, because this concept of the Holy Trinity is not an easy thing to understand…  In fact, I’d go so far as to say, you can only understand it if you are born of the Spirit.

 

As we explore and celebrate this today, note the structure of our services; we begin and end our services in the name of, and the blessing of, God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

 

A couple of weeks ago we had the reading of the prayer of Jesus.  In this he prayed to the father to protect us.  He said, “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.”   When I read these words, I straight away think of, “In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit”  -the sign of the cross.  And it calls to mind those movies where the characters are in dire straits and they bless themselves. It makes sense in the light of Jesus prayer for protection.  And it makes sense that we should also, regularly remind ourselves that our faith, and our destiny for the kingdom of God is protected by God, through that prayer of Jesus – through our faith in one God – Three persons.

 

The HOLY TRINITY is a mysterious and sometimes divisive statement of faith.  But it is super important.  The doctrine of the Holy Trinity began to be formalised at the council of Nicaea in 325 AD when it stated that Christ is “of the same substance [homoousios] as the Father,”… 

 

You will not find the Holy Trinity written in the scriptures, but you will find, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”.  And you will find, in the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ..”  The word of God was a common term in the Old Testament, and we have come to know that the word of God is Jesus.  St. John made this very clear when he said, “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  And as scripture tells us, Jesus is the exact representation – the visible expression of our unseen God.  So we come to understand, as Christians, that Christ and God the father are ONE…. But how?  It is still a mystery and hard to grasp concept….. so lets just add another…. The Holy Spirit.

 

Before I talk a little more on the Holy Spirit, however, lets imagine the Christian Church back in the first few centuries….. They started with a bang.  The Holy Spirit enabled the Gospel to be proclaimed with boldness and accompanied by many miracles showing the power of God.  They went through extreme persecution and finally, in the 3^rd century, through the Roman empire and the Christian influence of the Emperor Constantine, the church gained legal status.  Then through the Emperor Theodosius, Christianity, specifically Nicene Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire. Other Christian sects were deemed heretical.

 

There were lots of ideas floated around about Christianity…. Right from the start!  We know this through the New Testament letters.  Most of those letters were written to teach and correct. 

 

In our God-given freedom, we will all sometimes, on one point or another, get it wrong.  Why?  Because there is so very much to know about God.  His thoughts are way beyond our thoughts… scripture tells us this.  Our wisdom is foolishness compared to God.   God loves for us to get to know him, but he understands that we will sometimes get it wrong.  However, it is important that there are some guidelines to bring us back…. Our creed does this.

 

The third part of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is our helper, teacher and comforter.  In fact, the only real way to understand anything about God is “Spiritually”.   In fact Scripture tells us about this New Covenant into which we have entered, in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, 31 it says; “33“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. 34No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.”  This is because of the coming of the Holy Spirit. 

 – the Jewish festival of Pentecost was a festival celebrating the coming of God’s Holy Law to his people.  When the Holy Spirit came, he indwelt and wrote that law on the hearts and minds of God’s people.  In other words, the Holy Spirit leads, guides and teaches… the Holy Spirit is God within us and is the Key to understanding.  The image that comes to mind is like one of those great adventure movies, where the characters all have different parts of the puzzle and when they all come together the final piece becomes the key, and suddenly everything opens up and reveals the treasure.  The Holy Spirit is that final Key.

 

In our reading today we have Nicodemus having a discussion with Christ.  Nicodemus really and truly desires to know God.  He has already observed Jesus and decided that He must be from God, but it went against his traditional understanding…. So he comes at night.  In some ways it is figurative… he is still in the dark… he doesn’t understand… and then the first thing that Jesus says to him is; , "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Older translations of this passage have the phrase “born from above” as “Born Again” The Greek word translated as 'again' or “from above” actual has two meanings: it can mean not only 'a second time' but also 'from above.'  Jesus may have meant both, but Nicodemus doesn’t understand and takes the literal meaning as being born again.  He therefore asks and says that a man can’t enter his mother’s womb a second time.

 

Jesus is talking about being born of the Spirit.  Something that we often forget, is that we are made in the image of God and we are also triune beings.   Mostly we are familiar with body and soul and there is a good reason for this.  We are body, soul and spirit.   However, our spirit is dormant like a seed in an alfoil packet.  When we respond to the message of the Gospel it is because our spirit has been awakened by the Spirit of God… and we can finally SEE spiritual truth.   We have become born from above because it is of God that we are born spiritually. 

 

Just like physical birth, when you are born you can’t then be unborn.  You can’t stop being a child of God… you are born again and your spiritual life is a reality.  And this is regardless of any of our failings.  We don’t forfeit being a child of God because we fail or get things wrong.  But we should come to resemble our heavenly father’s nature that becomes our own, simply because we are his children and we resemble him… we have his spirit… in fact we have his Holy Spirit. 

 

With the Holy Spirit in union with our own spirit we can finally SEE the kingdom of God… the things of God.  In our world there may be spiritual things that we encounter, but not all of these are the Holy Spirit.  We need to discern these with the help of the Holy Spirit, and also through scripture itself and through returning to our creed.

 

We believe in one God the father, the almighty.  We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ – Of one being with the father.  We believe in the Holy Spirit – who proceeds from the Father and the Son.  This Holy Trinity is there throughout scripture, and the formalizing and defining God as three in one, gives validity to the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

 

Many accept Jesus as a good man and maybe as one who was even God’s son, but they fail to see Jesus as God.  Jesus was crucified because he claimed divinity and oneness with God.  Jesus tells us through his words to Nicodemus, that God sent the Son to bring us ETERNAL life, and that life comes to us though our union with the Holy Spirit.  Just as the Holy Spirit came over the early Christians in power, the Holy Spirit needs to be integral to our experience of God today. 

 

Unlike the pictures of the three circles, three leaf-ed clover and other images, I am not going to explain how God can possibly be three in one.  But instead I will leave you with this one truth; the Holy Spirit will bring about an understanding about the things of God that are naturally beyond us.  Scripture also tells us that with the Holy Spirit in us, we have the mind of Christ – We can SEE the kingdom of God. 

 

So, I’ll leave it in your hands, and the hands of the author and perfector of our faith and with the Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters of chaos at the beginning of time and created all things.  He is with us always… lean into him and wait.  He has SO much that he desires to teach us, And I will finish with this…. In the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  AMEN.

THE POWER OF A TESTIMONY Easter 7B 2024 May 12th

 2024  05  12  EASTER 7B       

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26  •  Psalm 1  •  1 John 5:9-13  •  John 17:6-19

 

Do you have a testimony?  A testimony is to tell what you saw or what you know.  The Latin root for the word “testimony is the word “testis”, meaning “witness”.   Do you have a declaration that you make, as a witness to the truth and Jesus Christ?

 

In our readings today there is an emphasis on the importance of testimony.  The apostles chose a new apostle to take the place of Judas and the qualification for that position, was simply that it was someone who had been an eye witness of all that they had experienced in their time with Jesus, beginning with the baptism by John.  They came up with two names and chose by lot, Matthias. 

 

I love that the scripture doesn’t say, “Matthias is an eloquent speaker”, or “Joseph is someone of high standing in the community”.  The qualification to be an apostle was simply someone who had been with the group, following Jesus the whole time and therefore, someone with a testimony about Jesus, who could witness to others about the truth of this Good News, Gospel message.

 

Even when it appeared that there were two men properly qualified, the apostles decided that God knows better than they, who should be called to fill the spot and so they cast lots, in prayer, trusting that God is in control of the outcome.

 

Saint John had a testimony about Christ.  He says, that if we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son.

 

You may have heard or read about people who had near death experiences, witnessed Ghosts or other unusual happenings.  That is a testimony, and no one can deny a personal experience – It is a powerful testimony.  However, our interpretation of that event or the conclusion we come to because of that event can range from spot on true and correct to wildly skewed.  While you and I might have learned knowledge, or a story about spiritual matters, the supernatural or any other belief system, and we can share that story with others,… there is a testimony that is greater and carries more weight…. It is the testimony of God. 

 

Other religions or even theologians might come up with ideas about God that seem good, but nothing trumps our message of the Gospel, because it is what God has said about himself.  What’s more, Saint John tells us that “Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts.”  We have this testimony because we are those who believe in Jesus.

 

Saint John was personally present when God the father spoke about Jesus at his baptism and he was there when Jesus went up the mountain and was transformed when Elijah and Moses appeared.  Saint John had heard the voice saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased – listen to him.  This is the testimony of God about God.  There is something more that Saint John reveals to us in this letter, he says, “this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

 

The Good News at the heart of our message is that we have eternal life and this eternal life is ours through our connection with Jesus.  When John writes about “eternal life”, he is using the Greek word “Zoe”, which has to do with a life that death cannot destroy.  We might read this and think of this as meaning our being with God when we die, and although that is true, it isn’t primarily what John was talking about.  The ZOE life is more to do with the quality of life… Spiritual Life… which starts here and now and never ends.

 

In our culture, we might imagine that a good life means riches and health, but that is not what these early Christians understood about the life that God gave.  They all understood that, to be given the life of Christ was to be so infused with the spiritual life of God that they were assured of eternal life and they were therefore willing to endure all kinds of hardship and yet at the same time proclaim the goodness of the life they had, here and now, in Christ.  Their vision of life and eternal life was bigger.  Most importantly, that spiritual life with which they were infused, was the life of God that can not die.  These early Christians were infused…. Infilled… with life through the Holy Spirit.

 

We contrast this with Judas who betrayed Jesus.  His vision of life was limited. He was looking for a life that was here and now and he was expecting something that seemed better than what Jesus was offering in the here and now – He missed the bigger picture – his perception of Jesus’ message didn’t make sense to him because he expected more in this physical life.  He was focused on the physical rather than the spiritual.

 

In the Gospel of John, the prayer of Jesus is recorded; “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.” 

I find this concept that Judas could be so close to Jesus and yet lost, most frustrating.  There are certainly things that are beyond our knowledge, but it teaches us that it is possible to follow the “idea” of Jesus and still miss the Good News.   It is possible to hear the Good News and still not understand it.  We sometimes have our own agenda and our free will resists the message of the Gospel.  God respects and will never over ride our free will.  This is different from genuine difficulty and slowness in understanding.

 

A quick look at history, or even just a quick look around us, we see that the disciples, apostles, and all of us, poorly handle the message of God – the testimony.  We are so slow to understand.  But it isn’t all as bad as it looks.  For example, when the former slave trader John Newton, realized the truth about Jesus Christ, he and Wilberforce instigated the ablution of slavery.  Rest assured that God’s message eventually cuts through and then God’s life abiding in us, still makes a difference in our world.

 

Our world desperately needs apostles who have the testimony of Jesus to proclaim.  Matthias was an eye witness, but those eye witnesses are long gone…. What now?  Now it is up to you and me.  Now, you and I have the testimony of Jesus and we need to proclaim it.  Each of us who believes in Jesus, has the testimony of Jesus in our heart.  We each have our part to play in testifying to the truth.  This may make us a little anxious but we can take comfort in the fact that we are upheld in prayer…. In particular, we have been prayed for by Jesus himself.

 

In the Gospel of John, we get to eves drop on the prayer that Jesus prayed for his followers, but understand that the verse after our reading says this; “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,....”  This is US.  Therefore, it is worth looking to see what Jesus prays for us and rest assured that His prayer is answered.

 

Central to the message is this prayer for protection.  “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.”

 

At the time that Jesus prayed this prayer, Peter was about to deny him, Thomas was about to doubt and most of them were about to be scattered in fear and despair.  My takeaway from this is that sometimes it looks like our prayers aren’t answered….  But looks can be very deceiving.  This was the very prayer of God.  The protection for which he prayed was not so much about physical protection, but that their faith in God would be protected, and that they would be protected for their destiny in the Kingdom of God. 

 

There were arguments and varied opinions in the early church which must have “looked” like disunity, but Jesus prays that they may be one.  It again, looks like his prayer was not answered…. But looks are deceiving.  In fact, what we see is why Jesus needed to pray for them.  There will always be tension when working together because we are all so different, but Jesus prays that we may be one. 

 

Right now, it may seem that the churches and people within the churches, are in tension with one another.  My takeaway from today’s readings is that this is simply why Jesus needed to pray for us and don’t despair… looks are deceiving.  If there is any prayer that we can be assured will be answered, surely it is the prayer of Jesus…. We will be one and we are one.  Within the variations of understandings there will be and is unity.  In fact I love the word “harmony”….  Harmony is a musical term that that does not mean sameness.  In music, harmony only happens when notes that are different play together in such a way that they make a gorgeous tapestry of sound. 

 

The prayer of Jesus is not just for those apostles and disciples back in the day, but for us also.  We can rest assured that we are protected in our faith so that our destiny in the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled. 

 

We each have the testimony of God, because John tells us that those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts.  Our world needs us to proclaim this testimony.  Our world desperately needs saving by God, and our destiny in the Kingdom of God, is to bring that testimony to those we meet so that the world can be saved.  Those who believe in Jesus are saved and have eternal life.   We have the testimony, and a testimony is meant to be declared and shared so that all can know the truth.

 

Next week we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit empowers us to share the testimony.  In this coming week, let’s commit to praying for the re-infilling/ empowering of the Holy Spirit so that we can truly be the witness of God in our world, so in need of saving.