The Greatest Commandment: A prayer for Pentecost 23 (25 October 2020)

See also: The Greatest Commandment: A sermon for Pentecost 23

Let us pray

Lord, your love for us is revealed in so many practical ways.
You touched the leper, welcomed the outcast,
blessed the children and responded to a mother’s cry.
You loved even those who rejected you,
and you gave your life for every one of our sins.
And you call us to love.
You declare that our love for others is your love in action.

Lord, we confess that we limit your love.
We love those we like
And we turn away from those we fear,
those who challenge us, those who oppose us.
We limit our loving to what we think we can cope with,
have time for and can afford and that will not overwhelm us.

Yet we have the grace of God in our hearts
and the resources of heaven at our disposal.
Teach us, Lord, to love bravely, to love more widely
and to love more passionately.

We pray for our Covid-19 world:
For those finding a way forward
and for those caring for the sick and quarantined,
for vaccines and treatment programmes,
for those who have lost loved ones
and those who have lost jobs and homes and their sense of security.

We pray for America as it goes into one of the most challenging of elections on 3 November.
And we pray for South Africa as we look for a way forward from the corruption, anger and conflicts that dominate our lives.

Help us to love so that the world will discover a better way to live.

In Jesus’s name,
Amen

The Greatest Commandment: A sermon for Pentecost 23 (25 October 2020)

Readings: Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Matthew 22:34-46

Being remembered

What are you going to leave behind?
And I don’t mean houses and bank balances. But how will you be remembered?

Of course, we don’t like to answer that question, because we know all too well what some people in our lives are going to remember. So, we prefer to answer a slightly different question: ‘How would you like to be remembered?’ No doubt we’ve all got ideas about that.

But that suggests another question, doesn’t it?
What are we doing about it? How are we living and engaging with people so that they will remember us as we want to be remembered?
What really matters? What should we be focussing on?

Moses

Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and through the desert for 40 years. He brought them to the banks of the Jordon river and the edge of the promised land. Over ‘there’ was home.
But not for Moses. His job was to get them there. The task of conquering and settling the land was for the next generation led by Joshua.

How would Moses be remembered? He was certainly remembered as the one who brought them out of slavery and into a covenant relationship with God. But what would they do with that legacy? Would they remain faithful to the covenant, or would they abandon all that Moses had taught them?

Perhaps Moses wondered about that as he gazed across at the promised land.

How will you and I be remembered?

The greatest commandment

Jesus tells us that the best thing to be remembered for is loving God and loving others.

The Sadducees had failed to trip Jesus up, so the Pharisees wanted to have a go. One of their number asked Jesus:
‘Which is the greatest commandment in the law?’

We often ask about the best thing to do.
‘What’s the best decision I can make in this situation?’
‘What should I study first for my exams?’
‘What’s the best car to buy?’

And in Pharisee school, the students and their tutors were always arguing about which commandment was the most important. Hence the question to Jesus:
‘Which is the greatest commandment?’

Now we might have different opinions about that.

If you were to ask a parent which is the greatest, most important command they might say, ‘Honour your father and mother, that you may live a long life.’

A judge would say, ‘Do not give false testimony.’ And your boss: ‘Do not steal.’

Your neighbour might point to the tenth commandment: ‘Do not covet your neighbour’s wife, house or anything that belongs to your neighbour.’

And, with churches closed during the Covid-19 lockdown, perhaps church treasurers might say that the most important command is, ‘Bring your tithes and offerings into the House of the Lord.’

Love God and love your neighbour

When Jesus was asked, he did not choose one of the Ten Command­ments. It is as if he were telling the Pharisees, and us:
‘These ten commandments cannot be split up. You can’t pick and choose. One is not more important than the other.’

‘The greatest command is found in Deuteronomy 6:5, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Then he said, ‘The second is like it (Leviticus 19:18): “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.”
‘The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on (can be understood in the light of) these two commandments.’

If you want to know what is right and wrong, what you should or shouldn’t do in a particular situation, you could check against the Ten Commandments, or you could check through the list of 613 commandments the rabbinic tradition held to. But Jesus said that we should rather ask, ‘Will this action or attitude be an expression of my love for God or for my neighbour?’

Whose son is he?

Then Jesus asked the Pharisees a question of his own:
‘What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?’

Of course, ‘whose son is he?’ was a question that had been asked before about Jesus:
In Mark 6 and Luke 4, Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth, and he preached in the synagogue. The people said: ‘But, isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph …? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’‘Whose son is this?’ And they rejected him.

And the way Jesus answers his own question suggests that where we come from, our family background or where we live, or even what we have done or failed to do, is not particularly important. What matters is how we live: how we relate to God and how we relate to others.

Rules

None of us is any good at sticking to the rules.

The Psalmist says, ‘There is no one who does good, not even one.’ (Psalm 53:3)
And Paul writes: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ (Romans 3:23)

It doesn’t matter whether we take the Ten Commandments or the 613 from the rabbis, or any other list of dos and don’ts. We are going to fail. And if that is how we are remembered, our friends will say, ‘He kept 527 of the commandments.’
While our enemies will say, ‘He failed 86 of them.’

But is that what really matters?
Jesus says, ‘No.’

How much better to say of someone, ‘She didn’t always get it right, but you could see her love for God, shining in her face.’
Or ‘He wasn’t a saint, but you knew that everything he did, he did because he really loved people.’

Jesus makes it clear that the rule that holds everything together, that demands our absolute attention is ‘Love God’, and tied up so closely with it that they become one thing: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’

‘Love your neighbour, not as somebody who is different from you, not as someone who is separate from you; love your neighbour as if they were you.’

Rules are about what I can do and what I can’t do.
Love isn’t about me at all. Love is about what God wants and what my neighbour wants.

Love matters

Loving God means we put aside our lives and become involved with what God is doing. And Jesus makes it clear that our love for God and our involvement in his work can only be expressed in our love for others.

He said it again in the upper room in John 13: he gave his disciples a new commandment, to love one another. He said, ‘By your love for one another, the world will know that you are my disciples.’
And later he prayed, ‘that they might be one, so that the world will believe.’
In his first letter, John made it even more clear: ‘How can you say you love God whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brothers and sisters whom you have seen?’

Friends, there are many things we as Christians can do in the world to make the world a better place. But if we do not love each other, if we do not find a way to work together, we will not be doing the work of God.

We will be doing good things, certainly, but we will not be living as Christ followers. What we do will not turn the world upside down. What we do, however great, however important, will not bring people into the Kingdom. It is how we do it, how we live and how we love, that will transform our neighbourhoods, our communities and our world.

When we make Christianity more about rules, what we are allowed and not allowed to do, we burden ourselves with guilt because of our many failures. And we dare not let anyone know, because everyone else seems so perfect.

Masks

So, we put on masks, then no one will know what we are really like. Not the Covid-19 masks that just mask our face, but those that mask our nature, that cover our failure.

Social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, tends to be one big rollercoaster of health, happiness and all-round success. Very much like the way we present ourselves in church, where we keep smiling and pretending all is well.

One writer put it: ‘Sometimes, church is the last place where people feel free to be themselves. They cover up with Sunday clothes and Sunday smiles.’ [Sarah Young (2004), Jesus Calling, October 19]

How can we love each other if we don’t know who we are, if we don’t know whether the person we are engaging with is a real person or just a façade?

Barriers

We create so many barriers between us: Race, gender, age, culture, wealth, where we live, even how we worship. We use these things to divide us, to help us decide who we like and who we will mix with and listen to.

Our differences are not the problem. God has given us our differences as a gift to enrich our lives and the world in which we live.

The problem is that we have chiselled our differences into the concrete walls we build between us. We might not know quite what we believe, but we know what we don’t believe and who we don’t believe and what we don’t like and what we won’t put up with.

When we hear about the confrontation at Senekal or protests around the country, it is easy to take sides. Based on our experiences, our preferences, and which side of the wall we are on, we assume that we know who is right and who was wrong.

Your neighbour needs you

But Jesus says, ‘Your neighbour needs you.’
Our neighbour on the other side of that concrete wall needs us. And it doesn’t matter whether it is our wall or their wall, our neighbour needs our love. Not our wisdom, not our clever remarks, not our solutions, and not our opinions. Our neighbour needs our love.

But we are afraid of what is on the other side of that wall. So, we start asking the questions that the opponents of Jesus asked him, like:

‘Who is my neighbour?’
‘Which is the greatest commandment? What should I be doing first? What’s the most important thing?’

And the answer Jesus gives us reminds me of a question Phillip Yancy refers to in one of his books: ‘What would grace look like now.’

As we peer over the concrete wall between us and our neighbour, between us and our children, our spouse, our colleague, what would love look like. How can I offer grace?

And if we are not sure what the loving thing to do might be, perhaps we will find inspiration in a basket of fruit, which is always well received: ‘The fruit of the Spirit,’ Paul tells us, ‘is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ (Galatians 5:22-23)

Pick one and offer it to your neighbour today.

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbour as you love yourself.’

Amen

For the prayer, see: The Greatest Commandment: A prayer for Pentecost 23

Being sheep in a Covid-19 world – A sermon for 3 May 2020

This sermon can also be found an the following video link:
Being sheep in a Covid-19 world – A sermon for 3 May

SCRIPTURE:  Psalm 23; Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

Lockdown
Five weeks of Covid-19 lockdown!

How has it been for you?

I remember, just before we went into lockdown for the initial three weeks, thinking, that’s a long time. What will we do for three weeks? And now five weeks have passed and (in South Africa) some of the doors are beginning to open.

How has it been for you?

People have spoken about the opportunity to reflect, to realign, to reorganise (or, for some of us, just to organise).
Many years ago, I was in hospital for four or five weeks with bilharzia. And I kept hearing about people who had been in similar or worse situations, and how they had used the time for deep reflection and prayer and had grown spiritually.

I felt so guilty. I didn’t want to reflect on anything other than how nauseous and miserable I felt. I didn’t feel the least bit spiritual.

How has the lockdown been for you?

For most of us, it’s about the money. Where will this month’s pay come from? Will my business survive? Will I still have a job?
Then there is the virus itself. Will we survive? Will our family survive? Will those in essential services be able to cope?

Relationships are especially difficult. Our lives are often so busy that we usually don’t spend much time together. Suddenly we are locked down, and we only have each other for company. And it’s not like when we are on holiday and all relaxed. There are all these new fears and worries that create tension or add to tensions that are already there.

The early church
In the middle of all this, we read about the early church in Acts 2.42–47.

Remember the disciples, too, had been locked down. As far as we know, they had been self-isolating in the Jerusalem upper room for the last 50 days. They had just started to emerge. There were a few jaunts here and there — to Galilee, for example, where Jesus met them for breakfast. But, in Jerusalem, we are told, they were behind locked doors for fear of the Jews.

Then, at Pentecost, they emerged like butterflies out of their cocoons. And what we read in Acts 2, sounds so idyllic:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Everyone was filled with awe ….
All the believers were together ….
They gave to anyone who had need.
They met together in the temple.
They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
… enjoying the favour of all the people.
And (every day) the Lord added to their number ….

How does our lockdown compare with any of that?

Close? Not very? Way off?

As our lockdown has dragged on, people have begun to show more and more frustration and anger on social media. We are used to being in control. We like to decide what to do and how to run our lives.

We like to choose what we buy, when we buy and where we buy. We want to visit friends and neighbours. We want to take a meal to a someone who is sick.

We don’t want to drive down the road and worry about how many roadblocks there will be and whether we’ll be sent back (or worse, put in jail). We don’t like being told what to do.

Jesus as shepherd
But, in John 10, Jesus portrays himself as a shepherd. In verse 11, just following the passage we read, Jesus says, ‘I am the good shepherd’.

Now, the idea of Jesus as shepherd is a wonderful image of love, care and hope. But the problem with the image is that if Jesus is the shepherd, we are the sheep. And, although we think of lambs in warm and fuzzy terms, there are very few images of sheep that are flattering:

• Bumbling, ignorant, trusting;
• Vulnerable, docile, dependent;
• Bred for human use and consumption.

Even in our well-loved Psalm 23, the Psalmist is utterly dependent on God, the Shepherd.

And Peter tells us in our 1 Peter 2 passage that, when Jesus took our place on the cross, he ‘did not retaliate’. ‘Instead he entrusted himself to [depended on] him who judges justly.’

The Church in Acts
But in Acts 2 (in fact, in the whole of Acts) the disciples are nothing like sheep. Have they been set free? Does that mean we grow out of being sheep?

No, it’s because they saw themselves as sheep, utterly dependent on God, that they were able to do extraordinary things.

We often hear people talking about recreating the New Testament church. We try to reinvent the church on the basis of what the early church did. But the key to the early church is not what they did, but their dependence on God, which is summed up in the opening verse of our Acts passage:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)

Trying to recreate the NT church by copying their actions is the wrong approach. We are not called to do what they did, but to be as they were — utterly dependent on God.

What does that mean for us as we struggle to be the church and to live as Christians in a struggling world? I suggest we are given three invitations.

KNOW THE SHEPHERD
Our first invitation is to know the shepherd.

Knowing the shepherd is a critical step in our journey. It is almost impossible to trust someone you don’t know.

Jesus tells us in John 10 that the shepherd knows his sheep, he loves his sheep, he cares for his sheep, he calls them by name. It isn’t just a job for him, as it might be for a day labourer who is just helping out. For the shepherd, it’s a labour of love.

And so, these new disciples ‘devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.’ — activities that would enable them to get to know the Shepherd and experience his love for themselves.

Friends, you and I are loved.

Sink back into that love as you would into a soft pillow. Enjoy that love as you have enjoyed this respite from the relentless rush of everyday life.

Keep coming back to this. Pray often. Read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. Talk to other Christians who have journeyed with this Shepherd and have known his love. Begin to discover that love for yourself. Grow in his love and get to know him better.

Relationships, not activities
Too often, we want to run on ahead and do things, and live a ‘proper’ Christian life. But our Christian faith is routed in a relationship rather than in activities. Being a Christian is about knowing that we are deeply loved. Knowing that Jesus poured out his love for us on the cross, and that God, in his mercy and grace, has opened the doors of the kingdom to you and to me.

That’s not the end of the journey, of course. As we experience this undeserved, extravagant love of God, we can’t help ourselves. It’s as Jesus described in the parables of the ‘Hidden treasure’ and the ‘Pearl of great price’, because we’ve discovered this treasure, we want to give everything of ourselves to the one who loves us. We want to live that Christian life.

TRUST THE SHEPHERD
And so, the second invitation is to trust the shepherd. Know the shepherd so that we can trust the shepherd.

As we experience God’s love for us, we begin to trust him more. And we trust him not only with our lives, but with our way of life as well, which may be much more difficult.

Jesus said, ‘If you want to follow me, take up your cross daily and follow me.’

Jesus wasn’t suggesting martyrdom. He didn’t say, ‘Die for me.’
He said die to yourself. Put yourself — your dreams, your plans, your desires, your rights — put it all on the cross every day and live for me.

Friends this is really difficult. As we have seen in this Covid-19 lockdown, we don’t like being dependent; we don’t like following other people’s rules.

But, when our legs, for example, aren’t able to do what they are supposed to do, we have to accept the fact that we need help, otherwise we are immobile. But when we learn to depend on our crutches, we are free to move around.

FDR
Franklin D Roosevelt served as Governor of New York for four years from 1928, and then as President of the United States for an unprecedented 12 years to the end of WW2. And all of this from his wheelchair. He had contracted a paralytic illness, at the age of 39, seven years before he became New York Governor.

He didn’t say, ‘This wheelchair is just a crutch. I don’t need this; I’m better than this. I’m going to stand up and run the country on my own two feet.’

That would have been foolish. He knew and accepted his dependence. He trusted those around him to do for him what he couldn’t do for himself, and that freed him to get on with what he could do — running the country and fighting a war.

As we get to know the Shepherd and begin to trust the Shepherd, we discover our true freedom. We are able to rise above our limitations, becoming far more than we could if we only trusted in ourselves.

And we are not alone in this. Jesus, the good shepherd, has walked this road before us, and he travels with us.

In our 1 Peter passage, Peter describes how, Jesus, who knew no sin, took on the role of sinner; in humility and in utter dependence on God, he took the insults hurled at him and allowed people to think he deserved them. Then Jesus took on the consequences of sin and died on the cross. And Peter says, ‘He entrusted himself to him who judges justly.’

This is our shepherd who leads us.

OBEY THE SHEPHERD
So, we are invited to know the shepherd.
We are invited to trust the shepherd.
And our third invitation as sheep in God’s pasture is to obey the shepherd.

Peter says in 1 Peter 2:25, ‘You were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.’

We don’t stop being sheep, but instead of following our own way, we follow and obey the shepherd.

When we think about obedience we usually think about lists of rules and regulations. And the nice thing about a list of rules is that they are relatively easy to follow.

Of course, some lists are longer and more complicated than others. We thought the regulations for the Covid-19 lockdown were onerous. Now we know they were child’s play compared with the regulations for getting unlocked.

For Moses and the Israelites, things were a bit easier, it seems. There were only ten Commandments. Jesus made it even simpler for us to understand. He summarised it all into three commands:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Love one another as I have loved you.

Friends, it is ALL about love, which makes it easy to remember and even to understand. But love is much more demanding and much more costly than the longest list of regulations you will ever find.

Love never asks the question, ‘Have I done enough?’
Love never says, ‘I’ve ticked all the boxes. I’ve done what you asked me to do.’

Love asks, ‘How can I express my love to God, today?’
Love asks, ‘What can I do to demonstrate God’s love to this neighbour today, to my Christian sister or brother in this situation?”

Love doesn’t ask, ‘What should I do?’ as if there were a to-do list for every situation.
Love rather asks, as Phillip Yancy suggested, ‘What would love look like in this situation?’
‘What can I do differently, that would show more of God’s love to you?’

Friends, the lockdown is over; the invitations are out:
We are invited to get to know the shepherd who loves us
We are invited to trust the shepherd we can depend on
And we are invited to obey the shepherd and join him on a journey of love.

Will you come?

Let us pray …
Link to the prayer here

 

The Great Shepherd and Covid-19: A prayer for 3 May 2020

Let us pray

Great Shepherd, you invite us to know you, to trust you and to obey you.

But, Lord, we confess that we don’t like being sheep.
We don’t like waiting for others to tell us what we are allowed to do.

We confess that we have been irritated by this lockdown.
We are also afraid of this virus, Lord.
We are afraid for our lives and for those of our loved ones.
We are afraid for our jobs and our livelihoods.
We are afraid that there may not be a place for us in the post-lockdown world.

Lord, we confess that we have sometimes let loose our fears and frustration on our families.
We have forgotten that they are experiencing the same fears and uncertainties.
Instead of comforting them, we have added to their burdens.
Yet you do not come as judge, but as shepherd, to love, to heal and to transform.

You invite us to know you and to be transformed by your love.
To marvel at its length, to wonder at its breadth, to be awed by its heights and inspired by its depth.
And to realise that we have experienced only a fraction of the glory you still want to reveal to us.

You invite us to trust you
To trust the one who knows better than anyone just what we are made of and what we are made for.
You invite us to trust you on our journey.
A journey that may involve green pastures but that, just as often, takes us through the darkest valleys.

Great Shepherd, you invite us to obey you,
not by following rules and regulations,
but by learning to love as we have been loved,
by learning to bring love into every relationship, every situation, every day.

Great Shepherd, as we have been loved,
so teach us to love you, to love our neighbours and to love one another.

In your precious name we pray,

Amen.

This prayer follows a sermon for this Sunday, which can be found here

 

Holy Week Service – Matthew 24

Our theme at Prestbury Methodist Church this year is the teaching of Jesus during Holy Week as recorded by Matthew. I was privileged to preach on Tuesday evening on Matthew 24.

SCRIPTURE:    Matthew 24:1-14; 42-44

We sang Stuart Townend’s song just now, ‘I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom’.

Well, the disciples wanted to boast. They boasted in the glorious architecture of the Temple: ‘Isn’t it magnificent!’ they cried. The Romans might be in charge, but this is the real centre of power. This is what really matters.

And it was important. Whatever the world might throw at them, however difficult it might be to make ends meet, to put food on the table, to pay the rent, if the Temple was there, if Jerusalem was secure, there would always be hope.

And we are no different. We worry about the Guptas, we worry about Nkandla, we worry about inflation and interest rates, we worry about unemployment and how it will affect our children and grandchildren. But while we are complaining that this is bad, that’s bad and the whole world is corrupt, we are constantly looking for something to hold on to, something that will give us a sense of security, just as the disciples found in the Temple building. If we could just fix this; if we could just settle that; if there was less corruption, more tolerance, there would be hope.

Jesus said to his disciples, and to us, ‘You may think that these stones, this wish list, this fix will keep you safe, but none of these things will last; not a single stone will be left in its place.’

None of the things we put our faith in, none of the things that give us hope, none of them really matter, none of them is permanent. And what happens to our faith and to our hope when they are gone?

If our relationship with God depends on the Temple, what happens when it is pulled down? If our confidence and trust in God depends on our health or our security or our comfort, what happens when our health deteriorates, our security is threatened, our comfort is taken away?

The disciples were horrified at the idea that the Temple might not be as permanent or as important as they thought. So they cried out, ‘When, Lord? When?’

We need to know, so that we can plan, we can prepare, we can get ready. If we know when it will happen, we will live our lives differently; we will plan differently, we will be ready.

Every now and again, of course, someone comes along bragging that they have worked it out. They know when it’s going to happen, and they give us the date. The end is not simply near, it is set for the 17th of April, just after tea.

Now we know. We can stop working, stop shopping, stop planning. We can go up onto a mountain, down by a stream, into the wilderness or into the Temple. We can worship without distraction, meditate without worry, pray without fear.

So, tell us, Lord; when will it be?

But Jesus is emphatic: no one knows, and no one is going to know.

He does warn us, however, that the end will not come easily. The process will be like the pains of childbirth: the reward is magnificent, but you are not going to enjoy the journey. There will be war and famine and earthquakes. Our own comfort and wellbeing will be threatened. We will be arrested, punished and put to death because of our faith. People will hate us, simply because we trust in Jesus.

Jesus warns us about these things not so that we can work out which war, which famine, which earthquake is the final one. He even tells us that these things ‘do not mean that the end has come.’ No, he warns us so that we know what to expect and are not taken by surprise.

No matter what happens, Jesus is saying, hold on to your trust and faith in God, not in fine buildings, good health, security systems or healthy pensions. Many will give up their faith. But if we hold onto our faith, we will continue to live in the security of God’s presence, no matter how bad it gets. Don’t give up.

But ever since Jesus said these words we have been trying to work out which earthquake he was talking about, which famine, which war would announce the end. (I can just see the angels rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Which part of “no one knows, and no one is going to know” don’t you understand?)

But Jesus does tell one thing that will happen just before the end. We tend to ignore it. It has nothing to do with earthquakes and war and stars falling from the sky. Jesus says: ‘(The) Good News about the Kingdom will be preached through all the world for a witness to all people; and then the end will come.’

The end is not heralded by wars or famine or pain and suffering. Those things are going to happen. They will always be around us. Whether they will be any worse towards the end, Jesus doesn’t say. But instead of counting wars and famine and earthquakes, we should be looking for ways to share the Good News with people around us.

So when Jesus says, ‘You must always be ready because the Son of Man will come … when you are not expecting him’, he isn’t saying have your bags packed ready for heaven. He’s telling us always to be ready to share our faith, always to live as if the Kingdom of God is already among us. It’s not crime and corruption that matter or even our health and security. Persecution and death may be our lot. What really matters is that the Gospel is proclaimed, God’s way is demonstrated.

What has eternal significance is when our lives, what we say and what we do, begin to proclaim God’s love and faithfulness to a hurting world; when our choices and our reactions demonstrate that ‘normal’ responses, our ‘normal’ way of life, are not the only way to live – there is a better way.

In the chaos and the struggle of our lives, we are challenged to rise above the normal, to find ways to be better than normal; to stop taking offence at what we see around us, at what others are doing or saying.

That’s a phrase that challenged Jen and me in our quiet time recently: ‘Don’t take offence.’ Because we do. We take offence at what others do or fail to do; we take offence at what others say; we take offence at other drivers. It’s a normal reaction. But Christ calls us to be better than normal, to offer an alternative response, to demonstrate what the Good News looks like and what life in the Kingdom of God is like.

How about we start this Holy Week.
They are planning to put Jesus to death. There are signs it’s going to happen this week. But Jesus doesn’t want us to take offence – to scream and shout and draw our swords. He wants the love that drives him to the cross to drive our every interaction, our every relationship, our every decision; that his love should drive us this Holy week and every week, come earthquakes, war, famine or persecution, until he comes again.

‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’

Or as Graham Kendrick writes:

‘So let us learn how to serve, And in our lives enthrone Him;
Each other’s needs to prefer, For it is Christ we’re serving.’

[We closed with Christine Jerrett’s beautiful prayer found here: Faithful, promise-keeping God]

 

Holiness: a journey of love

We wondered about holiness this past week. Perhaps wondering is all we can hope to do — recognise the questions it raises rather than pronounce on definitive answers. I offered the following prayer/meditation as part of the process.

Holy God,
Holy God,
Holy God!
How can we begin to understand your holiness?
How can you in your holiness even think about us;
Let alone meet with us,
Or welcome us in our rags?

Is it because your holiness is not defined by right and wrong,
But by love?
Is it because love is what holiness is about?

For the religious teachers, holiness was defined
by laws kept and laws broken. We, too,
condemn those who break laws we like to keep.

But your holiness is steeped in love;
An outrageous, extravagant love.
The prodigal son is loved, welcomed, clothed and fed.
Will his life be transformed?
Will he become holy?
You don’t wait for the answers.
You simply pour out your love,
And invite us to journey with you.

We don’t know how holiness is displayed in heaven
But here, your holiness
Builds bridges and reaches across chasms.
Lepers, outcasts, the blind, the lame, the foolish,
Servants and masters, rich and poor,
Young and old; lost in a broken world.
None beyond your reach; no one turned away.

The adulterer, the self-righteous, the timid, the proud;
The scandalous prodigal and the self-righteous brother,
All loved with a passion, wept over, and embraced.
So, is holiness a journey of love rather than a destination?
A growing relationship rather than a set of rules?

To become holy as you are holy.
Does that mean we become holy as we offer
Your gift of love to a broken world?
As we reach out a hand to the lost,
Offer an embrace to the unlovely
A helping hand to the foolish?

Lord teach us to love as we have been loved;
Lead us on a journey into holiness.

For your love’s sake,
Amen