Community Bible Experience (Covenant History): God’s Rahab-ilitation Program

Scriptuire: Joshua 2: 1-21

Video of the sermon here (from around 35 minutes)

Audio of the sermon here

Before I came here, the first church in which I was full time pastor was in a small town in Somerset. Just down the street from our church building was a shop unit which, when I first arrived I assumed to be a café. Looking back there were indications that I was wrong, but never mind. But to me, even the logo seemed to be designed in such a way that reminded me of a cup of tea with steam coming off it. I would think sometime when I’m working in the church building, I’ll have to pop in and try it.

Then one Sunday after church, not that long after I started, I was chatting with a few folkabout something we might try in the near future. We thought it would be good to set up a meeting to plan it all out. I suggested we could meet at this place I presumed to be a café.

From the looks on their faces I could tell I had said something wrong.

This was no café.

It was a massage parlour…

… and a particular kind of massage parlour at that. It was suggested that if I started frequenting this establishment as a customer, my ministry would be likely to end rather quickly!

Well today, as we continue our season in the Covenant History section of the Community Bible Experience, we come to a story about two men, sent by Joshua to check out Canaan, and in particular a city called Jericho, who wind up in a not too dissimilar establishment. This one belonging to a woman called Rahab.

In the last couple of weeks we have been with Moses, who led the children out of Egypt and through the wilderness. Last week we left them on the Eastern bank of the River Jordan about to cross into the land of Canaan.

When we pick up the story today Moses has died. His place has been taken by a man called Joshua, after whom the book from which we read this morning is named.

The next few books of the Bible can be quite dark. It can leave us with lots of deep questions. Often when critics of the Bible, religion or Christianity talk about how primitive and barbaric the Bible is, the bits they will point to are found in Joshua and the few books which follow. I don’t want to run from that, we may discuss that a bit more, especially in the Zoom studies.

But today I want to focus on this story. It’s has enough odd details all on its own. In some ways it conceals more than it reveals. If you read it closely it leaves you with all sorts of questions.

Why did Joshua send the spies in the first place?

Why and how did they end up in a sex worker’s establishment?

How rubbish are these spies? I mean, no sooner do they arrive in Jericho than they’re spotted and the king comes looking for them! Something that gets lost in the translation is that there is quite a comic element to this story and a comedy is a little more risqué than many might expect to find in the Bible!

But as we’ve gone through this section of the Bible, a common themes has been that, although there is a huge story being written, the plot is carried along by individuals and the choices they make, for good or ill. This morning I want to focus on one of them.

Her name is Rahab.

As I say, this is a dark, violent part of the scriptural story. There’s lots of talk of you’re going to walk in the land and take it over, you’ll show no mercy, you’ll wipe everyone out, you’re not to make any covenants or agreements with them… then you turn the page and first main story you get turns all of that on its head. The first hero is a female Canaanite sex worker.

Rahab is the central character here. I mean, what are names of the two spies?

Exactly. Nobody knows. Not even the writer of Joshua cared. 

Cos this is Rahab’s story.

If you’ve ever come across this story before there is probably one thing you know about Rahab.

Her occupation.

Now before I go on, however we approach this story, we need to appreciate it is messy story with flawed characters, with mixed motives, acting largely out of self-interest. I don’t say that as a criticism, it is just life. Sometimes I think people want especially their Old Testament characters to be good Christians ahead of their time. And they’re not. If you want good clean, wholesome characters whom you could always point to and say go do what they did, don’t read the Bible. It’s far too real and honest for that!

Even so, as I have dug around this story and tried to put together something for this morning, something I’ve noticed is that male and female preachers, writers and so on, handle this narrative somewhat differently.

Female Bible characters, especially when it comes to matters of sex, can so often be handled quite harshly.

Rahab’s story is often presented as a redemption story where a woman absolutely and wilfully steeped in sin comes to see how good and big God is and decides to repent, after which she is spared the fall of Jericho and amazingly comes to find a place in God’s plans. We sometimes sing a hymn which has the lines

the vilest offender who truly believes,

that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

If we want evidence of this Rahab could held up as Exhibit A.

Now, if it helps some come to see that however far gone they think they are, the grace of God can reach them, well and good.

But listen to how some describe her. One calls her a shady lady.

Another suggests Rahab indulged in venal wantoness, as travelling merchants came her way and were housed in her ill-famed abode. Evidently Rahab had her own house [how very dare she?] and lived apart from her parents and family. Although she never lost her concern for her dear ones, perhaps she was treated as a moral leper.

And he’s not finished yet…

Like many a young girl today, perhaps she found the restrictions of her respectable home too irksome. She wanted a freer life, a life of thrill and excitement away from the drab monotony of the home giving her birth and protection. So high-spirited and independent, she set up her own apartment with dire consequences.

Sometimes she’s presented as the madame running a brothel at great personal profit.

There’s only one problem.

None of that is in the story.

There are of course those who go to the opposite extreme and try to clean her up. This goes back at least as far as Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, who claimed that she was actually an innkeeper.

Not to say she couldn’t have been both. When you hear the word inn in the Bible don’t think luxurious 5 Star Hiltons. Inns were rough and ready places with pretty awful reputations. They weren’t getting many 5 star reviews on Trip Advisor!

But Rahab is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, and the word that is used to describe her profession, in Hebrew in the Old and in Greek in the New, only ever has one meaning and it has the same root as pornography.

Rahab is mentioned four times in the Bible. We’ll come back to the 4^th later, but on three of those occasions she is referred to as a prostitute. In Joshua we’re even informed of her profession before we’re told her name!

A little bit of background might help us set the scene. There is some archaeological evidence, which admittedly predates Joshua, that city fortifications were sometimes built with double walls, connected by cross walls in between. This created small spaces which were often used for storage but also created spaces in which some people lived. That’s how Rahab comes to live on the city wall. But I wouldn’t get the impression that it was a luxurious abode, with stunning views over the Dead Sea Valley. Chances are it was very small, humble place.

There is also the question of how, most likely, Rahab wound up as a sex worker. There were two distinct types of prostitute. Around the temples of the Canaanite religion there would have been cult prostitutes. Sex with them may have been part of the celebration of fertility religions. And they could be very young.

But there were also ‘secular’ prostitutes. The word used to describe Rahab was this latter kind. Of course, she could have started out as one and, when she got too old for that, ended up in the other.

Can I just say that such a life was very unlikely to have been a young girl’s dream. Contrary to what the writer I mentioned earlier suggests, it was unlikely to have been the dire consequences of chasing freedom, thrills, excitement and venal wantonness that brought Rahab to this point. This was a society in which women had few rights and even fewer options for self-sufficiency. We’re not told Rahab’s age, but it’s possible she had been married and he had died or left her. Without a husband to provide for and protect a woman, there were few avenues for her to earn a living. We see she had a family, for she asks for protection for her mother, father, sisters, brothers and their families. So perhaps they ought to have been looking out for her, taking her in, providing for her.  But if they found themselves in debt or other dire straits, there were only a handful of options to help them get out of it. One was debt slavery. Another was selling a family member into prostitution.

So although I can’t say for certain that being a sex worker wasn’t Rahab’s lifestyle choice it is way more likely that she had been forced into slavery and trafficked into the sex trade.

So Rahab has these two anonymous spies turn up at her house. They’ve been checking out her city and for whatever reason this is where they find themselves. We’re not given any details of any conversation or other interaction between them. Did she know they were Israelites spies before the king’s men told her? We don’t know. There’s a good chance she thought it was best not to ask too many questions. Better not to now too much. 

Whatever, they’re clearly not as inconspicuous as they think because they in no time at all they’re spotted and word is taken to the authorities who turn up at Rahab’s house. It wouldn’t have been uncommon for one of these cities to have someone with the title king. We might think it  more like a mayor. 

Again it’s lost in translation, but the conversation the king’s men have with her is really quite disrespectful, coarse and suggests they looked down on her. And she has a choice to make. Does she give them up or not?

Maybe their attitude made her choice a whole lot easier. Perhaps she came to the conclusion that Jericho hadn’t done much for her and she owed them nothing.

But it seemed she had heard about the God of the two men she was hiding. It’s amazing how often in the Bible, the biggest statements of faith are made by outsiders, normally people who worship other gods. It’s what we get here. She says to the spies I know that the Lord has given you this land. We are very much afraid of you. Everyone who lives in this country is weak with fear because of you. We’ve heard how the Lord dried up the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt…. Because of you, we aren’t brave anymore.

The Lord your God Is the God who rules in heaven above and on the earth below.

Wow!

It may have started out in fear, but it quickly turned into hope. That however she had ended up where she was now, another future was possible, for her and her family, Theirs was a God who cared for people on the wrong end of power, who were oppressed.

People like her.

And yes, I’m sure a huge part of the motive is about saving herself when it is all over. And she has leverage here. She has real power, for she can just hand them over and they’d be killed. But even beyond that faith causes her to see that she could be included in this people. That by faith she could at last belong. She could at last be included.

So she made a choice. I’ll throw my lot in with their God.

So she protects them. But she has a price.

Promise me in the name of the Lord that you will be kind to my family. I’ve been kind to you. Promise me that you will spare the lives of my father and mother. Spare my brothers and sisters. Also spare everyone in their families. Promise that you won’t put any of us to death.

So the men made a promise to her. If you save our lives, we’ll save yours. Just don’t tell anyone what we’re doing. Then we’ll be kind and faithful to you when the Lord gives us the land.

There’s a word that keeps cropping up in that exchange and it is telling. It is hesed.

In what I’ve just read it’s the word kind. It could be merciful, compassionate, faithful. It is often associated with God and translated steadfast love.

And it may be out of desperation that they return the promise, but they do and they give her a sign of that promise. A red cord which she is to tie in her window and all in her house would be spared. It’s often been associated with the red of the blood Israelites painted on their door at the Passover, or the red of the blood of Jesus.

But in this story the hesed of Rahab is not just returned by the spies. She experiences the hesed of a kind, merciful, gracious, compassionate, faithful God, with whom her future need not be defined by her past. And her legacy… what God does with her.

For Rahab is welcomed into the people. She marries a man called Salmon. They had a son called Boaz. In time he would marry another person who would have seen as an outsider, called Ruth. Interestingly Ruth was a Moabite, another group of women who had a reputation in Israel for sexual promiscuity. But Ruth and Boaz had a son called Obed, who in turn had a son called Jesse, who was the father of King David.

The one who would go on to be revered as their greatest king was the great-great grandson of Rahab. And it all started with her choice to hide some spies. To throw her lot in the God whom she had come to believe was the one who ruled in heaven above and in the earth below.

In years to come, rabbis would be proud to trace their descent from her. She is one of only two women to be named in this list of heroes of the faith. And she was one of four named in the genealogy of Jesus. She was as much an outsider as it was possible to be, but she found herself part of the story of God sending his Son, Jesus, into the world.

James who wrote one of the letters would use her as a model of faith for the way she acted in protecting the spies. When the writer of Hebrews produces a list of great heroes of faith, the only person mentioned in connection with the story of Jericho isn’t Joshua. It’s certainly not the spies. It’s Rahab.

And her legacy continues right down to the present day. Google Rahab and if you get through the Bible references you will come to charities working with people in the sex industries especially the exploited the trafficked and those fighting cycles of abuse, poverty and addiction.

I think we do well not to misrepresent Rahab. I fear it might say more about how we view those in similar situations today than about her. But however she got there what is true is that she wasn’t too broken to encounter the grace, love, the hesed of God. She was given a fresh start.

As I touch this down, I mentioned that Rahab is mentioned three times in the New Testament. Both Hebrews and James refer to her as Rahab the prostitute.

But there is one place she is not – and that is the genealogy of Jesus. And I think that is beautiful. Because it was not what she had been in the past that was important. It was what God did with her and through her that mattered.

And the same is true of all of us. We might not think of ourselves in her place, and by the grace of God I hope we never find ourselves there. But we’re all a mix of good and bad, with our better moments and our mixed motives. We all stand in need of the same grace that was available to Rahab. And it is available to us. The blood of Jesus runs down through history like a scarlet thread connecting us all to the God who loves us and gave himself for us. He is still the God of heaven above and the earth below. He is still the God whose love extends to each one of us.

And if there is one thing we can take from Rahab it is that his grace can reach us, whatever we’ve done, however we got there, however we’ve been hurt and who has done it to us.

For in Jesus our past need not define the future.

His love, grace, mercy and hesed can do a much better job.

Community Bible Experience (Covenant History): Shema (Revisited)

Scripture: Deuteronomy 6: 1-12, 20-25

Video of sermon here (from 40 minutes 30)

Audio of sermon here

During World War 2, thousands of Jewish parents, on the run from Nazis, hid their children in farms, convents and monasteries all round Europe. When the war ended, and the Nazis were defeated, Rabbi Eliezer Silver headed up the search to find them and return them to their families if at all possible. Unfortunately, this wasn’t easy, as for very good reasons, record keeping was kept to a minimum. And those who took them in didn’t go out of their way to publicise it.

Still, Rabbi Silver had a promising lead that a monastery in southern France had taken in some Jewish children. But the priest in charge was of little help, declaring that to his knowledge, all their children were Christians. Quite a few had fairly obviously German names: Schwartz, Kaufmann, Schneider, but they could be either Jewish or Gentile.

He went into a classroom and scanned their little faces. Many had lived there since they were toddlers. They may have had little or no memory of life before the monastery, How could he know if any of them were from Jewish families?

Then slowly and softly he began to sing…

Sh’ma Y’Israel ,Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad

As he did so, a handful of little faces lit up, and tiny voices around the room began to join in. They recognized these ancient words from their bedtime prayers, and from early memories of mothers and fathers reciting them each morning and evening, during their own prayers. It had become embedded in them and even after several years, much of their lives, when other memories had gone, this was still there. It was almost part of them. Just as Moses hoped these words would, as he stood on the edge of Canaan and gave his farewell address to the Hebrew people.

We’re continuing our time in the Covenant History section of the Community Bible Experience. It’s our second week with Moses. Last week we met him at the burning bush, where God called him to lead the Children of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. We’re jumping on few decades and skipping a large chunk of story.

This nation which left Egypt camp at the edge of Canaan preparing to enter it. Virtually none of them would remember Egypt. Most of those who took part in that Exodus never personally made it to the Promised Land. But Moses is desperate to keep the story alive, so he retells them their story. In the chapter previous to the one we read, he reiterated what we know as the Ten Commandments.

Today’s reading is perhaps the central statement of faith in the Old Testament and remains the central tenet or creed of Judaism.

If you had to summarise the Christian faith in a few words, you’d be hard pushed to top Jesus Christ is Lord.

Islam has There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

Judaism has the Sh’ma. Hear, O Israel, The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. It’s named after the first word in Hebrew.

Sh’ma.

Hear.

This is recited by pious Jews every morning and evening. Children learn it as their very first words. They hope to recite them with their last breath. It is the bottom line of their faith.

But it is not central just for Jews. Let’s remember that Jesus himself was thoroughly Jewish. He kept their religious festivals, ate kosher, observed sabbath and at least twice a day Jesus would have prayed this prayer. And when he was asked what the most important commandment was, what was the central teaching of his faith he pointed to this…

Here is the most important commandment. Moses said, ‘Israel, listen to me. The Lord is our God. The Lord alone. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your mind and with all your strength.’ And here is the second one. ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ There is no commandment more important than these. (Mark 12: 28-31)

Out of curiosity, how many of you were part of this church when I first arrived here as your minister?

Well, you might remember way back in 2014, the very first series of sermons I shared with you was on these words. You might not remember anything of the sermons themselves, but there is one thing you might remember. Back then we did something I’m going to invite you to do again for old times sake.

I invite you to stand and we’re going to say these words together. We’ll do the first line in Hebrew, then we’ll recite it in English.

Shema Y’Israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad

I can’t remember if we did this last time, but I’ll invite you do it this time. Put your hand in the air, with your little finger extended. Imagine you’re a posh person having a cup of tea. We say this with our hand in the air and the finger extended.

This itself is a statement of faith. It’s saying that our God had more power in his little finger than Pharaoh had in the Exodus story. Our God is greater, more powerful than all the nations of the world. We’re saying our God is mighty to save, he will speak the final word and his word will be good, for our good, for the good of his creation.

So here we go…

Shema Y’Israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone

Love the Lord your God

With all your heart and with all your soul,

And with all your strength

And love your neighbour as yourself

It can seem a strange thing to command love. However it is perhaps better expressed as a yearning, an aching and a longing. Oh, that you would love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. It’s not so much a command from some sort of cosmic sky dictator saying love me or else! It is about pledging loyalty to a divine loving presence who wants you to know life. True life. It’s an invitation to embrace the life you were created to live, in close, intimate, loving relationship with God. To borrow from what Jesus would say many years later, if we did this our yoke would be easier and our burden lighter.

This is not the command of a harsh, distant autocrat. We’re not called to honour or love God simply cos he exists or wants his ego stroked. He may have more power in his little finger than all the nations on earth, but he cannot force them to respond appropriately to his love.

We’re called to love because he first loved us. We’re called to love because of God’s unfailing goodness. When Moses presents the people with things like the Ten Commandments, or the Shema, God is not described in abstract theological terms. It’s rooted in terms of his saving acts. Not based on some deep myths, but on real things that have happened in this world, in this history.

They had been slaves in Egypt. They had been rescued and brought up to their own land, which they were now on the verge of entering. God had been with them and provided for them all the way. God was worthy of their love and loyalty because he had shown it to them.

They were to pass it on to their children. To keep this memory, this story alive. In time their children would ask why do we keep these laws?

And the answer wasn’t just because! It wasn’t they had to keep God on side, or he’s zap them. No, they gave themselves to God, because this God has given himself to us. He has shown his faithfulness and goodness. He has displayed his integrity, committed love and power to give us new life.

How much more for us who live on the other side of the coming of Jesus? Who have as our founding story a God who loved us so much that he became one of us, entered our world, dwelt among us, put a face on the invisible God, showed us what God was like. And even when we rejected him, he never stopped loving us. He gave his life for us, breathed forgiveness over us, rose from the dead and offers his own life to us? As John, one of Jesus earliest followers put it – we love because he first loved us. And because we love him, we keep his commands, we live as he calls us.

Today, although we’ll move around the passage, for the time left I want to focus mainly on a single word.

Shema.

What does it mean? Well, you might think Andrew, it’s hear. You told us a few minutes ago. Except there’s a little more to it than that.

How many words do you think there are in the English language. Anyone want to guess? Depends who you ask. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests there are 170,000 words in current use and a further 47,000 obsolete words. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, includes some 470,000 entries.

Ancient Hebrew only had around 8,400. Ok, so we have words for a lot of things that did not exist then. First Century Israel didn’t exactly need a word for television or i-phone. But translating from Hebrew is not a precise science.  We might have several different words which are valid translations of a Hebrew word. Normally they are linked, but not always in a really obvious way.

Often we go looking for the one right answer. Say when we hear the parables of Jesus we think there is one precise meaning or message we need to learn from it. We fail to realise how recent a way of reading scripture that is.

For most of the time people have approached scripture like turning a gemstone. The idea is that the Bible is like a diamond with many faces and as you read and re-read it in different contexts new light hits it and you see its beauty all over again.

So in Hebrew and later Jewish culture they would debate what if it means this, what if it means that, how does that shed new light on the text?

The idea is to allow the text to speak to us and shape us. The idea is not to master the scriptures, but to allow the scriptures to master us.

So this word Shema. It can mean hear.

But it can also mean Listen.

Or Listen up.

There’s a sense in which it means, draw close, listen to this. You don’t want to miss this.

Thing is we know we can hear but not really hear! Listen but not really listen.

I mean does anyone have a favourite song they would be prepared to share? A song that you associate with a particular time, place, emotion… Or maybe it’s a book, a flim, a piece of art… but a song is probably the most direct analogy.

This song it really gets you. Then you play it to someone else and they say yeh, pretty good. Or meh. It’s alright. They’ve heard it, but they’ve not really heard it. It’s not really penetrated more deeply.

It’s that deeper type of listening that Shema calls us to. The idea is not to just let it bounce off the ear drum. But to let it soak in. To allow it to marinade in our soul, to allow it to affect us at a deeper level.

Jesus talked about different types of soil. The good soil was the soil were it goes deep, takes root and produces results beyond our understanding.

The idea is that these words are really central to all of life. We internalise them. It’s like when you learn a new skill, you start by going through each step and for a while you’re really conscious of each step in the process. But after a while it becomes part of you. You’re doing it without really thinking about it.

There is some really powerful imagery here.

It talks of binding these words on your hands, your foreheads, your doorframes. And it is true that within Judaism this can be quite literal. In fact we do some of this at the manse. At the front door of the manse we have a mezuzah. It’s a little old and faded now – we’ve had it more than 20 years. We got in the Jewish quarter of Prague. It’s been with us in numerous houses. But the little metal box is hollow and inside it is a little scroll and the words on that scroll are the Shema. In one sense it is designed to a statement to the world that in this house the LORD is our God, the LORD alone. It’s also a reminder that whether you are at home or way, wherever you are, God is with you and he alone is to be your God.

They speak of binding these words to your foreheads and hands. Again some Jewish people take this words quite literally. They will wear what are called Tefillin, or Phylacteries, small black boxes with little scrolls of parchment in them which they wear in prayer on their foreheads and wrists, again containing a little scroll with the Shema.

Thing is there is no actual word for the forehead in Deuteronomy 6 in Hebrew. It’s just a close translation. The sense is between the eyes. A good way of expressing this might be let this be the lens or the filter through which you view the world. It’s like if you hold a coloured cellophane sheet in front of your eyes, it affects how you see everything.

Why do you think you’d bind it on your hand? It affects how you act, or what you do. Imagine if every time you went to act, it was there before you. Is what I am about to do reflecting that I love God with all my heart, soul and strength and my neighbour as myself?

Imagine how different our world would be wherever we are, we looked on the world through the lens of loving God with all our heart, soul and strength and neighbour as ourselves, and that that became the measure against which all our actions where to be judged. Where it has become so internalised we don’t have to stop and think about it. We don’t have to wrestle with our consciences. Its become our natural way of being. That was what Moses was driving at. That’s the call Jesus places on those who would come follow him.

The Shema is to be a movement. From the head, to the heart and on into our actions. And it’s as important for the world today as it ever was.

Here’s a question for you. What would you say is the greatest issue facing the world today?

Some might say cost of living, human rights, climate change, inequality, the threat of war in numerous places, nuclear proliferation. The philosopher and Christian writer saw it slightly differently. He said

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who.. are identified as Christians will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners of  Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live to the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of existence.

It’s another way of saying imagine all those who claim to love God truly lived as if these words were ever before them, had made that 18 inch journey from head to heart and penetrated there, so that wherever we are, home or away, it is ever before us, the lens through which we view the world, and the motive and measure against which all we do is to be judged?

Will we listen, will we hear, will we Shema but not just hear, but will we shaped and transformed by what we hear?

Our world is not short of information – we’re swamped by it and can’t keep up with it. But we’re dreadfully short on transformation. We can know so much about Jesus and live a life that bears no resemblance to him. We could ace the test, but fail the practical.

We can hear what God wants from us, but not do it. James says if we’re like that we’re like one who looks at their face in a mirror and, after looking at themselves, goes away and immediately forgets what they look like. It’s the one who listens out for what God wants from us and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.

Jesus said that the wise are those ears his  words of mine and puts them into practice. They’re like those who build their house on the rock. And when the storms of life come, it does not fall, because it has a solid foundation.

Of course there are all sorts of reasons to want to avoid hearing at that deeper level. The fear of what it will involve; the doubt that it is truly of God. The anxiety that you’ll look like a fool. The sheer inconvenience of it. Maybe, but not now.

But the one who calls us to it is one who has shown he can be trusted. It showed it to the Israelites in the Exodus as he rescued them from slavery to Egypt. He shows it to us in a new Exodus, a liberation for us from sin or death. The God who calls us to live this way empowers us to follow. He will not leave us alone to do it. He has committed himself to us. Given himself for us. And calls us to love as he first loved us. And he says to us…

Listen up, Harrow Baptist. Listen, hear, take it to heart.

The Lord is Our God, the Lord Alone

Oh that we would love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength and that we would love our neighbour as ourselves.

May this make the journey from your head to your heart. May it be with you and before you, wherever you do.

May it be the lens through which you look on the world and the measure by which you determine your actions. And may God be with you every step of the way. And may you discover all that God can do in you and through you.

Community Bible Experience (Covenant History): Moses, the Reluctant Deliverer

Scripture: Exodus 3: 1 – 4: 23

Video of the sermon here (from 41:30)

Audio of the sermon here

John Gardner, the American writer and author of The Art of Fiction once said that in the whole world of literature there are really only two plots:

            A person goes on a journey or an adventure.

            A stranger comes to town.

The journey might be more metaphorical than physical. It might be a journey of forgiveness, or an inner journey of growth.

The stranger might not necessarily be a person, it could be a thing, an animal, a disease even.

Provided you’re not too literal about it most stories will fit into one or other category. Films, TV, novels are full of variations on these themes.

Another way we might break these plots down is as follows:

            A person goes looking for trouble.

            Trouble comes looking for a person.

The first is the hero who sets out to slay the dragon, the detective driven by their quest to solve that murder, the person who is determined to overcome any obstacle to achieve their dream. Such a person really embraces the idea of being the hero. Presented with the opportunity for growth, or change, they grab it.

The other is the reluctant hero, the one who starts out quite happy with their life as it is, thank you very much. They’d rather get a knight to slay the dragon, leave solving that murder to the police – it’s their job and, besides, murderers are dangerous. Normally circumstances drive them to act. Trouble comes looking for them. Something happens and they’re forced to deal with the consequences like it or not. Presented with the opportunity for growth or change, normally at first, they’ll hide or resist.

You might remember earlier this year we started on the Covenant History section of the Community Bible Experience. We looked at Genesis stories of Noah and the ark, and Joseph, his brothers, his dreams and his rise to power in Egypt.

Underlying all this is a promise that God had made to a man called Abram…

The Lord had said to Abram,

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s family.

Go to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation.

And I will bless you.
I will make your name great.

You will be a blessing to others.

I will bless those who bless you.
I will put a curse on anyone who puts a curse on you.
All nations on earth will be blessed because of you.”            (Genesis 12: 1-3)

Abram’s story probably fits the person sets off on an adventure type story.

The covenant history section is about how that promise of blessing a family or a people, not for the sake of it, but for the purpose of blessing the whole world is worked out in the stories of different people and groups. Some are the driven, eager, willing heroes. Others, most actually, turn out to be the more reluctant type. All of them are flawed. But that’s a matter for another day.

For the next two weeks we’ll be with a character who takes up a sizeable chunk of our Bibles. Moses.

Moses is one of THE key figures in the Bible. Only two people are mentioned more often that Moses. Want to guess who they are? Jesus (1281); David (971); Moses (803).

The first 5 books of the Bible are sometimes called The Books of Moses and Exodus to Deuteronomy largely tell his story.

But going back to the types of stories, which type of hero is Moses?

Is he the willing, eager adventurer, who goes looking for trouble?

Or is he the reluctant hero who finds trouble comes looking for him?

It depends where you look. Moses was born at a bad time. When we left the story a while back, Jacob had taken his family down to Egypt. His son Joseph had been sold into slavery in Egypt, but risen to prominence, becoming one of the leading figures in the land, second only to Pharaoh. He saved not just Egypt but his own people in a time of famine. He made up with his brothers and the whole family went down to Egypt.

But by the time Moses is born, that’s all forgotten. Abraham’s descendants are multiplying, this gets noticed and the Pharaoh at the start of Exodus views them as a threat. So, Egypt enslaves them and sets them to forced labour.

But still they multiply. So, Pharoah orders that all male Hebrew babies be put to death.

Moses’ mother refuses to comply. First, she tries to hide him, then, when that starts to prove too difficult, she places him in a basket on the Nile where he is found and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. He is raised in the palace with his own mother as a nurse.

Time passes, Israel are still enslaved, and one day Moses sees an Egyptian mistreat a Hebrew slave. At this point Moses is the person who goes looking for trouble. He is very much the willing saviour and goes charging in and kills the Egyptian. But later, when he tries to settle a dispute between two slaves, he realises this has not made him as popular as he thought. Whether he’s just seen as the posh boy at the palace, or another reason, his people are not rallying to him. They say are you going to kill us like you killed that Egyptian?

He realises what he’s done has become known and he runs into hiding. He goes to Midian, gets married and settles down. Meanwhile the people of Israel still suffer in slavery. It’s like God has completely forgotten them and all the promises made in Genesis have been forgotten.  Moses started off as very much the willing hero, ready for the fight. But he fails miserably. That’s where we picked up the story.

Moses has become a shepherd. He’s looking after his father in law’s sheep. It’s a fairly barren territory, and his job largely involves scouting for spots where there may be some decent pasture, even for a short period.

Then one day he is out and something odd happens. He sees a bush on fire.

In one sense that is probably not that uncommon a sight. It’s a hot dry environment. That’s quite literally what Horeb means – dry, barren, desolate. The kind of place where bushes might catch fire.

But Moses notices something odd… the bush is not burning up. So, he decides to take a closer look.

Moses could easily have walked on by. Reflecting on this story, rabbis have sometimes asked if others had passed that bush and didn’t notice?

Some have speculated that this is not the first time Moses has been this way and the bush had been burning for a long time waiting for Moses to notice it. Who knows?

In later years he might have thought he’d have saved himself a lot of trouble if he ignored it. His life would have been very different.

That dryness, barrenness, desolation, I wonder if that says as much about Moses and where he finds himself emotionally as well as physically? Does the environment reflect his mood?

Was there a sense in which from birth he’d been considered special. The way he was spared, the kind of upbringing he had… surely, he had some kind of purpose?

But time passed and here he was, alone, far from his family and people. At the end of chapter 2 he has a son and calls him Gershom, because he is an outsider in a strange land.

But even in that place of dryness, barrenness, desolation God had not forgotten him. In fact, that becomes the place where God encounters him.

When God sees he’s got his attention, that Moses has stopped to look, God speaks to him from within the bush.

Moses, Moses!

Moses replies Here I am.

Do not come any closer! And take off your sandals! The place you are standing on is holy ground.

By now Moses would quite reasonably have been asking what on earth is going on? Who is this? The answer comes quickly….

I’m the God of your father. I’m the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob.

Moses tries to look away. But God calls him in.

And it’s here we learn two things about God. One is that he is interested in the world. He cares about the world. Particularly those on the wrong end of power in this world. And he is active in the world.

I wonder if, when Moses heard God say who he was, if he was thinking about time you showed up. Where have you been all this time. All those promises you made way back when. So how come their descendants are being treated so badly? Have you no idea what’s going on? Don’t you care?

If so, he gets his answer…

I have seen how my people are suffering in Egypt. I have heard them cry out because of their slave drivers. I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to save them from the Egyptians…

God does care about the world he created. God sees injustice. God hears the cry on those on the wrong end of oppression. One of the things we encounter a lot in scripture, God’s generally not on the side of the powerful. God cares about those on the wrong end.

God cares about injustice – whoever the perpetrator is.

God cares for the victim – whoever they are.

We can’t just plonk there are then into here and now. If we do that, we bypass so much else of what is revealed in scripture – and most importantly we bypass Jesus and all he teaches us.

This is important as we consider some of the other bits we’ll touch on in coming weeks. We need to tread carefully. We always should, but even more so in the current climate. If we are using scripture to demonise or dehumanise one group of people today and absolve another, we’re not using it well. We’re abusing it.

So, God is a God who cares about and is active in the world. But the passage says something else about God. He works through people. And in this case, it is Moses.

Look at all the active verbs here…

I have seen.

I have heard.

I am concerned.

So, I have come down.

I will bring them up.

I will bring them into

Israel’s cry for help has reached me.

I have seen how the Egyptians treat them.

There is no doubt this is God’s project, God’s rescue and deliverance. Maybe Moses thought about time. But God’s not finished…

So now, GO!

I am sending YOU to Pharaoh.

I want YOU to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.  

I have come down… now you go.

People sometimes wonder why, with so much evil in the world God doesn’t do something about it. I’m not offering this as a complete answer. But it could it in part be because human partners are harder to come by? How many are keen, willing eager adventurers seeking trouble. Far more of us are the more reluctant hero, who find trouble coming looking for us.

I’m sure God could do it all by himself. May God could just zap the bad guys, but aside from the question of where he would stop, it would appear God chooses not to work that way. God placed the care of his world in the hands of people and God takes that seriously. God doesn’t give us the opportunity to abdicate responsibility.

There was a statement by the 4^th/5^th century theologian Augustine which sums up so much of the Biblical narrative….

Without God we cannot, without us God will not.

We’re pursuing a story of God’s longings to bless the world, God’s purposes, God at work in the world. And without God so many endeavours fail horribly. So often in the narrative characters, including the biggest heroes, try to take matters into their own hands and invariably it ends badly. Without God we cannot.

But equally without us God will not. God works through people who will join in with what he is doing.

But far more often than not, God winds up drafting those who will do it. Amongst the lead characters in the Bible there are very few volunteers. There are very few eager heroes. Very few of the people who go looking for trouble. Ther are a lot more reluctant heroes – the ones whom trouble comes looking for them.

And that’s the category Moses fits into. We sometimes think of him as a great towering hero of the Old Testament. I mean, in Hollywood he’s played by Charlton Heston! But in reality, he is insecure, uncertain, unprepared, unworthy, un-whatever-else-you-care-to-mention. He needs tons of reassurance. CS Lewis once described himself as the world’s most reluctant convert. Moses would beg to differ.

Maybe there had been a time when Moses believed in himself, when he would have been the eager adventurer. Failure and years in the wilderness had hit him hard.

He sees himself as a nobody. Who is he that he should go to Pharaoh and demand the release of his people?

He lacked knowledge. He wasn’t smart or wise enough. What if they ask me what your name is? What do I say then? What if they ask awkward questions? I’ll look really stupid.

And never mind Pharaoh. What if the people won’t listen to him? It’s a question of effectiveness. They hadn’t followed him before. And back then they at least probably had some idea who he was. What chance has he got now, when he’s been away so long no-one will have a clue who he is?

And he doesn’t have the skill set. He’s never been eloquent. He’s never been able to think on his feet and offer the clever response.

And then we get to the heart of it. Could you not just send someone else?

I’m not sure you have to be thinking in terms of great big spiritual endeavours to acknowledge that many of us feel like this faced with many of the challenges of life. We might not have all his hang ups, but I suspect that one of the reasons this story is preserved for us and one of the reasons it resonates is because many of us recognise something of ourselves in Moses.

In many ways his reluctance is a good sign. People who desperately want power don’t always use it well. In many ways it is better to be led by someone who has to be persuaded to do it. The certainly seem to be God’s choices more often than not. There are very few eager heroes in the Bible. Certainly, amongst those who make it.

But Moses does have two things on his side. He has a curiosity. He could have easily just passed by. Bushes catch fire in the wilderness all the time. What was so special this time? But he turned aside to look. Woody Allen once said 80% of success is showing up. There are times the life of faith can be difficult. We can go through dry, barren spells when we feel forgotten, useless, disillusioned, disappointed. God can feel distant and we can become apathetic about things like prayer that connect us to God. The main reason Moses encountered God was because he turned aside to look.

And ultimately he was honest with God. Even when the answer is But I don’t wanna! It doesn’t mean God lets him off the hook, but God can handle his honesty.

But as I touch this down, we return to the God at the centre of the story. It’s interesting how God deals with Moses and his objections. As Moses protests, I’m not able to do this, God doesn’t say don’t be silly, of course you are. God doesn’t say It doesn’t matter. God doesn’t say Don’t worry – I don’t call the equipped, I equip the called. (Another well-worn preachers’ phrase. Not saying it’s untrue, but it’s not what’s going on here).

God doesn’t just zap Moses with all he needs to do the job. He doesn’t alter Moses’ self-awareness so that he felt competent. God doesn’t alter any circumstances that made it easier than it looked. God doesn’t tell him to stop being so defeatist and start thinking positively. God didn’t even guarantee him quick success. Quite the opposite in some ways.

God simply offered him his presence and asked him to trust that would be enough. What matters is not what Moses was or is, but that God is able. God’s promise is always to the inadequate. Cos none of us get it right all the time. And none of us can do it on our own.

Without God we cannot. Without us God will not.

God’s self-revelation is important. He was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then, but his promises still stood and weren’t forgotten. They had all faced seemingly impossible odds, but God had brought them through. God was still the God who calls into the unknown, keeps his promises, however unlikely they seem, sticks with those who tried and failed and can take even unpromising material (I mean, there is not a lot of go and do likewise to be found in Jacob) and work through them.

Then he reveals himself as I am who I am. I will be who I will be. In every place, every circumstance, he will be. Nothing we face will catch him out. He never burns out, never reaches the end of his resources, he will be there, he will be with Moses (and with us), being whatever is necessary in different contexts to achieve what he has promised.

He is still the God who overcomes the powerful. No more powerfully do we see that than in Jesus, who goes to the cross and endures the worst the world can offer yet emerges in Resurrection.

But without us he will not.

Whether or not we’re the hero who goes looking for trouble, it will come looking for us. But even if we turn out to be reluctant heroes, even if we feel we don’t have the resources to face it, even if we’ve tried and failed before, God will not give up on us. We will never be left alone. He will be what he will be. And if we trust him, ultimately, he will be enough. 

When I Survey 2: The Ultimate Revelation of God

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25

Video of sermon here (from 47 minutes 20)

Audio of sermon here

There’s an old story about a young boy doing a drawing in school one day. His teacher came round and asked what he was drawing. He said I’m doing a picture of God.

But how? asked the teacher. Nobody knows what God looks like!

They will when I’m finished came the reply.

I notice that it is a few weeks in a row now that we’ve sung When I Survey The Wondrous Cross. It’s not just lack of imagination, or bad record keeping on my part! But during this Lent season that’s what I am trying to do. To survey the cross. To look closely at it.

Not the piece of wood. There was nothing special about that. But to consider what it means, what it tells us? Why, of all the tens of thousands of people who were brutally executed in that fashion, do we remember this one, thousands of years later, thousands of miles away?

As I said last time, it’s a question people have wrestled with for almost 2000 years. There is no way it can be condensed to a single meaning. Last time I gave you abig list. I won’t go through it all again. But the one we focussed on then was forgiveness and revelation.

This week and next, I’m going to look at two linked ideas – what the cross tells us about God… and what it reveals about us. Next week I’ll turn to us. But today I want to focus on the cross as The Ultimate Revelation of God, or Who God is.

I say it often enough to you, for Christians the answer to the question what is God like is Jesus. God is like Jesus, God has always been like Jesus, God always will be like Jesus. If your picture of God is not like Jesus, it’s a good indicator it’s not God.

But this morning I want to go further. The moment when God is most revealed in Jesus is at the cross. That’s why Paul says, when he turned up in Corinth, he decided to talk about nothing but Christ Crucified. If you really wanted to see what God is like, look at the cross.

In some ways you could say the cross has been a victim of it’s own success. Centuries of reflection on it, of forming jewellery in the shape of the cross, of putting them on the walls of churches can disguise the fact that when Paul preached this message it would have sounding like the mad ravings of a modern conspiracy theorist.

There’s a passage in the Old Testament book, which Christians went to more than any other to explain the cross. It’s found in Isaiah 53. It’s a passage which describes a suffering servant who was despised and rejected, who was wounded and crushed for us. And it opened with a question. Who has believed our message?

Well if you were claiming this was about God, the short answer to that question would have been no-one. Nobody would have talked this way. Nobody’s God would have behaved like that. I love how the Message puts verse 23…

Jews treat this [the cross] like an anti-miracle. And Greeks pass it off as absurd.

Jews and Greeks had very different worldviews and theology. But they did agree on one thing. If Jesus was who Paul said he was, he wouldn’t have ended up on a cross!

I mean, look at this bit of graffiti, found in Rome. It is reckoned that this might be the oldest surviving depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus. And it’s not reverent. There is a figure on the cross with the body of a man and the head of an ass. Written underneath is in inscription Alexamenos worships his ‘god’.

To say this was God was just ludicrous. Nonsense. That was how the majority felt.

It’s worth spending a few minutes thinking about the world into which Paul spoke those words. How did they answer the question what is God like?

Everyone got the sense of the transcendence of God. That God was over and above us. But for most, gods were aloof. The Greek philosopher Plutarch suggested it was an insult to involve God in human affairs. The idea of a God who suffered was a contradiction in terms. Gods were detached and remote.

Plutarch is not a million miles from what many will say today. They might think there could be a God, but he’s got a great big universe to run, why would he be interested in us, our in life here?

The Roman philosopher Celsus, who was a big critic of Christianity, put it this way….
I make no new statement, but say what has been long settled. God is good, and beautiful, and blessed, and that in the best and most beautiful degree. But if he come down among men, he must undergo a change, and a change from good to evil, from virtue to vice, from happiness to misery, and from best to worst. Who, then, would make choice of such a change? It is the nature of a mortal, indeed, to undergo change and remoulding, but of an immortal to remain the same and unaltered. God, then, could not admit of such a change.

Basically he’s saying that for all sorts of reasons, the very idea of God coming down and dwelling amongst us, was just foolish talk. Nonsense. No god would behave like that. And note, he doesn’t think he’s being controversial. He suggests his thought is not new. It’s been long settled. It’s what everyone thinks. We might say it’s common knowledge.

So the notion that God would not only be born amongst us in human form, grow into adulthood virtually unrecognised, to go about doing good and healing all kinds of sickness, But then go on to surrender his life into the hands of unscrupulous men, dying a death like crucifixion, reserved for the lowest of criminals – that was way beyond what anyone expected. That’s not what gods were like.

Historically people believed in lots of gods and goddesses. But normally they had one supreme, fairly unreachable God.

In Egypt it was Ra, the sun god. He had the body of a human and the head of a falcon. He’s got weapons in his hand. He is on a boat because, he is connected with the Nile. There’s all sorts of imagery in here. The Egyptians also had Osiris, Isis, Horus and others, who maybe got more attention. But Ra was above them all and was largely unreachable.

In Babylon it was Marduk, he was sometimes known as Bel, which means God of wisdom. He was the God of thunder. Thunder gods were often seen as important, maybe they made the most noise! This is a relief found in Nineveh in the 1800s, depicting Marduk defeating Tiamat, the chaos monster, to create the world. And you can see he is well armed. (He also seems to be wearing a watch, which is odd, but there you go! Maybe he’s big on being punctual!) But it gives you the sense of strength and power.

In Persia it was Ahura Mazda. The god of Japanese cars. He is offering the ring of supreme authority to their ruler, because he has the power to do so.

Then in Greece it was Zeus. The Romans renamed the Greek gods and he became Jupiter. Again he’s the God of thunder. He is often depicted as holding a thunderbolt. Often he is depicted with one hand pointing accusingly, and the other holding a lightning bolt.

Ever heard someone say if they went into a church it’d probably be struck by lightning? Zeus just might be the god they’re really thinking of.

In short, the gods of the ancient world where powerful, violent, dangerous, they evoked fear. If you asked this ancient world what God was like, this was their answer.
At best they were indifferent. At worst they were angry and vindictive.

But within that world there was very odd group of people. The Hebrews. When I say odd, I mean they worshipped one god. Just one. Everyone else had loads. They had just the one. And they had no image of this God. In fact they are forbidden from making any image of this God.

They had a temple. Nothing unusual about that. There were temples the world over. It was where you put the image of your god. But Israel had no such image. When he dedicated the temple, Solomon said Yahweh dwells in thick darkness, which was a poetic way of saying we can’t see God to know what he is like. He is a God who is hidden.

In AD70 when the Romans conquered Jerusalem they sacked the Jewish temple. They broke into the Holy of Holies, a place so sacred that only the Jewish High Priest ever set eyes on it, and they expected to find all sorts of treasures. But when they got there it was empty. At one time there had been the ark of the covenant. But that had been lost centuries beforehand and nothing took its place. There was only an empty space symbolising the presence of God.

But although they didn’t have an image, they had the Word. And that is where Jesus was a gamechanger. Suddenly, in Jesus, God got a face. Hidden though he was, God still longed to be known. Down through the ages, in all sorts of ways had been reaching out to us.

But then, contrary to all expectation, God did precisely what Celsus had said no God would do. He became one of us. As John would describe it, the Word became flesh.
God moved into the neighbourhood. Jesus made the invisible visible. He was described as the image of the invisible God. The exact representation or imprint of God’s very being.

It began in shocking enough fashion, in the manger. But it reached its climax at the cross. God is like Jesus, God has always been like Jesus, God always will be like Jesus, but nowhere do we see God more clearly than when we look at that man on the cross.

It’s a whole different shocking answer to the question what is God like? Other God’s carried weapons. All Jesus had in his hands were nails.

In Jesus we encounter a God who would rather lay down his own life than destroy his enemies.

There is another vital line in our reading this morning. Verse 21: God was pleased to save the world this way.

That doesn’t just mean God was happy. It was God’s fixed, sovereign choice to give himself this way. God is radically free. He is not bound by expectations or beliefs about how God would or should act. He didn’t care too much for what Plutarch, Celsus or anyone else thought. This was God’s way to save the world. The cross wasn’t just a tragic accident in our history. This was God most fully revealing what God is like.

Jews treat this [the cross] like an anti-miracle. And Greeks pass it off as absurd.

Paul says the opposite. Christ is the miracle and wisdom of God rolled into one.

God chooses to save the world, not with power as we understand it, but in the seemingly shameful, powerless death of Jesus. The cross lays down a challenge to any human ideas of wisdom and power. We think of power in terms of domination, coercion and control. The world’s view of power thrives under rivalry and competition.
Jesus confronts all those postures of power and prestige and overthrows it to establish an upside down kingdom. Human power put Jesus on the cross and he exposed how utterly bankrupt it is. The cross is where the one who is supposedly being shamed and humiliated, made the last and the least, is actually being crowned as the world’s true king.

We can have big ideas about what God is like and how God ought to behave. But it is Christ crucified that we truly see what God is truly like.

That God is not just out there, over and above us. God has become one of us. Far from it being an insult or a contradiction for God to involve himself in the life of the world, God gets right down into the mess, he is radically engaged with us, deeply and lovingly involved with us in our predicament. Willing to go to such lengths as he stretches out to reach us.

No-one could have predicted it. If they had, nobody would have believed it. It was never something we would come up with for ourselves. But it is only it’s power to work in the lives of those who will trust in him, who will believe it, that will reveal the truth of that to us.

The world has moved on. Ra and Marduk, Ahura Mazda and Zeus are long gone. But for many their understanding of God is the same. Angry, violent, dangerous, retributive, always ready to judge, always demanding to be appeased. Aloof, disinterested, or at least too busy.

But the cross shows a very different God, who gives himself for the life of the world.
Paul’s not just saying that the cross shows that God is more powerful. It’s saying that God’s glory is not in his power to destroy, but to give life. It is his glory to forgive, to die in the name of love.

Jesus is not the world’s true king despite the cross, but because of it. The cross is his throne. He always reigns from the cross. Meekness and Majesty, Manhood and deity, in perfect harmony rolled into one.

I go back to the child at the start of the sermon saying that when he is finished people will know what God is like. As we survey the cross and hear Jesus utter the words It is Finished that is when we know what God is truly like.

Never do we see who God is more clearly that at the cross. For the cross is the ultimate revelation of God. This is what God is truly like.

When I Survey 1: Forgiveness and Reconcilation

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5: 17-21

Video of the sermon here from around 27 minutes

Audio of the sermon here

I don’t know if you watch Richard Osman’s House of Games, but earlier this week there was a question where contestants were asked to identify the symbol most associated with Buddhism.

Anyone know?

It’s the wheel.

Well, if they’d been asked about the symbol most associated with Christianity what do you think they’d have chosen?

Maybe the fish. It was a symbol used by very early Christians, because the Greek word for fish was ICHTHUS, which stood for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. You still sometimes see it on cars driven by Christians, although I always think that requires a high degree of confidence in how you’re going to behave behind the wheel to risk that! I’ve lost count of how often I’ve been in someone’s car, they’ve pulled some sort of dodgy manoeuvre, then said and that’s why I don’t have one of those fish
things.

But chances are it would have been the cross. The cross is one of, if not the, most recognisable symbols in the world. And it is at the heart of the Christian story. Around the world today millions of people will gather in churches and I would venture the vast majority will, at some point, be asked to think of the cross. We’ve just sung about it and will do so again before communion. A few months ago when we were reflecting on the potential change in the church’s logo, one of the features people
considered essential was to include the cross.

In a sense that should strike us as odd. If we’d been in Jerusalem during Passover, sometime around AD30, and if, as the old spiritual asks, we had been there when they crucified our Lord, we would not have assumed that in 2000 years people would be adorning buildings with the cross, wearing crosses round their neck, or singing songs describing it as wondrous. In so far as the cross was a symbol of anything back then, it was a symbol of power and violence, of Caesar and Rome, of the brutal humiliation and torture they could inflict on anyone who dared defy them.

When Paul, the early follower of Jesus who wrote the two letters to Corinthians which appear in our New Testament, first showed up in Corinth, he says he decided to talk about nothing but Christ and Christ crucified. In a city like Corinth, which benefitted greatly from, and strongly supported the empire, that was going to be a tough sell. He knew that Jews would find it offensive, to be told that God had sent their long-awaited Saviour into the world and he’d been crucified. It just didn’t fit with their worldview or expectations.

And, well, Gentiles would have just thought he was talking nonsense. Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for the lowest of the low. Not people worthy of reverence or even worship!

Yet today, as I say, it is not just one of the most recognisable symbols in the world. It is deeply revered.

But why? Lots of people were crucified. At least three on the day Jesus died. One estimate suggests that between 200BC and 337AD, when crucifixion was effectively abolished, up to 150,000 people were crucified in Roman controlled territories. In 73BC during a rebellion sparked by Spartacus, 6,000 were crucified in a single day.

Interestingly, despite what Hollywood tells us, Spartacus wasn’t one of them. He died in battle.

So why this one?

Why does the horrific death of a Jewish itinerant teacher, on the fringes of town, on the edge of a great big empire, have significance for the whole world?

Well, not for itself. There’s nothing wondrous about the piece of wood. It’s because of the one who was crucified, who was nailed to a cross. What it meant and what he achieved.

That’s the question we’re going to think about over the next few weeks I am with you.

What does this mean?

That’s a question people have wrestled pretty much since it happened, or at least pretty much fromthe moment a few days later when Jesus emerged from the grave. A while ago I listened to a talk by a writer called Brian Zahnd, and he came up with a whole host of meanings…

It’s the place where God is most completely revealed
It’s where God expresses solidarity with human suffering
It’s where God, in Jesus, conquers death and defeats Satan
It’s the supreme demonstration of God’s love
It’s the coronation of the world’s true king
It’s the enduring model for our discipleship…

I could go on. He had at least a dozen. I’m not even sure I understood them all. You’ll be glad to know I’m not going to try to cover them all today!

But in this season of Lent, as we prepare to reflect on the Easter story, on the cross and resurrection, I’m going to look, over a few Sundays, starting today, at 3 of them.

Today I want to start with the one with which the cross is probably most identified.

Forgiveness and reconciliation.

It’s there in our reading this morning. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.

When we look at the cross we are looking at the moment when all the sin of the world is forgiven. Our four Gospels report seven things Jesus says from the cross. And one of them, according to Luke, is about forgiveness. As he is crucified Jesus cries Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.

And at one level he is praying for forgiveness for that particular moment. For those who are inflicting that most brutal of tortures on him. For those who have lied and plotted to put him on that cross. For the one who betrayed him and handed him over to his enemies. For the one in whom he had invested so much, but who, at the vital moment, denied even knowing him. For the one who had the power to release him but refused to take ownership of the situation and tried to wash his hands of any responsibility. For those who had mocked, punched, spat at him, beat him and who, even as he was dying, divided his very few possessions between them.

Yes, he was praying for the forgiveness of all of them.

But so much more. It was like all the sin of the world became focussed in a single moment on him and all of it is forgiven.

All forgiveness, past, present and future flows through the cross.

Now there is something we do need to be clear about here. This is not about God the Son changing God the Father’s mind about us. God is not an angry deity, out for revenge because we didn’t do what he told us. As I was preparing this, even some of the stuff I read suggested that Jesus was making it possible for God to forgive us. So if there is one thing you take way from this morning, let it be this…

Jesus is not saving us from God.

There is one phrase in this morning’s reading which it would be very easy to gloss over, but which is very important…

All this is from God!

Sometimes the way the Bible story is presented is that God created us, we sinned and then God had to think up some way to get us out the mess.
Sin was and is not a surprise to God. Sin and its forgiveness was always in the mind of God. There is a passage towards the end of our Bibles in the book of Revelation. It’s a part of the Bible many people avoid altogether because it can be very strange. But in one part it speaks of Jesus as the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

Even before we got here, even before we messed up, God had in mind what he planned to do.

The cross isn’t about God responding to our cries and longings for forgiveness and reconciliation. It is God who takes the initiative. They’re possibly the most famous and most important verses in the Bible… God loved the world so much, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shouldn’t perish, but have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world should be saved.

The primal story of Eden shows that sin and shame cause to hide from God to shy away from approaching God, to consider ourselves unworthy or unacceptable. But in Jesus God still comes looking for us. God looks on us purely with compassion, not wanting to humiliate or judge us, but only to offer us the chance for a fresh start, a new relationship. And to do that God gets right down into the mess with us, that God might lift us back to himself.

Jesus once told his disciples he hadn’t come to fulfil his own will, his own plans or desires, but to do the will of the one who sent him. At the cross Jesus reveals that forgiveness is the will of God.

Jesus does not save us from God. Jesus reveals that God is Saviour.

God does not inflict the cross on Jesus so that he can forgive. God endures the cross in Jesus as God forgives.

The cross is not some sacrifice to appease an angry God. It is God reaching out to embrace a guilty world in love.

At the cross, all the sin of the world is focussed on Jesus.

And it is all forgiven.

At the cross human sin collides with divine love. At the cross we get the answer to the question of which will win. And it turns out not even to be a contest. Jesus absorbs the whole lot and returns it with his forgiveness. Divine love and divine mercy win out.

Grim and awful as the cross was, it was, nevertheless, the greatest expression of God’s love for us, focussed in Jesus.

The Bible never speaks of God being reconciled to us. It’s always about us being reconciled to God. God has never needed to be reconciled to us. He’s always loved us. He has always been for us.

There is no question of an angry God needing to be pacified. The whole process of our salvation is rooted in God and his longing for us to know God’s love.

And the message of the cross is that we can come home. All is already forgiven, even before we ask. Your sin, anything that you shy away from in shame, has no right and no power to keep you from God. And it certainly won’t stop God from loving you.

Jesus beautifully describes this in one of his most-loved stories. The story of the Prodigal Son, or the forgiving father. The father loves the son throughout the whole story. When he is at home, when he liquidates his share of the inheritance and takes off for the far country. When he’s living it up far away, or when he’s down and out amongst the pigs. Or when he starts out on the road towards home.

The son goes through many changes in the story, but the Father never changes. He never stops loving the son and as soon as he sees him afar off, the father hitches up the skirts of his robes and sets off running up the road to greet the son.

We, with thousands of years of being influenced by the Jesus story, can fail to recognise how shocking the story was. No first century patriarch in Israel would have behaved like that. It would have made a real spectacle of himself. Those watching would have thought he was making a disgrace of himself. And for what? A wastrel who basically told his father he wished he were dead.

But the Father doesn’t care. His love for the son outweighs it all.

Does the son receive forgiveness because of his little pre-prepared speech? No.

Does the Father care how desperate the son had to get before he returned home? No.

The father had never stopped loving the Son, never stopped looking out for the son, and all was already forgiven.

God’s posture towards us is not one of anger. God is not like Zeus, ever ready with the thunderbolt. God is not like the Gary Larson cartoon with his finger hovering over the smite button. God is not pointing the accusing finger at us. That’s Satan’s job. God is the one waiting in love to come running towards us to welcome us home in love.

Whatever you think can keep you from God… it’s can’t. It’s already been dealt with. You are already forgiven, even before you ask.

That’s the message God has given us to take into the world. Paul describes us as ambassadors of that message.

It’s something that isn’t immediately obvious to us, but that word had a particular meaning. In the Roman empire there were generally two types of province. Senatorial and Imperial provinces.

Senatorial provinces were generally amongst the longstanding parts of the empire. They were generally peaceful and friendly, easily controlled and placed under the rule of the Senate. Imperial provinces were those who were more reluctant, less peaceful, who resisted Roman rule. They came under the authority of Caesar himself. He sent ambassadors to try to bring ‘peace’, at least as Rome understood it.

That’s the role Paul says we have in that world. To bring a message to world which is hostile to God, resists God and his love, and needs reconciled to God, but which needs to hear the message that we are loved nevertheless. God already loves us. Nothing can stop that…

…but will we live in that love?

For it is here we come to the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness involves one person. Reconciliation involves two. Our sin is already forgiven. But will we accept it? God has never needed reconciled to us. But will we be reconciled to God?

It takes honesty, because it requires that we are prepared to accept that we need it. But if we will accept that, it frees us to turn from all that is wrong in our lives, and stops us living the free, full life Jesus came to bring.

God has never wanted us to live estranged from him. He is always looking on us with love. He wants us to come home and live in relationship with him. And to that end, Jesus went to the cross, absorbed all the sin of the world and pronounced forgiveness over the whole lot.

And this table reminds us of all God was prepared to endure in Jesus that we might come to know that forgiveness and understand just how loved we truly are. His body was broken and his blood shed. And as all the sin of the world converged on him, Jesus absorbed it all and pronounced it forgiven. We can come home. We can be reconciled to God. And when we turn to him, we have nothing to fear.

All that awaits us is an embrace and celebration.

Community Bible Experience (Covenant History) Joseph – With Only God and a Dream

Scripture: Genesis 37-50 esp Genesis 37: 3-11, Genesis 37: 17-28, Genesis 50: 15-21

Video of sermon here

Audio of sermon here

This is a little different from a usual sermon. Here we will retell the story of Joseph, from his perspective, drawing out the key themes of the story.

There I was in a deep, dark pit, thrown in by my jealous brothers. I was scared to death! There was no way out of there. There was nothing to climb with. And I could hear them chatting over their lunch. There was no talk of pulling me out once I’d learned my lesson.

I was just a kid. I knew they hated me, but I never saw this coming. All brothers fight, don’t they? And there was more rivalry in our family than most.

But why would anyone want me dead?

Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I should introduce myself.

My name is Joseph, son of Jacob, sometimes called Israel. You might have heard of me and my amazing technicolour dreamcoat.

But I come from way back. My great-grandfather was Abraham, my grandfather Isaac and my father was Jacob.

We were a family who carried a promise. A promise that God had to us. A promise of a land of our own and that our descendants would be as numerous as the sand of the seashore or as the stars of the sky. But we lived in a time of change and upheaval. That promise seemed a long way off at that time. Our families were shepherds and herdsman. We were always on the move looking for pasture.

I had 10 older brothers. They didn’t care too much for me, but was I bothered?

Probably no. I always considered myself smarter than them.

But that’s exactly what got me into trouble. They were jealous of me. Actually they despised me.

My only sort-of friend among my brothers was Reuben. If not for him, I wouldn’t be here today. He looked out for me as much as he could, more out of loyalty to me father than to me.

Ah yes, my dad. Looking back, my Dad, Jacob, didn’t really help. He favoured me way above them, and everyone knew it. I knew it, they knew it and even the servants knew it. Looking back I can see how that caused some tension in our family.  I wouldn’t really recommend it as a parenting technique. I’m sure none of you would ever make his mistake.

But one day he gave me a stunning jacket to wear! I loved it and wore it proudly. But it caused deep resentment among my brothers. It was a way of flaunting my favoured status with my Dad.

One day I went too far. I told my brothers of a special dream, a dream that for a long time became a nightmare. My dream described my brothers serving me and bowing at my feet.

They were beside themselves. Rage just overtook them. That was when they decided enough was enough. I had to go.

One day as they were out feeding the flocks in Shechem, my Dad sent to check on them. They seized me and wanted to murder me right then and there. But Reuben came to my defence. He convinced them to throw me into the pit.

I must admit, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound much better. But he did intend to return and release me.

So there I was at the bottom of this pit, wondering what’s next.

Have you ever been in a position like that? Scary isn’t it? But then Reuben had chores to attend to, and whilst he was away, a caravan of Midianites, heading for Egypt came by. With Reuben not around to defend me, my brothers sold me as a slave for 20 shekels of silver.

I was terrified. I was only 17! My life was turned upside down.

All I had now was my God and my dream.

I remember thinking I’ll never see my father again. I’ll never sleep in my own bed and who knows what awaits me in Egypt?

The only thing I had to cling to now was God himself. My father had told me stories of how God had proven himself faithful to our family many times, going right back to my great-grandfather Abraham. I knew he was still with me even though it seemed strange that he let all of this happen!

I struggled with anger toward my brothers, it was hard to forgive them, but I knew enough about God to know eventually I would have to.

Over time God helped me overcome it all – but that came in Egypt.

Have you ever moved to a new country? If you have, you know something of what I was about to face as a 17-year-old!

Egypt was full of new experiences. A new language, new culture, new religion, new foods.

Things actually went quite well for a while. Or as well as they could, given I was a slave.

When I was placed on the slave auction, the most humiliating experience you could imagine, I was purchased by a man with power and means. His name was Potiphar; he was a captain in Pharaoh’s army.

I worked hard. Served him, as I would have served God. Then, with God’s blessing, I soon became the overseer of the entire household, earning the respect and favour of Potiphar.

But then as when things were going smoothly, my master’s wife tried to seduce me. I refused her, but she would not stop. Again and again, every time he was away, she would contrive to get me alone, then she tried to seduce me.

Another choice to make. Should I allow this temptation to overcome me, or will I overcome it?

But  I remembered my dream, God’s promises, and my commitment to God.

One day she grabbed at me and I ran from her, but in the process left my cloak behind, as she had torn from me. She kept my garment and showed it to Potiphar when he returned from a business trip.

When Potiphar got the news, I was in deep trouble. All the respect and goodwill I had earned vanished into thin air. Potiphar was furious! The fact that I was thrown into jail rather than killed on the spot suggests Potiphar wasn’t entirely convinced, but it made little difference.  I still went to jail.

No trial, no lawyer for a plea bargain. Do not pass go.  Straight to jail.

My life was turned upside down again, all I had now was my God and my dream. Prisons in ancient Egypt were dreadful places, but yet again there were signs that God was with me, being faithful to me.

I soon gained special favour with the guards. I became the warden’s right hand man. What’s more, the prison to which I was assigned was the place where the King’s prisoners were held. So I made some good social contacts which would come in handy later!

Time passed and Pharaoh became angry with two of his officers, the Baker and Butler. They were thrown in jail too. And because of my position, I was placed in charge of them.

Then one night they both had dreams. They were disturbed and perplexed by the dreams and became sad and depressed, so I asked them what was going on.

Dreams, I know a few things about dreams; sometimes a dream can become a nightmare. So they described their dreams to me. God had given me the ability to understand and interpret dreams, so by God’s grace, I was able to explain the dreams for them.

For one, his dream brought good news. In three days the butler would be released from prison and returned to his job.

But as I say, sometimes dreams can be a nightmare.  The baker was soon to discover that to his cost. In three days he would be dead.

I pleaded with the Butler, clearly and emphatically, remember me when you get out of here. This was my best chance to get out of prison. Otherwise I might be forgotten and just rot away in there forver. And I really thought this guy would come through for me…

But he didn’t. Ever felt let down? I did. I could have become really bitter inside, but God in his grace helped me through it. I knew bitterness wasn’t the answer. God would stay with me. Yet I must confess I didn’t understand what was going on. Still, all I had was my God and my dream.

Two long, grinding years passed and, well, nothing. No help, no freedom, he simply forgot about me. Until, of course, he needed me again.

My life was upside down, but I clung to my God and my dream.

Then, finally the wheels started turning. You see, Pharaoh also had a dream, a dream that no one could interpret. Pharaoh called in all his magicians and wise men, but none of them could interpret the dream.

Suddenly the Butler remembered me, mostly to save his own neck! The Butler spoke to Pharaoh and said something like: I know a chap I met in prison who has an amazing ability to understand dreams, maybe he can help us!

Immediately Pharaoh said: Summon him at once.

I quickly changed into fresh clothes, shaved and washed myself. After all I was appearing before the King!

When Pharaoh related the dream to me I immediately understood it, as God gave me the interpretation. I was careful to tell Pharaoh that I was not a magician, but a servant of the most high God.

The dream went something like this: Seven good years are coming for Egypt, the harvest will be a bumper crop for seven consecutive years, but then there will be seven years of hardship and drought, years of famine. Unless we plan and prepare for them.

Pharaoh listened as I spoke. His mood was sombre as I shared with him what was about to happen in Egypt. While Pharaoh didn’t know my God, the true and living God, he believed everything I said.

While the dream was astounding and incredible, on a personal level, this was the big break I had been hoping and praying for! God had opened a way out of prison for me! Sometimes God really surprises us. Just thinking of Pharaoh’s dream reminded me of my own dream. My life was still upside down, all I had was my God and my dream. But that’s really all I needed!

Then Pharaoh really shocked me! He appointed me as second in command in his kingdom! He took off his signet ring and placed in on my finger. Fine linen clothes were given to me, and a gold chain was placed around my neck.

And then the biggest honour of all. I was given the second chariot to ride in! People started bowing before me and crying out Bow the Knee!

Talk about going from rages to riches! I couldn’t believe it! I went from being virtually powerless to being the second most powerful man in all of Egypt! And at a time when Egypt really was something.

I knew this was God’s doing because he had given me the gift of interpreting dreams. I just didn’t know why. I sensed there was more to come.

I was now the grand old age of 30. 13 years had passed since my brothers sold me as a slave. Much of that time I spent in prison, feeling forsaken. Now by God’s grace I was promoted to the second ranking official in all of Egypt! Pharaoh even presented me with a beautiful wife. Together we had two beautiful sons. We named our first, Manasseh and the second Ephraim. We chose those names because they spoke of how God looked after me in trouble and proved faithful.

These two precious sons meant everything to me when I looked into their faces I saw the grace and the loving care of God. God sure is filled with surprises. My dream was starting to take shape as God showed me over and over again that he was in control. I remembered what had sustained me in earlier years; “When my life was turned upside down, all I had was my God and my dream.” Now by God’s grace my dream was becoming a reality.

In my new responsibilities as second in command, Pharaoh charged me with preparing the entire nation for the seven bad years to come. During the seven good years, I gathered and warehoused as much grain as possible. Storage sites had to be built, workers had to be mobilized. This was a major national campaign to preserve Egypt from famine. I worked long days and long nights.

At the end of the 7-year campaign, we had our survival plan in place. The seven good years ended, and the seven bad years began. We went from boom to bust. The rain stopped falling, the mighty Nile slowed to a trickle, drought began to set in.

The drought was severe in all the surrounding lands too, and people from all the nations came to buy grain from me in Egypt! It took divine wisdom to distribute the grain fairly and justly. But by now I knew a few things about justice.

I suppose I should have realised that what happened next was a possibility. But preparing 7 years ahead for a famine didn’t prepare me for what was to happen next. My father Jacob sent his 10 sons, my ten older, hated brothers to Egypt to buy food.

After all these years, my 10 brothers were standing before me. I recognized them right away. But they didn’t recognize me, after all I was an Egyptian executive now, not some lean, rash Jewish teen.

My mind began to work fast. What to do? Revenge or mercy? They would never know it was me, but God would and I would. I had to help them. I knew what was at stake here. The survival of my people! Now it was all beginning to make sense. Amazing! I began to realise perhaps why God brought me to this place.

But I didn’t know how to break this news to them. I needed to buy time. So to challenge them I spoke roughly and accused them of being spies. They denied it, of course. So I decided to make it interesting. I set up a test of their truthfulness: bring this younger brother you speak of, and I will keep Simeon here until you return. They already felt guilt over their wicked plot to kill and then sell me as a teen. Now this. Reuben spoke to his brothers: Didn’t I tell you God would punish us for what we did to Joseph?

Of course I could understand everything since I knew the language. I had to turn away and weep. So Simeon stayed as insurance. Then I filled their sacks with grain and put their money back in the sacks and sent them off.

When they returned home without Simeon, and now being forced to deliver Benjamin, Jacob was distraught: Joseph is dead. Simeon is in prison in Egypt, now they want Benjamin. It was almost too much for my aging father.

Reuben spoke up I guarantee I’ll bring Benjamin back safely. Jacob said no deal. Stay home. So they did, but the grain came to an end before the famine. They needed more food. So they returned to Egypt.

This time when they arrived I invited them to dine with me. Benjamin was with them. When I saw my beloved younger Benjamin, I had to leave the room to weep, it was too much for me. We ate a meal together for the first time in 13 years! Then I filled their sacks with grain, and I planted a silver cup in Benjamin’s sack.

Of course our security people discovered the stolen property and arrested them and brought them to me immediately. They were apologetic and baffled. I set their punishment: Benjamin is to become my slave. They protested: no, no it will kill our father! At this point I couild take it no longer, so I revealed my identity to my brothers.

Come close to me. I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into slavery. Do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me here before you to preserve life. We have had famine for two years and we have five more years of famine remaining.

God sent me before you to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you who sent me here but God and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

Now bring our father here say to him God has made Joseph lord of all Egypt, come down to me, do not delay. Dwell in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me and your children and your flocks and herds and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are still five years of famine remaining.

Then I simply embraced Benjamin and we wept together. Then I kissed all my brothers and then we talked together for a long while. When Pharaoh heard all this, he supplied carts and animals to journey to Canaan for Jacob and he said the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.

As I reflect upon my life and the dramatic events God brought me through, I can summarize it all this way, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive!

Have you heard the expression, it’s not how you start. It’s how you finish?!

Well I’ve proven that to be true! And God proved himself faithful to me! My dream became reality, although for a while it seemed like one big nightmare that just wouldn’t go away, but God proved faithful.

I have learned to trust him! When my life was turned upside down, all I had was my God and my dream. I discovered that was more than enough! God had a plan and if we stick with him, his plan never fails.

When I was a boy, God gave me a dream. It was actually a promise. And God made good on his promise. I look at my children, I see the power I have in Egypt, I look at my brothers with whom I’m now reconciled and I look at my Father. What a blessing to have a few years with him before he died.

As for my dream that had my family bowing down to me, I now see it as a privilege to serve them and in serving them, I’m really serving my Lord.

Community Bible Experience (Covenant History): Noah – God Needs Only One

Scripture: Genesis 6-9, especially Genesis 6: 9-22 and Genesis 9: 8-17

Video of the sermon here from around 33 minutes.

Audio of the sermon here

It would be fair to say that not many Bible stories capture the imagination like Noah’s ark. David and Goliath, maybe. Joseph with his technicolour dream coat (which, spoiler, we’ll look at in a couple of weeks after the United Service), possibly. 

The story of Noah’s ark intrigues children, theologians, historians, and modern-day ark seekers. Even Marco Polo wrote about seeking the ark.

When I was child there was a children’s TV series called Noah and Nelly who lived with the animals on board the Skylark! Even now you can get children’s toys with Noah’s ark, not just in Christian shops, but in mainstream toy stores. Which is odd, cos it’s quite a dark story and you’d have thought it would cause nightmares!

Two replicas of Noah’s ark exist today. One sea-worthy replica built by Johan Huibers in 2013 is anchored in the Netherlands. The other opened in 2016 in Kentucky.

Noah in the ark was not the only such flood story in the ancient Near East. In one a gang of gods unleashed a catastrophic flood as a personal vendetta against some noisy people who kept them awake at night.

When we read stories from the Bible they can sometimes seem primitive and barbaric, and maybe they are, but we can often fail to put them in the context of the world in which they were written and we might come to see them as a step forward.

The Jewish version of the flood story is found in Genesis 6–9. As we continue our time in The Community Bible Experience that’s where we land today. But looking back over my records I realise this is third time I’ve spoken on this story in little over 2 years. Once was on this Sunday a year ago. And as I prepared, I’m not sure I had a huge amount I wanted to add. So for those with long memories, some of this might sound familiar. But quite a few of you wouldn’t have been around and if you were… well, reinforcement can also be good!

But let’s be honest. The story of Noah is not an easy read. It is a story of salvation, but it also a story of huge judgement and death.

That said, when we see real evil in the world we ask why doesn’t God do something about it? We want it sorted now. And what do we expect that would look like? Noah is a story of what would happen if God ever left us entirely at the mercy of our own folly and evil.

It’s a story of a world that had utterly rejected God and was descending into chaos. Last week we looked at the story of creation and saw that we were invited to be part of the ongoing work of creation. To shape the world so that it is more and more as God intended.  But as we join the story in Chapter 6, it seems very few were taking God up on the invitation. Rather than joining God in his ongoing work of creation, people seem hellbent on destruction. Violence, the very opposite of creativity, fills the earth.

The idea of the world getting so bad that God would be so grieved that he regrets putting us on the earth can be hard to read.

Maybe we need to stretch our imaginations.

I mean, imagine a world where violence is the preferred solution to most problems;

or where racism and prejudice run rampant;

or where people would enslave other human beings;

or where people are valued largely on their ability to produce. Some expendable, others valuable.

Or a world where children are used for sexual pleasure of adults.

Or where the greed and interests of small groups, normally the rich and powerful are given prominence and the more vulnerable get ever more vulnerable…

Yes, it may be difficult to imagine such a world…

Or maybe we just have to switch on the news. 

Imagine how it must feel to be God who invested his image in us, gave us immense power and responsibility, but also gave us free will, and we used it for such destructive ends?

Well, whether we recognise it or not, that’s the backdrop to the Noah story.

We find his story in the early chapters of Genesis. Genesis 6 begins with a story of a world descending into chaos. The whole earth has corrupted its ways.

I used that word chaos quite deliberately. For chaos was precisely what creation had emerged from Last week we looked at Genesis 1 and 2. In the beginning the earth was formless, empty, chaotic. The Spirit hovered over the waters, which in the ancient world was a symbol for chaos.

In the creation story we see God rein back those forces, gathering together the waters so that dry land can emerge. The implication is that on the land at least life will continue so long God holds those forces at bay.

Yet the darkness and chaos are being ushered, welcomed even, back into a world consumed by violence. In the end God gives the world over to what it has chosen. The waters restrained at creation break free. A world so welcoming to darkness and chaos finds itself consumed by them.

But at the same time, there’s another story going on. Just when it looks like we’re ending the end of the road, we find a moment of hope. God hadn’t given up on us. It’s a story of faith.

This is not just the story of a flood. It’s the story of a man. Noah. The story begins This is the account of Noah and his family.

It’s not just a story of massive destruction. Through Noah it becomes a story of rescue and redemption.

It’s a story which reminds us however messed up things are, with God a new future is still possible. With God one person is enough.

Sure, if you believe in a God, you can probably believe that such a God could save the world. And he does.

But how? Through one person who chose a different path, who chose the right path, and because of him what could have been the end opened up to a whole new possibility. With God one person was enough.

It all turns on a couple of verses in Genesis 6.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.

Whilst the rest of the world seemed to be heading towards destruction, Noah was walking a different path, writing a different story. Whilst this seemed an utterly hopeless story of death and destruction, a story of new creation was being written.

But Noah is hardly an obvious choice. He may have been blameless amongst the people of his time, but tradition says that people thought he was mad. He spent forever warning people of the coming flood, but no-one would believe him. They mocked the mad guy with his warnings of coming disaster and his weird boat.

It’s said he was blameless in his time, but he was far from popular. Hebrews says he condemned the world… What does that mean?

It doesn’t mean he was self-righteous, fault-finding, judgemental, went around tutting and saying I told you so.

No, he was just different. His life stood out from those around him. And because of that people didn’t want him around. His life posed a challenge to those around him, because he lived by a different standard.

He refused to be dictated to by the standards of those around him. He was considered extremist, overly idealistic, not quite in the real world.

You know, community can be a powerful thing. We can achieve far more together than we ever can part.

But it has downsides too. Do you know you are less likely to do something heroic when you see yourself as part of a group? When we see ourselves primarily as just part of the group, it can be easy to think that somebody else might do it.

And groupthink can drag us down. People will do things far worse when they see themselves as part of a group than they ever would if they were entirely by themselves.

The life of faith can be lonely. It can mean standing for the right thing, even when no-one else will. Saying this is where I stand. Even if it is lonely. Even if others think I’m mad.

But the world depends on people like that. Pretty much every piece of social progress, stuff that we take for granted, it’s hard won. It starts with one person, one group, who say no to what is considered normal. 

Often they are mocked, disparaged, ridiculed, slandered… sometimes they’re killed.

But they still say no.

And the world moves forward because they did.

Noah was one such person. And because of his no, God could rescue his creation.

Noah was a man whose faith resulted in action. Noah believed in God’s promise, even when it seemed foolish to everyone around him. And he acted.

Yes, disaster was coming, but no-one could really see it. No-one was listening. It wasn’t obvious. But Noah was ready to obey and his faith prompted him to take action. To build an ark to protect his family from a storm nobody believed would ever come. That was the proof of his faith.

You know, sometimes faith is seen presented in such a way that we’re almost telling God what to do. If you had more faith, you’d be healed. If you had more faith, you’d get that job. If you had more faith, you’d solve that problem. But from Noah we see a different angle. There’s one phrase which crops up in his story twice which is very telling. Noah did all that God commanded him.

Even when it seemed like madness.

Even when everyone mocked him.

Noah staked what he had on God’s promise and warning. He believed that God had plans for him, and could be trusted with what he committed to him. Faith isn’t about telling God what to do. Its about trusting in what God wants to do.

But it didn’t come as a one-off. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.

Noah was able to rise to the big occasion because he walked with God in the everyday.

Have you ever watched somebody do something and though I could have done that better. I mean a real professional. A chef, a painter, a sportsman. But you know, ultimately you probably couldn’t.

You could give me Rory McIlroys clubs, caddie, his money even, and I still wouldn’t make that big putt. Because you know, those are not the things of a moment. They are the end product of a lifetime spent preparing for it.

We might think when the crunch moment comes we would be the person we wanted to be, the person we were meant to be, the person who would be what God called us to be.

But it’s not a given. And we’re very unlikely to prove trustworthy in the big moment, if we’re not doing in in the everyday.

Noah was who God needed him to be when the big moment came, because he had lived a life of what Eugene Peterson called Long Obedience in the One Direction. 

Even when others thought he was mad. Even when no-one listened.

Even as everyone around him seemed hellbent on destruction, Noah chose a different path, the right path, Noah chose to be the person God called him to be. And even in the midst of the greatest of messes, because of the obedience of the one man, Covenant History continues.

Actually we’re going to find this time and again in this series. In the midst of messiness, one person or one group steps up to keep the story going.

You know, I doubt we’ll be asked to build a boat to save humanity. Trust me, if I build it, don’t get on it!!

But each of us, in our own way is called to be God’s instrument in ushering in a different future.

I came across this cartoon last week. One person says to another, aren’t you terrified of what 2024 could be like. Everything is so messed up.

But the other says I think it will bring flowers?

Really? says the first one. Why?

Because I’m planting flowers, comes the reply.

In a world of so much despair, to offer a glimmer of hope.

In a world of so much destruction, to be bearers of a God of rescue and redemption, who is writing a different story. Building a different Kingdom. And a God who writes that story through a people who will allow a new story to be written.

That’s what means to be people of God’s covenant, of God’s promise. Of God’s great love for the world.

All too often we can find ourselves asking who we are and what can we do? Well, those are the perfect qualifications. It’s the norm of faith. The world has always turned on one person who would say no to what everyone else considered ‘normal’; Who would listen to that voice guiding them towards something new that God wants to bring about.

It needn’t be anything huge. It always starts small. With a simple act of obedience and trust. But a long obedience in a single direction in the small things means that when needed we are already the people we need to be, because it’s who we’ve been becoming all along.

In a world of so much despair, Noah reminds us that there is always the possibility of a new story being written. For God hasn’t given up on us. And all he needs is one.

It’s the story of Jesus, the story we are called to follow. The story of the one through whom we are reconciled to God.

He has committed himself to us. And invites us to step into relationship with him.

Oh, we will face the storms of life. No-one escapes them. They will come and go and sometimes we will doubt and question. And won’t be able to trace the rainbow in every cloud.

But sometimes we do.

And in those moments, take note and rejoice.

Remember the covenant.

A covenant of hope that God has not finished, this too shall pass.

He will not give up and will never let us go. And if we join him, well, all he needs is one.

Community Bible Experience (Covenant History) Introduction: The Importance of Beginning In The Beginning

Scripture: Genesis 1

Video of the sermon here (From around 34 minutes 30)

Audio of the sermon here

Towards the end of last year, we followed a series of sermons based on the New Testament section of the Community Bible Experience. Some of us followed the daily reading pattern and met on Zoom to discuss what we had been reading too.

Do you remember in the Covid crisis the government had those three short statements across the front of the lectern from which the various people were speaking… STAY AT HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVES. Later is changed to STAY ALERT. CONTROL THE VIRUS. SAVE LIVES.

Well the Community Bible Experience has a similar three word motto. READ BIG. READ REAL. READ TOGETHER. And I would encourage you to read at least the bits that are going to form the basis of the talks each week. For example, this coming week, even if you’re not going to follow the other stuff, try reading the story of Noah. Genesis 6-9.

But this READ BIG. It stems from the fact that the Bible is a huge book, with lots of different parts, in lots of different styles and genres. Because underlying the whole Bible is a story. So when we approach any individual part of the Bible I always try to keep the ‘big story’ in mind.

But like any story I think it is important to start in the right place. At school I was told that a good story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Whoever told me that was right. Today, although we will jump around a bit, that’s where we’ll begin.  In the beginning of the Bible story.

That should seem fairly obvious, but actually it is not always where Christians often really do begin and, as I hope to show later, changing where we do begin makes a bigger difference to the Christian message than we realise.

Before I begin … a warning.

This is not a science/faith, creation/evolution talk.  I want to place these opening words of Genesis within the Bible’s bigger story and also examine a little of why it is important to begin the Christian story here.

In the beginning…

The Bible begins with a rhythmic poem. That’s not always obvious, but it’s a poem. It comes with repeated refrains of ‘and God said’ or ‘and there evening and there was morning, the xth day,’ ‘And God saw that it was good.’

It’s a poem, perhaps even a song. People can get a bit hung up on what slots into what day, but there are a couple of things I want to draw out, which on the face of it might seem somewhat minor but are actually quite important for understanding where the Bible is going with the story and why it begins here.

The first thing I want to point out is to look at verse 11. ‘Then God said let the land produce vegetation.’ And we turn to verse 12 ‘the land produced vegetation.’ Another word might be sprout. Don’t blow me away with the collective ‘wow.’ 

But here right at the start this is telling us something about God and his creation. God gives to his creation, the capacity to create more things. So we might say God created all the plants and trees, or we might also say God created plants and trees and enabled them to produce more plants and trees.

The effect is the same, but it’s subtly different.

That subtle difference creates a tension which runs right through the story, right down to our present day. Our responsibility v God’s responsibility.

If you go too far one way, you get God the watchmaker, who just winds up the universe and lets it go, but takes no further active part.

Go too far the other way, it’s God who does everything, any participation by his creation, including ourselves, is really just an illusion. Ultimately whatever happens it can be made to be God’s fault.

Often I find people can be really good at holding both those extremes at the same time.

But however we look at it, the picture of creation offered by Genesis is of something that is progressing, it is going somewhere. It is not fixed and static.

That shouldn’t be earth shattering to us. If you take a photo of your garden every day for a month and never do any work to it, over time it changes. That’s the picture that Genesis gives of creation – it is dynamic – it is going somewhere.

That’s important for the story that follows. But it’s often misunderstood. One suggestion made about creation and Eden in particular is that it was perfect. That’s not what the Bible says. The words God uses for his creation are good and very good. Not perfect.

We should be careful of using the word perfect is because this is a Hebrew story, and how we understand the word perfect is quite different from the Hebrew understanding. 

We import things into the story that aren’t actually there. We hear the word perfect and come up with the idea of something that cannot be improved upon. That tends towards something that is static and unchanging.

In Hebrew the word perfect meant ‘fit for purpose’ or ‘suitable for the job.’ A hammer is perfect for that job of nailing things together, for example.

So we’ve got this creation that’s going somewhere and in some sense is actually not complete or perfect. That’s important for the rest of the story.

Because into this picture God plants people, made in God’s own image. In Genesis 1 it is just human beings, in Genesis 2, they get names… Adam and Eve.

And they are there for a purpose. They are given work to do. In Genesis 1 this work includes filling the earth and subduing it and to rule over the creation. In Genesis 2 Adam is placed in the garden to work it and take care of it. Men have hid down allotments ever since.

The idea behind both ruling and the caring is the same. It is about responsible stewardship.

There’s an important word in Genesis 1. Verse 28. Fill the earth and subdue it.  Subdue! Creation is going somewhere, but it’s direction needs to be shaped. It’s like God has created this world that is going somewhere, then he creates us and says ‘here’s a world, do something with it. Co-create with me.’

Two other little things before I move on. At this stage in the story there might not be perfection, but there is harmony. Things are the way God intends them to be. Hebrew had a word for that. Shalom. You hear me talk about that enough. The English equivalent is peace, but it means so much more than the absence of trouble. A good shorthand way of understanding shalom is to understand it as things being as God intends.

One component of that is hierarchy. God creating us, to look after creation, but to do so in relationship with him. One reason why God’s assessment of creation moves from good to very good upon the creation of people is that that link in the hierarchy has been completed. Not only has God provided us with a creation with the capacity to keep creating more, he has provided us to shape the direction in which that creation goes.

Yet as we mentioned this morning, we can barely get through a week without some news story or other pointing to the damage we have done and suggesting that the direction we are taking things is not the right one.

If God’s shalom is to be maintained that God-human-creation hierarchy needs to be respected. When humans forget their accountability to God for the world he has created, abuse of the world God gave us is the inevitable result. Or we can go the other way, and become reliant on something created for our meaning or fulfilment, rather than seeking it in God.

When people become addicted to a substance or an activity, the hierarchy is disrupted. When they seek meaning and fulfilment in money, or sex, or possessions or work we find ourselves worshipping something that was created rather than God.

Again, the Bible has a word for that. Idolatry.

That’s why idolatry is right up there at the top of the 10 commandments. It’s not that God is a petty tyrant. He’s not saying love me and no-one else, or else I’ll burn you forever. It’s just that God has designed us and our world to operate in this hierarchy. When we allow this hierarchy to get messed up, we and our creation suffer.

The final thing to say about Genesis 1 & 2 is that earth and heaven are the same place. God’s will is already being done completely here on earth. And God’s dwelling is here, on earth, where he walks with his creation, in the cool of the evening in the garden.

That is where the Christian story begins. But look at how the story ends. And for that purpose I want to turn to Revelation 21.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Move on to Revelation 22.  Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations… The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever.

Notice. All the bits and pieces of the Genesis story I highlighted are all there.

The new creation is dynamic one, endowed with the capacity to create more. We have the trees producing their fruit every month.

It’s a picture of harmony where people rule over the earth, but in hierarchy under the throne of God and of the lamb.

What’s more we have earth and heaven coming together once more and God making his home once more amongst his people.

All of the key components of that first creation from the Genesis story, all present and correct at the end in Revelation.

That’s the beginning and the end of story, but if that was all there was the Bible would be a little on the thin side. Those through the Bible in a year things would be so much easier! Nobody would flounder in the middle of Leviticus.

But of course we know there is that whopping great chunk in the middle.

It begins in Genesis 3 with a disruption in the harmony and the hierarchy of Genesis 1&2. God not only sets them in the garden to work it, but defines the boundaries. This is what you mustn’t do. They violate the boundary and the result is disruption in the relationship with God.  The first thing they do is hide themselves in the garden. And when God comes down to the garden in the evening he says the strangest thing ‘where are you?’

Are we to take from that that Almighty God can’t find two naked people in a garden? Or is God saying something else? Is he saying ‘I’ve told you the way to exercise your role in creation, but you’ve chosen to do it another way. Where’s that got you? Where are you now? Is that working for you?’

And all the rest of the big chunk of the Bible is about God trying to get his creation back to where he intended it to be, to bring heaven and earth back together again. To get us back to where it began.

That’s the story as Jesus understood it. He sums it up in Matthew 19:28, when he talks of the renewal of all things.

Or when Peter is defending himself in the temple courts he speaks about God’s plan to restore everything.

Or when Paul writes to the Colossians and talks of Jesus dying on the cross to reconcile all things.

Again, I know, I say this a lot. It’s important.

I love how the message puts it – God fixing all the broken, dislocated people and things in the universe. This I want to suggest to you is the story of the middle. The journey from creation to new creation.

I want to give you a few thoughts on where that understanding of the Bible takes us.

We have a dynamic creation. God has plans for this creation. It’s going somewhere. People are given responsibility for taking that creation in a direction where there things are as God intended, in a way which sustains or takes it towards the shalom in our relations with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the created order in which he placed us.

When you have all that it gives us a more complete understanding of just what sin is. The question to ask is ‘is there any area where I am taking things in the wrong direction?’ away from what God intended?

You might know that the word sin was originally an archery term about an arrow which dropped too early and fell short of the target. So, are there ways in which my or our action or inaction or even my thoughts fall short of what God intended for us and his world?

But the story of the big chunk in the middle is a missionary story, about a missionary God. It’s an invitation to recognise that God has come looking for us, and to hear the voice of God saying ‘you’ve gone your own way… where’s it got you? Where are you now? Is that working for you?’

That voice does not come through to destroy you or humiliate you. It comes to offer us the chance to notice those areas of our lives that do fall short, and name them, or to use religious speak confession.

It also comes with the offer to turn back, to return to what God intended for you – or again to use religious speak – repent.

But it’s important when you tell that story to begin and end in the right place. Many of the ways in which the Gospel story is presented, effectively start in Genesis 3.

One way to recognise a Gospel that starts in Genesis 3 is when it becomes basically a message of dealing with the sin problem. What Dallas Willard calls the Gospel of Sin Management.

You get bumper stickers and badges that say Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. I’m not saying that sin is unimportant, nor am I saying that forgiveness is unnecessary, but the message of me and my sin falls a long way short of the a message of a God who is restoring all things, renewing all things, taking all the broken and dislocated pieces of his world and putting them back together again.

But there is something else a Genesis 3 Gospel does. Something that is often subtle but extremely common is that material stuff and rebellion kind of get mixed up. Yes the Bible talks about human rebellion against God, and in ways which we feel, but are beyond my grasp, they have an impact on creation. Creation itself, Paul says, is in bondage.

But that’s not the same thing as saying creation itself is bad. If I were to kidnap John and tie him to a chair, we might say that John was in bondage but it wouldn’t make John a criminal.

But Gospels which begin in Genesis 3 often adopt a negative posture towards creation. I feel guilty saying this because I really like the person who said this, but I once heard a talk in which the speaker talked about our world said if they were Jesus they would not have wanted to come to, and I quote ‘this crap.’

Hold on a second – that’s the world God loves.

We get materiality bad, spiritual good. One logical outcome of pursuing that path is the separation of spiritual things from the rest of life.

Another is that it makes the ultimate aim of the story is to escape. To go somewhere else. To fly, fly, away. The soul escapes the material body and most people’s picture of heaven is disembodied.

It results in some weird views about what eternal life with God is and will be like. I say weird because some people have this idea of heaven as like a church service that goes on forever.

Can you imagine Shine, Jesus, Shine for the millionth time? I say weird, because I find it hard to describe that as heaven.

It also leaves us questioning why we take care of this planet when it’s not going to matter anyway.

In extreme form it even becomes the sooner we trash this place the sooner Jesus will have to come back. And it doesn’t matter – creation is bad. Destined to be destroyed.

Whereas start in Genesis 1 & 2 and we see how heaven and earth belong together. One day God will bring them back together. What we’ve got now matters.

That takes on a whole new complexion.

The Resurrection of Jesus is not disembodied and although for now Jesus might be ascended into heaven, his Resurrection was bodily and took place in the midst of this creation.

He was recognisable, but different. The new creation God plans for his world transforms this creation, but takes place within it.

Jesus takes all the death and disruption in the midst of creation on himself on the cross, leaves it in the grave and emerges from the tomb reaffirming his creation as good.

That also transforms how we understand mission. If we see the Gospel as an invitation to join God in restoring the shalom he intended for his creation, questions like should we be preaching to save souls or feeding the hungry, become irrelevant. The answer is both. A full Gospel requires both.

Whatever we do that takes our lives or our world towards God’s intended future won’t be lost as we abandon here and shove off to another world. God has invited us to share in his work of new creation and somehow or other, we don’t know how, he will make room for what we do, within it.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God blessed the world and saw that it was good. God loved the world and gave himself for it. And one day God will restore all things, renew all things, reconcile all things, take all the broken and dislocated parts of his world and put it back together again.

That’s the story of the Bible.

It begins in Genesis 1.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

That’s how it was in beginning.

That’s how it’s now.

That’s how it ever will be.

Unto Us Part 4: Prince of Peace

Scripture: Isaiah 9:6

Video of the sermon here (from 32 minutes)

Audio of the sermon here

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet; the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along; the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Those are the opening verses of a poem written by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day 1863. But cheery as those words sound, the backdrop to the poem was anything but. It was the time of American Civil War. Two years previously, Longfellow’s wife, to whom he was absolutely devoted, was killed in a fire. Then in 1863 his son signed up to fight in the civil war, against his father’s wishes. A month before Longfellow wrote the poem, this son was severely wounded. Although he recovered, his career as a soldier was finished.

The darker backdrop of the civil war is evident in some of the verses not often sung in the songs…

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound; The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn; The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then comes perhaps the darkest verse…
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong, And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

The disparity between the bells pealing about Peace on Earth at a time when his country was at war, was all too evident. Even worse, it was two groups who claimed to be Christian fighting one another, and one of them wanted to keep another

group of fellow believers enslaved. How can they possibly talk of Peace on Earth?

And 160 years on, as we approach Christmas, that same disparity is very evident. This year, owing to the conflict in Gaza, Christmas festivities in Bethlehem have been cancelled. No tree, no lights, no nativity scene. It brings into sharp conflict what we claim to be celebrating and what so many are experiencing in our world in 2023. 

We’ve been looking at a verse in Isaiah, which is often read at Christian time and which the earliest Christians applied to the coming of Jesus into the world…

Unto us a child is born

Unto us a Son is given…

And he shall be called

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

On the night of Jesus birth the angels announced Jesus birth and sang

Glory to God, in highest heaven

And on earth, peace to those on whom God’s favour rests

No wonder those first Christians saw, in Jesus, the promised Prince of Peace.

As we’ve worked through this list of titles, we’ve seen how they build on one another, creating a composite picture of what Jesus came to be for us. Jesus is not just a wonderful counsellor. He has real wisdom which can guide us through life or make the right decisions. But he’s also a Mighty God, with the power to do what he has promised, and strengthen us to follow him. But that power is balanced with mercy and compassion. He is an everlasting Father.

But he is not just interested in making me feel good. Jesus comes as the latest stage of a mission God first announced to Abraham that through him and his descendants that all the world would be blessed. He comes to bring peace where these is none. To be our Prince of Peace.

But of the 4 titles assigned to Jesus, perhaps this last one, Prince of Peace, can feel the farthest away. A number of years ago the rock band, U2, released a song called Peace on Earth, which said…

We hear it every Christmas time

But hope and history don’t rhyme

So what’s it worth?

This peace on earth

Our age may well echo Longfellow’s view that

Hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Peace does not appear to be our natural state. In researching this I came across a few stats… well, I used to muck about with numbers before I was a minister. You can take the boy of out being a stato, but you can’t take the stato out of the boy.

In the last 3400 years of human history, there have been a total of 268 years of peace. This is about 8% of the time. I have to admit, I thought even that felt optimistic. It defines peace purely in terms of absence of war and a war has to be a sustained conflict which takes at least 1000 lives. Which for a fair bit of history would have been a sizeable proportion of a group of people.

You may or may not know this but we are living in a period known as The Long Peace or The Pax Americana. It has been ongoing since 1945, driven by nuclear deterrence, international trade, globalisation, increased democracy, efforts to reduce poverty, rise in the empowerment of women, increased education and quality of life…

But in truth it’s not just the name which displays a certain amount of western bias. It is really just describing war between richer countries against each other, not even taking into account when they go to war against what are classed as smaller, poorer countries.

The starker truth is that it estimated that since the end of World War 2, there have been 26 days of world peace.  Not even a February worth!

But even that only includes wars between countries. When you start to introduce warfare within countries, that number can fall to 3, or arguably even zero.

In truth leaders haven’t always been defined in terms of their commitment to peace. Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great. There is something new and positive about describing a coming ruler as the Prince of Peace. But what was Isaiah talking about?

Well, there were three components to this idea of peace.

The first was disarmament. It wasn’t enough just to refrain from using weapons. They should be put beyond use. This stands in stark contrast to our world, where, what we think of as peace is at least partly determined by the knowledge that our missiles can be launched before their missiles can land. What’s called mutually assured destruction.

There’s a song in the play Hamilton in which George III, dismayed by the US War of Independence, expresses his belief that the American colonies will come crawling back to him when their rebellion is crushed. The song is called You’ll Be Back and it contains the line

Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!

Disarmament hasn’t always been easy. I remember the Northern Ireland peace process, when one of the stumbling blocks was the IRA decommissioning their weapons. To them, disarming was tantamount to admitting defeat. To the other side it was a sign that they were committed to the peace process. How could you negotiate with someone who had weapons and could just return to war.

It’s an idea that is at the heart of the Isaiah passage we’ve been sharing. In the previous verse Isaiah speaks of

every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.  

Earlier, in a prophecy which was later also shared by Micah spoke of how, under God’s rule, nations will

beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

It’s not just the lack of the absence of violence, but the threat of it, the inclination towards it.

The second aspect of peace is reconciliation. Where enemies are turned into friends. It’s often said that one of the things that cause the Treaty of Versailles to fail was that it was more intent on punishing Germany than achieving peace and it paved the way for World War 2. Real peace in times turns enemies to friends.

But the final aspect of this peace is the Hebrew word Shalom. Not just an absence of trouble, but a situation where people are not left behind, all can thrive and benefit.

How often have I shown you this drawing of the network of relations we live within, with relations with God, others, creation, ourselves. God is in the business of renewing, restoring, reconciling all things. Real peace is when these relations are all working as God intended. That is Shalom. That is what Jesus came to do and be for the world.

We are used to identifying the term Gospel with the story of Jesus. We have 4 of them in our Bibles. But at the term Jesus was born the word Gospel was had different connotations and was associated with someone else.

Caesar Augustus.

There has been an inscription taken from a building in what is now Turkey which says Divine Augustus Caesar, son of a god, Imperator of land and sea, the benefactor and saviour of the whole world, has brought you peace!

He was the one who, at that time, considered himself the Son of God, The Prince of Peace, The Saviour of the World.

But it was peace on the end of a sword.

You could embrace that peace, or…

Well, there is plenty of wood around. We can always make another cross.

Jesus couldn’t be more different. He refused to live by the sword. You might say he was following what God had been in the business of doing right from the beginning. There’s the very primal story, way back in Genesis, of the flood.

After the flood, God seals a promise with Noah never to destroy the earth with such a flood again. And how does he seal it? With a rainbow. God sets his bow in the sky. We might say God hangs up his bow. It is pointing upwards towards the sky. In a way it is God disarming himself, so the reconciliation can begin.

He comes not in power, but in vulnerability. In his life he models the love and reconciliation of God. It’s interesting that in the Bible you will never read of God being reconciled to us. Reconciliation has never been an issue for God. We see this in the story of the prodigal son. The son comes to the end of his rope and starts to think of some speech that might get past the old man. But the father is having none of it. Even when the son is a long way off, the father hitches up his skirts and disgraces himself by running along the road to greet him. Before the son has got midway through his little pre-prepared speech the father is ordering new shoes, robe, jewellery and fatted calf.

When they come to arrest Jesus one of the disciples strikes out and Jesus responds by telling them to put it away. Do you think I cannot call on my Father for more than twelve legions of angels? Instead, in all he faces, Jesus refuses the way of retaliation. As he is being crucified he prays Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing!  When one of the prisoners on the cross asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his Kingdom, Jesus replies Today you will be with me in paradise.

And it’s interesting how Paul describes that moment. Jesus disarmed the powers and the authorities, making a public spectacle of them and triumphing over them at the cross.

Elsewhere he says Whilst we were still God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his son. And because of that we have peace with God. Jesus is our Prince of Peace.

In the face of God, his love and his plans and purposes to bless his creation and bring peace, even their very worst was powerless. Jesus remained obedient to God, retained his passion for creation all the way to death…

And even there he wasn’t beyond the reach of God, who reached into the grave and raised him to new life. God’s victory is assured. We wait, but it is assured. God is in the business of ultimately bringing Shalom to his creation.

Going back to the poem with which I started, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, there is one more verse I never mentioned…

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,; The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

It can be hard to hear and believe that in the period of waiting; in a world were wrong is doing pretty well, thank you very much. Right does not look much like prevailing. But it is God’s promise that it will.

But as we wait, one final thing. One final trip to a passage we have turned to alongside Isaiah, pretty much constantly. John 14. The night of his arrest, when Jesus tells his disciples he is going away and they are disturbed. He opens Don’t let your hearts be troubled. And he needed to say that cos their hearts were troubled, with good reason. He says Don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. And later in that same speech he says Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

The peace we so often crave is an absence of trouble. But the prince of Peace also offers us a peace that can sustain us through the storms. It’s a peace with god, to know we are loved and nothing can separate us from that love. It is beyond understanding, because it comes not from us, but by God’s presence with us in the Holy Spirit.

And how do we access it? Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Talk to God. Tell him those things which disturb your peace. Nothing is too big for him to handle, and nothing is too small for him to care about. You are loved with an everlasting love and your Heavenly Father wants you to live in trusting relationship with himself.

He loved you so much that he emptied himself and came amongst us, born as a baby, far from home, to an occupied people om the edge of empire. As we eat bread and drink wine, we remember he does not stay in the manger, but goes to the cross, because of his great passion for the world, his commitment to rebuild all that sin and death had taken from us.

But God raised him from the dead and if we trust in him God promises to send his Holy Spirit to us, to be with us always.

So may you come to know him as a Wonderful Counsellor, one who is able to guide you along right paths.

May you come to know him as your Mighty God, the one who strengthens you to follow and has the power to bring to completion all he wants to do in your life.

May you come to know him as an Everlasting Father, who watches over you, cares for you, protects you and sustains you in all of life.

And may you come to know him as your Prince of Peace, who can offer you a peace beyond your understanding, and is ion the business of renewing, reconciling and redeeming all things.

For it is not just to people in 800BC, or in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago ago he came.

Unto us, Unto you, Unto me, a child is born

Unto us, Unto you, Unto me, a son is given

And if we trust him he promises to be

Our Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace

May you come to know him as all of that, this Christmas and into your future.

Unto Us Part 3: Everlasting Father

Scripture: Isaiah 9:6

Video of the sermon here

Audio of the sermon here

I have no real memory of my father. He died quite suddenly, in tragic circumstances, when I was about 16 months old. In truth I didn’t really know what a father was until I went to school. I remember being taught to write and the teacher putting a sentence on the board for us to copy. I like to help my daddy, it said. She then said Andrew, you can write I like to help my uncle. I remember thinking it odd that I should have to write something different. What I actually wrote was I like to help my daddy uncle and I couldn’t understand why the teacher put a great big strike through the word daddy. Amazing the stuff that sticks with you.

When my father died, my mum was in her early-to-mid 30s, with 4 kids aged between 12 and 16 months. My father was the main breadwinner in our family. It definitely had an impact economically on us as I grew up. As the youngest I was probably less aware of that than some of the others.

But I do know that there was a verse in the Bible that my mum took to heart at the time. It’s found in Psalm 68:5

A father to the fatherless.

A defender of widows

Is God in his holy habitation.

A father to the fatherless. A defender of widows. And you know, as I look back, I do see God has been faithful to that promise, certainly in regard to my life. Some of the people he has chosen to look out for me have been rather surprising, but I truly believe they did that.

Did I always recognise it, or appreciate it? No. Just as I didn’t always recognise or appreciate what anyone who has cared for me was doing. Often I still don’t Often it is only as we look back we gain an understanding or appreciation of God’s workings in our lives.

Sometimes people have talked to me about how terrible it must be to have no real memory of my father. But equally I know others who have known their fathers and whose relationship with them has not been great.

The name Jesus used for God was Father and he encouraged his followers to do the same. But not everyone finds it easy to think of God in those terms.

But rather than dispense with it, I think let’s reclaim it. Even if our earthly fathers haven’t been good, we recognise the failing. If we think about it, we can probably identify things that ought to have been different. Why should we let the bad example define the term, rather than the good?

But even if you are, or were, blessed with a great earthly father, even the best are only on loan. I may have lost my father tragically young, and I know, sadly, it doesn’t always work out this way, but the natural order of things is that however good or bad our fathers are, we will normally, I emphasise normally, outlive them. There will come a time when they are not there.

Even the best are not everlasting.

That leads us into the third of the terms Isaiah uses to announce a coming king. One whom later early Christians recognised was fulfilled in Jesus.

I’ve suggested these terms build on one another to offer a fully rounded picture of what God wants to be for us…

He’s a wonderful counsellor. He has real wisdom which can guide us through life or make the right decisions.

But what good is wisdom if you don’t have the power or strength to carry it out? There are times we need not just wise counsel from God. We need him to be a Mighty God.

But power is not a good thing per se. It’s no good if the one wielding that power lacks compassion, simply does not care about us. And that is what this title is talking to us about.

Isaiah looks for one who will be a Wonderful Counsellor, a Mighty God and an Everlasting Father.

But what was Isaiah talking about?

Well, in some ways it is best to go back and look at the outcome of the absence of such a figure. If we turn back a few pages in the Bible, to Isaiah 1, we come across a verse of what God wants the people and their leaders to do…

Isaiah is sick of the hypocritical religion on his day. He even speaks of God hating their festivals, of not wanting to pay attention to them. Cos their worship and their lives don’t match. Then he says this…

Learn to do right

Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

In fact in the Old Testament there are three groups of people who are often grouped together. A quick internet search told me they’re combined at least 18 times. The fatherless, the widow and the alien, or the foreigner. People are urged to look out and look after these groups. Not to take advantage of them or abuse them.

Why?

Because in this society they were the most vulnerable. They were the most likely to fall through the cracks. Foreigners didn’t even have the most basic of rights. Fatherless and widows had no-one to ensure they were looked after.

This was a very patriarchal society but the father was the central figure in the family. If something happened to him it could be disastrous. He was the source of income. Without him, families could be left destitute. Mothers could be forced into prostitution. Children could wind up enslaved or starve.

Kings or rulers liked to present themselves as Fathers of a nation. The title suggested their care for their people, the benevolence of their rule. That they cared for their people. That they would protect their people.

But the reality was very different. They wanted wise counsel, but if their kings knew the right path, they certainly didn’t follow it.

They needed a mighty God, but their kings were just powerless vassals, toys of whoever happened to the top dog in their region.

And they had been utterly uncaring.

Samuel had warned them what would happen when they asked for a king. He had said,  Here’s what kings will expect from you. They will take your son and make them serve with his chariots and horses. Others will have to plow his fields and gather his crops. Still others will have to make weapons of war and parts for his chariots. They’ll take your daughters: Some to make perfume;  others to cook and bake. They’ll take your best fields and vineyards and olive groves, a tenth of your grain and a tenth of your grapes and give it to their officials  and attendants.  They’ll take your servants, your best cattle and donkeys; a tenth of your sheep and goats. You yourselves will become his slaves.  When that time comes, you will cry out for help because of the king you have chosen.

And you know, that’s what happened. Even Solomon, supposedly the architect of the golden age was a tyrant to live under. When he died the people sent a delegation to Rehoboam his son to ask him to ease up on them. Sadly he refused.

Years later Jesus would tell his disciples what kings were like. He said The kings of the Gentiles Lord it over their people, and like to call themselves benefactors.

But the same had been true of their own kings.Every now and then one would come along and break the mould, but they were the exception, not the rule. The notion of people using power to benefit themselves and their cronies… it’s not new.

The promise to be an Everlasting Father was an assurance that God would be the one who would watch out for them when they were vulnerable. God has a special place in his heart for the vulnerable.

In our own age we are aware of two ideas of fatherhood. One sense we might call the paternity test sense. The father was the one who provided the sperm which fertilised the egg. If in years to come a paternity test was taken it would link you back to that father, whether or not he ever played any part in your life, whether or not you met him.

Then there is a the sense in which they are actively involved in your life, they care for you, they provide for you, they protect you. None of these exclusive to fathers but you get the idea.

That’s the idea that Isaiah is speaking of. A God who is interested in you, loves you, cares for you.

We live in an age which is quite sceptical of power and authority, not without reason. But the truth is whoever we look to, to be there for us when we are at our weakest, at some point they will let us down.

Even the best of them.

Even with the best of intentions.

And even the best of them are passing. Our time is limited. We are not everlasting. Those we rely on to love us, care for us, protect us, they will go. In the end death will take them away. At this time of year we may feel their absence most keenly.

But not God. He has committed himself to us and he will never let us go.

In his life Jesus modelled God’s love and care for the vulnerable. Perhaps the thing he was most criticised for was that he was too much on their side. He was too friendly with those others looked down.

But in his death and resurrection it gains a whole new dimension. It’s a passage we have had cause to turn to before in this series. John 14. It was the night Jesus was arrested and he was talking to the disciples about how he was going to be leaving and they were upset.

And he had told them he would send another advocate, another Counsellor. But he also added I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And he has promised I will never leave you, nor forsake you.

I will not leave you as orphans. Through the Holy Spirit, we are promised God will be with us as an Everlasting Father.

Jesus died and single man with no kids. Whatever the Da Vinci code says!

Yet he is the one whom they recognised as worthy of the title Everlasting Father. He is our answer to the question am I alone in this world?

And he has promised to be with us always.

Life can be tricky and complex to navigate, and in such times we need a Wonderful Counsellor. There are times when we reach out for help and we need one to be our Mighty God. And Jesus will guide us and strengthen us.

But he is also filled with compassion. His power and justice are balanced with love and mercy. He comes amongst us full of grace and truth. Not just truth, but with grace too.

It’s one of my favourite hymns… Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven and it has the lines

Fatherlike he tends and spare us

Well our feeble frame he knows.

He knows our weakness, our frailness, our vulnerability, because he has experienced it.

In a few days we will see that weakness and vulnerability manifest in a child in a manger. The mighty power behind the words and God said, will wail to let his mother know he needs fed and changed.

That is the depth of his commitment to us. A God who reaches us to us in compassion, because we are loved with an everlasting love.

But by his Spirit he is with us always. He can be our Wonderful Counsellor, guiding us through the maze of life. He can be our Mighty God, strengthening us to do more than we imagine.

But when we are at our lowest and most vulnerable, we are never alone. He won’t let us so. For he is our Everlasting Father.