The Only Scriptures You Really Know Are The Ones You Obey

In Matthew 23:23-32, Jesus has a conversation with the Jewish religious leaders. In order to put that conversation in context, we need a bit of background.

Prior to this conversation, Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph – the Palm Sunday procession – being welcomed by the ordinary people as the Messiah. He then went straight to the Temple and threw out the traders and moneychangers from the Court of the Gentiles.

The following morning, on the way back into Jerusalem after a night spent outside the city, Jesus pauses to curse a fig-tree that has no figs on it.

Then when Jesus gets to the temple, the religious leaders start to question him about why he thinks he has the authority to do the things he is doing. It is a fair question. Jesus has not been trained in any of the rabbinic schools. No official body has recognised his knowledge, his sanctity, his skills, or his gifting. He is an unknown person from the provinces and unconnected to any religious hierarchy or structure. So where does Jesus get his authority?

Now, there are two possible sources for spiritual authority.

The priests, the teachers of the Law, the temple hierarchy all get their authority from human religious structures. In the same way that I was ordained a priest by a Bishop in the Church of England, so any spiritual authority that I have comes from that ordination. But Jesus has none of that.

The other source of authority is that of the prophets. These men and women receive a divine commission directly from God to declare a message that He gives them.

But Jesus does not claim either of those sources of authority. Instead, Jesus responds to their question with a question; “Where did John the Baptist get his authority?” Jesus offers to answer their question, if they will first answer his.

But it is a clever trap, and the religious leaders can’t bring themselves to give an answer.

John the Baptist didn’t get his authority from any human religious structure. So, the only other possibility is to recognise that he was a prophet sent from God. But if they say that, then they condemn themselves for not accepting his message. Everyone knew that John had condemned the religious authorities, calling them “a brood of vipers”, and he had criticised them for hypocrisy and spiritual pride.

But that denial of John’s prophetic authority from God will be a problem, because the common people did consider John the Baptist to be a prophet.

So, in the silent stalemate of two unanswered questions, Jesus tells a story. On the surface, it is a very simple story. It concerns two sons and a Father – a very common structure for Jesus’ parables. Both sons are asked by the Father to go and work in the family vineyard.

The first son answers impolitely and flat out refuses to go. The second calls his Father ‘Sir’ and promises to go straight away. But then both sons have a change of heart.

The rude, and seemingly disobedient son, reconsiders his refusal and then goes and works as requested. While the respectful and seemingly obedient son, reconsiders and then decides not to go.

Now, this is a very common experience. This is everyman’s story. We have all been here. You ask for people for help, some people say all the right things. “Of course I’ll help, you just have to ask, I would be delighted” And, in the moment everyone is happy. You think you have people who are going to help you and a nice human exchange has occurred. Everyone feels warm and fuzzy. But then the day comes and no help arrives. You feel let down, made a fool of, angry.

Other people say straight to your face. “Nah, I’m not going to help with that. Not my thing. I just don’t have the time.” In the moment you feel deflated, awkward. You wonder about the true depth of your relationship. But when the day comes, they unexpectedly turn up to help. “Just thought I’d pop in, I felt bad about saying no.” And you feel elated, happy, like there really are supportive people around you.

So, this is an experience we have all had, it is a very human story. Jesus then asks a simple and unthreatening question, “Which son do you think did his Father’s will?”

It is not a hard question. The answer is obvious, the son who actually obeyed. The son whose first response was unpromising, confrontational, negative. But who then came around and did the right thing.

As usual with Jesus, this simple story was actually anything but. In this parable and in the one that follows it, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Jesus is following John the Baptist in bringing a harsh critique of the Jewish religious leaders and exposing their spiritual failure and wickedness. It is a kind of declaration of war.

The parable’s meaning is stark. John the Baptist really had come from God. He had told the people what God had told him to say and called them to repent of their sins and prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah.

The people who looked like unpromising candidates for spiritual renewal, the common people, – people whose lives often looked more like a ‘No’ to God than a ‘Yes’ – they had responded positively to John’s message. They repented. They came to be baptised by John as a sign that they were turning their lives around. So, although they initially looked like unpromising candidates, they actually ended up saying ‘Yes’ to God.

But the religious leaders, the pious and the spiritually observant, were the exact opposite. Their lives looked very much like a ‘Yes’ to God. They lived right, they prayed right, they fasted right, they went to the temple and to the synagogue. But although their lives looked like a ‘Yes’, they refused to receive John’s message. They refused to repent or be baptised, instead they opposed John as much as they could. Their lives might have looked like a ‘Yes’ but their response was ‘No’.

They were now doing the same thing with Jesus. Instead of agreeing with Jesus that the temple needed to be cleansed and function as a House of Prayer for all nations, they instead took issue with his actions.

The related story of the fig-tree that Jesus cursed because it didn’t bear any fruit, is an acted out condemnation of their failure. Their religion was all pious words and outward forms, but their lives didn’t bear the kind of fruit that God is looking for – Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Their words said ‘Yes’, but their lives said ‘No’. Because they did not produce good fruit, Jesus curses them.

Often in the Bible, the point is made that doing the will of God is more important than knowing God. Of course, it is better when you have both of these – when you do God’s will and have some understanding of who God is. But of the two it is always obedience in scripture that is seen as the most important. So, in Matthew’s gospel, the fundamental question is not simply whether you KNOW God but whether you DO the will of God.

Which reminds of a statement that I first heard at Bible college some 30 years ago. It stopped me in my tracks that day and it still does today. One of my fellow students stood up in chapel and said this, “The only scriptures that you really know are the ones that you obey.”

Think about that for a while. Are there any scriptures that you know, but struggle to put into practice? For example, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbour as yourself.”

Are you all square with that one? I confess that I struggle. If my fellow student was correct, “The only scriptures that you really know are the ones that you obey.” then there are lots of scriptures that I really don’t know at all.

But obeying God always has two components. This is brilliantly illustrated in the book ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman MELVILLE. The central character joins a whaling ship but before setting out to sea, the sailors go to church. The priest Father MAPPLE preaches a sermon. From the book of Jonah, of course! And it is a sermon about obedience and disobedience. In it he says this;

But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do- remember that- and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

Herman MELVILLE got that completely right. We have to ‘disobey’ ourselves in order to obey God, and that is often very hard.

We must say no to our own inclinations, our own desires, our own wants, our own priorities. If we cannot do that, then we will never obey God. Our bodies shout out their desires and demands, our culture screams at us, telling us what we should want and what we should do, and yet God calls us to disobey those strident calls.

The only thing that makes it possible for us to disobey ourselves are the spiritual disciplines. These spiritual practices help us hold our fleshly desires in check. They also present to us the shallowness, falseness, and ultimate emptiness of the things our culture values and prioritises.

Our culture says that we are in a competition and that the one who dies with the most toys wins. We see old men in their 80s still desperately trying to amass more wealth, more property, more stuff. It is the whole focus of their life. And yet it is ultimately meaningless. What do they take with them into eternity? Nothing. There is an old Scottish saying, “There’s nae pockets in a shroud”.

The spiritual disciplines present us with a different vision for our lives. They remind us that we are temporary beings, on a temporary formation course, preparing ourselves to be the kind of people who can rule and reign with Christ for eternity. That is the reality and meaning of our existence. That should be the focus of our lives. We win at life when we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our own transformation into people who come to resemble Jesus, just a little bit more each day.

Jesus’ critique of the religious leaders was that they were ‘all talk and no trousers’. They talked a very good game. As Jesus said to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach’.

That is a heavy challenge that I feel every time I get up to preach. I can tell you all about the gospel. I can tell you about what God is calling us to be and to do. I can explain what the Christian life should look like. But unless I am living that kind of life myself, I am just a fraud and a fake. Frighteningly, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly’” (7:21-23).

Great sermons, amazing miracles, vast crowds mean nothing unless we are doing the Father’s will in our everyday life. Those moments when we are at home, or alone. When no-one else sees.

So, what do we take away from this?

• Is our life a ‘Yes’ to God, or a ‘No’.
• Are our lives producing the kind of fruit God is looking for?
• What scriptures do we really not know, because we do not obey them?
• Can we disobey ourselves in order to be able to obey God?
• Are we ‘all talk and no trousers’, or do our lives really match up to our words?

This morning, at St Mark’s we gave thanks for, celebrated, and sent off with our blessing, two people who have found the courage and the grace to say ‘Yes’ to God’s call. They have done that throughout their lives, and they are doing it again as they go to serve the church in Lille. I’m sure that their obedience is costly to them. But obedience is the path to blessing and to growth. The Kingdom of God grows through obedience.

I hope that within our two congregations, there are people who are sensing God’s call to become our new Treasurer, Bookkeeper, and second Churchwarden. May God give you the grace and courage to step out in obedience. Because obedience brings blessing, growth, and it leads to the coming of the Kingdom. Amen.

The Scandal of Grace

I spent 12 years studying the book of Jonah and ended up writing a book on it – available in French and English from all good online booksellers!

So, some of you may be quaking in your boots because today, for the first time since my arriving in Versailles, the lectionary has offered me a passage from the book of Jonah to preach on! Some of you may be very afraid, especially those who have plans for this evening! I will try to not to get too carried away.

The book of Jonah is a unique, complex, beautiful, hilarious, tragic, and incredibly concise work of the highest literary art in the Bible. With less than 700 words in the Hebrew it is short enough to read through in a few minutes. Yet, as I found out when I fell down the Jonah rabbit-hole, you can study the book for years and still not exhaust it.

The greatest enigma about Jonah is why it is actually in the Bible. It is included in the prophetic books, and yet it only has 8 words of prophecy in it – ‘Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overturned’. And that is a prophecy that does not come to pass. Which makes Jonah a false prophet.

Also, all the other biblical prophetic books are primarily directed towards the Jewish nation, with the surrounding pagan nations, mentioned incidentally. Yet, the book of Jonah is entirely focused on the pagan city of Nineveh.

Another strange feature is that the central character, Jonah the Jewish prophet, he is not the hero, he is more the villain. Throughout the book it is the pagans in the story who are immediately responsive to God when he speaks, who immediately turn to him when he reveals himself to them; whilst Jonah the Jew rebels against God, argues with God, fights against God, and disagrees with God.

The whole book of Jonah seems topsy-turvy, the very opposite of what we would expect.

But the strange thing is that book of Jonah and the prophet Jonah is that they are honoured by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Each of these three faiths has found something in the book of Jonah that they sense is deeply valuable. Something that they find helpful in the life of faith.

Something else that should make us take note of the book is that Jesus compared himself to the prophet Jonah. So much so, that in the first three centuries, when images of Jesus were dangerous to have on your walls, it was Jonah, who was the most common figure in Christian art. He was most often shown being vomited out by the whale – an image that Jesus had used to speak of his own resurrection. This image therefore served as a clandestine reference to Christ’s victorious conquering of death.

But the book of Jonah is a confusing book that poses a lot of questions. So, it seems somehow appropriate that the book itself is structured around 14 questions and, as we heard in our reading, it ends with a provocative question hanging in the air, unanswered.

But what we might not appreciate at first glance, is how scandalous the book of Jonah was to those who first read it. For us to get a sense of that scandal, we need to know a little background.

The story takes place in the mid-600s B.C. The massive Assyrian empire reaches its brutal peak. The empire’s capital city of Nineveh has already been an important world centre for at least 2,000 years before this story begins. At this moment it is almost certainly the largest city in the whole world.

The Assyrian empire was aggressively expansionist. If they saw something they liked, they simply took it. They had a clear strategic approach – I guess we would call it ‘total war’, or ‘shock and awe’.

If the Assyrians came and besieged your city, you had just one chance to surrender immediately. If you did that then the Assyrians would still take everything they wanted from you, they would still ransack your city, they would still kill some of your nobility. But after that they would put a vassal king in charge with a heavy tribute to be paid each year and at least some of you, and some of your city, would survive.

If you didn’t take that one chance when it was offered, if you tried to resist, then the Assyrian army would besiege your city, for as long as it took. And when they finally broke through your walls, they would be merciless.

They would flay alive all of the nobles of the city. They would impale their corpses on stakes outside the city. They would hang their flayed skins on the walls of the city. It was performative cruelty. Deliberately exaggerated and extreme. Designed to inspire shock and awe. The message to any other city was intended to be very clear, ‘You DO NOT mess with us!’

So that is what the Assyrian empire, centred in Nineveh, was like. It is to that people that the Jewish prophet Jonah is sent.

So, we can perhaps understand why it wasn’t an assignment Jonah was keen to undertake. To go to the centre of the most brutal, bloodthirsty, pagan empire in the world, and tell them that a Jewish God that they know nothing about is not pleased with them. As jobs go, not a great gig!

You all know the story. Jonah refuses God’s command. Instead of going to Nineveh, he takes a ship heading in completely opposite direction. He actually heads for, what was to him, the other side of the world.

But God sends a storm. The ship is about to sink. Jonah heroically offers to sacrifice himself to save the Gentile sailors.

The sailors reluctantly throw Jonah overboard and the storm immediately calms. The sailors are awestruck and turn in faith to the God of Jonah. So, Jonah, the Jewish prophet, is used by God to save a community of Gentiles. Notice that.

God then provides a monstrous fish that swallows Jonah and he survives for 3 days inside the fish. During that time, facing certain death, Jonah repents. He turns back to God. God then makes the fish vomit Jonah up on the shore and Jonah reluctantly accepts his mission. He begins his 600 km walk to Nineveh.

After weeks of walking, Jonah arrives at Nineveh and he delivers God’s warning message.

Amazingly, the whole city, from the king in his palace to the man in the street, they all repent of their sin and turn to God in fasting and prayer, crying out to God to spare their city.

If you want to know the reasons why the Assyrians may have taken the prophet Jonah and his message so seriously, you will have to read my book! Available in French and English at all good online booksellers!

So, God relents. He spares the city. Jonah, the Jewish prophet, is used by God to save a community of Gentiles. Notice that.

But in doing this, Jonah becomes the most successful missionary in the whole Bible. He sees more people saved than St Paul or even Jesus. But, instead of being elated, amazed, delighted at how God has used him, Jonah is furious.

He actually despises his success. He hates what God has done through him. What Jonah wanted was that the hateful, wicked, bloodthirsty Assyrians would be destroyed. He wanted them to get what was coming to them. He wanted God to act in justice, but instead God acted in mercy.

Jonah has fulfilled God’s mission, but he doesn’t share God’s heart.

Finally, we learn the reason why Jonah fled from God and from this mission at the start of the book. Jonah explains that the reason he wanted nothing to do with this was because he knew God’s character,

for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 

That sounds to our ears like a beautiful summary of Gods character, but then we realize that Jonah is not praising God for his merciful nature; rather Jonah hates the wideness of mercy. Jonah is not expressing delight, but distaste.

Jonah does not want God’s mercy to be extended to people he doesn’t think deserve it. His horror at the mission God gave him was not inspired by any fear of the Ninevites, but by his fear of God’s wild grace. Hence the title of my book, ‘Jonah- the epistle of wild grace’ – available in French and English at all good online booksellers!

God’s grace is wild and it extends far beyond where we think it has any place extending. It reaches people who we don’t think it has any business reaching.

So, God responds by giving Jonah an object lesson. Jonah builds himself a little shelter on the hill overlooking the city of Nineveh, and he sits there quietly fuming at God’s wild grace.

God then provides a plant, to grow over Jonah’s shelter and provide him with some shade. Jonah is very happy with the relief that this plant gives him from the blazing sun.

But then, overnight, God sends a worm to eat through the root of the plant. Note that God has used the largest animal in the world – a monstrous fish to do his will – now God uses one of the smallest – a worm. God has used a violent storm and the blazing sun and desert wind. The whole of creation is at God’s command.

When Jonah wakes, he finds that his shade plant is dead and he gets very angry. God asks if he has any right to be angry about the plant? A plant that sprung up overnight and died overnight. A plant he hadn’t tended or cared for?

When Jonah insists that he has the right to care about the plant, God then asks Jonah a question. If he can care about a small plant, doesn’t God have the right to care about a city of 120,000 men, plus women, children, and livestock?

The question hangs unanswered. But the fact that we have the book of Jonah indicates that Jonah finally gave a positive answer to God. Only Jonah could have written this book. There is so much information in it that only Jonah himself would have known. Jonah finally came to appreciate God’s wild grace.

In a way, the book is Jonah’s confession. “I, Jonah, the great Jewish prophet, the first and greatest Apostle to the Gentiles, this is how wrong-headed I was about God’s grace. I confess my sin. I repent in dust and ashes, and I turn to God.”

Of course, the Jonah story links in perfectly with the parable that Jesus told about the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20.

Here too, the vineyard owner – who represents God – treats people better than they deserve. Those who only work for one hour are generously rewarded and paid as much as those who worked a full day.

Again, this wild grace provokes a negative response. People who consider themselves to be more worthy recipients of God’s grace are outraged that this grace should extend to those they felt were less deserving. How dare God treat these people as well as he treats us! It is scandalous!

But that is the whole point about grace. It IS scandalous. It is ALWAYS undeserved favour. God treats us better than we deserve.

The only right response to that scandalous, wild grace is gratitude. We express that gratitude by throwing ourselves on our faces before God in repentance, in being baptised, and in becoming Jesus’ disciples.

Grace and gratitude are the two pillars of the Christian life. Grace flows to us from God, gratitude is our appropriate response. Amen.

What is the Point of Prayer? How Do You Pray Well?

[Scriptures to read – Ezekiel 22:23-31, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22, Luke 18:9-14]

Our church recently spent 24 hours in continual prayer. You might ask why did we do that? Why did we go to all the bother. What, actually, is the point of prayer?

I am going to try and give a biblical framework for prayer. And then, once I’ve made a case for the importance of prayer, I’m going to look at related question, ‘How do we pray well?”

Prayer is a Sign of Life

Perhaps a first clue as to the importance of prayer can be found in the old hymn by James MONTGOMERY (1771 – 1854) the Scottish hymn-writer and poet, in which he writes, ‘Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, The Christian’s native air’. In other word, what breath is to life, prayer is to the spiritual life.

When I did my training as a Sapeur-Pompier, I was taught that one of the key tests for the presence of life, was the presence of breath. When you come across someone who is unconscious, the first thing you do is check for breathing. If you want to know if someone is alive, check for breathing.

Well, in the same way, if you want to know if someone is spiritually alive, look for prayer.

But why is prayer so significant? I believe that it is because prayer is one of the main ways that our relationship with God is expressed.

If we take an analogy from human relationships. If I were to tell you that I have an amazing marriage, but then I told you that my wife never speak to each other, neither do we spend time together – then I think you would have some questions for me. Really, Stephen?

Generally speaking, if you care for someone you want to spend time with them. And prayer is one of the ways that we spend time with God. As such, the amount of prayer in our lives is an indicator of the health of our relationship with God.

Prayer is a Cause of Change

Prayer is also significant in what it does in the economy of God.

John WESLEY, who was at the heart of the Methodist revival in the 18^th century, famously said, “God does nothing except in answer to prayer”. So, if God wants to work, he needs people to pray.

In Ezekiel 22:23-31 the whole of society is described as going to hell in a hand-cart. Every level of society was corrupt, faithless, and immoral – from princes in their palaces, to people on the streets.

This was a breach of the covenant and therefore God was duty bound to act in judgement. But God hesitates. Before he acts, God looks around. What is God looking for?

“And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.”

God was looking for faithful people, people who would stand in the gap and pray for their nation. But because God finds no-one doing that, God was forced to pour out his judgment upon the land. Because no-one prayed, God could not spare.

We see a similar process at work when Abraham prays for the sparing of Sodom. God is about to pour out judgement on Sodom for its wickedness and sin, but Abraham prays for the city. He asks God to spare the city if 50 righteous men can be found in it. God agrees, and then they negotiation goes on. Finally, Abraham gets God to agree that if only 10 righteous men live in Sodom, then they city would be spared. Had 10 righteous men been found, the city would have been spared.

That is the honour and the heavy responsibility that God places on us. He allows us, through our prayers, to release his activity in the world, or to restrain it. Because, “God does nothing except in answer to prayer”.

So, if we want God to work, we need to pray. Do we want this church to grow? Pray. Do we want this church to have the financial resources to do all the repairs and upgrades that this tired building needs? Pray. Do we want to see God move in revival across the nation of France? Pray.

Prayer Stands in the Gap

The Ezekiel reading might also give us pause for thought. How would our society be judged in God’s eyes? Are the French contemporary equivalents of princes, officials, priests, prophets, and the ordinary people of France living faithfully before God?

I don’t know what your thoughts are about that, but it motivates me to stand in the gap and to pray for our land.

Prayer Has Many Forms

But, if all this shows us the importance of prayer, what actually is prayer? Well, prayer can take a variety of different forms. When I was growing up, we used the ACTS acronym to structure our prayers.

• Adoration – Giving thanks to God for who he is.
• Confession – Acknowledging our sins and failings to God.
• Thanksgiving – Giving thanks to God for all of the blessings we receive from his hand.
• Supplication – Asking God to help us and others.

But a word of caution. When we come to supplication, or intercession, when we take seriously the privilege and honour that God has given us to release or restrain his activity in the world, the great danger is that our prayers become ever lengthening shopping lists.

One person asks you to pray for them, then another, then you learn of someone else. And your list grows from one page to two pages to three. And it can feel oppressive. It can take all the joy out of prayer. You can start to dread having to bring all the people and situations before God. And to be honest, you’ve probably forgotten why you were praying for half of them in the first place.

Prayer is Primarily Presence

So, it is really important to recognise two things, and if you remember nothing else I say this morning, remember this.

• Firstly, what God wants most in prayer is our presence, not our petitions.
• Secondly, when we pray, we are never giving God new information. God sees our hearts. He heard our promises. He sees our list. We have no need to explain or describe anything to God. He already knows.

So, you can simply come in prayer and offer your list to God. God can read better than you. He knows who is on your list, and he remembers better than you do why they are on your list.

So, simply ask him to work in those people’s lives and situations as is best for them and is most consistent with his plans and purposes.

Then you can be free to do what God wants to do in your time of prayer together. Simply to be present to each other. Which is what Thessalonians 5:16-18 talks about;

Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances

‘Pray without ceasing’ doesn’t mean a constant 24/7 verbal dialogue with God, but rather an acknowledgement of, and an attentiveness to, God’s presence with us. As Brother Lawrence wrote, ‘seeking to live in God, and with God, and for God’.

Prayer is therefore less an activity and more a state of mind, an orientation of the heart, a stance from which we face the world.

Another word of advice about prayer comes to us in Ecclesiastes 5:2;

Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God,

for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.

Sometimes prayer can be a bit like a constant verbal barrage that we direct towards God. But I don’t think that is what God wants from us in prayer. I was reading a book this week about spiritual direction and the author wrote this about her experience of God seemingly ignoring her prayers[1];

“But after many years of complaining to God about God’s silent treatment,

I realized that maybe I’ve misunderstood God all along.

Maybe God’s preferred language is silence,

and I need to learn God’s language instead of expecting God to speak my language.”

She went on to reflect on Psalm 19:1-4;

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
² Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
³ There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;
⁴ yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

She Interprets that mystical passage in this way,

“Our experience of God’s silence does not mean that God has nothing to say or refuses to speak. God’s silence is not a void; it’s not an empty silence. Rather it’s a thick silence.

It’s the same silence in which the stars and skies communicate so loudly and clearly.

Perhaps God’s primary language is silence because

God much prefers our presence over our words.”

For those of us from activistic Christian traditions, this idea of prayer as being more about just spending time with God, can be a helpful corrective. But there are also moments in life when words just aren’t helpful, or they just won’t come, or in our turmoil and confusion we don’t even know what to pray. In those moments, non-verbal prayer is helpful.

Christians have used physical actions as a way of praying from the earliest days of the church – kneeling, prostrating yourself, making the sign of the cross, lighting a candle, sitting with an icon – these are all ways of wordless prayer. Ways of presenting ourselves to God in wordless attentiveness. And sometimes that is a really helpful way to pray.

Prayer is Shaped by Personality

There is another consideration in prayer, and that is our temperament and personality type. Depending upon whether we are an extrovert or an introvert, certain ways of praying will naturally attract or repel.

Acknowledging this reality, the Anglican monk, Dom John CHAPMAN, famously advised, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t“. In other words, find what forms of prayer work best for you.

A helpful book in this respect is ‘Who We Are Is How We Pray’ by Dr Charles KEATING. He took the 16 Myers-Briggs personality profiles and worked out what forms of prayer might work best for each personality type. But the key learning point is to, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t“.

Prayer that God Hears

To close, I would like to look at Jesus’ parable from Luke 18:9-14 in which Jesus explains how to pray in a way that God hears. Which is good to know, right? There is no point in praying if God is not even going to hear your prayer.

In Jesus’ story, two people go to the temple to pray. One is an outwardly pious Pharisee. He takes centre stage, he raises his arms, he lifts his voice to heaven, and he presents his prayer to God.

But actually, his intended audience is not God but those standing around him. His prayer is not directed vertically, but horizontally.

His prayer is nothing more than a list of his own ethical qualities and spiritual practices. He is looking to impress, to have people praise him. He even weaponizes his prayer and includes in it a dig at the detested tax collector standing at the back.

In contrast the tax collector does not even feel able to raise his eyes to heaven. His hands are not raised in prayer, but he uses them to strike his breast in shame and repentance. He is overcome by his failure and his sin, all he can do in his prayer is to cry out to God for mercy.

Yet, Jesus states that the only prayer that God heard that day was that of the tax collector.

So, what does that tell us about the kinds of prayer that God hears?

Firstly, God only hears prayers that are solely addressed to him – so be careful about praying in public. There can be a temptation to address our prayers to those around us, to try to influence them, or to impress them. This is one of the reasons why our liturgy uses mostly prayers that are written down for us, it reduces that temptation.

Secondly, God only hears honest prayers. God sees what is on our heart. So, if what comes out of our mouth is not coherent with what is in our heart, we are wasting our time. God is not someone you can fool. So, be honest in prayer.

I hope you have found something helpful in this meditation and that God will lead us all into a rich prayer-life; that we might take seriously our duty and honour to release the activity of God in our church, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world. Amen.

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[1] LEE, Cindy S. ‘Our Unforming – De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation’, MINNEAPOLIS : Fortress Press, 2022, p81f

The Duty of Gratitude

[Ten Lepers by James Christensen]

There is an incident in the ministry of Jesus, where he heals ten lepers. You can read the story in Luke 17:11-19.

In order to understand the story we need to know a bit of background.

The word ‘leprosy’ in the Bible is a catch-all term for all kinds of contagious skin diseases. What we call leprosy is a very precise disease, which we now know is only caused by expose to the disease in childhood. It is now treatable, but still not curable.

In the world of the Bible, any contagious skin disease was all lumped together and in order to avoid contagion across the whole community, draconian measures were taken to separate any diseased person from the community.

So, for these ten lepers, we have to imagine what their experience must have been.

That fateful day when their disease first showed itself, they were immediately ostracised from their family and their community. They were not allowed to get closer than 50 paces of a non-infected person. That is why in the gospel story we are told that they kept their distance and called out to Jesus.

Imagine from one day to the next, being ejected from your home and your village, not being able to hold your children, to kiss your wife, or even have a normal conversation with your friends.

Instead, you find yourself living wherever you can find shelter, in caves, in derelict buildings, reliant on people from your family or your village dropping off food for you each day. Your life has gone to hell, literally.

The ten lepers who come to Jesus have nothing to offer him; no power, no influence, no status, all they can do is to cry out to Jesus for mercy.

Jesus responds to their request. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests.

We might wonder as to why Jesus tells them to do this. But the priests were the guardians of the community. It was they who pronounced someone infected, and they who pronounced someone free of disease. So, presenting yourself to the priest was the only way to get your life back.

The priest would examine their bodies for any sign of disease, and could pronounce them free of disease. Then they were allowed to return to normal life.

These ten lepers leave immediately to go to the nearest priest in obedience to Jesus. And as they go, they are amazed to find that their bodies have been healed, the signs of the disease have gone. Again, you can imagine the emotions. They are about to get their lives back. Their long nightmare is over.

You can imagine that they might start running, desperate to get to the priest who can confirm their healing, restore their lives, re-integrate them into their families and communities.

But one man slows. He is as desperate as the others to get his life back, but he senses a deep obligation, an obligation of gratitude.

He turns back. Shouting and declaring his praises to God who has brought him healing. He prostrates himself before Jesus.

But then the thunderbolt falls. This man is a Samaritan. Nine Jews have been healed, but there is no sign of them. Only the Samaritan, the people who were the hated off-shoot of Judaism, a people whom the Jews considered to be as bad as Gentiles.

The gospels record several moments when people prostrate themselves before Jesus –

• the Magi, or the Wise Men. They prostrate themselves before the infant Christ in worship.
• the Gerasene Demoniac, who falls prostrate before Jesus as the demons express their fear that he will destroy them.
• the soldiers who come to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. When Jesus asks them, ‘Who do you seek?’ They respond, ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. To which Jesus says, ‘I am’. Those of you who know your Old Testament will get the reference, ‘I AM’ is the divine name. And when Jesus says, ‘I AM’, they are knocked to the ground before him, unable to stand in his presence.

Note that every single one of these is a Gentile. Think about the significance of that.

In fact, there is only one Jew in the Bible who prostrates himself before Jesus, at least that is before his resurrection – after his resurrection the disciples will prostrate themselves before Jesus in worship.

But, before his resurrection, Jairus, the President of the Synagogue in Capernaum, is the only Jew who prostrates himself before Jesus.

Jesus often had a difficult relationship with synagogues. He was expelled by the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. In the synagogue of Capernaum, he seems to have been more accepted. He taught there and di miracles and exorcisms there.

So, when the 12-year-old daughter of the synagogue ruler is critically ill, he comes and falls at Jesus’ feet. Jesus responds to his request, and he obtains his daughter’s healing – her resurrection in fact, as she dies before Jesus gets to her. But his overt acknowledgement of Jesus may have been difficult for him in terms of his place in the synagogue and his position in the community. Which is interesting.

So, almost all those who prostrate themselves before Jesus in the gospels are Gentiles, or Jews who have to put in jeopardy their place in the Jewish religious community in order to follow Jesus. This fact seems to generally prove the point of John 1:11, ‘He came unto his own and his own received him not.’

Ten lepers were healed, but only one leper was thankful. Only one turns back to Jesus to acknowledge his grace and power, to testify, to give thanks, to rejoice, and to praise.

We might be scandalised by the nine ungrateful Jewish lepers, who received such a great gift from Jesus and failed to be thankful. But the uncomfortable reality is that is a picture of us too.

We have all received an incredible gift from Jesus, the forgiveness of our sins, reconciliation with God, the hope of eternal life. The question is, how much gratitude is in evidence in our lives?

There is a connection here with Galatians 5.16-24, the accompanying epistle in the Anglican lectionary. That reading gives us a litmus test for our level of gratitude to God for all his goodness and grace. It describes what gratitude to God looks like when it is expressed in a human life.

If, like the healed leper, we are genuinely grateful to God for his forgiveness and salvation, then we will live in a way that pleases him. We will do all in our power to show our gratitude to God by adopting his values and priorities in our everyday lives.

This process of refusing the natural inclinations of our bodies, and choosing instead live out God’s values, will develop in us what is called ‘the fruit of the Spirit’. The fruit that the Holy Spirit’s presence in us, is meant to produce is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Perhaps we should all take some time to examine our lives this week and try to work out how well we are expressing our gratitude to God?

The God of Social Media

Over the past 6 months, in our small congregation of 40 – 50 adults, I have had three new people come to church.

Each of them had a story about coming to faith through social media.

One of them had been living in a country where access to Christian material is banned. As a 16-year old, they found a PDF online of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in a traditional version of their own language.

They started reading this prayer book and came to faith in Jesus.

Another person told me that they had come to our church because they had been watching ‘The Chosen’ – a 7 series (so far) dramatisation of the life of Jesus.

This fairly recent work has been done with very high production values and embodies a somewhat Ignatian approach, in that it enriches the bare biblical text by seeking to enter into the feelings, hopes and dreams of the central characters, thereby bringing the stories to life in a deeper way.

It is also made available for streaming free of charge in a multitude of different languages.

The third person told me that they came to faith in Jesus through watching TikTok videos. Primarily those of an Orthodox priest and an American evangelist.

Each of those people, after coming to faith soley through Social Media, looked for a church to join and found us online.

For me, the heart of the Christian life is to do what Jesus did ; that is to look to see where the Father is working and then go and join Him in what He is doing.

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. John 5:19, NIV

We see this demonstrated in the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus in Luke 19.

Jesus notices something odd, a wealthy man of status has done something strangely out of character. His is so desperate to see Jesus that he has climbed up a tree. This is not what the Middle Eastern gravitas required of the social elite.

So, Jesus goes over, starts a conversation, goes to the man’s home. And, in very short order, the man has turned to Jesus in faith, set his life on a path of restitution and righteousness.

In the light of my recent experience, the question I have, if God is working like this through social media, what should I do ?

I put out this blog (380+ meditations now), but textual stuff isn’t where people are looking any more. People want spoken word, or video.

I’m not sure I have the right gifting to do that sort of thing. I am better at creating content than presenting it.

A question that still needs to be answered…

Suffering Successfully

The book of Jeremiah takes place in the late seventh and sixth centuries BC. These are the years on either side of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King. This led to the deportation of many of the Jewish elite to Babylon about 1,500 km away. Those who were left behind were under foreign rule.

Jeremiah was sent by God before this disaster happened. He was to warn the people about the judgment God was about to allow to fall on them because of their sin and to call them to repent. The people of God had broken the terms of the covenant – both in their personal lives, expressed in failings in both ethical and religious behaviour – and also politically, in making alliances with foreign powers, rather than relying on God.

But the ruling class in Jerusalem were not interested in Jeremiah’s message. Jeremiah spoke an inconvenient truth: he highlighted their moral failure, he drew attention to their corruption, he questioned their political strategy, and he demanded that they change their ways. This led them to look for ways to silence him: they had him thrown into a muddy pit, they had him locked him up in prison, and they even tried to kill him.

So, it comes as no surprise that Jeremiah is unhappy with his lot. He is just trying to be God’s prophet, proclaiming the message that God has given him honestly and accurately. Yet he is detested, opposed, ridiculed, and silenced. It is an understatement to say that Jeremiah is not enjoying the experience of ministry. He has discovered that being God’s prophet is hard and unpleasant. Finally, in Jeremiah 15:15-21 his emotions boil over, and he pours out his heart to God.

The Bible is a deeply honest book. And Jeremiah is one of the most honest books within the Bible. One of the ways we see this honesty expressed is in the Biblical genre of lament. Lament has a particular structure. About a third of the 150 psalms are considered psalms of lament; it is the largest category of psalms. Think about that for a moment.

The largest category of psalms are psalms in which God’s people are suffering and unhappy. They are experiencing anxiety, struggle, and pain. They are confused, disappointed, often angry with the way that God is working, or not working in their lives.

The fact that a third of the hymn book of the Jewish people are psalms of lament should warn us that living in relationship with God is not easy.

But the proper response to confusion, disappointment, or anger with God is not to disconnect from God. Or worse, to pretend that everything is rosy and that life is fine. No, the proper response is to be brutally honest with God, to express our feelings openly in lament.

I wonder what our worship would be like if we expressed our feelings honestly to God? If we sang songs about the misery of COVID, our agony when we see natural disasters happening, our anxiety about an ever-warming planet, our outrage at immoral and corrupt leaders who seem untouchable, our despair at wars that seem to start and never end.

Being honest with God and ourselves, is always good – as if we could hide from God our true feelings anyway. Being honest helps us to work through our feelings, and often it leads to healing and to peace, even when there are no clear answers.

There is a deeply prophetic and deeply troubling little book called “Don’t Waste Your Sorrows” by Paul E. BILHEIMER. It is troubling because he explains that suffering is an essential component of the life of faith. Suffering, rightly endured and responded to, is the only thing that decentralises the self and develops our capacity to love God and others.

BILHEIMER writes, ‘There is no sainthood without suffering. This is why the greatest saints were often those who suffered most.’

The reason that God allows suffering in our lives is incredibly rich and profound. We suffer because we are destined to rule and reign with God. To be co-rulers with God requires the formation of our character, and character is generally formed through the experience of suffering. As David wrote in Psalm 119:67 and 71,

Before I suffered, I did wrong. But now I obey your word…

It was good for me to suffer so I would learn your demands.

So BILHEIMER’s provocative title, ‘Don’t Waste Your Sorrows’, is a challenge to respond positively to any suffering that we experience and to allow it to do its transformative work in us.

I suppose that Job is the ultimate Biblical example of how suffering deepens and develops a person’s character. Job was a good man at the start of the book, but he is a deep man at the end of the book. His faith has moved on from embracing simplistic certainties, to accepting the deep mysteries of God. In a word, he has grown up. His vision of God has expanded, and he responds to the experience with deep awe, deep humility, and deep worship.

I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ Job 42:3-6

Suffering, rightly responded to, took Job deeper into God, that is what it is meant to achieve in us.

Notice that as Jeremiah utters his lament, it is still expressed in the language of worship. The proper response to evil, injustice, and suffering is still worship; even if all we can bring ourselves to do is to cry out our pain and our complaint before God.

Jeremiah pleads with God to act, to sort out this terrible situation. He reminds God that it is his obedience to God’s call that has brought this suffering into his life. God seems to have not responded as he should have. He describes God as a deceitful stream, one that dries up whenever you go to it looking for water. It feels like God has taken his sacrifice but instead of responding with favour and blessing God has abandoned him.

As is often the case in Scripture, God doesn’t give the answer Jeremiah wants to hear. Instead, God responds by quoting almost verbatim the words he used when he first commissioned Jeremiah;

“And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land — against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.”

God reminds Jeremiah that the suffering he has experienced is ‘as advertised’. This is not a mistake, or a failure, this is God’s plan working out. God tells Jeremiah that he has a choice. He can offer the people two kinds of speech: worthless speech or precious speech.

He can remain true to his calling, speaking God’s words with honesty and integrity – regardless of the response. Or he can pander to what people want to hear, he can modify the message, he can make it more palatable. But that will make his words entirely worthless.

God insists that Jeremiah continue. There is no promise of it being any easier. Nor is there any promise that he will see success. But God will be with Jeremiah and God will work his purposes out.

I believe that Jeremiah’s words speak powerfully to us today.

As in Jeremiah’s day, those in power in our world seem to be more and more opposed to God and to the values of God’s kingdom. The rich get richer and the poor have their faces ground into the dirt.

Those in power seem to exert all their power and influence to block and delay any change that would promote the greater good – dealing with climate change, decarbonisation. They put their own self-interest over concerns of justice, mercy, even the survival of the planet itself.

There seems no appetite for peace, only for war. No desire for mutually beneficial trading relationships, only for economic domination.

The Christian dream of the coming of God’s kingdom, a society ruled in justice, promoting righteousness, and expressing love for one another, appears far away — even impossible.

What do we do? Do we give up hope? Do we meekly accept the reality of injustice and unfairness? Do we simply shrug our shoulders about the fate of the poor and oppressed? Do we hold our silence as the planet burns?

God’s words to Jeremiah were to stay faithful, to embrace hope, to trust that God is working his purposes out, despite all the evident signs to the contrary. As Christians, we’ve read the end of the story; we know that ultimately God wins.

In Matthew 16:21-28, Jesus, like Jeremiah, is also experiencing opposition from the rich and powerful. They too want to silence him. Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a threat to the status quo. The rich and powerful do not want their cosy life to be messed up. The system is working nicely for them; the last thing they want is for things to change.

Jesus gathers around him some disciples and he speaks to them about establishing a kingdom. But the nature of that kingdom, and the means of establishing that kingdom are totally unexpected. Like Jeremiah, the way Jesus will fulfil his mission is passive – through enduring opposition, accepting suffering, and finally, through being killed.

As the disciples listen to Jesus predicting his coming suffering and death, they are scandalised. St Peter cannot see any way that this approach will work. This is not how kingdoms are established; it is not how evil power structures are overthrown. Like Jeremiah, Peter is confused, Jesus’ plan doesn’t make any sense. He takes Jesus to one side, and tells him his plan is just plain wrong.

Jesus’ response is to strongly rebuke Peter. To tell him he has no idea of how God works. God doesn’t adopt human strategies, or work according to human reasoning. But Jesus goes further. Anyone who wants to follow him will have to embrace his approach. Turn over their life entirely to God, embrace suffering and weakness, and trust that God will work through that to establish his kingdom. Those who do side with God will be vindicated and rewarded one day when God’s kingdom comes, which it will.

Romans 12:9-18describes what it looks like when God’s people choose to live in that way. When, to quote Romans 12:1, we choose to become ‘living sacrifices’.

There are 26 descriptions of how Christians should live. If we embrace this approach to life, we will be living in the same way Jeremiah and Jesus lived. It’s a costly and difficult way to live, yet it is what the normal Christian life is meant to be.

1. Let love be genuine;
2. hate what is evil,
3. hold fast to what is good;
4. love one another with mutual affection;
5. outdo one another in showing honour.
6. Do not lag in zeal,
7. be ardent in spirit,
8. serve the Lord.
9. Rejoice in hope,
10. be patient in suffering,
11. persevere in prayer.
12. Contribute to the needs of the saints;
13. extend hospitality to strangers.
14. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
15. Rejoice with those who rejoice,
16. weep with those who weep.
17. Live in harmony with one another;
18. do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;
19. do not claim to be wiser than you are.
20. Do not repay anyone evil for evil,
21. but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
22. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
23. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’
24. No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’
25. Do not be overcome by evil,
26. but overcome evil with good.

I invite you to read these descriptions of what the normal Christian life should look like. Ask yourself;

• Where am I showing some progress?
• Where are the challenges for me?
• Is there one thing I could change that might help me more closely approach this description?

Take your thoughts and ideas to God in prayer.

May God bless your prayerful meditation on these commands. May our practice of these commands transform our lives and our fellowships. Amen.

The Miraculous Moment When Time Itself Slips

Something deeply profound happens when we turn to Christ in faith. At that moment, the timeframe of our life changes. As Christians we no longer live in the timeframe of a human lifetime, but in the timeframe of eternity. That changes everything. It was something Isaiah talk about in Isaiah 51.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath;

for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats;

Which is something that astrophysics confirms. This world, this universe, this cosmos are all time-limited. And human beings, with the brief lifespan that we have, are like tiny flies on the surface of the world. But then God says something that radically changes everything;

but my salvation will be for ever, and my deliverance will never be ended

Isaiah is saying, ‘Look, when you are with God, that changes how you view time and existence. Yes, you are still human. You will experience growth, maturity, decline, and death, with all the joys and sorrows that a human life may encounter along the way. But that is now set in a far wider context. Your context is now eternity. Death is now not the end of your story;

but my salvation will be for ever, and my deliverance will never be ended

That reality has massive consequence as to how we should approach life. If the timeframe in which you evaluate your life is your lifetime, then you are focussed on the here and now. You ask yourself, ‘Am I getting as much pleasure and joy out of life as I can?’ Because I have only a very limited time to live, if I’m lucky, 80-90-100 years.

If this life is all there is, then I am in a desperate race to do all those things that I want to do before I die. The cultural expression of this view of time was invented in 1999 by the screenwriter Justin ZACKHAM. He came up with the concept of ‘the bucket list’. A list of things you must do before you die or else you will judge your life to have been unfulfilled.

In fact, when you live with a ‘this life’ timeframe, your whole life becomes one enormous bucket-list. Trying to squeeze in everything that this life might offer you – success, achievement, experiences, and pleasure – before it is all over and you die. If you want to know what that approach to life looks like, just look around you.

But that is not the Christian view of life. As if the success or failure of your existence could be determined by the experiences you had or failed to have! Whether or not you ate oysters or climbed a mountain.

The Christian view is that there is only one way that you succeed in life, and that is by putting God at the centre of it.

The Shorter Westminster Catechism, written in 1647, begins with the opening statement, ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him.’ The goal of your life is a love relationship with God and the only proper response to the reality of God is worship – whole-life, whole-person worship. This involves the process of orienting every aspect of your life, moment by moment to pleasing God; to enjoying his presence; to aligning your heart with his heart.

Which is exactly what we read in Romans 12:1-8;

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

But the Westminster Shorter Catechism added one word to that sentence that changes everything, ‘forever’.

‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.’

The timeframe of your life is not time, but eternity. God wants you and him to be in a love relationship of mutual enjoyment for eternity. Put another way, God will not allow death to separate Him from his beloved children.

If that is true, then the only way you can fail in life, is to not recognise the existence of God and to fail to properly orient yourself to God, putting God at the centre.

Putting God at the centre, is both transcendental and mundane. As Brother Lawrence described in the Practice of the Presence of God, he decided to live each moment of his life in God and with God and for God. So, everything he did became an act of worship. He could bend down and pick up a stray piece of straw for the love of God. Seeking to do that tiny act of cleaning and tidying as an expression of his worship to God. Which makes the action both mundane and transcendent, here and now and eternal. Nothing done for love of God will ever be forgotten.

Our worship is therefore not our singing, or even our gathering together on Sundays, but rather our whole lives. Everything we do, we can do for God and in God and with God, and it is that motivation of heart that transforms even the most insignificant action into something that counts in the timeframe of eternity.

In his PhD thesis, the American Tom WADSWORTH argues convincingly that in the early church their gatherings did not have as the worship of God as their primary focus. Worship was what you did in your day-to-day life throughout the week – you expressed your worship in how you lived – as a living sacrifice.

What the Christians gatherings were focussed on, was mutual edification. In the New Testament there are 59 ‘one-another’ commands. These describe what Christians are meant to do for each other, these are what actually express the reality of what Church is meant to be. As a few examples;

have peace with one-another, love one another, forgive one-another, pray for one-another, comfort one-another, be of the same mind as one-another, don’t judge one-another, admonish one-another, serve one-another, speak to one-another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs etc. etc.

59 of them, I have a list, if you are interested. Note that none of these commands are gender specific. It doesn’t say women do this, or men do that. Neither do any of these commands express any hierarchy or power structure. There is no difference in what episcopoi, presbuteroi, or diakonoi (bishops, priests, and deacons) or lay people are meant to do.

These ‘one-another’ commands are what every Christian should be doing for every other Christian. So, in the Early Church, the Sunday gatherings of the local Christian community – remember these were always in someone’s home – were mainly focussed on Christians ministering to ‘one-another’, encouraging, challenging, and building up ‘one-another’ in the faith – what is termed in Romans 14:19, ‘mutual edification’.

Certainly, the celebration of the eucharist was always a central element in the Christian gathering, alongside the teaching of the apostles through reading their letters and the preaching of local or visiting church leaders. But peer to peer ministry, ‘one-another’ ministry was a core feature of what the early Christians gathered to do.

In the contemporary church, we often have a hard time replicating ‘one-another’ ministry. It is probably something that happens more in home-groups, but our Sunday gatherings are often passive. People come along to receive, not to give. To be ‘done to’ rather than to ‘do’.

This is why I often try to create space for ‘one-another’ ministry after my sermon. I also usually encourage you to continue your conversations after the service. We also try to have people around ready to offer prayer after the service.

In our Vision Day, when we asked you to share your hopes and dreams for the future of our church, the biggest response expressed was a desire for more discipleship. Well, participating in ‘one-another’ ministry is one of the key ways in which we grow in our discipleship.

If we were to come to church less focussed on, ‘What will I get out of this?’ and more focussed on, ‘What might I be able to bring to share with my brothers and sisters that would encourage, build up, and strengthen them in their faith?’ I think our church would be healthier, and we would see more people growing as disciples of Jesus, discovering the gifts and graces that the Holy Spirit has placed in their lives, and finding how God wants to use them in His Church.

As an Anglican priest I believe in the ordained priesthood – people consecrated and set apart to lead the Church. But the ordained priesthood exists to empower and release the priesthood of all believers, where we all act as priests to one another and to the world. This ‘one-another’ ministry is an expression of that priesthood which we all share.

This priesthood is empowered and enabled by Holy Spirit gifting, as Romans 12:1-8 explains;

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

• Are you someone to whom God’s gives wisdom and insight? We need that.
• Can you minister to others leaving them feeling stronger in their faith? We need that.
• Can you help people grow in their understanding of the faith? We need that.
• Are you someone that can fire others up, motivate them to live more fully for God? We need that.
• Are you someone God has blessed with resources to share and given an open and generous hand? We need that.
• Are you someone who spots what is going on in a community and can give wise leadership? We need that.
• Are you kind and compassionate and cheer people up? We need that.

This church will only ever achieve its full potential, when we have everyone offering their gifts, graces, skills, energy, and effort. When we manage to do ‘one-another’ ministry.

But ‘one-another’ ministry is costly. It requires commitment and a willingness to think of others more than yourself. No-one would ever be willing to commit to that kind of life, unless something radical had happened to them. Something so significant that it changes their timeframe from time to eternity; from living for this life and for themselves, to living for God. That radical thing that needs to happen is a miraculous moment of divine grace.

We read of Peter’s miraculous moment in Matthew 16.13-20. Of all the disciples, he is the first to recognise Jesus as the Son of God. What was Jesus’ response?

‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’

As it says in 1 Corinthians 12:3; ‘no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.’

Whenever anyone recognises Jesus as Lord, a divine miracle has happened. God has directly worked in their heart and mind and soul to make that miraculous moment happen.

If you have never had that miraculous moment, then you need to pray asking God to give you that gift. No-one else can do that for you but God.

But when that miraculous moment happens, everything changes. Your time frame slips from this life to eternity. That miraculous moment makes it possible for you to choose to live a life of worship, to offer your body as a living sacrifice. The miraculous moment makes it possible for you to see the value of engaging in one-another ministry, discerning and fulfilling your life’s calling, partnering with God in what he is doing to bring the cosmos to redemption.

It is the miraculous moment that changes everything. Amen.

The 3 Levels of Faith

The great tragedy of Jesus’ life and ministry was that his own people, the Jews, largely rejected him. As St John writes in John 1:11, ‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.’ Sadly, throughout his ministry, the majority of the Jewish people failed to have faith in Jesus.

Jesus had a pet-name for his disciples. In Greek it is ‘oligopistoi’ and it means ‘the little-faiths’. It was a slightly pejorative and chiding term and is recorded in Matthew’s gospel four times (6:40, 8:26, 14:31, 16:8). Each time it is used by Jesus when his disciples have failed to have faith in him. So, the majority of the Jewish population had no faith in Jesus, and his disciples only had little faith in him.

This is something Jesus laments in Matthew 23:37, ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’

We might wonder why the majority of Jews had no faith in Jesus? That would seem to be counter intuitive. The Jews had a unique historical relationship with God, so aren’t the Jews closer to God than the rest of humanity? Don’t the Jews have easier access to God? Aren’t the Jews in a privileged class when it comes to faith?

Interestingly, there are two people in the New Testament that Jesus describes as having ‘great faith’. The shock is that they are both Gentiles. Let that sink in for a while.

It seems that by singling out two people, both Gentiles, as having great faith, Jesus is making some kind of point. But what point is he making?

It is undeniably true that the Jews had certain historical advantages when it comes to faith. They had the patriarchs, the creation of their national and religious identity in the covenant, the Promised Land given to them by God, the prophets, the system of temple worship. As Jesus says to the Samaritan woman in John 4, there is a very real sense in which, “Salvation is of the Jews”. Before Jesus, everything we know about God comes to us from the Jewish people.

Even Jesus’ own mission was focussed primarily on the Jews, as Jesus says in Matthew 15. But all those advantages that the Jews enjoy, they aren’t significant if they don’t lead to faith in Jesus.

In contrast, two Gentiles, who have had none of the advantages of a Jewish background, they can still draw close to God if they respond to Jesus in faith.

So, that which determines our relationship to Jesus is not our racial, cultural, or even our religious background, but our personal response to him.

So, what does this mean for us?

Well, we may have had the privilege of a Christian upbringing. We may have been taught the faith from our youngest years. That is a great blessing. But it doesn’t mean anything unless it leads us to respond personally to Jesus in faith, to put Jesus at the centre of our life, and to live out kingdom values in our lives.

Conversely, we may have grown up in a home where God was never mentioned, except as a way of cursing. We might literally know nothing about Christianity. Well, that doesn’t hinder us in any way from turning to Jesus in faith.

The first of these Gentiles with great faith appears in Matthew 15. An unnamed Gentile woman comes to Jesus seeking help for her demonised daughter. She represents Israel’s notorious ancient foe — the Canaanites – and she behaves like a pest. She keeps trying to get Jesus’ attention, but Jesus pointedly ignores her. This is what any Jewish Rabbi of the time would have done. But she just keeps on shouting.

She has some justification, Jesus who has left Jewish territory and entered a Gentile region. So, he has come to her.

Also, we see that this Canaanite woman — this unclean, outsider — has a better grasp of Jesus’ identity than his own disciples. The woman greets Jesus as “the Son of David.” That is a messianic title. His disciples are much slower to identify Jesus in that way.

But her constant shouting is an annoyance and finally the disciples have had enough, and they ask Jesus to send her away.

Jesus’s responds to them stating that his mission is to the Jews. This, again, fits what would be expected of any Jewish Rabbi. Jesus seems to be agreeing with his disciples. He still doesn’t speak to the woman; but, crucially, neither does he respond to the disciples’ request and send the woman away.

The woman notices this. Jesus has not done what his disciples have asked him. This is an opening. She has at least been acknowledged and noticed. So, she seizes her chance. She does something that is always significant in Matthew’s Gospel: she kneels before Jesus. Matthew always uses this as a way of showing people recognising kingship.

• The magi, who are also Gentiles, are the first to kneel before Jesus, recognising him as ‘the child who has been born king of the Jews’ (Matt 2).
• The unrepentant slave bows before the king in the parable of unforgiving servant (Matt 18),
• The mother of James and John kneels before Jesus when she seeks a position of favour for her sons in Jesus’ coming kingdom (Matt 20:20).

This Canaanite woman’s act of kneeling before Jesus is a physical expression of her identification of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of David.

In Matthew’s gospel, the act of kneeling is not only a sign of kingship, but also recognition of power. Often when people kneel before Jesus his power is then made evident.

• A leper kneels before Jesus and asks to be made clean and is healed. (Matt 8:2).
• A ruler of the synagogue kneels before Jesus and asks for his daughter’s healing and she is raised from the dead. (Matt 9:18).
• A father kneels before Jesus asking for him to deliver his demonised son, who the disciples have failed to help, and Jesus heals him. (Matt 17:14)
• At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, when the resurrected Jesus appears, the disciples worship him. The word translated ‘worship’ also means ‘to bow down, to prostrate oneself’. In response to this act, Jesus says that all authority in heaven and earth is now given to him (Matt 28:17-18).

Si, this woman kneels before Jesus recognizing his authority not only to sit on the throne of David, but also to wield power over evil and sickness.

Jesus’ response seems quite unkind to our ears. He says it is not fair to take the children’s food and give it to their pets.

But the woman is clever. She spots a loophole. She takes Jesus’ metaphor and develops it. He has used a picture of the family home. So, she claims a place in that household, not a position of privilege, or even as an equal. She accepts Jesus’ characterisation of Gentile’s having the status a family pet, but she claims that even the family dog gets to enjoy the crumbs that fall from the table.

Her statement is striking. She places her hope in what others have discarded. This fits entirely with what we have seen in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has come to his own people, the Jews, but the Jews have largely rejected him. Surely, if rejected ‘food falls from the table’, then the family ‘pets’ have the right to benefit from it?

Jesus seems both amused and impressed by her response. This woman seems to understand what the members of the household of Israel have yet to grasp; that Jesus is not just hope for Israel but hope for the whole world.

Jesus responds with the statement, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And we are told that her daughter was healed instantly.

In the passage that immediately precedes this story, Jesus has responded to challenges from the scribes and Pharisees by reframing the idea of what is clean and unclean. In Matthew 15:18, Jesus has stated that what comes out of the mouth, comes from the heart; and it is what comes out of the heart that determines whether a person is clean or not.

In this subsequent story, we see that what comes out of this Canaanite woman’s heart is pure faith — a certainty that Jesus is the promised Messiah and that he has power to heal her daughter. Her words are a therefore challenge to the separation of Jew from Gentile. With a faith so pure, how can this Gentile be deemed unclean?

In this way, this encounter with a Canaanite woman prepares the way for the coming ‘Great Commission’ at the end of Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus sends his disciples out to go and to make disciples of all nations.

The other story of a Gentile who Jesus says has great faith is in Matthew 8. Here, a Roman Centurion – a representative of the hated Roman army of occupation – comes to Jesus pleading for the healing of his servant. His slave is paralysed and in deep distress.

This Gentile Centurion has great compassion for his slave. He cares enough to come to Jesus and seek healing for him. But Jesus has stated that his primary mission is to the Jews. We might expect Jesus to refuse to help him. But surprisingly, Jesus agrees to go and heal the man’s slave.

But that would require Jesus to enter a Gentile home, which would make him ritually unclean. He would then have to go through a whole process of re-establishing ritual purity before being able to enter the temple or a synagogue.

The Centurion is sensitive to this and wants to avoid inconveniencing Jesus in this way. And the Centurion has faith that Jesus can heal at a distance. He says, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.’ We are told that Jesus was amazed at his faith and heals his slave.

So, a Canaanite woman and a Roman Centurion both become heroes of faith, whilst those with a privileged Jewish religious heritage, turn away from Jesus in disbelief.

One final thing. Amazingly, and rather wonderfully, both the words of the Canaanite woman and of the Roman Centurion have been included in our communion liturgy. I wonder if you ever noticed that?

From the 4^th century words that echo those of this unnamed, Roman Centurion, were used as private prayers prayed before receiving holy communion.

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.

From the 11^th century they officially became part of the liturgy, spoken quietly by the priest before consuming the bread and wine. Eventually, becoming part of the liturgy spoken by all the people in both Roman Catholic and Anglican liturgies.

In 1548, when Thomas CRANMER created the first Anglican Eucharistic liturgy, ‘The Order of the Communion’, he included words that echoed those of the unnamed Canaanite woman.

We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy.

Two unnamed Gentiles, yet their faith and their words have shaped our liturgy down to this day. Isn’t that beautiful! It expresses the vision of the prophet Isaiah that we read in Isaiah 56,

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant — these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

A vision that was also echoed in Psalm 67,

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.

The question for each of us to answer, is what level of faith do we have? Do we have no faith, like the Jews of Jesus’ time. Do we have little faith, like the disciples? Or do we have great faith, like these two unnamed Gentiles?

The wonderful thing is that Jesus is for everyone, regardless of our ethnicity, our culture, our religious background. God’s invitation is for all of us. We are all invited to respond to Jesus in faith, to receive his forgiveness, to join his family.

At St Mark’s Church, Versailles, we have the joy of expressing this in our multicultural congregation. We are living proof that God is indeed bringing his promise to pass, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Amen.

Miracles, Misery, and Loss of Faith

In 1 Kings 18, Elijah has a face-off with the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. He has stood alone against all 850 of them. They have built two altars on top of Mount Carmel, placed firewood and a bull on each altar, and then asked their respective Gods to consume the sacrifice with fire.

The pagan prophets prayed, they whipped themselves up into a frenzy, they cut themselves with knives. But nothing happens. They continue all day, but no fire comes.

Then, at the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah steps forward. Such is his confidence that he has his altar doused three times with water. Then prays and we read;

Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.

The watching crowd are amazed and astounded. They accept this as proof that Elijah’s God is the true God. Elijah then leads them in having all 850 of the pagan prophets put to the sword. In one day, the whole pagan religious system is cleansed from the land.

Following that, Elijah prophesies to King Ahab that the 3-year drought will now end. The covenant specifically promised drought for apostasy and rain for repentance. As the people have now acknowledged God as the true God and turned back to him, God will now bless their land with rain. Elijah prays seven times and then the rain comes.

Note that Baal was a storm god. If any god should have been able to send lightning on the sacrifice and rain upon the land, it should have been Baal. But Baal has been shown up as powerless. The true God, Yahweh, has proved that he is the God who controls everything.

Then a third miraculous thing happens. The Spirit of God comes upon Elijah so that he can outrun the king’s chariot for 27 km, all the way down from Mount Carmel to Ahab’s palace in Jezreel.

Think about that, three amazing miracles in one day. What an incredible experience! What a spiritual high! All that Elijah has hoped and dreamed of for the past three years has now come true in one 24-hour period. No doubt, Elijah now expects to be installed in the royal court, to be his counsellor giving godly guidance to the king. Israel can now enter a new religious golden age.

But on his return, King Ahab tells Queen Jezebel what Elijah has done and what is her response? Does she repent of her error in worshipping the goddess Asherah and turn to the true God? No, her response is to send a message to Elijah swearing by the gods that he will be dead within 24 hours.

In that crushing moment, Elijah realises that nothing has really changed. The power structures are still in place, and they are still opposed to God and to him. Elijah’s dream shatters.

So, Elijah flees for his life. He and his servant walk from Jezreel in the North of the land to Beersheba in the South, about 160 km. He is literally putting as much distance as he can between himself and Jezebel. Arriving at Beersheba, Elijah leaves his servant behind and walks for a day out into the desert. There, alone, he lies down under a bush, and he prays to God that he might die. He is a broken man. He has had enough. He simply cannot find the strength to go on.

I wonder, have you been there? Have you experienced moments in your life when it all just felt too much, too hard? Moments when you no longer have any idea what God is doing. The things that you had interpreted as God’s activity didn’t produce the results you expected. Nothing makes any sense. Looking at your circumstances, you cannot see any way for things to change. Everything has just gone terribly wrong, and it’s all just too much.

It is interesting to see God’s gracious response. No words, no arguments, no criticism. God just sends an angel with freshly baked bread and some cool water. Elijah is invited to get up and eat. He does so and then he lies back down again to sleep.

This is an important spiritual insight. Elijah is having a crisis of faith, but God ministers not to his soul, or his mind, but to his body with food and rest. As human beings we are body soul and spirit. Each of those impacts the other. Elijah’s soul is battered and bruised. His mind is confused. His emotions are all over the place. But his body is also exhausted. His body needs food and rest before his mind and his soul can be healed.

This physical restoration happens a second time. But this time the angel says, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” We wonder, ‘What journey?’ But then we are told that Elijah is heading to Mount Horeb. He spends the next 40 days and 40 nights walking there.

Why that long? The distance is only around 150 km. So, that means he walks less than 4 km a day. So why does it take him 40 days?

40 days is a recurring period of time in Scripture, it indicates a time of testing and preparation. Perhaps the most obvious example is Jesus being tempted in the desert for 40 days before starting his ministry. Our two annual 40-day fast periods of Advent and Lent are also times when we are meant to prepare ourselves for an encounter with God at the great feasts of the liturgical year. Elijah is about to encounter God at Mount Horeb, so he spends 40 days preparing himself in fasting and in prayer.

But why did Elijah decide to go to Mount Horeb? Mount Horeb is also known as Mount Sinai and has a key place in the spiritual history of God’s people. On its slopes Moses met God in the burning bush. At Horeb Israel first became a nation by entering into covenant with God. At Horeb Moses received the 10 commandments. So, Elijah is going back to the beginning, back to where it all started.

It is a reality that when people lose their vision for the future they return to the past. Elijah has lost any clear vision for the future of God’s people, so he goes back to what he knows – that Israel is in a covenant relationship with God, that God has called this nation, that God has shaped this nation, that God has a plan and purpose for this nation. What Elijah needs to know now is how is that meant to play out going forward? What does that covenant relationship mean for him, God’s prophet today? So, he heads to Horeb.

This is an important spiritual concept. When you lose your sense of what God is doing in your life, you go back to when God spoke in the past.

You could argue that this is what has happened with the renewed interest in Celtic spirituality over the past 20 or 30 years. People had lost a sense of God in the contemporary church, so they looked back to the spiritual heritage of the British Isles. In rediscovering Celtic spirituality they have found deep spiritual meaning and new ways to connect to God through the natural world, encountering the Creator through his creation. It has given them back the enchantment that had been lost in an over-rationalistic enlightenment spirituality.

Similarly, the renewed interest in pilgrimage, praying with icons, meditative prayer, these all speak to that same trend. Reconnecting to God through ancient spiritual practices that the Church had mostly forgotten about. The challenge for us in the contemporary church is, therefore, how do we present the Christian faith in ways that give people opportunities to experience God and to encounter God, through these ancient spiritual practices. People no longer just want to hear about God; they don’t want to hear a rational argument for faith; what they want is to experience God for themselves. As Jesus said to the disciples of John the Baptist, ‘Come and see.’

So, Elijah makes a pilgrimage to this holy site in Israel’s spiritual history. When he arrives, God speaks to him. God’s answer comes to Elijah – but not in the storm, nor through the earthquake, nor through the fire. But in the sheer silence that follows this massive storm, a voice speaks. It is in the silence that Elijah meets God.

Again, this is an important thing to note for our own spiritual life. We encounter God more in silence than in noise. If we want to go deeper with God, we will have to create pockets of silence in our lives. If we can’t do that regularly, we will never become mature disciples of Jesus. I think that the thing that most disturbs me about our modern culture is that people live without silence. Everyone is wearing headphones, listening to music or podcasts, watching stuff on their ‘phones. Even when they are running, or working out, or in the car, on the train. There is never any silence. That disturbs me deeply.

So, God speaks to Elijah, what does he tell him? Well, firstly he tells Elijah that his ministry is nearly over. His hard service is almost done. He has only to anoint the next two kings of Aram and of Israel – and to anoint his successor, the next prophet, Elisha, and then he will be done. This is the next step in God’s plan for his people.

But crucially, Elijah is also told something that he didn’t know. God still has 7000 faithful people in the land. The forces of evil may be in the ascendance, but God is still working away behind the scenes. The situation is not hopeless. God is working his purposes out.

There is a striking parallel between Elijah’s story and the gospel reading in Matthew 14:22-33. Like Elijah, Jesus has just had an amazing day with the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. But, like Elijah, he faces opposition from those in power. Herod has just had John the Baptist beheaded, and Jesus has had to flee Herod’s area of influence. Like Elijah, Jesus retreats into silence in the desert in order to meet with God.

The disciples too, having experienced the great spiritual high of the miracle, then find themselves in the middle of a great storm out on the lake, in danger for their lives. They might wonder, what is God up to? That incredible miracle, and now we just die? Was it all just for nothing?

Then we have the miracle of Jesus walking on the water, coming to the aid of his terrified disciples. We see Peter’s incredible faith, he wants to walk out on the water to meet Jesus, he wants to do what Jesus is doing. Jesus invites him and he does so, but then Peter’s faith fails and he starts to sink. Again, there is an obvious parallel with Elijah. Elijah’s faith has failed and he has sunk into despair.

What happens? Jesus comes and gently rescues Peter. There is a painting of this moment by the Korean artist Yongsun Kim. The painting is called ‘The Hand of God’.

We see the moment from the perspective of Peter as he sinks down into the water. He looks up and sees Jesus reaching out his hand to save him.

It is a painting full of compassion and warmth. Jesus is smiling at Peter. There is no judgement, no condemnation, just a gentle rescue and the invitation to begin again.

Again, the parallel with Elijah’s experience is clear. Elijah’s faith failed, but God has come to rescue and restore him and to show him the next step.

So, what do we take away from these stories?

• Success in the life of the church is often only fleeting. Miracles sometimes do happen, God does sometimes move in power, but times of testing and struggle will always return. That is the normal pattern.
• It is ok to sometimes be overwhelmed and to lose faith. That is normal, we are only human. We have a limited capacity to deal with hard things. In those moments of confusion and despair, our bodies, souls and spirits all need to be ministered to. In those times, we should do what Elijah and Jesus did. Retreat into the silence with God. Let him minister to you. Let him bring you healing, strengthening, and restoration. Then let God show you the next step.
• When, like Elijah and Peter, we fail. There is no condemnation from Jesus. Only a smiling rescue. Jesus will lift us up. He will set us back on our feet, and he will invite us to try again. Amen.

Jesus the God of Food and Drink

In Isaiah 55:1-5 God offers his provision for the basic human needs for life – food and water – as a sign of God’s care for those who turn to him in faith.

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

More broadly, the ability to provide the essentials of life is often a sign in scripture of God-anointed leadership.

In Egypt, Joseph rises to prominence and achieves greatness not only because he can interpret Pharoah’s dream that warns of 7 good years followed by 7 years of famine, but because he can organise Egypt to harvest and store grain over those 7 good years and enable the country to survive.

The great leader, Moses, proves himself again and again to be God’s chosen leader by being the person through whom God provides food and water in the desert.

But in the Isaiah reading God’s invitation to look to him for provision, goes far beyond the basic necessities. God is not just offering here the bread and water, but rather ‘wine and milk’, and ‘rich food’. Remember that one of the frequent descriptions of the Promised Land was that it was ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ – in other words a land of goats and bees.

All of this presents the idea that God’s abundant provision flows to those who live in right relationship to him. One of the consequences of being in a relationship of love and obedience to God is that God will provide for us.

This is of course not to promote a prosperity gospel. Which is an incorrect interpretation of these texts. Prosperity gospel says that every Christian should be rich, successful, and never have a day’s illness. But that is a heresy.

If you own life experience doesn’t convince you that this isn’t how the Christian life works, then read the Psalms, or any part of the Bible, and you will read of those who are living in a right relationship with God and yet still experience pain and suffering and struggle in their lives.

So, how do we hold God’s promise of blessing and provision, alongside our real experience of life, where this doesn’t always happen?

Well, we know that there are some things that God can only do in our lives through adversity.

You may find this difficult to believe, but as a young guy, I was very skinny. Hard to believe I know! But at the age of 16, I went to college, and at the college they had a weights gym that students could use. So, with a friend, I started to do weight-training, 3 lunchtimes a week. I learnt something important through that process.

Muscles only grow when you push them beyond their current capacity. So, if you want to build muscle mass, you have to lift heavier and heavier weights. When you do that, when you push your muscles beyond their capacity, it produces micro-tears in your muscle fibre. When these micro-tears heal, they heal bigger and stronger. If you keep repeating this process, then over time, you build muscle mass.

So, I did weight-training 3 days a week for 3 years. By the end of that time, I had increased my body-weight by about 15%, all of which was muscle and I was never Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I was no longer skinny.

Why do I tell you that story? Well, I do so because faith is very like muscle in that sense; it only grows when it is stretched beyond its current capacity.

So, if God wants to grow faith in us, if he wants to make us capable of following him into situations that seem impossible, then he has to build our faith by stretching it.

What stretches our faith? Adversity and suffering. Being in difficult situations that force us to hold on to God. That is the only way faith grows. So, this is one reason why Christians experiencing suffering. It is the only way that God can grow our faith.

Secondly, we live in a fallen world. The creation is marred from its original goodness. It is also made worse by mankind’s sinfulness, greed, and stupidity. As St Paul says in Romans 8, ‘The creation groans … waiting for its redemption’.

So, horrible diseases exist; earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes happen; forest fires break out. And they happen to everyone – Christians don’t get a ‘get out of jail free’ card that we can just wave when trouble strikes and get a free pass. We live in a world where bad things sometimes happen. And they happen to all of us.

We are also in a spiritual battle. We have chosen to side with God in the battle against good and evil. That means we are an enemy target. As 1 Peter 5:8 reminds us, ‘Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to swallow up.’

So, it is never a simple arithmetic equation – that obedience to God equals blessing. It is much more complex than that.

• There are some good and necessary things God can only do in our lives through suffering,
• There are naturally occurring things that bring suffering into our lives,
• There are spiritual forces at work that seek our harm.

So, in any situation of suffering we need discernment to know what is actually happening here? Until we know what’s happening, we cannot face the situation properly or helpfully.

All that said, the general principle is still that God wants to provide for his children and to bless them. So, often, if not always, righteousness will lead to the experience of blessing.

This was seen in the Methodist revivals in the 18^th century. Working class people were reached with the gospel by men like Wesly and Whitfield. The people they preached to were often living in filth and misery and poverty. Alcoholism, and violence were rife. As these people came to faith, they began to put their lives, their families, and their homes in order.

They learned to read and write so that they could study scripture. This up-skilled them as workers. They also became dependable and trustworthy. So, within a generation, many of these people were lifted out of poverty and misery. It was both God’s providential blessing and also the natural consequence of living the right way.

Returning to the subject of food and drink in Scripture, we need to note its significance for us in the Church. Our central act of worship has been, from the very beginning, a meal of bread and wine. As a family we gather around God’s table, we share bread and wine. We symbolically act out and express our relationship to God and to each other. We receive God’s spiritual sustenance and strengthening for our bodies and souls – however you choose to understand the outworking of that.

One aspect of this that we often forget, is that as recipients of God’s gracious provision of abundant food and drink we have certain responsibilities. Like Abraham, we are blessed to be a blessing.

“All nations on Earth will find themselves blessed through your descendants because you obeyed me.” Genesis 22:18

The blessing we receive from God, is meant to flow out to others. We share what we receive. Tithing our income is one way that we practically express this. As a church we not only teach this, but we also try to model it. We give 10% of our income to Christian organisations, and we give another 10% to the diocese in Europe. As God blesses us, we seek to bless others.

If we turn to the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14:13-21 we notice that the passage begins bizarrely with the phrase, ‘Now when Jesus heard this’. But heard what? We can’t possibly understand what happens next unless we know what happened just before.

So, to provide context, Jesus has just heard that his cousin, his forerunner, his baptiser, John the Baptist, has just had his head cut off. In response to this news, Jesus withdraws to a lonely place. Why does Jesus do this?

Possibly, out of his own need for time and space to process his grief. Or maybe it is in response to the danger that Herod will double down and come after him too. Jesus withdraws to an area away from the centre of Herod’s control. No doubt Jesus was hoping for a period of quiet. A time to rest, to find comfort in God.

But his plan fails. The crowds follow and Jesus finds himself with 5,000 men and women and children – perhaps 10,000+ people gathered on the hillside.

Now, what happens next is the miraculous feeding of this crowd. Now, of all the 41 miracles of Jesus, this is the only one that is recorded in all 4 gospels. Think about that. That alone should alert us that something significant is happening here. This is not just a simple story of a miraculous picnic.

Note that it is compassion that motivates Jesus in this story. As is often in his ministry, it is Jesus’ concern for people that provokes him into action. But, in all honesty, it is an unnecessary miracle. People are not going to suffer unduly or die because they missed one meal. So, it’s significance must be elsewhere.

We remember God’s miraculous provision of ‘bread in the desert’ with the manna in Exodus 16. The prophet Elisha also feeds 100 men with only 20 bread rolls. So, God’s miraculous provision of the necessities of life is a theme that appears several times in the Bible.

Jesus begins by asking the people to sit down. He then does what the head of the household would do at every Jewish meal, he blesses God for the food. Note it is not blessing the food, but blessing God who has provided the food. Something we often get wrong in our own action of grace before meals.

Jesus ‘takes’, ‘blesses’, ‘breaks’, and ‘gives’ the food. These four verbs are used in the description of what Jesus does after his resurrection, when he eats with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus – and when he does that, at that exact moment, they recognise him.

Also, in all four gospel accounts of the inauguration of the Lord’s Supper, these same four verbs are always used. These are therefore very specific eucharistic words. Our communion liturgy is shaped around these four verbs – we ‘take’, ‘bless’, ‘break’, and ‘give’ the bread and the wine.

So, the meaning of this event is meant to be seen as a foreshadowing of the Eucharistic celebration that Jesus will later give to his disciples as the central act of Christian worship.

Like the eucharist, it both look backwards and forwards. Backwards to all of the examples in the Bible of God’s provision for his people, backwards to Jesus’ self-giving on the cross for our salvation. But it also looks forwards. It looks forwards to the final great messianic banquet prophesied throughout scripture, when all of God’s children will be gathered to enjoy his presence and abundant provision forever.

Note that women and children are specifically mentioned as being present. We are perhaps meant to hear an echo of the Exodus provision of the manna, when we are told;

There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. (Exodus 12:37)

This speaks of inclusion. Male female, old and young, all are gathered together as an new community. So, in this meal on the hillside, we have the symbolism of Jesus creating a new community with himself as the head of the family. It is a replaying of the Exodus event, when a new people were created with God as their head.

So, in a very real sense, Jesus is the God of food and drink.