Psalm 22:1-31
There is a short story in the Bible, a story of thirty-one verses. This story begins with the words My God, my God why have you forsaken me?, goes on to say I am thirsty and ends with it is finished. Any ideas what that story might be? Of course we instantly recognise what that story is; it is the twenty second psalm. (Did you think I was going to talk about Jesus on the cross?)
Psalm 22 is a familiar story, but not just because it is the story of six hours one dark Friday. The Son of God is not alone among the daughters and sons of men in going through a time of seeming isolation from his God, his mates, and his senses. Abandonment, confusion, embarrassment and doubts assault each of us at times. A recent example of a seemingly God-forsaken people came to my mind this week because last Wednesday marked the International Day of Reflection on the genocide in Rwanda. I’m sure you are all aware that fifteen years civil war broke out and visited atrocities upon that African land. Wednesday was also World Health Day, and again a reminder to pray for all who are sick and sad, many of them alone, many without the hope that the messages of Easter bring.
Let’s look at the psalm...
Do you see the “it is finished” at the end there? The Lord has done it: it has been accomplished long ago and we will keep telling it.
This is a very private psalm, in scholarship terms it is referred to as a personal lament, more plainly it is one person’s whinge against the world. But we have all been there, even Jesus: this is a sulk with good reason.
The biggest question this psalm asks is in verse eight, which the Good News Bible translates as if the Lord likes you, why doesn’t He help you? (Aren’t you the Messiah? Come down off the cross then!) A good question: one I have asked on my own behalf many times. Just because God was silent when Jesus was on the cross doesn’t mean I have to like it when I am feeling tired and emotional. Indeed I remember asking this question in the company of my minister at a time when I was feeling like this, and he told me that it was a season of the Spirit which is sometimes called “the dark night of the soul”. How many of you have heard that term before? It comes from St John of the Cross and his book The Ascent of Mount Carmel. But in actual fact, this dark night is not about being abandoned in blackness; as we have seen in the second part of this psalm God is, and always was, there. The darkness is not about spiritualised depression; rather it is the steeping beyond the known and through the darkness of what is unknown to come to a new knowing. Teachers know about that, this is the journey we guide our students along all the time; but it’s a lot scarier when God is doing it to grown-ups. This process has more to do with Proverbs 3:5-6 and relying solely on God, and Psalm 23:4 and trusting God in the valleys of the shadows, than with our sins separating us from God. In the Contemporary English Version verse 21 says don’t let lions eat me. There’s no point saying that unless you think someone stronger than you is with you where the wild things are.
It is easy to feel confused and overwhelmed, I am sure that Jesus did. But what we go through in these times of darkness is like driving at night along an unknown road, (or even a known road in a rainstorm), rather than choosing to sit the darkness out. We can act in faith, and with conviction sourced from the deep roots of God’s record in our history. Darkness is mysterious, but that is the reality of our mysterious God. Faith is hope without sight: blessed are those who have believed without seeing, as Jesus told Thomas.
We come to understand, when this psalm turns in verse 22 from a lament to a song of deliverance, that the night is darkness in which a person may appear lost, but which actually leads them to the place in which they will find themselves. This darkness is a way of progress, the tunnel at the end of the light that leads to even greater light. It is sad that so often we try to find a refuge from the darkness, and way of avoiding it, rather than learning lessons of faith by walking with God through the valleys of the shadows.
In this week following Easter, and the first week of the season between the rising of the Son and the descending of the Spirit we remember that our nights of faith are not a phase or a season, they are a metaphor for Christian life. Now we see dimly, then we shall see clearly. We live all our lives in the time between times; but we also know that these dark patches come in bouts, and the more we are growing and wanting to learn the more often the bouts will come. It is scary, but like the wildest of rollercoasters it can also be fun when we remember that in God’s hands we may be spinning and ducking, but we are not crashing and burning. When we are out of control, God is fully in control: and that is a good thing. That is the confidence that lead Jesus to stand up in Gethsemane and greet Judas rather than scramble away to hide at Mary and Martha’s place until the soldiers had gone.
The light of God is the only true light. Sometimes God uses the darkness we have taken ourselves into rather than leading us into a dark place Himself. We learn that where He is there is light; false lights will lead us astray. I have heard it said it is better to be in God’s silence, than in the world’s violence; even if the world at least has neon and noise.
Life with God is thrilling: Easter and Pentecost show that, and as Christians we know it ourselves. The God of the gentle whisper that Elijah heard is also the God of the cloud of fire and smoke that Moses saw; so why can’t He also be the God of absence that Jesus experienced on the cross? Easter Sunday reminds us that God always comes through when all hope seems lost and only He can do it. That’s the testimony of my life: regardless of the tuneful talents of fat ladies I have learned that nothing is over until God proclaims it finished. It is finished when God has accomplished all, and that goes as much for His plans for our life and our church as for His plans for universal salvation through Jesus Christ.
What is achieved in darkness will be proclaimed in the light, forever.
Amen.
Cafe Agape
9th April 2010
Saturday 5 June 2010
Why Grace Sucks
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant has always been one of my favourites, but since I started work at Port Lincoln High School it has become a very tricky one for me. The story is found in Matthew 18:23-35 and I’m sure you know it. In quick summary a king forgives a servant who owes him sixteen trillion dollars and then that same servant goes out and throttles his mate who owes him twenty-three cents. The king finds out, does his block, and puts the first servant back in gaol for being such a Grinch. In the same way we need to forgive the trifles of those who sin against us because of our awesome gratitude for the mountains of personal garbage which God put on Christ Crucified. As Jesus explains: this is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. This has not been a problem for me because I love God too much to say, and I know He loves me logarithmically more than I love Him. I have never been hideously naughty, but God has forgiven me for stuff I am ashamed to even think about, and beyond forgiving God is helping me to forget it just as He has. I have the brilliantest God: I love Him so much.
So imagine you are seventeen and the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life is that one time when you were twelve and you nicked $50 from your mum’s bag before going down the Northern, flogging a bottle of black label from the drive-thru, spending the $50 on smokes and then hiding around your boyfriend’s place for three days of smoking, drinking and pashing yourselves stupid while your mum went out of her mind worried at your disappearance. That’s pretty bad, and as you sit and chat with the CPS Workers you know that you owe mum and the man at the Northern an apology. And probably $50. Each. Perhaps, if the CPSWs are brave enough to suggest it, you might even acknowledge your need for God’s forgiveness because you have broken two of the Ten Commandments: you disrespected your mother and you stole. Actually it’s three commandments if it happened on a Sunday because that’s the Christian Sabbath.
Now imagine you are seventeen and the worst thing that’s ever been done to you is that one time when your dad raped you. What if it happened eleven years ago, when you were six?
I can just imagine the conversation from there. Answer this one for me King Jesus: who owes who ten thousand years’ wages now, and who owes who a hundred days’ wages? Let me get this straight: because I can’t forgive my dad for doing unspeakable things to me when I was little, God cannot forgive me and will send me to be tortured in Hell for the sake of $50 and a few stolen kisses. But if my dad asks you to forgive him for what he did to me, and then he forgives me for making my mum upset, he will go to Heaven? Is that what you are telling me? Thank you for forgiving my sins, but if you’re gonna make my forgiving my dad’s sins the condition for your forgiving mine, then you can stick your grace.
Some of the children I work with believe in the God of grace, and they don’t want to know Him. They ask “how can I worship a God that will forgive my dad as much as me? I can see that I am a bad daughter and a shoplifter, but my dad is an incestuous child molester and I was the child.” Hmm, they’ve kinda got a point there.
What if, as you see it, what you have done against God is outweighed by what others have done against you? What if you believe in a God who knows and sees all, but did nothing to stop those things being done against you? “Let me get this straight” you ask, “I have to forgive all that sin that God did nothing to protect me from. I have to forgive the horrible people who did those things to me, and then I have to ask that stand-by-and do-nothing-type God to forgive me for childishness and misbehaviour that is so insignificant compared to what I went through? And if I do that only then will God be pleased with me?”
No wonder the gospel is such a hard-sell these days; Amazing Grace can really suck as a message at times.
So how are we feeling so far? Ha ha, and you thought high school chaplaincy was about handing out free toast and helping Scripture Union to plan youth-friendly concerts.
The gospel we proclaim is a gospel of the grace found in forgiving others. It can be surprising to us how many kids know they need grace, but it really shouldn’t be. Undeserved mercy and favour is what kids live on. Unconditional love is what good parents do, and even poorly parented kids know that because love without limits is what they see they are missing. The need for people to be forgiven and to have the opportunity to make a fresh start is a gimmie for many: but the necessity to offer forgiveness and compassion to “those who sin against us” in life-changing ways lives in the category of foolishness to the Greeks. The gospel we proclaim is defined by this: forgiveness means giving up the right for revenge. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Forgiveness does not mean that what was done was acceptable in any way, or that perpetrators should not face consequences. Forgiveness does not mean that perpetrators must be welcomed back into my life. There is great strength and divine justice in being able to say to someone “I forgive you, now get out of my life.” Of course this is not the answer for every conflict, but in some cases that sort of “grace of steel” is the cutters that can release someone once and for all from an abusive past so that they can fall into an abundantly loving and caring future found only in Jesus Christ.
The gift of the grace of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the character or activities of the person you forgive. You need to offer grace so that you can move on; not only so you can receive the grace of Jesus (forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us) but also so that you can be free of the anger and bitterness which is holding you back from fully embracing the future and enjoying an extravagantly abundant life. Your anger only punishes you: let it go and let God sort them out for you.
This is a cause that moves Heaven to tears. Wicked outcomes are likely when children are seen as a lower priority in society or a second-best option. This is why youth work is of such importance. But wickedness is also the likely outcome when grace is overlooked in favour of revenge, or the pre-emptive strike, no matter how old the victims of abuse.
To be totally forgiven is to be released from sin: your sin and their sin because if you can’t give forgiveness you can’t receive it. It’s not that God refuses to forgive you unless you first forgive others; all sin was forgiven at Calvary and there is no unforgivable sin except the sin of unbelief. The point of Jesus’ story was that if you carry a root of bitterness in your heart you won’t be able to access that peace which passes all understanding which the grace of God brings. Your sins will be blotted out in God’s book, but you’ll continue to live a life of pain if others’ sins are not blotted out in your book.
One of my favourite definitions says that sin is the vandalism of shalom. It comes from the theologian Cornelius Plantinga. This idea sits well in this situation: don’t let anger spray paint all over your joy; and don’t let the grudge that you carry rip out the upholstery of your peace.
I used to work in a gaol. You learn a lot about crime and punishment when you work in a gaol. Inside our gaol we had 768 prisoners. Outside our gaol we had none; well, none that we could see anyway. But I wonder; if the man who had done something nasty to me or my family was locked-up in a particular gaol, and I knew he was there, wouldn’t I want to camp outside that gaol day and night to make sure he was being punished properly? Would you do that? Of course you wouldn’t, and neither would I. We could be angry about the crime, and angry at the man, but we’d leave the punishing up to the officers and governors of that gaol because that is their job. In the same way our God says “vengeance is mine”, not because our God is a God of vengeance, but because God’s people are not supposed to be a people of vengeance. Plantinga entitled his book about sin “Not the way it’s supposed to be.” What has been done to you may well suck, but Jesus died so that you could live free from that. A life filled with vengeance and hatred driven by an identity of “I’m the victim of crime” is not the way it’s supposed to be.
So let’s get back to the Bible. In Matthew 18:34 the evil to be punished by the torturer is not the debt of the unforgiving servant, but his decision not to freely extend grace another. The God of Golgotha hates our lack of mercy because it stops God from being merciful toward the victims of crime. Mercy is wasted on the merciless: and those who have the greatest pain and the greatest need for grace are often the very ones cut off from it. This too is a cause which brings Heaven to tears.
I say to pastors when they invite me to speak that whatever the topic they give me, the outcome would be a message on social justice. Anything I say, and most of the things I do, comes back to social justice. But in this case I feel justified by the editors of scripture as my Poverty and Justice Bible has highlighted key phrases of this story in orange ink. I wonder what their thinking was. This story illustrates one key for me with respect to the girl I mentioned earlier; grace and justice don’t compute. Retribution doesn’t happen in a world ruled by grace, indeed in this king’s case it wasn’t until grace was refused by the unmerciful servant that he rescinded the pardon and handed the man over to the law. The whole of the Bible is very clear on this message: live by the law and you will die by the law, but live by grace and you will LIVE by grace.
But getting back to youth work. As Christians we know that we can’t truly forgive until we’ve been forgiven; I must have experienced grace before I can offer it to another. Christian and non-Christian children grow up with patient and loving parents, and they learn to love patiently. If a child does not grow up with love and patience then the results of that are seen in the child’s life. Patience and forgiveness are normal; but normal patience has limits. Only God, and those who are enabled by God to love as God loves, can show unlimited patience and truly unconditional love. A forgiving spirit will always express and accept forgiveness, it’s never one without the other.
The message we proclaim as Christians in our world, and as Christian Pastoral Support Workers in our school, is that it is up to the individual to take the initiative to forgive those who have sinned against you, (Matthew 18:15), but that you can only do this from a place of first having been forgiven by grace. Even the most unchurched of children knows about grace because they have seen it: the grace of God the Father is hidden in every supportive human adult. Grace cannot be offered unsupported because for people grace is unnatural.
Jesus’ teaching in this story follows four other stories which were gathered together to make up Matthew 18. Together these stories present grace as a dynamic within the fellowship of believers and a fundamental characteristic of the local church. In fact this passage is one of only two places in the gospels where Jesus specifically uses the word “church”; here he is specifically referring to a local congregation. It is the church which supports the act of conciliation and forgiveness in the lives of those who belong to it: that is why it is the role of the CPSWs as local Christians to be part of this conversation. These kids may not belong to you, but they belong to Lisa and me, and Lisa and I belong to you. This is why Lisa and I need your support in what we do, not because we need money to offer toast and Milo to empty tummies but because we need grace to offer oil and wine to broken hearts.
The message we can all give to the girl I spoke of earlier is not that God refuses to forgive the unforgiving. The message is that the unforgiving lack the humble attitude that would release them to seek and accept forgiveness, and frees them to extend it to those who don’t deserve the time of day from us. It’s the two sides of a single coin, or the two wings of the one dove. Which wing on a bird is more important, the right or the left? It’s a bit of a silly question, but grace works the same way. It is equally important to both give and receive forgiveness because one on its own can only send you spiralling into the landscape, or at the very least make you walk in circles.
In truth the amount of money owed in each transaction didn’t matter. The relative depravity or effect of the sin each one of us brings before Jesus is beside the point. What matters is that whatever is owed to God, God forgives each sinner the same amount. All. Now we can argue that the girl’s all might be a lot smaller than her dad’s all, but even in Bible College authorised New Testament Greek the word “all” means all. We each acknowledge that the shed blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to save both the girl and her dad from their sins. What the girl needs to hear is that the same blood and the same death is also sufficient to save her from the sins of her dad, if she is prepared to accept that all means all.
And so to the application phase. “All good so far Damien, but what do we do about it”? Well I’m glad you asked because there are two key outcomes.
1. As Christian women and men we must allow God to work God’s healing in us, to redeem our histories and to save us from the destructiveness of hating our enemies. I hope you’ve got that from what I’ve already said this morning because I don’t want to say much more about that now. However, if you are struggling with the actual work of trying to forgive someone who has acted heinously toward you then I invite you to come and find me or one of the team and allow us to pray with you. Being Church means no one has to defeat the demons of the past on their own. There are Christians here this morning who are ready to help you in any way you need. Just ask, and do so quietly later on if you want.
2. As local Christians and members of the Church in Port Lincoln we must see to it that no child in our city is disqualified from an abundant life because of the sinfulness of their significant adults. If we had time we could read in the next chapter from Matthew (Matthew 19:14) that when his disciples prevented a mob of children from approaching him Jesus was indignant. For those of you who speak Bible College approved New Testament Greek this is the same word indignant that the Ten felt towards James and John when the sought the cushy seats in Heaven, and the same indignant that Judas Iscariot felt about Mary wasting her jar of spikenard all over Jesus’ feet in the days before his burial. This Jesus is not some meek smiley man going gooey over the ickle wickle bubby wubbies, but the Lord of All Glory thundering that such as these must no longer be inhibited. It says in Matthew 18:3-6 that Jesus had told the Twelve that children are important and that entry to the Kingdom depends upon having a childlike spirit. The God Jesus revealed is searching for those who have a spirit like a child’s; not a childish spirit of selfishness and squabbling but a childlike spirit that is trusting and open, uncomplicated and obedient. There are children in our city who have had their trust and openness stolen from them and who are destined to a life of complication and disobedience if they are not shown that grace release them from all of that into another way. That lie of a life, that you are a worthless piece of nothing left over from your early childhood’s tragedies, has got to stop. More than that it has got to be fixed and fixed right now.
That is why there are Christian Pastoral Support Workers and Bible-believing, Christ-centred students and staff working at Port Lincoln High School.
So who’s with us?
Amen.
(Port Lincoln Christian Outreach Centre: Sunday 13th June 2010, 10:00)
So imagine you are seventeen and the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life is that one time when you were twelve and you nicked $50 from your mum’s bag before going down the Northern, flogging a bottle of black label from the drive-thru, spending the $50 on smokes and then hiding around your boyfriend’s place for three days of smoking, drinking and pashing yourselves stupid while your mum went out of her mind worried at your disappearance. That’s pretty bad, and as you sit and chat with the CPS Workers you know that you owe mum and the man at the Northern an apology. And probably $50. Each. Perhaps, if the CPSWs are brave enough to suggest it, you might even acknowledge your need for God’s forgiveness because you have broken two of the Ten Commandments: you disrespected your mother and you stole. Actually it’s three commandments if it happened on a Sunday because that’s the Christian Sabbath.
Now imagine you are seventeen and the worst thing that’s ever been done to you is that one time when your dad raped you. What if it happened eleven years ago, when you were six?
I can just imagine the conversation from there. Answer this one for me King Jesus: who owes who ten thousand years’ wages now, and who owes who a hundred days’ wages? Let me get this straight: because I can’t forgive my dad for doing unspeakable things to me when I was little, God cannot forgive me and will send me to be tortured in Hell for the sake of $50 and a few stolen kisses. But if my dad asks you to forgive him for what he did to me, and then he forgives me for making my mum upset, he will go to Heaven? Is that what you are telling me? Thank you for forgiving my sins, but if you’re gonna make my forgiving my dad’s sins the condition for your forgiving mine, then you can stick your grace.
Some of the children I work with believe in the God of grace, and they don’t want to know Him. They ask “how can I worship a God that will forgive my dad as much as me? I can see that I am a bad daughter and a shoplifter, but my dad is an incestuous child molester and I was the child.” Hmm, they’ve kinda got a point there.
What if, as you see it, what you have done against God is outweighed by what others have done against you? What if you believe in a God who knows and sees all, but did nothing to stop those things being done against you? “Let me get this straight” you ask, “I have to forgive all that sin that God did nothing to protect me from. I have to forgive the horrible people who did those things to me, and then I have to ask that stand-by-and do-nothing-type God to forgive me for childishness and misbehaviour that is so insignificant compared to what I went through? And if I do that only then will God be pleased with me?”
No wonder the gospel is such a hard-sell these days; Amazing Grace can really suck as a message at times.
So how are we feeling so far? Ha ha, and you thought high school chaplaincy was about handing out free toast and helping Scripture Union to plan youth-friendly concerts.
The gospel we proclaim is a gospel of the grace found in forgiving others. It can be surprising to us how many kids know they need grace, but it really shouldn’t be. Undeserved mercy and favour is what kids live on. Unconditional love is what good parents do, and even poorly parented kids know that because love without limits is what they see they are missing. The need for people to be forgiven and to have the opportunity to make a fresh start is a gimmie for many: but the necessity to offer forgiveness and compassion to “those who sin against us” in life-changing ways lives in the category of foolishness to the Greeks. The gospel we proclaim is defined by this: forgiveness means giving up the right for revenge. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Forgiveness does not mean that what was done was acceptable in any way, or that perpetrators should not face consequences. Forgiveness does not mean that perpetrators must be welcomed back into my life. There is great strength and divine justice in being able to say to someone “I forgive you, now get out of my life.” Of course this is not the answer for every conflict, but in some cases that sort of “grace of steel” is the cutters that can release someone once and for all from an abusive past so that they can fall into an abundantly loving and caring future found only in Jesus Christ.
The gift of the grace of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the character or activities of the person you forgive. You need to offer grace so that you can move on; not only so you can receive the grace of Jesus (forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us) but also so that you can be free of the anger and bitterness which is holding you back from fully embracing the future and enjoying an extravagantly abundant life. Your anger only punishes you: let it go and let God sort them out for you.
This is a cause that moves Heaven to tears. Wicked outcomes are likely when children are seen as a lower priority in society or a second-best option. This is why youth work is of such importance. But wickedness is also the likely outcome when grace is overlooked in favour of revenge, or the pre-emptive strike, no matter how old the victims of abuse.
To be totally forgiven is to be released from sin: your sin and their sin because if you can’t give forgiveness you can’t receive it. It’s not that God refuses to forgive you unless you first forgive others; all sin was forgiven at Calvary and there is no unforgivable sin except the sin of unbelief. The point of Jesus’ story was that if you carry a root of bitterness in your heart you won’t be able to access that peace which passes all understanding which the grace of God brings. Your sins will be blotted out in God’s book, but you’ll continue to live a life of pain if others’ sins are not blotted out in your book.
One of my favourite definitions says that sin is the vandalism of shalom. It comes from the theologian Cornelius Plantinga. This idea sits well in this situation: don’t let anger spray paint all over your joy; and don’t let the grudge that you carry rip out the upholstery of your peace.
I used to work in a gaol. You learn a lot about crime and punishment when you work in a gaol. Inside our gaol we had 768 prisoners. Outside our gaol we had none; well, none that we could see anyway. But I wonder; if the man who had done something nasty to me or my family was locked-up in a particular gaol, and I knew he was there, wouldn’t I want to camp outside that gaol day and night to make sure he was being punished properly? Would you do that? Of course you wouldn’t, and neither would I. We could be angry about the crime, and angry at the man, but we’d leave the punishing up to the officers and governors of that gaol because that is their job. In the same way our God says “vengeance is mine”, not because our God is a God of vengeance, but because God’s people are not supposed to be a people of vengeance. Plantinga entitled his book about sin “Not the way it’s supposed to be.” What has been done to you may well suck, but Jesus died so that you could live free from that. A life filled with vengeance and hatred driven by an identity of “I’m the victim of crime” is not the way it’s supposed to be.
So let’s get back to the Bible. In Matthew 18:34 the evil to be punished by the torturer is not the debt of the unforgiving servant, but his decision not to freely extend grace another. The God of Golgotha hates our lack of mercy because it stops God from being merciful toward the victims of crime. Mercy is wasted on the merciless: and those who have the greatest pain and the greatest need for grace are often the very ones cut off from it. This too is a cause which brings Heaven to tears.
I say to pastors when they invite me to speak that whatever the topic they give me, the outcome would be a message on social justice. Anything I say, and most of the things I do, comes back to social justice. But in this case I feel justified by the editors of scripture as my Poverty and Justice Bible has highlighted key phrases of this story in orange ink. I wonder what their thinking was. This story illustrates one key for me with respect to the girl I mentioned earlier; grace and justice don’t compute. Retribution doesn’t happen in a world ruled by grace, indeed in this king’s case it wasn’t until grace was refused by the unmerciful servant that he rescinded the pardon and handed the man over to the law. The whole of the Bible is very clear on this message: live by the law and you will die by the law, but live by grace and you will LIVE by grace.
But getting back to youth work. As Christians we know that we can’t truly forgive until we’ve been forgiven; I must have experienced grace before I can offer it to another. Christian and non-Christian children grow up with patient and loving parents, and they learn to love patiently. If a child does not grow up with love and patience then the results of that are seen in the child’s life. Patience and forgiveness are normal; but normal patience has limits. Only God, and those who are enabled by God to love as God loves, can show unlimited patience and truly unconditional love. A forgiving spirit will always express and accept forgiveness, it’s never one without the other.
The message we proclaim as Christians in our world, and as Christian Pastoral Support Workers in our school, is that it is up to the individual to take the initiative to forgive those who have sinned against you, (Matthew 18:15), but that you can only do this from a place of first having been forgiven by grace. Even the most unchurched of children knows about grace because they have seen it: the grace of God the Father is hidden in every supportive human adult. Grace cannot be offered unsupported because for people grace is unnatural.
Jesus’ teaching in this story follows four other stories which were gathered together to make up Matthew 18. Together these stories present grace as a dynamic within the fellowship of believers and a fundamental characteristic of the local church. In fact this passage is one of only two places in the gospels where Jesus specifically uses the word “church”; here he is specifically referring to a local congregation. It is the church which supports the act of conciliation and forgiveness in the lives of those who belong to it: that is why it is the role of the CPSWs as local Christians to be part of this conversation. These kids may not belong to you, but they belong to Lisa and me, and Lisa and I belong to you. This is why Lisa and I need your support in what we do, not because we need money to offer toast and Milo to empty tummies but because we need grace to offer oil and wine to broken hearts.
The message we can all give to the girl I spoke of earlier is not that God refuses to forgive the unforgiving. The message is that the unforgiving lack the humble attitude that would release them to seek and accept forgiveness, and frees them to extend it to those who don’t deserve the time of day from us. It’s the two sides of a single coin, or the two wings of the one dove. Which wing on a bird is more important, the right or the left? It’s a bit of a silly question, but grace works the same way. It is equally important to both give and receive forgiveness because one on its own can only send you spiralling into the landscape, or at the very least make you walk in circles.
In truth the amount of money owed in each transaction didn’t matter. The relative depravity or effect of the sin each one of us brings before Jesus is beside the point. What matters is that whatever is owed to God, God forgives each sinner the same amount. All. Now we can argue that the girl’s all might be a lot smaller than her dad’s all, but even in Bible College authorised New Testament Greek the word “all” means all. We each acknowledge that the shed blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to save both the girl and her dad from their sins. What the girl needs to hear is that the same blood and the same death is also sufficient to save her from the sins of her dad, if she is prepared to accept that all means all.
And so to the application phase. “All good so far Damien, but what do we do about it”? Well I’m glad you asked because there are two key outcomes.
1. As Christian women and men we must allow God to work God’s healing in us, to redeem our histories and to save us from the destructiveness of hating our enemies. I hope you’ve got that from what I’ve already said this morning because I don’t want to say much more about that now. However, if you are struggling with the actual work of trying to forgive someone who has acted heinously toward you then I invite you to come and find me or one of the team and allow us to pray with you. Being Church means no one has to defeat the demons of the past on their own. There are Christians here this morning who are ready to help you in any way you need. Just ask, and do so quietly later on if you want.
2. As local Christians and members of the Church in Port Lincoln we must see to it that no child in our city is disqualified from an abundant life because of the sinfulness of their significant adults. If we had time we could read in the next chapter from Matthew (Matthew 19:14) that when his disciples prevented a mob of children from approaching him Jesus was indignant. For those of you who speak Bible College approved New Testament Greek this is the same word indignant that the Ten felt towards James and John when the sought the cushy seats in Heaven, and the same indignant that Judas Iscariot felt about Mary wasting her jar of spikenard all over Jesus’ feet in the days before his burial. This Jesus is not some meek smiley man going gooey over the ickle wickle bubby wubbies, but the Lord of All Glory thundering that such as these must no longer be inhibited. It says in Matthew 18:3-6 that Jesus had told the Twelve that children are important and that entry to the Kingdom depends upon having a childlike spirit. The God Jesus revealed is searching for those who have a spirit like a child’s; not a childish spirit of selfishness and squabbling but a childlike spirit that is trusting and open, uncomplicated and obedient. There are children in our city who have had their trust and openness stolen from them and who are destined to a life of complication and disobedience if they are not shown that grace release them from all of that into another way. That lie of a life, that you are a worthless piece of nothing left over from your early childhood’s tragedies, has got to stop. More than that it has got to be fixed and fixed right now.
That is why there are Christian Pastoral Support Workers and Bible-believing, Christ-centred students and staff working at Port Lincoln High School.
So who’s with us?
Amen.
(Port Lincoln Christian Outreach Centre: Sunday 13th June 2010, 10:00)
Thursday 11 March 2010
Look Closer
It was a rock like any other rock. Well it had seemed that way anyway. A small jag poking through one of the sides of Bulldog Gully was all that could be seen as John Deason and Richard Oates turned their cart through the gully on the road between Moliagul and Dunolly. Just as they were passing the rock one of their wheels scraped against it, causing the cart to tip. One of the men looked around and saw a glint beneath the mud. Perhaps this was not a rock like any other rock.
Scrub fires were common in that part of the country. The tinder dry shrub under a blazing sun and the south-westerly winds blowing in from the desert made them a regular sight for the shepherd. The fire at Horeb was a fire like any other fire, if only a bit smaller as it seemed to be confined to just the one bush. Not really worth noticing then, it wasn’t going far. But then the something twigged in the shepherd’s brain and he looked again. Perhaps this fire was not like any other fire.
In our reading on Sunday we heard from Luke 13:1-3 where a group of people came to ask Jesus about current events. It says now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! Lots of stuff happens around us, and not all of it has a spiritual meaning. Sometimes the things that are significant to God aren’t the things that we expect: not all “Acts of God” are what they seem. When Elijah heard from the Lord it was not in the great wind, the earthquake, or the firestorm but in the gentle whisper. I am convinced that an act of God is not a natural disaster; rather it is what the Church does in response to one. The Act of God is not the bushfire: it is the volunteers distributing water, blankets, food, clothing, prayer, and hugs. God is seen in the everyday activities of ordinary people; sometimes in extraordinary circumstances.
Moses was minding his own business, and his father-in-law’s sheep, when God came to him. Maybe God had tried other things in the past and it took the not-so-burning bush to grab Moses’ attention, but even in that I don’t think there was anything truly spectacular in what God did. Unlike the epic cinema of the 1950s I don’t think there was an angel quire, or even a noticeable “presence of the Spirit” that the Charismatics might describe. I think Moses was just walking past, saw the bush, gave it a second glance, and then went over to have a sticky. It was then that God smiled, whispered “got him, yes!” to the pre-incarnate Jesus, and sent His Voice to speak with Moses just as His Voice had walked and talked with Adam.
Have a look at the passage, what is the first thing God says to Moses? He says Moses’ name. And Moses responds with “ye-ah...what?” Only then does God tell Moses to take his shoes off and proceed to introduce Himself. That is when Moses looks away in fear: before then he was quite happy to look at a strangely-burning-yet-not-consumed talking shrub. If we take the time to look for the wonder in the mundane we may find ourselves standing on holy ground.
I don’t know how it was with you, but with the generations that are young today, those called X and Y, (remember there is Z and now Alpha behind us), spirituality is carried in many “ordinary” things. Younger Christians, some of whom are heading for fifty, hear from God in songs on the radio, in films that aren’t specifically about Christian themes, or even in conversations with their mates. Sunsets and mountain lakes are still stunning us with God’s presence, but then sunsets happen daily, and mountain lakes have been around for as long as there have been lakes and mountains. You shouldn’t have to find the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast to know that God wants your attention: just look closer at ordinary things and you may well find that God has been trying to catch your gaze for a while.
Messers Deason and Oates were eventually paid £19,068 for their nugget, “The Welcome Stranger” which at 2283 troy ounces (70.558 kg in new money) is the largest alluvial gold nugget found anywhere in the world. It had been buried less than two inches below the soil. This was not a rock like any other rock, but it took someone to look directly at it to see that. What treasures might we find, what words might we hear if we bother to give a second glance or look just beyond the surface of the everyday?
Scrub fires were common in that part of the country. The tinder dry shrub under a blazing sun and the south-westerly winds blowing in from the desert made them a regular sight for the shepherd. The fire at Horeb was a fire like any other fire, if only a bit smaller as it seemed to be confined to just the one bush. Not really worth noticing then, it wasn’t going far. But then the something twigged in the shepherd’s brain and he looked again. Perhaps this fire was not like any other fire.
In our reading on Sunday we heard from Luke 13:1-3 where a group of people came to ask Jesus about current events. It says now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! Lots of stuff happens around us, and not all of it has a spiritual meaning. Sometimes the things that are significant to God aren’t the things that we expect: not all “Acts of God” are what they seem. When Elijah heard from the Lord it was not in the great wind, the earthquake, or the firestorm but in the gentle whisper. I am convinced that an act of God is not a natural disaster; rather it is what the Church does in response to one. The Act of God is not the bushfire: it is the volunteers distributing water, blankets, food, clothing, prayer, and hugs. God is seen in the everyday activities of ordinary people; sometimes in extraordinary circumstances.
Moses was minding his own business, and his father-in-law’s sheep, when God came to him. Maybe God had tried other things in the past and it took the not-so-burning bush to grab Moses’ attention, but even in that I don’t think there was anything truly spectacular in what God did. Unlike the epic cinema of the 1950s I don’t think there was an angel quire, or even a noticeable “presence of the Spirit” that the Charismatics might describe. I think Moses was just walking past, saw the bush, gave it a second glance, and then went over to have a sticky. It was then that God smiled, whispered “got him, yes!” to the pre-incarnate Jesus, and sent His Voice to speak with Moses just as His Voice had walked and talked with Adam.
Have a look at the passage, what is the first thing God says to Moses? He says Moses’ name. And Moses responds with “ye-ah...what?” Only then does God tell Moses to take his shoes off and proceed to introduce Himself. That is when Moses looks away in fear: before then he was quite happy to look at a strangely-burning-yet-not-consumed talking shrub. If we take the time to look for the wonder in the mundane we may find ourselves standing on holy ground.
I don’t know how it was with you, but with the generations that are young today, those called X and Y, (remember there is Z and now Alpha behind us), spirituality is carried in many “ordinary” things. Younger Christians, some of whom are heading for fifty, hear from God in songs on the radio, in films that aren’t specifically about Christian themes, or even in conversations with their mates. Sunsets and mountain lakes are still stunning us with God’s presence, but then sunsets happen daily, and mountain lakes have been around for as long as there have been lakes and mountains. You shouldn’t have to find the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast to know that God wants your attention: just look closer at ordinary things and you may well find that God has been trying to catch your gaze for a while.
Messers Deason and Oates were eventually paid £19,068 for their nugget, “The Welcome Stranger” which at 2283 troy ounces (70.558 kg in new money) is the largest alluvial gold nugget found anywhere in the world. It had been buried less than two inches below the soil. This was not a rock like any other rock, but it took someone to look directly at it to see that. What treasures might we find, what words might we hear if we bother to give a second glance or look just beyond the surface of the everyday?
Answering The Call
Isaiah 6:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
One of the big sporting events in the United Kingdom each year is the RBS Six Nations rugby championship. Each February and March the home nations of Britain, plus France and Italy, compete in a round-robin series to determine who will be champions of Europe. The British also compete for “the triple crown” and this is awarded to the team that defeats all three of the others. I have always supported England in this competition, but the reigning champions from 2009 were Ireland who won for the first time since 1984, having been runners up in 2007 and 2008. Because the Ireland team is composed of players from Eire (the independent Republic) and Northern Ireland (a province of the United Kingdom), there is no one national anthem. Instead Ireland plays under the anthem “Ireland’s Call” and it goes like this:
Come the day and come the hour,
Come the power and the glory!
We have come to answer our country’s call
From the four proud provinces of Ireland.
Ireland, Ireland!
Together standing tall.
Shoulder to shoulder,
We’ll answer Ireland’s call.
It’s a rousing song and a stirring sound when the full complement of Lansdowne Road or Croke Park stadiums in Dublin belt it out; even as an Englishman I love to hear it sung. Come the day and come the hour, come the power and the glory, we have come to answer....we’ll answer the call.
The lectionary readings for this week tell the story of people being called by God to take His message to the world. Those of you who were here on Sunday will remember Rev Rob preaching from Luke 5:1-11 which is the story of Jesus preaching from the boat, and then of Simon lowering his nets on the opposite side of his boat for a big catch. The story concludes with Jesus inviting Simon to fish for men, and with Simon and the sons of Zebedee leaving their nets and everything else to follow Jesus.
This story, along with the one we have just read from Paul and the call of Isaiah recorded in Isaiah 6:1-8 have several elements in common.
1. God always takes the initiative: Jesus appeared on the beach and climbed into Simon’s boat uninvited. Jesus appeared to Paul on the Damascus road after he returned to Heaven, and Isaiah appeared (in a dream) in the courts of Heaven. We know that the story of grace tells us that God sent Jesus to a world bound up in sin and selfishness: the gospel is always a story where God acts first.
2. The human response to a call is always the recognition of the holiness of God, followed by a sense of unworthiness in the face of the call. Simon and Isaiah both express distress at the sudden realisation that they are sinners in the presence of the Lord. God responds with grace to the reality of human insufficiency; Jesus encourages Simon not to be afraid, and the Lord on His throne sends a seraph with a burning coal to purge Isaiah’s sinful lips.
3. Those who accept the call will agree wholeheartedly to participate in God’s work. “Woe to me,” cries Isaiah, but then “here I am, send me”. Paul who described himself as “the least of the apostles because I persecuted the Church” goes on to describe how he has toiled harder than anyone else in preaching what he believes so that others will come to believe the same. Each of those to whom God issues the call understands that God is calling the people of the world to Himself, beginning with those whom He calls to share the message.
The lives of Peter, Paul and Isaiah in the decades that follow their individual stories of call demonstrate that as men and women of faith our lives are always more productive and imaginative when Jesus is with us in our activities. Simon has caught thousands of fish, but Peter has been the inspiration to billions of people over two thousand years. Saul of Tarsus had been a top scholar in the school of the leading Pharisee Gamaliel, but the Apostle Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament, planted churches across the known world, and mentored the next generation of leaders in Timothy, Titus, and John Mark. We are at our best when we are embedded in the substance of our call: doing what God has individually called and resourced us to do.
Cafe Agape has returned to serve Port Lincoln in 2010, and we hope that even with the changes taking place in and around Unity Hill in the next year that the fellowship which has taken place here will continue. God has called all of the Church to be His representative in its local community: may we all keep on enjoying each other’s company, cooking, and testimony.
Amen.
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