Going Live!

Hi folks -

With the advent of our recording and uploading services to our webpage (http://www.belhelviechurch.com/) I'm going to stop putting sermon transcripts on the net. I hope the resource that's here continues to bless folk in different ways. It's gratifying to see how this blog has reached out way beyond the walls of our wee church here in Scotland to impact folk around the world, over 22000 times.

Every blessing

Paul McKeown

Harvest - Rootedness

The author Barbara Brown Taylor observes that when you meet new people in America, the questions they ask to get to know you will vary depending on what part of the United States they’re from.

Folk from the fast-moving North East tend to go straight for geography. “So where are you from?” they’ll ask.

But Southerners, with their slower, more relational ways, take a different tack. More often than not, they’ll begin the conversation by saying- “So who are your people?”

Place, and people. Two different ways of thinking about your roots.

And here in the North East of Scotland, we cleverly manage to combine the two. I often hear people, usually older folk, saying that they ‘belong’ to Udny, or to Whitecairns or to Belhelvie. And the use of that word ‘belong’ marries the geographical and the relational in a lovely way. In that way of thinking, a place and its people are so tied up with one another, you can’t really separate them. You belong to both.

And by and large, throughout human history, our people and our place have been the main ways that we identify ourselves and speak about the things that give us our rootedness in life.

In terms of people we speak of family, neighbours, community, and countrymen,

In terms of place, we think of

home, town, region and nation.

This is the primary language of our rootedness.

And pride in your people and your place is a good thing. It’s a wonderful thing, even as an Ulsterman, to stand among 60,000 Scots singing Flower of Scotland at Murrayfield, and feel that incredible swell of national pride. It’s even better when the boys in green thump you at Murrayfield to win the Grand Slam – but that’s another story!

But we know all too well, that that kind of pride can have a darker side. It’s a short step from pride to arrogance, and from arrogance to violence.

I’d happily wear an Ireland shirt around Edinburgh on my way to the rugby. But I remember my dad cautioning me about wearing it up the town in Ballymena. Green? Shamrock? Bad idea in my home town. You might just get your head kicked in if you meet the wrong people.

And it looks like we’re entering another of those times when fear, if not outright hatred of those who are different from us, is beginning to infect our politics both at home and abroad. Holland, Germany, France and the UK have all seen a significant resurgence of the far right, while across the pond the so-called leader of the free world is fully engaged in rattling sabres, building walls and pulling up drawbridges.

Pride in your place and your people is one thing; acting as though your place and your people are all that matters is another.

And in a way, that’s the painful lesson that Israel had to learn in the Old Testament.

You’re chosen – yes – you’re God’s chosen people. But you’ve been chosen for service, not for privilege. You’ve been chosen to show the other nations what God is like, and what life under God is like. You’ve been chosen not because God loves only you, but because God loves all his people and wants to use you in drawing them back to himself.

But no matter how the prophets tried, the people couldn’t get that message into their heads. As far as they were concerned, they were the people, this was their place, and God was their God. End of.

It took one of their own, one they would eventually crucify, to finally subvert that thinking and teach them that being rooted in God was far more important than being rooted in a particular place or people.

It’s only when you read the gospels with that in mind that you see how often and how radically Jesus undermined the thinking of his day.

You  might remember that in his discussion with the Samaritan Woman at the well, she tries to distract him from her love life, or lack-of-love-life,  with a bit of religious controversy.  “Sir -our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. A time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” (John 4: 19-24)

True worship isn’t about the city you’re in, he’s saying. And nor is it about the building you’re in – even if it’s the temple, the pride and joy of Israel’s religious system.

As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

(Mark 13:1-2)

Jews in Jesus’ day thought that true worship was rooted in the Temple, and in Jerusalem. And Jesus says ‘no’ – it’s deeper than that.

And they thought that belonging was all about the kinship ties of family and tribe and religion, but Jesus said ‘no’ it’s deeper than that.

One time, while he was preaching and teaching in someone’s house, his mother and brothers came to try and intervene because they were worried he was out of his mind. Someone got word to him:

 “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35)

It’s hard to overestimate how countercultural that was. Jesus, very much against the understanding of his day, is arguing that genuine spiritual ties can be closer than blood ties.

And he goes further, and says that those kinds of ties can be found outside of Israel, the chosen people. Ethnicity is no longer what it’s about, in Jesus’ book. It’s about faith.

So a Gentile woman approaches him asking for healing for her daughter. And when he parleys with her, she answers him with such insight and faith he gives her what she wanted.

A Roman Centurion -the enemy to all intents and purposes - approaches him and asks for healing for his servant. Jesus offers to go and visit the centurion’s home, but he says – there’s no need. I know who you are and I know that if you say the word, it will be done.

¹⁰When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. (Matthew 8:10)

And yet, when he went to his own people, and preached in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, they were so incensed at the idea that God might have sympathy for those beyond their own kind, they took him out and tried to murder him.

Can you see the pattern here?

In terms of rooted-ness, place and people are important. But when they become too important to us, we can find ourselves on dangerous ground . Our primary call, as Christians, is to put our roots down into God. Everything else follows on from that.

And if you were listening closely, that’s the common thread between    our three readings this morning.

The tree in Psalm 1, planted by a river, gives its fruit in season because its roots are nourished by good soil and fresh water.

Jesus promises in John 15 that if we remain in him, he will remain in us and we will bear much fruit.

And in Isaiah 37, Hezekiah is promised that at least some of his people will survive. “They will take root below and bear fruit above.” the prophet says.

And this is what I think we need to understand this morning. There’s a direct connection between our being rooted in God, and our bearing fruit for God.

We can race about trying to do things for God, but not actually be rooted in him ourselves – not knowing his peace and his presence in the deep, quiet places of our lives.

But when we operate from that place of knowing God and knowing who we are in God, it gives the whole of life a different slant.

And when you meet someone who’s living this out, they tend to make a good impression, even though they’re generally not trying to.

The writer Brian Draper puts it this way –

“Have you ever met someone who – instead of making you feel bad about yourself because they’re so ‘good’, so sorted, so together – seems to bring you to life and inspires you to greater heights and depths?

They lift you, almost without doing anything at all. They inspire you, just by the way they are. They help you, somehow, mysteriously, to feel connected, alive again, humane, accepted, loved… just through the way that they look at you, or through the way they greet you, or through the way they listen to you with undivided attention.

It doesn’t happen that often, it’s sad to say. But they are out there, such people, if you keep your eyes open for them.”

I’ve been lucky enough to meet a handful of folk like that in my lifetime. Folk who seem so at home in God they are 100% at home in their own skin, and that comes across in the generous and selfless way they treat people.

But I’m pretty sure of this – none of them were born that way. They became that way by putting down deep roots into Christ.

How do we do that? Well discipline is the key to discipleship, and if you’re going to grow you need to be working at it. And that means making prayer and spiritual reading a part of your everyday life. It means meeting with other folk who are making a similar journey and talking honestly with them about how it’s going as you try to live it out. It’s not rocket science, but it works.

I’ve seen people in this congregation becoming more fruitful for Christ in their everyday lives as they develop the spiritual practices that root us in God. More of us need to be making that journey.

You don’t need me to tell you that we live in very challenging times for the church, and the temptation is to rush around trying lots of new things to try and draw more folk in.

But maybe what we need isn’t something new, but something very very old. The people of God  rediscovering the spiritual disciplines that root us deeply in God and help us, in his good time, to be fruitful.

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.

Desert, but not Deserted

One of the tightropes that every minister has to walk is deciding how open to be about the things that are going on in your own life.

If you never talk about anything personal, your congregation will feel like they don’t really know you, or that you operate on some spiritual plane that’s far above the grid of everyday life.

But if you go to the other extreme and talk about everything that goes on in your life, you’re going to turn people off because you’ll come across as needy and narcissistic. They have a word for that kind of behaviour in today’s world – they call it ‘oversharing’.

So what am I to do today? My dad passed on two weeks ago after a long spell of illness. What am I going to do with that on my first Sunday back in the pulpit? Gloss over it as though it didn’t make a blind bit of difference to how I’m feeling today? That’s the classic way men deal with things isn’t it? Man up, give nothing away, keep a tight lid on your emotions. Which is probably why so many middle aged men end up shouting at the television during Question Time, or hurling abuse at referees on Saturday afternoons. The emotion has to get out somewhere….

No. I don’t want to gloss over my circumstances today.  It would feel totally incongruous to do so. But I don’t want to overshare either because you came here today to be touched by God’s story, not hear about mine.

So if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to try and find the middle way and offer some honest and realistic reflections of what it’s like to be in this kind of place, and then talk about how God looks after us when we find ourselves there.

A phrase from CS Lewis kept coming into my mind over the last few weeks. It’s from one of his lesser-known books called the Pilgrim’s Regress, which tells the story of a man called John and his long and arduous journey towards faith.

At one point near the end of the book, John’s exhausted from all the trials and temptations he’s faced on his travels, and Lewis says this of him. “He had never in his life felt more weary, and for a while, the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him”.

Now I’ve had spells in life where I’ve felt more weary than I do today, and I’ve found myself facing more distressing circumstances than this over the years. But that phrase about the purpose of his pilgrimage waking no desire in him? That’s where I find myself today.

I find myself echoing Ian Grove’s question from last week and adding a few more of my own. What’s it all about? Where’s it all going? What’s the point in anything? Just now, I have to confess, I’m finding it hard to summon much enthusiasm for anything.

Maybe ministers aren’t supposed to say that. Or maybe we are, and we do our people a disservice when we try to pretend those feelings away.

For a while, the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him.

Have some of you been in that place? Are some of you in it right now?

It could be because someone’s died. But it could be because hope has died, or plans have died, or a relationship has died, or an opportunity has died.  And for a while, that’s all that’s on your horizon. That loss. You feel reduced, somehow. Less than yourself. One dimensional.

It feels like someone’s walked away with part of your life, or part of your heart. Your old familiar life has suddenly become unfamiliar and strange.

And before anyone leaps in with a gospel bomb to tell us that we shouldn’t be down because Jesus loves us, remember that that same Jesus had to take himself off into the hills to be alone when he heard the news that his cousin John had been murdered. That same Jesus – the Lord of Life! - stood and wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus when death claimed him.

There’s a brand of Christianity that wants to pretend grief and loss away as though they were some kind of failure of faith. Folk from that school of thought need to spend a wee bit of time in the Psalms, I think. The Psalmists never pretend their anger, their confusion or their sorrow away – they own them and they write about them with brutal honesty. But in the silence that falls once they’ve finished venting, they always find God waiting there for them.

And he waits for us too. In the silence. In the desert places where our pilgrimage no longer wakes any desire within us.

“Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert.” Words that Nehemiah prays before the people of Israel; reminding them of their history, and us of ours. Our God does not abandon us in the desert times. As the Psalmist says -

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

And that’s all well and good, some might say. But  it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I’m on my own with this.  If God is with me, then how is God with me?

Well as he retells the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt and years in the wilderness, Nehemiah gives us three answers to that question.

Firstly he talks about the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire that travelled with the Israelites, symbolising God’s presence with them:

“By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. “ Nehemiah 9:19

What do those pillars represent? They’re all about presence, reassurance and guidance.

God travelling with them in that way gave the Israelites orientation in an otherwise confusing landscape; it helped them know which way to go. It reassured them that they were not alone.

And those are precious gifts in the landscape of loss.

How is God with you in your own desert places? In the presence of those who’ll travel those bleak roads with you, those whose company says at least as much as any words or advice they might give you.

Do you have people who will sit with you and listen to you without judgment? Who make the time to help you untangle the knotty ball of your thoughts and feelings? Folk who gently, kindly, help you take the next step forward, even if it’s just a small one?

If so, you don’t need to wonder where God is. He’s with you in them.

And he’s with you in Spirit.

Nehemiah says ‘you gave them the pillars of cloud and fire’ and ‘you gave your good Spirit to instruct them’.

God’s spirit is with us through it all; but as we all know, the Spirit speaks in a still, small voice; one that’s easily drowned out by all the noise in our lives.

And maybe that’s as it should be. It’s those who seek who find. It’s those who listen hard who hear.

Every teacher knows that if you keep raising your voice to get a classes’ attention, it eventually stops working. If you lower your voice and keep talking, the kids think they might be missing something and start listening in!

God’s Spirit is with us, and wants to speak to us. But when things are difficult for us, we try and numb our pain with distraction. We hit the internet, we gorge on box-sets, we eat too much, we drink too much, we never let ourselves slow down. You know how it goes.

And it’s hard for the Spirit to speak through all of that.

And that’s why, when we’re down, it’s important to make the time to consciously listen for what the Spirit’s saying, because the path to life often goes in the opposite direction from where our instincts want to take us.

You may be wired differently, but when I’m down, I just want to retreat. I want to avoid people. It took a lot of effort to go to church the Sunday after dad died, but I felt the Spirit nudge me in that direction and afterwards, I was glad I went. I met folk I hadn’t seen in 30 years. People who had kind words about my father.

The minister who took the funeral offered to meet up for coffee, and not really knowing him, my first instinct was to retreat and find some reason to say ‘no’. But again, I felt the Spirit nudge me in the opposite direction, and we ended up having a very good and life-giving conversation as colleagues.

When I got back home late last week, I was swithering about going to see the NEOS photography and painting exhibition in the White Horse because I knew I’d meet folk who know me, and I didn’t know if I had the heart to make conversation with them.  To cap it all, it started lashing with rain, and that was my mind made up.

Until God gave me another wee spiritual nudge and I finally gave in and went down to Balmedie and spent a really enjoyable half hour talking with a couple of local photographers and admiring their work. It brought me out of myself. It got me out of that avoidance mindset.

They were just subtle nudges and hints. Easily ignored. But the more I go on in life, the more sure I am that the Spirit speaks to us. It’s just that most of the time we’re too distracted to pay much attention.

When you’re low, remember that God’s with you in the ones who journey with you, and he’s with you in Spirit, if you have ears to hear.

And lastly, he’s with you in the gifts that sustain you.

“You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst.” said Nehemiah. Practical gifts.

For us, over the last couple of weeks, it wasn’t manna, but a shepherd’s pie someone gives in to the manse so we didn’t have to cook. Offers of lifts or childminding. People travelling across to Ireland for the funeral. Cards and messages from dozens of different people. Hugs. Supportive words. Colleagues ready and willing to offer help.

Where is God in my time of need? He’s in those gifts and in the thoughtfulness of those who gave them.

And he’s in the gift of the little things we do to look after ourselves, and be kind to ourselves, when life is tough. Taking a walk; seeing a friend; giving ourselves permission to do something we love to do and not feeling guilty about it.

It’s all part of the healing God brings.

For a while, the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him.

For a while. But not forever.

Feelings are transient, however powerful they might be. What feels all-consuming just now, may, in a month’s time or a year’s time, seem much more manageable.

But we’re not a month or a year down the line yet. We’re here, as we are. And God knows, and God understands.

We are not alone.

God is with us: in the people who journey with us; in his Spirit, and in the gifts that sustain us through the difficult times.

And the God we worship is the one who in his own good time, promises to bring life again, even in the desert places.

¹    The desert and the parched land will be glad;

    the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

    Like the crocus, ²it will burst into bloom;

    it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

³    Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

⁴    say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

    your God will come,

    he will come to save you.”

Constellations and Theologies

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding myself wondering where on earth the summer’s gone! But I think that every year, around this time!

It’s always the same. You look forwards to things slowing down a little when the kids are off school, and you don’t have to be a taxi driver six days a week, and then before you know it it’s time to gear up again, get the pencil cases filled and get the labels sewn onto school clothes, go shopping for school shoes….

The holidays are nearly over, and like it or not, autumn’s on the way.

But it isn’t all bad news because autumn has its own charms too – the changing colours of the season, the productivity of harvestime, and one of my own favourites – that narrow window of time when the stars are amazing at night, but it’s still mild enough to stand outside and enjoy them. 

I’m no great stargazer, but I do know my way around some of the night sky, and recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between theologies and constellations.

You see, constellations are pretty arbitrary. Our ancestors looked at the night sky and picked out a bear and a warrior and a dragon. But they might equally well have seen a lizard and a milkmaid and a sickle. The same clusters of stars might inspire different images in different minds, or you could join the dots in entirely different ways that would make every bit as much sense as the patterns we’re used to.

It’s worth remembering that if we relocated to a different solar system, the constellations would be totally different. It would be the same night sky, but we’d scarcely recognise it.

Constellations can even be a little misleading in the way they simplify the night sky. When you look at the plough or Orion you get the impression that all the stars are in the same vertical plane, but in reality they could be light years away from one another.

The point I’m trying to make is that constellations are useful, but only up to a point. They’re a helpful way of mapping the night sky and helping us get our bearings, but the best they can ever be is a snapshot of a much bigger, grander reality.

Constellations can help us, but only up to a point.

And I would argue that the same is true of theologies. No matter how precious they are to us, and no matter how much we have vested in them, all theologies, all attempts to explain God and God’s working in the world, will always fall short in some way, because they can never fully describe the reality they’re trying to depict.

We can’t put God in a box. We can’t wrap him up in words. He is: and a tongue-tied, awestruck universe can only try to find the right words to describe him.

Our theologies aren’t the reality. God is the reality; theologies are humanity’s best efforts to try and describe what we know of God.

And the thing is, there are many of them, even within our own Spiritual tradition of Christianity.

Since Luther started the Reformation 500 years ago by nailing his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, the Protestant wing of the church has proliferated something like 20,000 different denominations – high church, low church, sprinklers, dunkers, strict and particular, free and easy, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Charismatic, Pentecostal, Brethren, Quaker, Mennonite, Independent, Adventist, and of course, our own particularly variegated strand, the Presbyterian.

That’s a lot of different theologies going about.

Not to mention all the different shades of Roman Catholic and Orthodox who were already on the go before Luther.

We’re all trying to describe the indescribable, struggling to make sense of a reality that none of us can fully get our heads around. And it’s an enduring shame of the church that in our history we’ve chosen to burn people at the stake over theological differences. And the irony is we did it in Christ’s name, when it’s something I doubt Christ himself would ever have done.

I’m thinking about this a lot just now because I come across a whole lot of different theologies in my reading, and the more I read the more it strikes me that some are more helpful than others.

Good theologies take the whole of Scripture into account, and always keep in mind  what I was saying last week. That Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God ‘s nature and character. Our benchmark. Our touchstone.  

Unhelpful theologies dilute that connection between God and

Jesus, sometimes almost setting them against one another, and they tend to magnify certain ideas or doctrines at the expense of others.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Just a few weeks ago I read this sentence in an article a friend had posted a link to on Facebook –

“Since only deeds done out of love for God are genuinely good, we must love God before we can do any good. But we do not naturally love God. We are born loving self and that self-love expresses itself in any number of godless lusts. What we naturally are is incapable of good.”

Now there’s a lot in there we could discuss, but let’s focus in on those last few words. What we naturally are is incapable of good.

How did that author come to such a pessimistic view of human nature?

Well it strikes me that that kind of theology grows out of an overemphasis on the  passages in Scripture which speak pessimistically about human nature. 

In Romans, the apostle Paul, quoting the Psalms,  says “There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one.”

At one point, Isaiah, speaking about the people of Israel, says “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags”.

The prophet Habbakuk tells us that “God is too pure to look upon evil.”

And we do evil, of course. We’re sinners. And the logic goes that because we’re sinners God can only bear to look at us if we clothe ourselves in Christ through faith. But even then, in Luther’s own words, we are little more than snow-covered dung.

Do you see where this very selective, myopic theology takes us? To a God trapped in the prison of his own holiness, and despising the creation that he’s made so much he can scarcely even bring himself to look at it.

Going back to last week’s sermon does that sound like Jesus to you? Does it sounds like John 3:16 to you which tells us that  “ God so LOVED the world, he sent his one and only son.”

Yes, Habbakuk says “God is too pure to look upon evil”. But in the very next breath, he goes on to ask God why he does exactly that!

Why he bears with a fallen world and fallen people!

If God is literally too pure to look on evil, why didn’t Jesus go around with a blindfold on all the time? He was God incarnate. His holiness didn’t keep him away from sinners in disgust, it took him towards them in the hope of seeing them restored and redeemed.

If God has to turn away from us in anger because we’re sinful, why does Scripture show God turning towards sinful men and women time and time again from Genesis through to Revelation?

And if “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”  then why does Jesus spend so much time in the Sermon on the Mount exhorting us to righteous acts?

Why does Paul say in Romans that it’s those who ‘persist in doing good’ who will be given eternal life?

Why does James say we should demonstrate our faith in what we do?

I come back to what I said last week, but expand it a little.

If we have an image of God, or a theology of God, which does not look or sound like Jesus we are fully justified in questioning it.

And I have to tell you, I am very much in a questioning mode at this stage in my journey of faith.

I don’t care who said it or theologised about it! If it doesn’t square with the wide sweep of scripture, and what I’ve come to know of Christ for myself, I feel duty bound to question it.

The scriptures do say that “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags” but I think that’s hyperbole, not doctrine.

If all our righteous acts are like filthy rags, why is Jesus moved by the righteous act of four men bringing their friend along to him for healing?

We know this story well, don’t we, and I know I’ve preached on it several times before at Belhelvie.

And the same things always strike me when I read this passage - the men’s persistence – the sheer effort they went to to bring their friend to Jesus.

Jesus’ reponse – forgiving sins first, which was a claim to divinity, and a recognition that inner healing and friendship with God is even more important than physical healing.

But then this glorious command of ‘get up and walk’ – an indescribable blessing to the man who was ill, but also a slap in face for the strict and particular Pharisees. Men who just couldn’t get their heads around the fact that God  could work in ways their theology wouldn’t allow.

But in the light of what I’ve been saying this morning, let’s linger on five very significant words as we close. “When Jesus saw THEIR faith.”

“When Jesus saw THEIR faith.” he said to the man ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.” It wasn’t just  the man’s faith he was responding to; it was their faith.

Jesus sees these men, out of love for their friend, sweating and struggling their way up onto the roof, risking the wrath of the houseowner by ripping the ceiling open, and then lowering him down into the chaos in search of healing.

He saw the friendship, the faith and the sheer effort involved and he despised it, because naturally we are incapable of any good.

No – he responded to it and affirmed it – and his compassion went out towards them in forgiveness and healing.

This is our God. He knows the things we do to help carry others through life; he sees the burdens we bear out of love and appreciates them.  And he sees the times when we ourselves need to be carried. He knows. And his compassion goes out to us.

I want to end with another short poem by Seamus Heaney which he wrote after he’d had a stroke and this Biblical story came to life for him in a very real and personal way. And this goes out to all of you who in different ways are carrying others, or being carried today. It’s called ‘Miracle’.

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks

But the ones who have known him all along

And carry him in —

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked

In their backs, the stretcher handles

Slippery with sweat. And no let-up

Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable

And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.

Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,

Their slight light-headedness and incredulity

To pass, those ones who had known him all along

Amen.

God Is Just Like Jesus

There’s a story told about a woman who was given the gift of being able to speak the language of the bees.

And being of a religious persuasion herself, she was very interested to find out what the bees thought about God. So she went up to one who looked the scholarly type, and she said – ‘Tell me this, what is God like? Is he like you bees in any way?”

And the scholar drew himself up to his full height and said ‘Certainly not! We bees have only one sting, but the Almighty, well he has two!”.

A wee story from the eastern tradition that highlights the danger of making God in our own image.

And like it or not, that’s something we are all prone to.

God is as God is. But we can’t help but perceive God through the tinted lenses of our culture and our upbringing. The God of our brothers and sisters in America seems to be in favour of freedom and capitalism. Drive north into Canada and he’s all about tolerance and the common good.

If you ask about God in China, you’ll find he’s big on harmony and honour, but in Africa he majors in joy and supernatural power. In Latin America it’s all about family. In Protestant Europe it’s all about right thinking and right action.

And even if someone says – oh, we can get past all that cultural stuff, we just have to go back to the Bible, it’s not quite as easy as that because the Bible’s a big enough book that we’ll always find the God we want to find in its pages.

A God who brings peace, or a God who sanctions war. A God who shows compassion, or a God who withholds mercy. A God  who’s OUR GOD and no-one else’ or a God who embraces everyone.

Appealing to the Bible doesn’t help in some ways, because the truth is, we all read the Bible with our lenses on. Lenses that highlight some things and make other things almost impossible to see.  And lest we forget it - the people who wrote down the Bible in the first place, were wearing their cultural lenses even as they put pen to parchment. God in his wisdom, did not choose to edit out the human element when he gave us the scriptures.

So what are we to do? With our inherent bias and preconceptions, how can we possibly know what God is like?

Well the Christian answer to that is to say ‘we can’t know - unless God reveals himself to us. And we believe that he has done just that in the man called Jesus, the Christ’.

And today I want to argue that what we have in Jesus is the clearest revelation of what God is truly like.  Whatever our notions of God, however we’ve pieced them together from scattered texts or cultural upbringing or theologies we’ve held unquestioningly from childhood, if they represent a God who does not look like Christ, then we are fully justified in questioning them. Why? (IMAGE)

Because Scripture itself teaches us that Jesus is ‘Immanuel” – which means ‘God with us” – Mt 1:23

That ‘he is the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15)

That he is the ‘exact representation of God’s being” (Hebrews:1: 3)

That God was pleased to have ‘all his fullness’ dwell in him (Col 1:19)

and as Jesus himself said “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. I and the Father are one’ (John 14:9, 10:30)”

Scripture could not be clearer that the ultimate revelation of God is not a book or a doctrine, or a set of propositions we need to agree to. It’s a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. God is like Jesus.

With that kind of evidence, you’d wonder how we could doubt it. And yet I think many of us do.

T.F. Torrance (IMAGE) was one of the leading Scottish theologians of his generation, and he’s still held in great esteem today across the world.  During the second world war, Torrance served as an army chaplain, and in October 1944 he helped carry a young private off the battlefield under sustained gunfire. As he sat with the young man, who was clearly dying, he realised he was trying to say something and as he leaned in he heard the soldier whisper – ‘Padre. Is God really like Jesus?’. Torrance assured him that he is; but the question – and the very fact that that young man should have to ask it – profoundly affected him and the direction of his teaching and preaching from then on.

Writing about that incident shortly afterwards, Torrance said:

“What have we been doing in our preaching and teaching in the church to damage in the faith of our people the relation between their faith in Jesus Christ and in God?”

The good news I want to proclaim to you today, is that in his character, his motivation and his disposition, we can be sure that God is exactly like Jesus.

When we see Jesus blessing newlyweds with more wine than they can possibly imagine, breaking taboos by talking to a Samaritan woman at a well, healing people who were sick in body and mind; taking on those who in their arrogance thought they had God cut and dried; kneeling with a towel round his waist, washing his disciple’s feet; stretched out on a cross, entering the depths of our suffering to free humanity from the chains of death and sin. Rising in glory on Easter Sunday, and bringing our fallen humanity back with him out of sheer unwarranted love.

God is exactly like that. Like Jesus.

And our calling isn’t merely to fill a pew, hand in our envelopes, or take an active part in church life, good though those things are. Maybe our churches are in the state they’re in because we’ve wrongly believed that’s all God asks of us. No – our calling is to walk the way of Jesus. To try to live with the character, the motivation and the disposition of Jesus in all the places where he has set us. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

And today we’ve heard the words of his sending as they’re recorded in Luke’s gospel: (IMAGE)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind;

to set free the oppressed

and announce that the time has come

when the Lord will save his people”.

Those words were for Jesus, at that specific moment in his ministry, but I believe they’re also for us as we seek to follow him.

Because we’re called not merely to believe, but to follow, which is far more costly.

A few months back at the last Presbytery meeting before the summer, I shared a wee insight I’d had a while back, and I want to share it with you too.

(Image)

What you’re looking at here are the words of Jesus as we find them in John’s gospel.  (Wordle – bigger the word, more often it occurs in the text)

I could study that image all day – it’s fascinating. Not only for what’s there, but what’s not there. Here it is – this is the Son of God – in John’s gospel - telling us what really matters.

It’s a sermon for another day, but we’re used to thinking that the gospel message boils down to teaching about sin and heaven and hell. Can you see sin? Can you see heaven? You won’t see hell, because he doesn’t talk about it once, in John’s gospel. He doesn’t mention it once. I wonder what you make of that.

But I digress!

Relational – Father, Son, God.

Key nouns important for Jesus – world, truth, life

Biggest number - Verbs – Come, believe, know, tell, sent, going

As expect, differences between the 4 gospels, but broad brushstrokes are largely the same.

And I think there’s a message for us here.

That genuine faith is not static. It’s a going out, a way of relating to God and to the world that helps others see the truth of what we believe.

It’s in Jesus’ going, his relating, his living, that big ideas like Truth, Life and Love come to make sense to those who were with him. And we know the truth of that from human experience!  When I’m hungry and need a meal, or lonely and need a friend, or bereft and need a shoulder to cry on, I don’t need a definition of love, however accurate it might be. I need someone there who’s putting their love in action. That’s what speaks to people.

It’s the verbs of our faith that help make sense of the nouns.

It’s in our going, our living, our loving, our helping, our praying, that others will come to believe, and to follow.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.”

So who are the poor in your world? They may not be cash poor, but are they poor in friendship, short of help, lacking hope?

Who are the captives in your world? And what are they captive to? Habits? Bitterness? Regrets?

Who are the blind in your world? Who needs to see things in a new way;

and who are the oppressed – weighed down by all kinds of worries and burdens that they’re trying to cope with in their own strength.

And how can you help make this time the Kairos, the opportune time, when the reality and the goodness of God finds its way into their lives through you?

This is our calling. Because we are followers of the way; not fillers of pews.

The good news for today is that God is exactly like Jesus.

The challenge for today is that we must be like him too.

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.

The Seven Deadly Sins - Gluttony

Back in January when we started this series on the seven deadly sins, I think both you and I wondered if we’d manage to last two months on this subject without losing the will to live! But your feedback’s been very positive and it’s  almost with a sense of sadness that we arrive at the last of the seven sins, this morning; the sin of gluttony.

And as I began thinking about gluttony, it occurred to me that almost all of the sins we’ve been looking at are about us trying to fill a fundamental emptiness inside us.

We’re hungry for love, for meaning, for affirmation, for assurance, and at the most fundamental level, we’re meant to find those things in our relationship with God. But if we sideline God, we still feel the hunger; and without even thinking about it, we’ll end up looking around for something to fill our emptiness.

We’ll kid ourselves that accumulating lots of things will give us a full life. That’s greed. We’ll convince ourselves that if we only had what someone else has, we’d be satisfied. That’s envy.

We’ll try to mask our spiritual hunger by distracting ourselves or just checking out of life- that’s sloth. We might lash out in anger at the perceived injustice of life, or seek a quick sexual fix through lust.

Or, worst of all, we might find ourselves saying ‘You know what? I’m not hungry at all. I have all I need. I am all I need’. That’s pride.

It’s the desire to fill the emptiness within us in wrong ways that’s the root of all sin, and so the Desert Fathers’ consistent advice on this is ‘watch your thoughts’ – every sin starts in the mind. So when you sense some negative movement within yourself it helps to ask - What am I thinking just now? Where is that thought coming from? Where is it taking me? Is it helpful? Is it true? Noticing your thoughts is the first step towards understanding them and dealing with them, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

And in some ways, gluttony is the easiest sin to do that with. Watching your conscious and subconscious relationship with food is very revealing. It tells you a lot, not just about your stomach, but about the condition of your heart.

Food, like sex, is a good gift of God. Something to be enjoyed, and savoured and celebrated; but in the right way.

The writer and preacher Meredith Dancause argues that food is almost a fully-fledged character in the Bible. It’s there from that shiny red apple in Genesis all the way to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation, and everywhere else inbetween. 

God uses food to bring people together as families and friends gather round a table, or as communities come together for ritual meals like Passover, or the Lord’s Supper. As we eat together we literally become companions because that word comes from the Latin meaning to eat bread with someone. As we eat together, our bodies are nourished, but also our souls as we give each other the gift of our time and attention and remember to be thankful for all that we’ve been given. Body and soul go together, as we’ve seen time and time again throughout this series.

So food is a wonderful gift to us; But as we said last week, the devil’s power lies in taking something that’s good and twisting it for his own ends.

And I hate to say it, but he’s done a hell of a good job when it comes to food.

We live in a world where a billion people are dying from starvation while another billion are dying from obesity related illnesses. You really couldn’t make it up if you tried.

In the developed world, we have more choice and access to food than ever before, but we’re told simultaneously that we have to be slim and attractive if we’re going to be worth anything. Watch the beer commercials and the junk food ads and, rather ironically, you’ll struggle to find anyone who looks even remotely overweight.

So it’s no wonder, with all the mixed messages society’s giving us, and our human hunger to be loved and valued, that food becomes the battleground where many of these wars are played out.

Some folk eat to numb their pain. Fred Buechner says that ‘a glutton is one who raids the fridge for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.’

But sadly, the opposite is also true. Through anorexia, many young women these days are starving themselves for the same reason.

And do you see what it all comes back to? A poor self image. A false belief that eating, or not eating, is going to make things right.

But as a famished Jesus said to the devil when he tempted him to break his fast and turn stones into bread -“Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Bread is good, and we need it. But bread is not enough to mend us. Only God can do that.

Jesus’ opening gambit to the disciples in this morning’s reading is ‘Do not worry. Do not worry about food.’

And I’d argue that behind the sin of gluttony, almost always, is anxiety and worry that’s being worked out through our attitudes to food. And because of that, gluttony’s a much more complex and nuanced thing than the caricature of the grossly overweight person who’s always stuffing themselves with food.

Way back in the 13^th century, the great theologian Thomas Aquinas teased this out for us and argued that gluttony can take several different forms: it can mean eating too daintily, too sumptuously, too hastily, too greedily, or too much.

What he’s telling us is that how you eat reveals quite a lot of what’s going on in your heart and mind.

So let’s start with eating too daintily. Which is not about sticking your little finger out when you lift your china cup from its saucer. What Aquinas means by that is eating with a degree of fussy control. When things have to be just so, or we’re not pleased.

CS Lewis writes about that kind of person in the Screwtape Letters – he describes an old woman who’s become a slave not to the gluttony of excess, but the gluttony of delicacy. “She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile "Oh, please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast."

But of course, she’s so exacting, no-one can ever prepare tea and toast just the way she likes it, and when they can’t, servants are fired and friendships start to cool.

This kind of gluttony is all about control. Life is full of things that we can’t do much about, and some folk cope with the anxiety that brings by being overcontrolling in other areas, such as what they eat and drink. And they’re often difficult people to be around because they tend to be exacting and impatient.

The truth that speaks into that from this morning’s reading is that we need to give up our illusions of control. We can’t micromanage life, and if we try to we’ll drive ourselves and others to distraction. “Don’t worry” says Jesus. These things aren’t as important as you feel they are. You’re never going to be able to control everything. You can’t add an hour to your life or an inch to your height; so what you need to learn to do is trust. Trust that God is in control, and that his plans for you are good. The sooner you reconcile yourself to that truth, the better.

So the first aspect of gluttony is eating too daintily. And the second is eating too sumptuously

When Ross and Mairi were little we taught them a few bits of sign language before they could talk very much, and one of the signs was ‘more’. And I remember us going into a fabulous cheese shop at the bottom of our road in Glasgow,  and there were always samples to try. Popped a wee cube into his mouth…..  MORE MORE!

It’s also a joke in our house that Mairi’s first full sentence was these three words – ‘need more cake’!

Some food is routine and everyday, some – for reasons of health and possibly budget - is best kept for special occasions!

But if you’re finding yourself reaching for the cake or the chocolate or the wine or the whiskey too often, you need to pause and ask yourself what’s going on in your life.

When treats become a need, that should give us pause for thought. When treats become needs, we’re trying to feed a hunger that’s in our souls, not our bodies.

If we feel under appreciated, or taken advantage of, or unloved, or anxious, we feel like we need some kind of compensation; some kind of treat to give us a boost. So we reward ourselves, because no-one else is going to do it for us.

And so we get caught in a vicious cycle of low self-esteem and patterns of eating and drinking that end up lowering our self esteem even further.

But all the while, there’s another quiet voice trying to tell us about our worth – the voice of God. You are my beloved child, he says. Look at the birds. Says Jesus. They don’t sow or gather, and yet God feeds them. And you are worth so much more than birds.

You’re already valuable in God’s sight. If you’re having to prop up your ego with food, you need to hear that truth and take it to heart.

Gluttony is can be eating too daintily, too sumptuously. And too hastily. Universal symbol for that is the McDonald's arches!

Is it just coincidence that the countries with the highest rates of obesity tend to be those with the greatest access to fast foods?

But apart from the nutritional value of the food, what does it say about our lives that we don’t have time to prepare meals and sit down together and eat our food around a table?

If life’s so busy that that has to go, maybe that’s a sign that life is too busy. That priorities have to be re-negotiated. It’s just too easy these days to be living a full but unfulfilled life. 

Human eating is more than mere biochemistry. It should be profoundly social. It’s part of the glue that keeps families together and talking.

When we’re in perpetual motion, we’re in danger of missing out on the best parts of life. As Jesus says, none of us can live any longer by worrying about it. So why not slow down and enjoy the journey a little more instead. I know that’s hard to practice in daily life, but when you can, try and take time over your meals. Prepare real food; switch off the telly; sit round a table; make it an occasion. Think French cuisine rather than the Golden Arches!

We can eat too daintly, too sumptuously, too hastily and too greedily.

You’ll know the story about the two kids who were offered the last two slices of cake, and one was much bigger than the other.

Benny got in first and took the big slice and Mikey was outraged. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing? If I’d gone first I’d have been polite and taken the small slice.”

“I know” said Benny – I was just saving you the trouble!

Do you see the dynamics there? I’ll get in there first and make sure I’ve got more than enough; then there’s no danger of me missing out. I want to make sure I get my share. Maybe even more than my share.

Greed is really about security; it’s about me making sure that I’m not going to experience any discomfort or inconvenience. It’s the mindset that says as long as I’m ok, then everything’s fine.

But listen to what Jesus says to that – he says don’t set your heart on what you eat and drink and what you choose to wear. The anxious pagan world runs after those things, but you don’t have to. Your security is in God. He knows you need food and clothing, but don’t make them your first priority. Put his Kingdom first, and you’ll get everything you need; though maybe not everything you want. Don’t be greedy.

And then lastly, don’t eat too much.

When we start eating too much it’s a sure sign that we ourselves are being consumed by something. Could be regret, loneliness, sadness, boredom. Somewhere within us there’s an aching spiritual hunger that food just can’t touch, no matter how much we eat.

We need to learn to name that hunger and own it. And we need to bring it to God, because we won’t find the answers we need in the fridge or the cupboard.

Seek first the Kingdom, Jesus says – because the Kingdom is the place of joyful union and submission to God and it’s where you’ll begin to taste the wholeness, restoration and integrity you long for. That’s his promise to us.

So what did the desert Fathers have to say about gluttony? Well, along with lust, they considered it to be at the less serious end of the spectrum, and their advice about it was really practical.

Notice your thoughts. What’s going on in your mind as you reach for that food or that drink? Are you really physically hungry, or is it some other kind of hunger that you’re trying to feed?

Don’t eat too much or too little, they said. And make sure you eat at designated times – not before or after meals.

Enjoy seasons of feasting and celebration when they’re in order – giving thanks for God’s abundance. But balance that with seasons of fasting. Allow yourself to taste a little emptiness now and again to remind yourself of your dependence on God.

Warren Weirsbe puts it this way “Whenever people come to the table they demonstrate with the unmistakeable evidence of their stomachs that they are not self-subsisting Gods. They are mortal and finite creatures dependent on God’s many good gifts. Sunlight, photosynthesis, decomposition, soil fertility, water, bees and butterflies, chicken, sheep, cows, gardeners, farmers, cooks, strangers and friends. Eating reminds us that we participate in a grace saturated world.”

Indeed we do. And in this grace saturated world,

You don’t have to be in control. God is in control.

You don’t have to prove your value or worth – you’re already a person of worth because God made you.

You don’t have to rush through life. There is time to stop and savour and enjoy.

You will have enough. God knows what you need. The kingdom is not a place of scarcity.

And your emptiness can be filled.

Not by food, or sex. Not by vengeful plans or envious thoughts. Not by amassing possessions, or by mindless distractions. And not even by your own faltering ego.

Your emptiness was meant to be filled by the one who said  “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

So as we end this series this morning, may you taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who put their trust in him.