Monthly Archives: December 2014

Old Testament Lectionary December 14th Advent 3 Isaiah 61:1-11

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit confused about Advent themes. In the good old days it was all about death, judgement, heaven and hell, but there’s also that stuff about prophets, patriarchs and the rest. The ASB helpfully gave us weekly themes, and Bible Sunday used to be around here somewhere too, but then in reaction to the ASB themes Common Worship is a bit shy and prefers us to see what we hear as we meditate on the readings, rather than telling us what we’ve got to find in them. Confused …? However, from the gospel for today we’re apparently supposed to be thinking about John the Baptist, so what does Isaiah have to say about that?

 

The first thing which strikes one is the similarity of this passage to the ‘Servant Songs’ from the middle chapters of the book. The Spirit of God had anointed someone or other (discuss!) to bring redemption to Israel through sacrificial suffering. Indeed the nation had suffered in exile, but now they are back in their homeland and have the task of rebuilding not just the physical city but also the national life. So now a new ‘servant’ is being called and anointed, like the previous one unidentified, but probably in this case the prophet himself. His message is one of hope, new life, restoration and redemption, and he speaks to a people whom one might imagine literally standing in the ruins of the city, among the broken and scattered stones of the once great buildings, hearing his good news of a new start. It’s not difficult to see how the ministry of John was foreshadowed in this passage.

 

But what is interesting is the hints we get here about the foundations of this renewed community. In v 8 we get a glimpse of God’s values, the things which are important to him: he loves justice, and he hates robbery and wrongdoing. And then again in v 11 God promises to make righteousness and praise spring up. This, I think, helps us to deal with the question prompted by all the lovely stuff in this chapter ‘Well where is it then?’ The ongoing history of Israel after the return from exile was anything but as rosy as this text paints it. We’re still waiting today for the glorious future of Israel as they fight within their own land and as a mosque occupies pride of place in Jerusalem.

 File:Dome of the Rock (2667006381).jpg

Righteousness and praise, robbery and wrongdoing. We know clearly what God likes and doesn’t like, but, as with the people in the time of John the Baptist, we have a choice as to how we live. Choose the right things and we choose life, hope and a future. Choose the other way, and there is no certainly of God’s best will becoming reality. God never forces his blessings on us, and the story of the Bible as a whole is the story of God’s plans for blessing and prosperity being thwarted again and again by twisted human rebellion. There is hope, there is a future, but as a human race we need to hear again, more urgently than ever, John’s cry to repent.

Reflections on Discipleship – Fears and Fantasies

Last Sunday I was preaching at a St Andrew’s Day Patronal Festival, and although I must have read the passage in question (Matthew 4:18-22) hundreds of times, I was struck afresh by two things, both of which I believe are good news for would-be or slightly nervous disciples.

You see in my experience people have some pretty powerful fantasies about what it would mean if they really decided to follow Jesus, to surrender everything to him. This passage speaks powerfully into some of those fears.

I noted firstly that here and elsewhere Jesus often calls disciples in pairs. Here we have Andrew and his brother Simon, followed by James and his brother John. In John’s account of the story, these two pairs are followed by Philip and Nathaniel. It seems to be a bit of a pattern. I wonder if this is because Jesus knows just how difficult it can be to swim against the tide on your own. People often feel, I reckon, that to follow Jesus will isolate them. Their friends won’t like them any more, or understand them: they won’t fit in at work, or down the pub, or at the golf club, or wherever it is they live and move and have their being. They’ll turn into religious nuts, unable to take a place any more in normal society. So it is significant that in the case of these disciples Jesus calls them together. We’re stronger when we’re not alone. Later on Jesus is going to send them out to put into practice the things he’s been teaching them, and again they are sent out in pairs. We’re meant to support one another in this enterprise of discipleship, and I believe Jesus knows that. If you are feeling some kind of sense of call to go deeper with Jesus, the first job is to ask who else around you is feeling the same call, and whether you might respond together. Tragically it can be the case that church is the last place where we can really speak about our relationship with God. But if we can foster a culture where such conversations are common currency, I bet we’ll see more people discovering the same call, so that we can strengthen and support one another as we respond and obey.

But the second bit of good news might just be even more important. Look what Andrew and Simon are called to. ‘You’re fishermen’ says the ever-astute Jesus (I reckon it might be the boats, nets and all-pervading smell of fish which gave him the clue). How do you fancy catching people instead of fish? I think this is significant because another common fantasy people have is that if I really obey the call of Jesus to follow him I’ll have to go to Africa. Serious Christians always seem to get called to some awful mission-field, so although I do like Jesus I’d better keep a bit of distance. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve heard this fear expressed. In fact Jesus is calling them to do what they’re already good at, and presumably enjoy, but with a new twist.

When I was 18 I went off to university to become a chemistry teacher, but for reasons I won’t bore you with (but which you can read about in my God’s Upgrades … My Adventures) it didn’t work out. But a couple of years later, when God got his hands on me again, I started the journey to Christian ministry. Now 33 years on the thing people say most often about me is to thank me for my teaching ministry. There are, of course, several aspects of my ministry which go the other way, and I’ll spare you the details of what people say I’m lousy at, but the point is that my instinct to teach was a good one, but that God wanted to take it to a new level. He hadn’t created me to teach people about chemistry, but about his Word and what it means to live for him.

So if God is calling you to go deeper with him (or if you are involved in caring for and nurturing those who he is calling) look for the stuff you’re already good at, passionate about, and experienced in. It may well be that God doesn’t want to turn your life upside down, but merely to enhance what he has already put it in your heart to do for him.

Through the Bible in Just Over a Year – 2 Samuel

1 Samuel ends with the death of King Saul, who has lost the plot spiritually: 2 Samuel begins with David, his successor, lamenting over his death before taking the throne, first in Hebron, anointed to rule over the tribe of Judah, and then eventually in the newly-captured city of Jerusalem to reign over the whole nation. There is of course some infighting between Saul’s supporters and David’s, but pretty quickly things settle and David begins what will go down in history as the golden age for Israel. Two key events have great significance for David’s reign. Firstly the Philistines are defeated. For years the nation, which, like Stoke-on-Trent, was an agglomeration of five cities, have been thorn in Israel’s side: we have already seen the trouble they got Samson into, and David’s defeat of their champion Goliath. But from now on they get hardly a mention, as they cease to be much of a problem ever again to Israel.

 As a result of this, secondly, the Ark of the Covenant, that important symbol of God’s presence with the people, which had been captured and carried off by the Philistines, is brought back to its home, which is to become the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, it seems almost disappointing that David himself did not build the Temple, but we are told that it was his idea. So his reign becomes symbolic of everything going right at last, with royalty and worship established in the new ‘City of David’.

 

But it isn’t very long before the ‘warts and all’ picture of David begins to emerge. Under the surface we have a king with not enough to do turning lustful eyes towards another woman, leading to intrigue and murder. Meanwhile conflict between various individuals demonstrates something of a leadership vacuum, leading eventually to rival claims to the throne, even from within David’s own family. The book ends with David ready to step down, and the next episode of the history begins with David old and frail, although still sharp enough to make sure that his son Solomon succeeds him.

 

So what we have is 2 Samuel is a portrait of a strong and godly yet flawed leader. The Bible is never a book of pure hagiography, and whitewash is never applied to its characters. Yet what we do see is David’s basic integrity: when confronted with his sin he repents quickly and thoroughly, and right to the end of the book he is still a worshipper at heart, someone who celebrates and depends on his courageous friends and colleagues, someone who has God’s desires for the nation deep in his spirit. That fact that he loses the plot sometimes should only encourage us, because we do that too, but it doesn’t mean we’re bad people, or that our attempts to live the Christian life are all in vain. In fact David, hero though he was and remains, struggled with all the things which trouble us: sex, family conflicts, the use of power, personal enemies – all the stuff of daily life. Like David we will not always get it right first time: like David may we always have the grace to deal with what we do wrong, coming quickly to God in penitence and receiving quickly his forgiving and redemptive grace.

OT Lectionary December 7th Advent 2 Isaiah 40:1-11

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages.

Usually it’s good to hear a passage read before listening to a sermon about it, but I have found that there is great impact from this particular text if you do it the other way round. It marks the transition from Isaiah of Jerusalem to so-called ‘Deutero-Isaiah’, who was writing around the end of the exile in Babylon. So why not just take a moment to think yourself into the world of his original hearers?

You’ve been snatched from your homeland and marched across the desert to a strange, foreign land with a weird language, an unknown culture, all kinds of alien gods. You are suffering from what sociologists nowadays would call ‘cultural dislocation’, with all its attendant anxiety. Some of you are working like slaves at hard physical toil, under taskmasters who can be extremely cruel.

But at a level deeper than the mere physical and mental pain there are a set of theological questions to be answered. What are we to make of God in this current situation? Prophets (like Isaiah) have been warning you that unless you turned back to God you’d be in trouble, but, hey, those prophets can get a bit grumpy: they need to lighten up a bit and enjoy life. Maybe they were right all along, and God has washed his hands of us. We know that God has been patient with us for years, but now maybe we’ve blown it once and for all. He’s used up all his mercy and now we’re on our own.

Or maybe there’s a different problem. Lots of the nations around us treat their gods as though they were in the Anglican parish system. Depending on where you live you have a different god looking after you. So while we were back home in Jerusalem Yahweh was our God, but now we’re in Babylon, have we moved out of his patch? Should we be praying to Bel, Nebo or one of the others to save us? We know our God is a mighty God, but maybe his power doesn’t extend this far.

Or is it about punishment? OK, we can now grudgingly admit that we might just have been a little bit naughty as a nation, and we know that God hasn’t always been pleased with us. But is this it now? Is he going to punish us for ever, with no hope of forgiveness or restoration?

You can just hear the agonised theological questioning, can’t you? And then, without warning, a new voice is heard in the land: a new prophet. We know nothing about him except what we can discern from his writings. But the message he brought, in fact the first sentence of the message he brought, swept away all their anxious questioning in one go.

‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God’

Doesn’t sound all that, does it, until you put in some italics:

‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God‘

When you look back through the OT there is a formula which is used again and again of the covenant relationship between God and Israel – ‘You will be my people and I will be your God.’ Isaiah deliberately uses this phraseology in his very first sentence, and the meaning is abundantly clear: the deal is still on! Whatever you’ve done, God’s mercy is still there for you. Imagine the relief!

But there is one more beautiful twist to this tale, and it hangs on the Hebrew word translated ‘double’ in v 2. The word Kiphlaim does mean ‘double’, but not in the sense of twice as much. If you have a ‘double’ it means that someone somewhere looks exactly like you do, a complete match. So the prophet is  saying that the punishment you have received for your sins is the exact equivalent. It’s done, it’s over, appropriate sentence has been served, and there is no more debt to pay. You’re free! You’re going home!

The next 15 chapters merely unpack there themes further, but the real good news comes all in the first two verses.