For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 6 – Isaiah 55:10-13 (Related)

These words form the final section of what we have come to know as ‘Deutero-Isaiah’, the second of three major parts into which the whole book falls. It began in Is 40 with words of comfort to the exiles, who had spent long enough being punished in Babylon and were now due to return home. The next 13 chapters expand on this good news, and paint a picture of who God is for a generation who had been continually exposed to Babylonian idols, and no doubt had begun to wonder whether their own God still had any validity. But in this, the final chapter, God’s future promises begin to broaden out, and his purposes are set against a wider backdrop.

The people must have been relived, when they got over the shock, that after so long God was on the move again. The nation had become powerless as immigrant slaves, and so the idea of a powerful God to set them free must have been immensely appealing. But actually this chapter gives a different message, and the final few verses tell the people a bit more about their relationship with God. The images used are from creation, and there are clear links with the stories which they knew so well from Genesis. Water comes down from heaven and soaks the land, so that fruitfulness results. But this isn’t all up to God: the original creation narratives contain repeated calls to the creation to be fruitful and multiply. Plants must be tended and cared for, and very soon after the sovereign acts of creation by God alone, things move on and there is a partnership.

Whilst it is not easy to extrapolate this message from v.10-13 alone, it makes sense of the earlier verses in the chapter, which call in different ways for a human response to divine activity. God is there, and is sovereignly active, but the people must choose to come to him (v.1), to listen to him (v.2), to seek him (v.6) and to turn to him (v.7). If we do that, then he will do his part and create afresh from the chaos and darkness of exile a land of fruitfulness, prosperity and joy.

We might say, therefore, that the message of this passage is that ‘God helps those who help themselves’, or, perhaps more accurately, God helps those who are willing to work in partnership with him. Here lies a central truth in our Christian gospel: whilst our salvation is all through grace, we have to work it out ourselves. God gives the growth, but after we have prepared the soil and nurtured the plantings. Christians can easily fall into one of two camps: those who are activist and feel that they have to do everything themselves, and those who are superspiritual and believe that if we pray enough God will do it all for us. Both groups have a point but miss the point.

I have found this to be an important lesson in my ministry, particularly among small, scattered rural congregations, just about managing to keep the show on the road, desperately longing to see growth and some people under 80, but struggling to know what on earth they might do about it. Many have been praying for decades to see the next generations becoming part of their churches, yet they are doing very little to make that happen, and may even be doing a lot to prevent it! Leaders, of whom there are fewer and fewer on the ground, seem as hopeless as the people they lead: one priest in my last diocese confided that he had absolutely no idea how to grow his church, which made me wonder about his ministerial training, and what everyone had thought they were training for. There is enough wisdom about to be able to answer questions about how our churches can be more effective, and actually it isn’t rocket science. Just ask the 20% of churches which are growing. But this text reminds us that all growth comes from a partnership between divine action and human co-operation. If Christians were truly to come to God, listen and seek him, and change as a result, we might paradoxically see more of his action.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 5 – Zechariah 9:9-12 (Related)

In my final job before retirement one of my roles was to help local churches to write ‘vision statements’ in order to plan for the future. We thought about visionaries as being those who were able to see what could be rather than merely what is, and we talked about ‘writing your history in advance’. Most of the time parish visions were either too small, merely more of the same, or too vague, as in rapid and dynamic growth without the first idea of how they were to achieve it, and, if it was that easy, why they weren’t already doing it. Vision can be powerful, but it also has to be realistic. The next job for me was to help parishes write action plans to help them toward achieving their vision.

Like the book of Isaiah, Zechariah appears to be the product of different historical settings. Just as Isaiah falls into three sections, Zechariah is a game of two halves. Chapters 1-8 seem to have a very clear historical setting, in spite of some of the visions being a bit obscure. But as we move to chapters 9-14 the feel changes. The language is more general; the historical data more vague, and the whole thing seems much harder to pin down to a particular historical setting. The first half is clearly a warning about what God intends to do to send his wayward people into exile, but the second seems more like a vague ‘vision statement’. Sometimes God uses his prophets to tell people in great details what he is about to do, but at others we get a much more vague account of his general intentions, rather than a detailed timetable and action plan.

As such our passage for today can tell us more about God than about the history of the nation. We get an insight into the nature and character of God from his intentions for his people. As a father I always wanted my kids to grow up healthy and happy, to form positive relationships and to become useful and godly citizens. The way they were to work all that out was more their issue than mine! So we might read this passage as a list of things God wished, and wishes, for his people.

1)         Relationship

Here as elsewhere in the OT, Jerusalem or Zion is personified as a daughter, thus casting God in the role of father. The wishes of a father for his daughter are obvious, and no doubt we get our instincts from the Father in whose image we are created. God wants to treat us, his people, as the best possible father would want to treat his beloved kids.

2)         Peace

The next image is of rest from enemies, a particularly poignant motif in the light of Israel’s recent (and in fact less recent) history of warfare, defeat, exile and slavery. God does not mean his people to be an oppressed minority, any more than he wants his Church to be. He certainly does not want us to be oppressed by others who hate us, but rather that through us others should be blessed and find peace themselves.

3)         Freedom

Israel, like many nations throughout history, knew only too well what it meant to be enslaved, often in lands far from their home, and to be treated with cruelty. God’s son was born into an occupied nation who were often treated cruelly and taxed heavily. Zechariah reminds us that this is not part of God’s long-term plan for his people.

4)         Stability

Those who have led nomadic lives will know how important ‘home’ is, and how unsettling it can feel either to be far from home, or not even to know where home is. I have found paradoxically that having retired to Sheffield, with no intention of ever moving away, Essex, which I left in 1979, and where we have very few remaining friends or family, has become increasingly important to me. God knows that we need somewhere to call home, and that wherever we hang out hats doesn’t quite hack it. So just as Abraham and Moses set out towards the place which God had promised for them, so the people are to begin to journey home once again, just as we are all journeying towards our eternal home.

5)         Victory

The paradox at the end of this passage is that the gentle and humble King, whom Jesus knew himself to be, so acting out this passage in his final entry into Jerusalem, is still a warrior. This reminds us, perhaps, that our humble King is not as ‘nice’ as we’d sometimes like to think, and that evil will be finally defeated, and destruction destroyed from the new heavens and earth.

Like all expressions of general hope, this passage begs many questions, including questions about why life is so different from the wonderful world described here. It also makes us want to cry out, as God’s people always have done ‘How long, O Lord?’ When are you going to make all this happen? On this God is infuriatingly vague. Our job is simply to be assured that this is his vision for his people, to hold steadfastly onto it, and to live in that direction.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 4 – Jeremiah 28:5-9 (Related)

Last week we saw Jeremiah facing a personal dilemma; this week he is causing one. Once again, we need a larger context in order to understand this text, so let’s go back to v.1.

The prophet Hananiah stands up and delivers a prophetic oracle. The timing here is important: we know that this happened in 594 BC, which is significant because it lies midway between the first deportation of exiles to Babylon in 597 and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 587. The placing is important too: it’s in the Temple, in the presence of all the worshippers and priests. The message is simple: within two years all this mess will be over. The people and the sacred articles from the Temple nicked by Nebuchadnezzar will be returned. The Monarchy will be restored in Judah, and this exile of some of the people will have been only a blip, not a total catastrophe. In other words – and here’s the subtext – all that doom and gloom that Jeremiah has been spouting is complete rubbish. So how does a prophet respond to that kind of a message?

So how does Jeremiah cope, and what can this incident teach us about the nature of prophecy in general? Well, first of all he responds kindly. He hopes very much that what Hananiah has spoken about will indeed not come true. A mature prophet is not vindictive (although immature ones often are!), and he wants to avoid the complete destruction of Judah as much as the next man. But he believes the opposite of what Hananiah has predicted, and he can’t just let this go, especially with all the great and good of Jerusalem looking on. That would be to neglect his God-given calling. But rather than telling Hananiah that he is completely off the wall, he says that we’ll just have to wait and see. In fact he does then go on to embark on a battle of prophetic symbolism involving an ox’s yoke, but that isn’t where he starts.

An interesting question is about just why Hananiah believed what he was saying. The most likely explanation is wishful thinking. Of course we all want things to be nice and OK, so it’s a short step from wanting that to hearing God telling you that that is what he’s going to do. A couple of weeks ago we thought about childlessness. I can’t recall how many ‘prophecies’ I’ve heard for childless couples that within such-and-such a time they’ll get pregnant. Like Jeremiah I very much hope they were accurate, but I suspect that at least some of them led to even greater disappointment and suffering. Everything within us longs for a happy outcome when we’re praying for people, but we all know that happy outcomes are not guaranteed.

Or maybe it was about personal popularity. Hananiah could see that Jeremiah’s words had not made him the nation’s favourite, so perhaps he thought that he’d come out looking better as a prophet if he gave the people what they wanted, a message saying that everything would be fine. Who wouldn’t want to hear that? Or maybe he just got it wrong, and misheard God. We’ve all done that too. But whatever the reason for his prophecy, our hero Jeremiah had to correct it, and the ongoing prophetic battle in v.10-17 shows that he was not healthily open to correction. In fact Jeremiah was powerfully vindicated by predicting his death, which happened two months later. So much for Hananiah.

Two key points emerge from this sorry tale. The first is that prophecy is highly contextual. Later on Deutero-Isaiah told the people that God was comforting them, that the exile was over and their sin had been paid for. They were going home! In that context the message was exactly right, and proved to be accurate. But when Hananiah said the same thing, it was false prophecy. It all depends, and that’s why we need fresh revelation from God, and can’t just live on yesterday’s promises. But the second, as Jeremiah points out, is that prophecy has a much stronger track record at confronting than it does at comforting.  This seems to be the exact opposite of much charismatic prophecy, where encouragement and blessing seem to be the order of the day. It ought to give cause for concern if sin is never confronted and repentance never called for, lest we be guilty of crying ‘“Peace, peace” when there is no peace.’

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 3 – Jeremiah 20:7-13 (Related)

Every now and then, on a bad day, I find myself in a dilemma. In retirement I’m still involved in teaching theological students, training clergy and Readers for ministry. I love my work (that’s why I’m still doing it even after I’m supposed to have retired), but there are days when I feel like a complete hypocrite, because actually I wouldn’t wish ministry in the C of E on my worst enemies. Nobody had told me, as a bright-eyed bushy-tailed ordinand in the 70s just how heart breaking it was going to be (or maybe they did tell me but I just didn’t hear it). I feel that I know, in small measure, how Jeremiah was feeling.

This text is the final of six personal laments in his book, and it is by far the strongest in its language. Jeremiah knows what it is to have a hard message to deliver, and to be mocked for it. He knows the awful feeling of believing that God is going to act in judgement, but then to see him doing nothing while evil continues to prevail. He knows personal attack from those who don’t want their comfortable worlds rocked with bad news, and who don’t want to be called to account for their wrongdoing. But above all he feels deceived by God. You called me to this ministry, and I just can’t withstand that call, yet all it brings me is misery. I try to avoid my calling and to disobey you, but something within me just won’t let me do that. The word ‘deceived’ is that used often in the Bible for sexual seduction: the difference here is that God has seduced him into obedience, not sin. And it hurts.

No doubt we’ve all heard sermons about how it’s OK to get angry with God, and to express our true feelings rather than pretending everything is nice, and this passage certainly validates that. But the liturgist in me wants to read this text from a different point of view. It is a great example of a liturgical form called ‘Lament’, and as such it is intended to contain and express those negative feelings we so often have, but also to move us on to a more positive place. Lamenting is not the same as whingeing.

So what is really interesting about this passage is the way in which Jeremiah’s relationship with God changes through it. In v.7 God is without doubt the enemy, the deceiver who has tricked Jeremiah into working for him in such a painful job. But by the time we get to v.11 things have changed, and God has become an ally against his attackers. And by the end of our text (v.13) a song of praise to God springs to his lips. As in any good liturgy there is a journey here, a progression from where we are now to a different place, and Lament form follows this well-trodden path, allowing us to express with raw emotion what it is we’re upset about, but not leaving us there. You can see this journey in many of the Psalms: Ps 13 is a good example, but there are several others. Note too that part of the Lament process is often imprecation, calling down curses on the heads of those who have hurt us. I know we’re supposed to forgive people this side of the cross, but so much ‘forgiveness’ is cheap and shallow because it doesn’t take seriously what we would actually like to do to our enemies. My favourite definition of forgiveness is ‘choosing to leave it up to God to punish my enemies, rather than trying to do it myself’, and this certainly doesn’t mean that things are going to be nice from now on. I may forgive someone, but it might be impossible ever to trust them again, and often the most sensible course is simply to keep away from them.

There are two more important things to say about Lament. The first is that if you’re feeling that this is all a bit quick and neat, that you can deal with your feelings in around six verses, you’re right. That’s what liturgy does: it expresses concisely a journey which may take us years to travel. When we say the Creed in church it takes a few minutes, but for us to have come to the point where we can say ‘I believe …’ may have taken considerably longer. Indeed we may still be on that journey, working through our doubts and uncertainties. In the same way a liturgical text expresses what ought to be going on, what we hope will be going on, even if we’re not entirely there yet. The level of pain Jeremiah is feeling cannot be dealt with lightly, but Lament is a good start, a roadmap for the journey if you like.

The second point lies beyond our passage, but note that after the song of praise in v.13 he is straight back to moaning again. The benefits of using Lament seriously are not instant and permanent, not least if people are still hurting us. It is a resource to be used over and over as needed, but every time we do so we remember to make that shift from God being our enemy to our saviour.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 2  – Genesis 18:1-15 (Related)

The Epistle for today, from Romans 5, contains the well-known line about suffering bringing hope, which does not disappoint us, or put us to shame. But what when it does? Abraham had been told 25 years earlier, in Genesis 12:7, that the land would be given to his offspring, and that he would be the father of many nations (Gen 15). But Sarah his wife remained stubbornly childless. Abraham, faced with this hope which certainly had disappointed him because they had been unable to have children, tries in two different ways to help God out. First he decides that what God really meant was that Eliezer of Damascus, his chief servant, who was no doubt like a son to him, should be his heir, and then he follows the custom of having a child with Hagar, Sarah’s servant. Neither of these approaches really work out, though, and indeed the Arab-Israeli conflict of today could be traced back to the animosity between Isaac and Ishmael. But what must it have been like for Abraham and Sarah living through those years, with monthly reminders that God had not acted, and with the sense that the biological clocks were ticking and time was fast running out?

Our passage begins with the unexpected arrival of ‘three men’ (18:2) who eventually become ‘The Lord’ in v.13 (v. 10 simply uses the pronoun – ‘Then he said …’) Like a good Middle Eastern host Abraham makes them welcome, but he must have been suspicious when in v.9 they appear to know his wife’s name, and when they cut right to the chase with the reiterated promise from 15:4. These are not merely men, and they are soon recognised for who they are, whether angels, or the Trinity incarnate. 25 years on, God still means what he said, and the fact that the couple are approaching their century makes no difference.

Sarah can’t believe it – why would she? – and responds with incredulous laughter. It has been suggested that this is a joyful laugh as, brimming with faith, she celebrates what God is about to do, but the text doesn’t read like that: it’s much more like ‘You’re having a laugh, O Lord!’ She is soon penitent, and tries to lie her way out of the embarrassment, but she has been caught out. She didn’t really believe God would fulfil his promise. The passage leaves her, and us, with the question ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’

In my experience, though, this isn’t always the question we are really asking, and that’s why we so often need to protect ourselves from the pain of hope which does in fact disappoint us. I don’t disbelief God’s power to act and to answer my prayers, but I’m never terribly sure about his will. I’m with the guy with leprosy from Mt 8: ‘If you are willing, you can …’ But like Abraham and Sarah I’ve lived with dashed hopes for so long that I need to protect myself from further hope, which will only add to the pain.

We ought to be so powerfully full of faith that even 25 years of waiting does nothing to dent our belief in God’s plans to act. But most of the time we’re not, and we need that self-protection. So I don’t want to be too hard on Sarah. It’s not like me to be pastoral, but I’ve been aware over the years of couples desperate to have children, who have spent thousands on IVF-type treatments but who have still remained childless. For them this isn’t just a story: it’s their life, and the more well-meaning people have given them ‘words from the Lord’ and hopeful promises, the more their disappointment has grown. It’s worth remembering three things from this passage. First of all, God will do what he wants to do, and for many people that means that hope is disappointed – big time. Secondly, the fact that Abraham and Sarah’s story has a happy ending does not invalidate the stories of countless others during the years of Israel’s history who had no such outcome. They may not get the headlines, but they were there, and are every bit as much a part of the biblical experience of God’s people. But thirdly, the one hope which will not disappoint us is that of the place where crying, mourning, pain and death will be no more. Sometimes, sadly, pie in the sky when we die is the only sure and certain hope we have. How we live faithfully until then, disappointments and all, is what we’re all trying to work out.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 1 – Hosea 5:15 – 6:6 (Related)

What would you rather have: a God who was angry with you, or a God who was dead and powerless? That is the question posed by this very difficult passage from Hosea. We need a bit of background to understand both the question and how we might answer it. Hosea was a contemporary of another OT prophet, Amos. Both of them were based in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and both wrote around 740 BC, not long before Assyria captured the kingdom and virtually wiped it from the pages of history. But although writing in very similar circumstances, their messages were quite different. Amos focussed on social injustice: the rich were cruel and oppressive towards the poor, justice could be bought with bribes, and the people were thoroughly corrupt in their dealings with one another. Amos’ most famous call was for ‘justice [to] roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.’ (5:24). But Hosea saw things differently. The root problem was not the people’s lack of love for one another, but their lack of love for God. He lived out his message by obediently marrying a prostitute, whom he knew would be unfaithful to him, and by yearning for and welcoming her return.

One clear message to emerge from the book was that it was the same God who punished the nation and healed them. In the verses just before our passage there are three powerful pictures of God’s action on the adulterous people: he would flood them with his anger, he would eat away at them like moths or rot, and he would tear them apart like a lion. This seems problematic to us: we are used to someone else harming us but God restoring us. The idea that the God who has torn us to pieces is the only one who can bind up our wounds (6:1) seems difficult to say the least! So how can we understand this in context, and make sense of it for ourselves?

Hosea appeared to know that before too long the growing and greedy Assyrian empire would destroy Israel. Because of Israel’s fierce monotheism, they simply could not believe in another power at work alongside God’s will, or an equal and opposite ‘devil’ figure. Whatever happened, good or evil, could only possibly come from God. That, by the way, is the explanation for the difficult idea found in 1 Samuel that ‘an evil spirit from the Lord’ attacked King Saul. There was simply nowhere else from which an evil spirit might come: it had to be God. So if you were beaten in battle, there could only be two possible explanations. Either your god was cross with you and was teaching you a lesson, or he was weaker that your enemy’s god and had been defeated. Of the two options in OT thought, clearly the first was less serious than the second. If your god was dead, there was no hope, but if he was annoyed with you, there was still the possibility that he might forgive you.

So having torn the nation apart, God retreated in 15:15 to his lair to wait and see what the people would do next. In 16:1 we have a change of voice, and the people do indeed come back to God, confident (perhaps over-confident) that he will turn and restore them, and that he will do so quickly. But it isn’t as simple as that, and in 16:4 God again speaks, lamenting the short-lived fickleness of his people, and longing for their so-called repentance to manifest itself in love for him and therefore mercy in the land. Cheap repentance, and shallow worship, would not cut it, so he had had to cut them.

So what does this say to those of us living in Christ on the other side of God’s son being torn on the cross? In one sense, nothing has changed. We would all, if we’re honest, acknowledge that we can be fickle and insincere, repeating liturgical words of penitence but then living in exactly the same ways as before. Indeed these very words form part of one Common Worship prayer of confession. We would all own up to loving God nowhere near as intensely as we should. But it remains true that the only one who can bring forgiveness is the same one who castigates us for that lack of love, and who, like Hosea himself, yearns for a restored relationship with those who go off after others. If God is upset with us, there is hope: because Jesus died but was raised we do not have a dead, powerless God, but rather one longing to forgive, heal and restore.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity Sunday – Isaiah 40:12-17, 27-31

This has got to be about the hardest Sunday of the year for which to write an OT Lectionary blog! If the Trinity is only alluded to in the NT, how on earth are we meant to find it in the Old? In fact it wasn’t until the 4^th century that the doctrine of the Trinity as we understand it was finalised, the end of a journey in which Christians had tried to express theologically what they knew and had experienced of God, and to outlaw false doctrine. So to expect to find a fully developed trinitarian theology in our Bibles is a vain hope. Yet there are hints, the very hints which caused early Christians to try to formulate the idea. Maybe there are some in today’s OT reading.

The passage comes from the second part of the book of Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah) which dates from the end of the Babylonian exile, and announces to a weary and homesick nation that God is about to rescue them and build a highway to take them back to their homeland. There is the feel that people had almost given up on their God after decades away from home, with their Temple having been destroyed, and being surrounded by the gods of Babylon, where they now felt they were doomed live for ever. So to a people who had forgotten, the prophet poses a series of questions, with the refrain ‘Do you not know?’

‘Who has …?

v.12-17 pose a series of questions about God as creator, and the relative tininess of humans. The reference to God’s Spirit or spirit in v.13 is probably what inspired the lectionary compliers to choose this as a trinitarian passage, although most likely it simply means the ‘mind’ of God: who can grasp what God means to do, or tell him how to do it? But what we do have here is a dramatic picture of the majestic creator of all, before whom humans appear as nothing.

The filleted out verses, 18-26, similarly pose questions to the disillusioned Jews: With whom will you compare God? (v.18), Do you not know? (v.21) and again To whom will you compare God (v.25). If we are seeking to read these verses through the lens of a trinitarian theology, we have a description of God the Almighty king and Father, before whom we are left with no option other than humble and awe-filled worship.

But then the next question introduces a different note:

‘Why do you complain …?’

This leads into an assurance that God has in no way forgotten them, nor are they beyond his reach in Babylon, nor has he grown old and past it, needing to be replaced by a more up-to-date Babylonian deity. In fact he is among them even so far away from home: the very ends of the earth are his. If we want to, we can perhaps find a hint of the incarnation here. God, rather than leaving the exiles to get on with it, is still present in their world, with compassion and care. Jesus is God with us.

‘Do you not know …?’

This question, to which we shall return in a moment, ushers in the famous verses about renewed strength and eagle’s wings, which we might want to read as a reference not to the majesty of the creator, nor the closeness of the redeemer, but rather God’s Holy Spirit within us, renewing, empowering, comforting and equipping for the journey.

So at a stretch, and without believing that Deutero-Isaiah had a fully developed 4^th century doctrine of the Trinity, we might see some hints here about the nature of God as creator, redeemer and empowerer. But to return to that question which forms a refrain in between the others, what is significant is that the people ought to have known, and that in knowing would be their comfort and salvation. The Hebrew word yadha’ is a rich one, and is not just used about having information. Its primary meaning is to ‘ascertain by seeing’, and that right there is perhaps the most helpful thing we can say about the Trinity from this passage. Preachers have spent so long trying to get people to understand how God can be three and one at the same time, but that is to miss the point, not least because no-one can understand. But Isaiah’s question isn’t about what they comprehend; it’s about what they have experienced. ‘Have you not heard?’ in v.28 could mean ‘Have you not experienced?’ And there’s the point: how have we experienced the awesome majesty of God the Creator and sustainer of the whole universe, and how do we respond to him in worship? How do we know the closeness of Christ with us day by day, such that we love him and call out to him for help in all the circumstances of life? And how have we felt the empowering of the Spirit, bringing his gifts and growing his fruit in us, refreshing us, renewing us and causing us to flourish? This is a very different kind of knowing, and is of far more value then mere theological formulae.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Pentecost – Numbers 11:24-30

Once again our lectionary compilers have given us Daily Breadcrumbs here, with only half the story and no context, so let’s begin with the whole chapter (always a good idea) and try to put it in context. The Israelites have just left Sinai after around a year camped there, and almost immediately there is trouble. The people start complaining again, causing God to send fire on them, which only abates when Moses intercedes (again!). Then off they go again, moaning not about their unspecified hardships as in v.1, but this time about the manna which God has graciously provided for them, to the point where they wish they were back in Egypt because they used to have melons and garlic. Moses hears the wailing, and so does God, who decides to act to help Moses with the lonely and heartbreaking job of leadership, a job which has made him ask God just to kill him and get it over with.

So God promises in v.16-18 to ease Moses’ burden by giving him other leaders to work with him. In the meantime God provides quail for the people to help with their monotonous diet of manna, but then we come to our passage, the fulfilment of the promise given earlier. 70 elders are called out and equipped with the Spirit of God, the same Spirit who dwelt within Moses. The result was a one-off prophetic ministry.

It is not easy to understand how this actually helped Moses, however. There is no record of the elders doing much more in terms of working with Moses to deal with his miserable people, and the fact that they ‘prophesied’ probably means something very different from either the work of the canonical OT prophets or current prophecy within the charismatic movement. It probably simply refers to some kind of ecstatic state which was believed to demonstrate the fact that the Spirit had been received, and we can only imagine what that kind of behaviour might have looked like. The non-attendance of Eldad and Medad seems merely to function as a set-up for the punch-line of this passage: ‘I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!’ (v.29)

So is this passage more than a set-up for Pentecost? The more common OT reading from Joel 2 looks forward to a time when all God’s people would have the Spirit on them, and in his speech Peter deliberately emphasises the universality of the gift of the Holy Spirit, quoting Joel as he does so. Or are we perhaps meant to notice the differences between Acts 2 and the OT work of the Spirit? Moses wishes that all God’s people could receive the Spirit, but they don’t, only 70 of them. They get worked up into a prophetic frenzy, but only once. And very little seems to happen after the initial experience of receiving the Spirit. There is jealously and the desire to protect the Spirit from those who don’t quite keep the rules, or maybe to protect them from the Spirit! And the whole event comes at a time of great disaster, when Moses has been brought to the point of suicide.

In Acts 2 we see a very different story. The disciples are filled with joy at the resurrection, ascension and promise of Jesus. The Spirit comes, and the result is visible and audible, as it always is when the Spirit comes on people in the NT, but the fruit is more than clear to see: 3,000 converts, followed by healings, deliverance, and even raising from the dead. And anyone can receive this Spirit, not just leaders or elders. Still today many are hesitant, and regard the power of the Holy Spirit as like a bare electricity wire from which we do well to keep as far away as possible. Yet in the NT we see Moses’ wish and Joel’s prophecy being fulfilled. Will we celebrate Pentecost on Sunday with great joy? Will we be there, or would we prefer to stay indoors? And will the celebration of the festival allow more effective ministry and more exuberant joy in the Church? We can only pray for the latter, for all God’s people without exception.

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Sunday After Ascension – Ezekiel 26:24-28

This week we are in a period of waiting, between Ascension and Pentecost. Just as the disciples spent these days in fervent prayer, so the Church has often used this time as a time of waiting and preparing for the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, with initiatives such as ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. But it is worth asking ourselves just what it is that we are waiting for. What exactly are we expecting to happen as we celebrate the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost? I guess that will vary. For some, who already know and understand the Spirit and his gifts, it will basically be more of the same, with perhaps a chance to receive afresh, to be topped up with the Spirit, since we all leak. For others the story of Acts 2 remains a bit of a mystery, and a weird one at that, which engenders little in the way of expectation. I can remember being part of a team organising a Pentecost celebration in our local cathedral, and someone had the idea of showing children with sparkly (and now politically incorrect) shapes from the ceiling to represent the flames of fire coming down on their heads. When I suggested that we might just skip that and pray for them to receive the fire of the Spirit directly, I was greeted with stunned silence. We’re sometimes happier with the symbols that we are with the reality.

In an otherwise gloomy and negative book these few verses from Ezekiel speak of a people in waiting. The prophet has used the reality of their exile to blame them for getting into this mess through their own deliberate fault. As I have mentioned before, the prophet nowhere speaks of God’s love for his people as a motive for restoring them. But he does speak about four things God is intending to do in order to bring about their healing. Maybe there are some parallels with our waiting and our celebration of Pentecost, and how we might perhaps pray for the Church.

God will gather us

Sin often results in breaking and fragmenting, whether because of racism, sectarianism, or, in this case, displacement. God’s solution is not to try to ‘ban the boats’, but rather to gather people back together again and to give them a future. It has often been noted that Pentecost is a kind of reversal of Babel, where language caused the people to be scattered and separated, but now communication is restored through the Spirit’s gift. It is tragic that the work of the Holy Spirit has so often divided the Church, and so we wait prayerfully for his healing of our divisions and differences.

God will cleanse us

Sin pollutes us, and the image of sprinkling and cleansing, taken up in the sacrament of Baptism, is a major one in Scripture. Note that God never says ‘That’s OK’, but he does say ‘I forgive you’, which is a very different thing. Whilst the Israelites had committed many sins, it is interesting that it is idolatry which is specifically mentioned here. The prophet recognises that false worship leads inexorably to false living, so we pray for God’s church not just to be one, but also to be holy.

God will change us

Recently I have been teaching about discipleship and how we might measure it, how we can see whether in fact our ministry is helping people to grow more Christ-like. Two very different attempts to do this both contain one very similar metric. One calls it ‘perspective’, in other words how well people are growing to think and see things as God sees them, as the mind of Christ grows in them. It’s not so much ‘What would Jesus do?’ as ‘What would Jesus think?’ about any particular situation. And another scheme talks about ‘consequence’ the degree to which people’s so-called faith inspires them to live differently, and affects their finances, how they vote at elections, and so on. Discipleship is a long and gradual journey, a ‘long obedience in the same direction’ to quote Nietzsche, but here God promises a heart transplant which will change our desire to live for God, and to obey him. In a culture where we instinctively reject any authority, we might pray for a new heart for the Church, which gladly submits our all to God and to his purposes.

God will reaffirm the covenant

The words in v.28 about the relationship between God and his people are the standard form of the covenant, the ‘deal’ between us, and come again and again in the OT. They are going to be used again in Isaiah 40:1 when that prophet announces the return from exile to their homeland: ‘Comfort my people says your God.’ Ezekiel has roundly condemned the nation throughout his book for their sin, and yet God remains faithful and willing to give them a second chance (in fact an n^th chance) to live in relationship with him. In spite of our sin, weakness, idolatry and compromise, the deal is still on! Perhaps that is our greatest prayer: that God will restore us to be the Church he has always intended us to be. Come, Holy Spirit!

For those who want a change from the Gospel

Easter 6 – Genesis 8:20 – 9:17

In the final part of this mini-series on the Flood narrative we come to the happy ending, although actually it is not that happy. We may have been struggling with the idea of a God who, in a fit of anger, regrets that he has made the world and destroys almost all of its inhabitants with a flood. We have used the picture of a divine reboot to get things running smoothly again, although without too much hope for anything different to happen in the future. God himself knows that ‘every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood’, so even his hopes must have been low. Yet this story is one of grace and patience, of a God who will try anything to restore the relationships which have been so tragically broken.

But first we need to get that grace in context. It is possible to read the story as though God woke up in a bad mood one morning and snapped his destructive fingers in a fit of pique. In fact the chapters from Gen 3 to 6, chapters which cover eight generations, show a continuous downward spiral, from Adam and Eve’s disobedience, Cain’s murder, through to the spiritual evil of the demonic Nephilim. God had put up with human sin for hundreds of years, and did not lightly come to the conclusion that drastic punishment was needed. But in the aftermath of that, his grace one more rises to the fore, as he makes a covenant with his creation.

The first thing to note is that covenants are made between parties who have a relationship. They are not like the dreadful ‘Married at first sight’ TV shows. The fact that God makes a covenant with all the created order is significant, since it implies relationship. In the 17^th century a new philosophy arose, which saw God as the great Creator who had now finished his wonderful work and put it on the shelf, having nothing more to do with it, like a clockmaker who winds up his machine and leaves it to get on with it. God has no ongoing relationship with us or his world. As the Creator he is worthy of our respect, but not of our love or worship. Deism soon died out to be replaced by atheism, although it is still alive and well in the Masonic Lodge, the Scouting Movement and the Anglican 8 o’clock Communion service. The fact that God has relationship enough with his created world to make a covenant with it gives the lie to this heresy. Note too that it is all living creatures. We are used to thinking about God’s covenant with his chosen people, the Jews, but here his favour is for everyone, a favour which will be worked out finally when all nations come to worship at his footstool.

The second thing to note here, though, is that this covenant is entirely one-sided. Elsewhere in the Bible covenants are conditional. If you keep my commandments, I will bless you and be your God, that sort of thing. Not this one. This is purely about God’s desire not to wipe us all out again. This is pure grace, even though, as we have mentioned, God knows exactly what sinful human hearts are like. Any images we have of a grumpy and spiteful God need to be tempered by this truth. There are some regulations about what may and may not be eaten, and vegetarianism seems to be a thing of the past, and there is a reminder of the sanctity of human life which must not be ended by bloodshed and murder, but nowhere is God’s blessing stated to be dependant on these regulations.

The third significant feature of this narrative is the rainbow, which we so often misunderstand. While the rainbow is a natural feature which we all recognise, its significance here is often missed. The word ‘bow’ (qesheth) refers primarily to the weapon used in hunting and in warfare. It only carries the meaning of a rainbow because of the similarity in shape. So God is quite literally ‘hanging up his bow’ in the sky, in the same way we are used to a boxer hanging up his gloves. In other words, there will be no more fighting. The old song about ‘When you see a rainbow, remember God loves you’ misses the point entirely. The heavenly bow is a sign for God, not for us, which he will see and remember (zacar) his grace and mercy.

Of course as Christian readers of the OT we can see here a foreshadowing of that time when the Messiah came not to destroy his enemies but to show mercy on them through his death, knowing full well that most would turn away from him. As in so much of the OT, we see mercy triumphing over judgement. Hallelujah, what a saviour!