Advent 1 - When Enough Is Enough - Luke 1:26-38

I want to describe a moment to you that you’ve seen a hundred times before.

You’ve seen it in films and TV dramas so often that it’s almost become hackneyed.

Here’s the scene –

Two people are in some kind of peril – usually a guy and a girl - and they’re running for their lives. They turn a corner, or burst out of the forest, or race to the edge of the skyscraper but suddenly there’s nowhere left to go. You can hear the baddies getting closer. The game’s up.

But it never is.

Because there’s always some way out that involves dangling over the edge of the skyscraper, or swinging across the chasm, and there’s always this moment when the guy’s gearing up for action and turns round to see that the poor girl’s terrified. So he looks at her calmly, reaches out his hand and says ‘trust me’. And she always does. And they always get away.

Could be Humphrey Bogart, Harrison Ford or Shia Labouf. Could be Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher or Megan Fox. They’ve all done it, and they’ll keep doing it ‘til kingdom come.

But rather than any particular movie star, it’s that particular moment I want you to hold on to in your imagination this morning; that meeting of the eyes; that reaching out of the hand; that decision to trust despite the terrible danger.

I think there’s something about Mary that fits with that picture.

What we really know about Mary would comfortably fit onto one side of A4 paper, but getting to the truth of who she was isn’t easy, because that one sheet of A4 has been papered over and papered over with layers of theology and interpretation and art, and it takes a lot of work to strip away everything that’s been added to her story over the centuries.

Here’s a good example of that – I’ve shown you this picture before. It’s Botticelli’s painting of the Annunciation, which was finished in 1490. And it’s one of my favourites - I’ve seen it with my own eyes in the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. But note the nice Italian architecture and clothes. Note the pale skinned, fair haired Mary. This is 15th Century Florence we’re looking at; not 1st century Palestine!

And look at her body language. She looks like she’s about to faint, doesn’t she? She looks like someone who’s utterly passive. Someone to whom something is being done.

And I’m not sure that’s what the text implies. I think Mary’s much stronger than we give her credit for sometimes.

And that’s why I’ve always preferred the next picture. She’s young, she’s dark, she’s in a house that looks like it might belong to her time and place. So it’s far more authentic.
But the thing I like best about it is that she’s looking up at the angel. Most other paintings of the Annunciation have her turning her eyes away. But not this one. This Mary’s not passive. She’s frightened. She’s questioning. But she’s an active participant in whatever’s going on. And that’s far more in keeping with how Luke tells the story.

We know enough about the culture of those days to know that Mary would have been in her early teens – maybe even as young as 12. When a girl reached puberty and her parents had arranged a suitable partner for her, she was betrothed to him in a public ceremony, but she’d continue living with her parents. Officially she was married, but the marriage wasn’t consummated ‘til a second ceremony had taken place about a year later, after which she went to live with her husband.

During that year of betrothal, a man could divorce his wife for a number of reasons, but the most common was if she were found to be pregnant. In a culture where male honour was paramount, and the whole of society was engineered around the preservation of honour, for a betrothed girl to fall pregnant was shameful, both for her own family and that of her husband.

Worse still, if she fell pregnant to someone other than her husband. That was about as shameful as you could get.

Matthew’s gospel fills in some of the background that Luke misses out when it comes to Joseph’s attitude to all this, and it’s clear right from the start that as far as he’s concerned, divorce is the only option. There was no question of him putting up with this.

Joseph’s dilemma was whether to divorce Mary quietly, or make sure that everyone around knew that he’d wasn’t the father. There was no question of staying with her until he had his own encounter with God.

So given that strict cultural setting, can you imagine what must have gone through her mind when the angel said “Don’t be afraid, Mary. God has been gracious to you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus” ?

She knew straightaway this wasn’t about looking into the future when she and Joseph started living together. This was now. And if it was now, it was all wrong. She knew how much disgrace she’d bring on herself and everyone she loved if she were found to be pregnant.

That’s why she protested and said “How can this be?”. I’m chaste – I’m faithful. This isn’t in the script.

And at that point Gabriel helpfully pulled out a laptop and showed her a ten minute Powerpoint Presentation on what exactly was going to happen on a genetic level so that the divine son, fully God and fully man, could be conceived within her womb. And wouldn’t we all like a copy of that particular CD?

In fact, all he said was “The Spirit will be upon you, and God’s power will rest on you”. No DNA analysis, I’m afraid. Just a promise and some reassurance. And a reminder that strange baby stuff was happening to her cousin Elizabeth too, if she needed someone to talk to. Elizabeth had been barren all her life, but was now six months pregnant with the baby boy who grew up to be John the Baptist.

So there’s wee Mary, sitting safely at home in one sense, but teetering on the edge of a precipice in another. She’s scared to go on, and she’s scared to go back. But there’s this angel looking at her, and holding out his hand. And she knows that the way he wants to take her – God wants to take her – is fraught with danger. But she’s seen enough and she’s heard enough to know that she can trust him.

She doesn’t know how on earth all of this is going to work out. But she has enough faith to believe that it will.

“I am the Lord’s servant” she says; “May it happen to me as you have said”. That’s not a meek surrender. That’s a life-changing and courageous choice.

**********************************************

In other traditions Mary’s described as the Mother of God, and personally I’ve always found that too much to claim. It’s a title I don’t think she’d welcome.

But Mary’s certainly the mother of God incarnate – and in a way she’s also the mother of all who choose the way of faith.

She didn’t know where it was all going, but she’d seen enough and heard enough to trust that God would see her through. And that’s an example that should encourage us, because it’s not easy being a believer in today’s world.

We’re not an endangered species just yet, but we’re certainly a rare breed. And as the folk around us become more and more removed from the Christian story, we can expect less and less understanding of what we’re really about.

They just won’t get it.

And sometimes that’ll come out in the form of mild abuse and mick-taking. And other times, usually when folk are alone or slightly the worse for wear, it’ll come out in genuine questioning. Some of the best conversations I’ve had about faith have taken place when friends or flatmates have drunk just enough to lose some of their inhibitions.

And the worst thing we can do when we find ourselves having to explain why we believe and what we believe is to try and pretend we’ve got all the answers, because we don’t. None of us have, no matter how long we’ve been Christians for.

And neither did Mary. She didn’t know where on earth all of this was leading. But she’d seen enough to know it was worth staking the rest of her life on.

She looked God in the eye; she took his outstretched hand, and she went for it.

And so must we.

First Things First - Psalm 127

Remember those long car journeys with the kids you’d have now and again?

Five miles down the road and they’d be saying “Are we there yet”?

We all know that in those circumstances, a wee break can make all the difference.

And that’s why, today, we’re pulling into a lay-by and getting out the picnic hamper, because we’re half-way through the Psalms of the Ascent and we still have a long way to go before we reach Jerusalem.

Psalm 127 is where we pause for a break today, and it’s a great Psalm to have in our minds as we get ready for the build up to Christmas and all the mayhem that goes with it.

This Psalm’s written in the style of King Solomon, who’s thought to have written the book of Ecclesiastes and the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. Solomon was a master of the pithy saying and that’s what comes through strongly in this Psalm. It’s just good, basic, spiritual common-sense aimed at the worshipping community.

So what’s the Psalmist saying?

“If the Lord does not build the house, the work of the builders is useless;
if the Lord does not protect the city, it is useless for the sentries to stand guard.
It is useless to work so hard for a living,
getting up early and going to bed late.
For the Lord provides for those he loves while they are asleep.”

I wonder if that sounds the same to your ears as to mine?

When I first read that I found myself remembering a story about an old man who was very proud of his garden. When the minister stopped by one afternoon he got the tour, but all he said on the way round was “isn’t God’s work marvellous”. And that got under the old man’s skin, because he knew fine well how long it took him to get the garden looking like that.

At the end of the tour the minister said “Well, Jimmy, you and God have done wonderful things here”. And the old boy said “Aye – you’re right enough. I suppose we have. But you want to see the mess of the place when I leave it all up to him”.

The Psalmist is not suggesting here that we down tools and leave it all up to God, or that we take ourselves off to bed, content in the knowledge that all our needs will be miraculously provided for.

That’s not Biblical – there’s a strong current in scripture that says if you do not work, you shall not eat. Work’s part of the equation.

What he’s getting at here is something deeper and profoundly counter-cultural.

He’s saying it doesn’t matter how hard you work - if you leave God out of things you won’t find what you’re soul’s looking for.

You’ve got to get first things first. And God should always be first.
God, then relationships, then work. That’s the way it should go,

Love God, love your neighbour. Then get on with whatever it is you do in life. That’s all. God, relationships, work – in that order.

But the thing is, our culture is doing its damnedest to reverse that order. Work, then relationships, then, if there’s any time left over, God. It’s a complete reversal of the way things should be.

Where does that come from? Well, Genesis gives us an answer.

There’s Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. And God says “Make sure you get your five a day. But not from that tree, please”.

But the story says they didn’t listen because the apples looked good. The woman took the fruit – note that – the woman! – and gave it to the man who meekly ate because he didn’t dare complain when she’d gone to all the trouble of choosing it and picking it and shining it up for him. And he knew that if he complained it’d be the last time she’d reach him an apple….

So they ate. And their eyes were opened, we’re told. And two things of significance happened. Firstly they were cursed. Eve was told she’d struggle in childbirth, and Adam was told he’d have to work hard all of his life in order to make a living. And now, with more women in the workplacee, the ladies get a double whammy with that piece of good news.

Secondly, that act of disobedience brought a distance between humanity and God. Paradoxically, their eyes were opened, but God became harder to see. and harder to hear. Sin got in the way.

So in the story of the fall, God goes out of focus, and at the same time, work becomes more of a focus.

Fast forward a few centuries.

You’re looking down over a great plain where men are moving across the landscape like ants, dragging logs and carts full of bricks. A great tower’s rising from within a frame of scaffolding, already taller than anything that’s ever been built so far. They’re really putting their backs into it. Why? So they can make a name for themselves. So, through their work, they can finally prove themselves independent of God. They want to prove that they are self-made, autonomous people.

Do you see what’s happened in just a few short years? It started out as God, relationships work; but then came the fall. And by the time we reach Babel the pattern’s completely reversed. It’s become work, relationships, God. If God’s even there at all.

And that’s where we’re at in our society. We’re still building Babels. Still kidding ourselves that if we can just work a little bit harder, get a little bit more money, buy a few more of those things we think we need, then we’ll really have arrived. We’ll be the gods of our own lives. Self-made men and women.


That thinking has deep, deep roots that go right down into our culture. We’ve swallowed the lie so completely that to live in any other way makes us feel totally out of synch with the rest of society.

But that’s the worldview that the Psalmist’s critiquing.

Why are you sweating over building a house, when what you really want is a home? No point having a Beverley Hills mansion if the life you live in it’s miserable.

Why are you stressing out over security when what you’re yearning for is real community? If we tried harder to accept each other and look after each other maybe we wouldn’t need gated communities and security guards with guns.

Why are you wasting your best years amassing wealth, when you know very well that money can’t buy you happiness? Isn’t that the one thing the tabloid press is good for, apart from holding fish and chips? Showing us that money’s no guarantee of happiness.

How many people do you know who leave God aside and give their lives over to work and accumulation, ostensibly to provide from their families, and then find themselves deeply unhappy further down the line because they haven’t delivered the freedom they were supposed to? All that time invested in work and furnishing the 'dream' home, but not nearly enough in relationships or in God. And then they wonder why things crumble....

First things first, says God. I know you need these things. but don’t live for them. Don’t make them your God. Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness and all these other things shall be added unto you.

Make room for me, says God. Make time for me. There is nothing more important you can do.

“But I don’t have time, God” we say.

“Sure you do” says God.
"You have the same amount of time as anybody else. The question is, how are you using it?"

That is the question.

Is it work-relationships-God, or God-relationships-work?

How are we living? How are we using the time we’ve been blessed with? Is God building the house, or are we labouring in vain?

As we move toward the season of Advent that’s a good question to ponder.

Traditionally Advent was a time for slowing down and reflecting on the enormity of what happened on that first Christmas. It was a time for personal reflection and prayer to help us get back in kilter with God and ourselves.

And we can make it that again; but only if we choose to.

We have the time. What we need is the will to use it well. To get first things first.

I want to finish with a reading from the French priest and writer Michel Quoist. It’s simply entitled “Lord, I have time”.

I went out, Lord.
People were coming out.
They were coming and going,
Walking and running.
Everything was rushing, cars, lorries, the street, the whole town.
People were rushing not to waste time.
They were rushing after time,
To catch up with time,
To gain time.

Goodbye, sir, excuse me, I haven't time.
I'll come back, I can't wait, I haven't time.
I must end this letter - I haven't time.
I'd love to help you, but I haven't time.
I can't accept, having no time.
I can't think, I can't read, I'm swamped, I haven't time.
I'd like to pray, but I haven't time.

You understand, Lord, they simply haven't the time.
The child is playing, he hasn't time right now. Later on…..
The schoolgirl has her homework to do, she hasn't time….. Later on…
The student has his courses, and so much work, he hasn't time. . .Later on...
The young man is at his sports, he hasn't time . . . Later on . . .
The young woman has her new house, or new baby she hasn't time. .....Later on.
The workers are busy making their way in life……. Later on.
The grandparents have to look after the grandchildren, they haven't time. . ... Later on...
They are ill, they have their hospital appointments, they haven't time . . ....Later on...
They are dying, they have no . . .

Too late! . . . They have no more time!

And so all people run after time, Lord.
They pass through life running - hurried, jostled, overburdened,
frantic, and they never get there. They haven't time.
In spite of all their efforts they're still short of time,
of a great deal of time.

Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations,
There is a big mistake somewhere.
The hours are too short,
The days are too short,
Our lives are too short.

You who are beyond time, Lord, you smile to see us fighting it.
And you know what you are doing.
You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to people.
You give each one time to do what you want them to do.

But we must not lose time
waste time,
kill time,
For time is a gift that you give us,
But a perishable gift,
A gift that does not keep.

Lord, I have time,
I have plenty of time,
All the time that you give me,
The years of my life,
The days of my years,
The hours of my days,
They are all mine.
Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,
But to fill completely, up to the brim,
To offer them to you,
that of their insipid water
You may make a rich wine such as you made once in Cana of Galilee.

I am not asking you for time to do this and then that,
But your grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that you give me,
what you want me to do.

The Reality Behind the Reality - Psalm 126

I can’t place the day, but I remember the experience very clearly.

It was just a few weeks after I arrived at Belhelvie and I’d gone down to the beach for a run on a glorious May morning.

I had the place to myself; the sky was blue, the wind was fresh, the sun was warm, the waves were crashing in. It seemed like there was no better place in the world to be, in that moment. And just for a second I allowed myself to act like an American and went galloping along the sand punching the air and shouting ‘wahoo’ like an idiot. Like I said - there was no-one else around to see!

I couldn’t quite believe that I was here. After the all the soul-searching and discussion, all the interviews and assessments, all the busyness of moving and settling down, we were finally here in the place we’d been called to. And it felt good.

Especially given what had gone before.

18 months prior to that run on the beach, I remember sitting at our kitchen table in Glasgow with a few trusted friends, feeling about as low as I’ve ever felt in my 40-odd years.

It was a winter’s evening – dark outside; but dark inside too; in my soul. I’d just about come to the end of myself.

Describing it all would take too long and I’ll spare you the detail, but to cut a long story short I was within a whisker of having to be signed off my work with stress.

I was in a pioneering kind of job within the church, working in a deprived part of the inner-city. There was no script to follow because I was working outwith the normal structures of the church and immersing myself in the community in different ways. And there was lots of that work that was going well.

But two things were gradually wearing me down. The politicking around the three churches I was working with, and finding myself stretched more and more thinly across too many things. I did a little time and motion study over a few months and discovered that 60-70 hour weeks had been the norm; and of course there’s no overtime in ministry.

Four years into the post, and all of the life had sapped out of me. I had nothing left to give to anyone.

We’d gathered those friends together that evening to help me think through some strategies to make things better, and to pray.

And no miracles happened that night; but their good sense and understanding were the beginnings of a recovery.

And in God’s timing, and God’s grace, that recovery led me here.
And I’m wise enough now, five years in, to know that Belhelvie Church is no Utopia. But there’s no doubt that I’m in a better place than I was.

It’s a before-and-after story, I guess.

And so is today’s Psalm.

But to make sense of what he’s writing, you need a little bit of background.
What you see on the screen is the story of the people of Israel in miniature. It’s the Old Testament squeezed into one slide.

(Image of sine wave. The peaks are labelled ‘Patriarchs, Promised Land, Return and Messiah’, the troughs, ‘Slavery (Egypt), Exile (Assyria and Babylon), and Occupation (latterly, Rome)).

I then ad-libbed the story of Israel over a couple of minutes, charting these peaks and troughs with specific reference to:

Patriarchs – Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – Joseph
Slavery in Egypt – Moses leads them out and into
Promised Land – Good kings (David) – Bad Kings - Kingdom divided – Israel, Judah,
Exile – Assyria and Babylon (722 and 586BC)
Return – 70 years later, King Cyrus of Persia – temple and walls rebuilt (Ezra and Nehemiah). Exiles returned Home
Occupation – by more powerful nations. Latterly Rome
Messiah.

So having had that background, we’re in a better place to understand what’s going on in this Psalm:

Psalm 126 v 1: “When the Lord brought us back to Jerusalem, it was like a dream”.

What’s he talking about there? Promised land? More likely Return after the exile. “brought us back”.

verses 1-3 are looking back on that. Past tense. But where is he now?

Further down the curve. V4 – “Lord, make us prosperous again”.
Weeping because they’re back in hard times again!

Psalmist is sitting there in a dark place, and he has a decision to make. What am I going to do here? Am I going to accept that things are the way they are and give up, or am I going to believe that they can change? Am I going to settle for this reality, or am I going to look for the reality behind the reality?

That’s the question, isn’t it?

When I sat with those friends around the kitchen table in Glasgow, that’s what they were helping me do. See the reality behind the reality.

The reality was that I was lower than a snake’s belly and feeling like packing it all in. The reality behind the reality was that God didn’t want me that way and couldn’t use me that way, I hadn’t been looking after myself properly; I’d been working far too hard, and I’d stopped making time to be with the God who’d called me into ministry in the first place.

And when I put that right, I began to understand that the skills I have were better suited to parish ministry than pioneering ministry.

Hard to accept, but liberating to discover.

The Psalmist’s reality was being back in Jerusalem after exile and realising that things weren’t going to be plain sailing. The reality behind the reality was this sine wave of history that his people had lived through, and the fact that at every stage, God had been faithful to them and brought them through their difficulties. And that gave him hope. If God could do it once, he could do it again.

Do you see where we’re going with this?

Behind all our realities, there’s another reality; a divine reality that’s real and present, but unseen until we start looking for it.

It’s a bit like an iceberg. The parts we see sticking up above the water are only a fraction of what’s really there under the surface. They’re not the whole thing, any more than our present experience and how we happen to feel about it is the whole thing.

There’s always more. A reality behind whatever reality it is we’re facing. A reality that gets God in his proper place, and helps us see things from a different perspective.

So there’s that person you can’t stand at work. Or down your street. Or in the church. That’s a reality.

But the reality behind the reality is that that person’s known and loved by God, and there are reasons that they’ve turned out the way they are. What are you going to do with that? If you call yourself a Christian you can’t just ignore that and get on with disliking them. You have to find a way to live with that – and deal with them. That’s what God wants you to do, and can help you do - if you let him,

Or there’s that knock you’ve taken. A real body-blow. You put a brave face on it, but deep down, you’re shaken to the core. And you wonder why God let it happen. That’s a reality you live with every day of life.

But the reality behind the reality is that things happen in this world which aren’t part of the divine plan. And when those things happen, it’s always better to run toward God than away from him. Whatever you’ve gone through, other men and women have gone through the same and worse and kept their faith, It can be done. The Psalms show us that. They’re full of people pouring out this stuff to God, and in the silence that follows, finding the beginnings of an answer.

I look at the church we belong to. One commentator cruelly described what’s happening in the Church of Scotland as “one ageing, dying congregation collapsing into the arms of another ageing, dying congregation”. In some places, that’s the reality. But the reality behind the reality is that we worship the God who raises the dead and delights in making all things new. Institutions may die; traditions might perish. But the Church of Jesus Christ goes on.


So, in closing, I wonder how all of that speaks to you this morning?

What’s the reality you live with just now? Are circumstances kind, or challenging? Is faith growing, or faltering?

What’s the reality behind the reality of your non-stop life, or your workaholism, or the difficulties you’re having in that relationship?

What’s the reality behind the reality of your worrying, or your stubbornness, or your doubts about yourself or God?

However you answer, the one thing I want you to take away from this morning is that our feelings and circumstances are not the last word on how things are. God is the page on which this sine wave of our lives is drawn. Whether we’re up or down, he is the reality behind our reality.

And when we wake up to that, and set ourselves to finding him in the middle of whatever’s going on in life, that’s when things begin to change, and change for the better.

That’s what I found out in that dark kitchen surrounded by those caring friends;

That’s what the Psalmist found out in Jerusalem, surrounded by those warring nations.

In every situation, there’s always more going on than we know. Just under the surface, God is at work, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.

A Remembering and a Reckoning - Psalm 125

His name was George, and I had a hard time tracking him down.

He stayed in the outskirts of Possilpark in Glasgow where the dingy flats finally give up chasing the countryside away, and sit sullenly looking out over the copses and scrubland to the Campsie Fells beyond.

He was a Mr Never-in, was George. I tried visiting three or four times in the space of a fortnight before I finally got him at home. And he was pleased to see me, I think. I was the new student minister in his church.

He was a tall man; stooped by age, but still lean in body and face. He spoke gently and though his smile was rare, it was always genuine. And he carried himself with the kind of dignity that men who’ve seen action often possess.

I remember sitting in his wee living room and looking around as he went to the kitchen to make a coffee. The haphazard collection of memorabilia on the walls and mantelpiece told their own story. Wedding photo. A family gathering. Grandchildren. A black and white image of a group of young soldiers standing by a jeep somewhere out in the desert. A young George looking back at me from a distance of sixty years.

Surrounded by memories, but alone with them now, as a widower of several years.

We passed an hour together, and to be honest I remember very little of what we spoke about. But I left that day with a strong sense that there were depths to George that I hadn’t begun to fathom.

A few weeks later it was Remembrance Sunday, and it was the tradition in that church that the oldest living combatant would bring the poppy wreath forward at the start of the service. For years that duty had fallen to an old soldier in his 90’s, but with his passing, the honour fell to George for the first time.

I remember him coming in as we were singing the first hymn, and making his way shakily down the aisle, and I was glad that only those of us at the front could see his face because he was just about holding it together.

It’s hard to find the words to sum up how he looked. That tall, kind man, now shaking like a leaf as he bent down to place the wreath before the communion table. His body was there, quivering, but his mind was a thousand miles away in some field, or forest or trench where he lost the friends he fought beside. You could see it in his eyes, and the tight set of his mouth.

He’d survived it. But he never spoke about it. We talked often in my times there, but this part of his life was off limits. And I think that very often that’s the way with men like George. It’s those who have seen most and lost most who talk the least.


Some things are hard to talk about - even when you remember
them well.

Get a group of veterans together and they’ll chat readily about the places they visited during the war, the people they served alongside, the practical jokes they played. But it’s rare to hear them talk about their experiences on the front line.

What they remember best - they tend not speak of.

It is hard to really talk about the details of what happened: the real costs:
how their comrades died; how their parents, or brothers or sisters, or friends paid the costs of war,
how their own minds and hearts were
affected and never quite the same again.

Our most important memories for the most part are silent ones. Ones that we don’t talk about because of the pain that still resides in them and because they’re almost impossible to share with anyone who has not been there with you.

This week I travelled across to Oban to take the funeral of my wife’s great Aunt who was very dear to us. She was from Lancashire and in the war years she served in an RAF radar station in Norfolk, charting the movements of enemy aircraft. She was full of stories of the camaraderie she found among the folk who worked there, and she stayed good friends with some of them for the rest of her life.

But we know that at one point the young man she loved, and was engaged to, left on a sortie and never came back. She hardly ever spoke about him. It was only in recent days that a little more of that story began to emerge, and only with one or two people.

Some memories are just too painful to revisit.

We keep them stored in a locked room in our mind.
Every now and again we’ll go in and sit in that place in silence for a while, and very occasionally,
if the mood and the company’s right, we might allow someone else to glimpse what’s in there.
But for the most part, those doors stay firmly closed.

And when it comes to this particular Sunday in the year, perhaps it’s right that they do.

Our culture has an almost pornographic obsession with putting everything on display;
but we all know that there are some things that shouldn’t be treated that way because exposure cheapens them. Some things deserve honour and privacy and respect.

We don’t need those who lived through the war as combatants or civilians to share all their innermost memories with us. There are moments when we can read their sorrows in their faces.

But it is important that those who were there, those who fought hard and made it home
feel that all that happened was worthwhile, that it made a difference, and that those who sacrificed so much, are given the honour and respect they deserve.

It is always the way that in times of peace, soldiers and sailors and airmen are undervalued.

But today we remember with gratitude the enormity of the sacrifices that they made in the two world wars so the tyrrany of nations could be ended.

We recognise that cost, and we honour today those who served and those who died,
for us, for our country, and for those who could not fight to save themselves.

War is not a part of God’s plan for this world.
The prophet Isaiah predicts a day when swords will be beaten into ploughshares, and the wolf will lie down in peace with the lamb.
And Christ teaches us to pray for God’s kingdom to come;
and war has no place in that future.

But those days have not yet come.
And as long as our human story is marred by dischord and greed - in other words, by sin -war will be an inevitable part of our landscape.

But we have this promise in the heart of today’s Psalm to hold onto.
God promises that “The wicked will not always rule over the land of the righteous”.

There will be a reckoning, God says, and evil shall not win.
And when we stand up against injustice and oppression,
against violence and tyrrany,
we are firmly within the expressed will of God.

Our prayers today are for the men and women who,
in taking that stand,
gave all that they had to give.

For them, we pray in the words of the Psalmist:
“Lord, do good to those who are good, to those who obey your commands”.

On this Remembrance Sunday, Psalm 125 reminds us that there will be a terrible reckoning for wrongdoing, but lasting reward for those who do the right.

Today we commemorate those who did right, and commit ourselves to follow their example in our day and age.

We will remember them.

God On Our Side - Psalm 124

“Work fascinates me” – somebody once said. “I can stare at it for hours”.

Psalm 124 has felt like work this week. If my eyes were magnifying glasses I’d have burned a hole in the page with all hours of staring I’ve done at Psalm 124.

And isn’t because I don’t understand it. I understand it just fine.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to preach the kind of exegetical, historical sermon that ministers preach when they run out of real things to say.

But that’s not what you need. And it’s not what I need either.

Sunday by Sunday as we open ourselves up to these ancient texts, what we’re looking for isn’t primarily knowledge. It’s wisdom. Insight that helps us live well and deepen our experience of God.

And like a man wandering round a statue in a museum, I found myself looking prayerfully at Ps 124 from every angle and coming away feeling unmoved and none the wiser. How’s that for a confession! Ministers shouldn’t feel that way, should they?!

And yet, why not? We’re only human. We don’t have a direct line to the Almighty giving us a drip feed of inspiration. Our moods go up and down depending on tiredness, exercise and appetite. We have spells when we feel close to God and times when we wonder if this is all just an exercise in self-delusion. In short, I’m no different from you, just because I happen to be ordained. But I digress.

I looked hard at the Psalm this week and found that nothing moved me. Not a nice feeling when it’s your job to preach on Sunday.

But rather than fall back onto dull historical exegesis for the sake of getting something down on paper, I tried to drag my lack of inspiration into the light and look at it more clearly.

I said - God, why is this Psalm not moving me?

And that’s when things started to get interesting. Ideas began to tumble out like kids getting off a bus at a funfair and racing off in all kinds of directions. And rather than try to corral them all, I managed to round up two or three of the little brats and wipe their noses and smooth down their hair so they could be respectably presented to you this morning.

So here’s the first wee insight I want to offer.

The Psalmist begins with these words: “What if the Lord had not been on our side?”. And I found myself wondering how I would finish that Psalm if it had been me writing it. What if the Lord had not been on my side? I wondered. In all honesty, would I see much difference in the way my life had panned out?

You see Israel had this amazing history. They had been captives in Egypt for over 400 years, and then with signs and wonders God led them out of slavery through Moses. Parting the Red-sea, annihilating their slave masters, providing for them on this arduous journey though the desert that took another 40 years; helping them conquer much more powerful tribes around them so they could finally settle in the promised land.

And with that history, they could look back and say “If God hadn’t been on our side, none of that would have happened! Our enemies would have destroyed us! The waters would have carried us away”.

They had this huge story to tell.

But my story isn’t huge; it’s rather ordinary, to be honest. And I’m pretty sure that’s the same for most of you.

We’ve all read about folk with these remarkable testimonies of where they were before they came to faith and how things have turned around for them: and God bless them.

But most of us haven’t had that kind of a journey.

Put our ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures side by side, and you’d have to look pretty closely to see the difference. Or maybe there is no before or after for you – maybe you’ve always had some level of faith and would struggle to point to a time or place that might be called a conversion.

So given that, how would you finish this Psalm? How would I finish it? What would we have to say? Has God made a difference to our lives? That was my first thought. And I have to say, it made me feel more than a little guilty. I remembered a poster from my student days that said “if you were put on trial for the crime of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”. Makes you think, doesn't it?

But hot on the heels of that, came a second thought which is a little more encouraging.

Most of the people that we read about in the Scriptures seem larger than life. By definition, we end up reading their stories not necessarily because they were remarkable people, but because they had a remarkable role to play in God’s unfolding plans.

Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David, Elijah, Mary, Peter, Paul.

Ordinary in one sense, and yet playing an extraordinary part in the story. And that’s why we read about them and try to learn from their experience.

But here’s the thing. For every name in Scripture we know, there are 10,000 names of faithful men and women we never get to hear about. Men and women just going about the ordinary things of their lives with simple trust and faith.

You and I aren’t called to be Moses or Paul or Mary or Ruth and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for that. We’re called to be who God has made us to be, and to love and serve him in the place he’s put us in. If we do that faithfully, he may do wonderful things through us. But that’s his business, not ours.

Israel had this dramatic story to tell. But for ordinary folk like us, all that drama might be hard to relate to. Maybe it’s ok if our stories aren't as gripping, as long as we have something to say when people ask us what difference it makes having God in our lives.


Third thought.

The Psalmist says “What if the Lord had not been on our side”?

What does it look like and feel like, when God is on our side?

That one’s really worth thinking about.

I remember when I first started playing rugby at secondary school. There were a couple of lads in the team who were really big for their age – I mean, 5’6 and 10 stone in first year – big solid farmer’s boys. They were twice the size of most of us!

And when we lined up with them on our side, the opposition were quaking in their boots! All we had to do was get the ball to Booth or Hayburn and they’d do the rest. Those of you who watch rugby will remember the ’95 world Cup when Jonah Lomu ran through the England back line like they were made of straw. It was a bit like that.

You know, a few years later it was a different story. Suddenly everybody had grown a few inches and put on a few pounds. These farmers lads were still good players, but it wasn’t a walk in the park for us any more. We still won more than we lost, but everybody left the field bloodied and bruised.

Having God on your side is much more like the second experience of rugby than the first. No-one comes off the park without a few cuts and bruises.

Sometimes people assume, wrongly, that having God on your side is going to make everything like a walk in the park. Some ministers preach like that, some Christians try to sell the faith to others on that basis.

But they’re just plain wrong.

The Psalmist doesn’t say “The Lord was on our side. Great! Nothing happened to us. We were fine!”

He says “when our enemies attacked us”, “when they got furious with us”, “when the floods came and the waters threatened to cover us”. In other words, bad stuff still came our way. But in the midst of those things, God was on our side.

I know I thump this particular tub on a regular basis, but I keep coming up against this issue pastorally. When troubles come, as they will, folk often take that as a sign of God’s anger, or worse still, his abandonment.

So let me say this once again, loud and clear. Having God on your side doesn’t preserve you from troubles. It preserves you in them.

It’s right there in the Psalm.

“Let us thank the Lord”. Why? Because he kept us from all harm? No – we thank him because he has not let our enemies destroy us.

If you have faith, you won't be destroyed, even when life hands you a beating.

That bereavement you suffered? We’ll you’re still here. And day after day a little more healing takes place.

That illness you’re fighting? You can't stop what it's doing to your body, but you're determined that whatever happens, you’re not going to let it break your spirit.

Those circumstances you’re facing? Your powerless to change them, maybe, but you’ve decided you're not going to let them rule over you.

Why? Because you know that these things don’t have the last word on your life. God has the last word. And you trust him to make it a good word.

And that brings me to the final thing I want to say this morning.

I’ve already mentioned this Psalm looks back to the Exodus, the great formative event in the life of the people of Israel.

But when Christians read about the Exodus, they always see a deeper meaning in those stories, because for us, Moses and his work of liberation was just a foreshadow of Jesus and his work of salvation.

Moses saved Israel from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus’ work saved us eternally from the power of sin and death. His was a second Exodus with eternal consequences.

And in a way, this morning’s Psalm could have been written with Jesus in mind, even though it was penned about a thousand years before his birth.

He took the worst the world could throw at him including abuse, suspicion, betrayal and an agonizing death. Take a snapshot of his life at any one of a score of different times and you could be forgiven for saying “If God’s on his side, why’s that happening?”.

And yet God was on his side; and his resurrection was the final proof of that.

“Let us thank the Lord, who has not let our enemies destroy us.” says the Psalmist

We have escaped like a bird from a hunter’s trap;
the trap is broken and we are free!”.

Those words resonate down through the centuries. Spoken first by the Psalmist, but taken up by Christ as he stands smiling, beside an empty tomb.

The trap is broken and we are free.

That great Exodus story is the backdrop against which the Christian lives out his or her little life. That great story, and its consequences, are the end toward which we are living. The death of death and all that goes with it, and the coming of new life even now.

John Calvin once said that the church is a place of many resurrections. And he was right.

These lives we lead might not seem extraordinary set alongside the story of Israel, or the great heroes of the church. And the truth is, there are times when we find ourselves unmoved, perplexed or even angry as we try to walk with God.

But every act of kindness, every Godward movement, every setting aside of the wrong and embracing of the right is a mini resurrection. A sign of the work God’s begun in us, and as sure as Christ is risen, will one day bring to completion.

That’s the hope Psalm 124 brings us.

Those long hours of head-scratching helped me see that in the end, this Psalm isn’t about us and what we do. It’s about God and what he’s doing.

He’s in the process of saving this world from all that mars it.

And throughout it all, he’s on our side.