Rosemary Morgan

The Kingdom of God.

OPENING PRAYER

“Father God,

as we gather here together again, we think back over the past week.

We remember all of the good things that have happened and we want to thank You for those.

Thank You for all of the people who love us and for all of the good things that we have and all of the fun things that we do.

We also remember all of the things that we did wrong and we want to say sorry.

We are sorry for hurting You and for hurting other people.

You have promised to forgive us and to help us to be the good people that we want to be.

Please forgive us when we are unkind, and help us to become our true, good and gentle selves.

Amen.”

SONG - ‘Christ Triumphant, Ever Reigning’.

When I was younger my parents bought be a lot of those ‘I-Spy’ books. Have you seen them?They come in themes: ‘trees of Britain’, for example, and they contain lots of pictures for you to tick off. I think that you were supposed to take them on long country walks and tick off all the trees that you saw. I can’t say that I spent a great deal of time doing that, and as a result I am terrible at identifying trees.

Now, last time I was here I talked about looking out for the Kingdom of God. So I’ve brought an I-Spy sheet of my own, so that we can see how we’ve all been doing!

I’ve got these pictures of things that the Bible says belong in the Kingdom of God and I’m going to make two columns of them. This column is for things that we’ve seen, and this column is for things that we haven’t.

So, here we go. The first picture is of . . .

[show pictures of ‘throne of God’, ‘lion laying down with lamb’, ‘river of life’, ‘whirling wheel’, ‘peace’, ‘patience’, ‘justice’, ‘joy’, ‘wine ever flowing’.  Ask if congregation have ever seen these. Obviously, they will have seen some and not seen others.]

Well, that’s fantastic! Lots of us have seen lots of signs of the Kingdom of God! Sometimes we can feel a bit sad that we don’t get to see all of the more exciting images from the Bible. It sounds quite cool to see a real angel, and I would like one day to see the Throne of God.

But, just because we don’t see all of these super-natural things doesn’t mean that we don’t get to see God at work in our world. I hope that in the future we will all have eyes to see God’s Kingdom at work here on earth.

SONG – ‘How Lovely on the Mountains are the Feet of Him’.

PRAYER BEFORE CHILDREN LEAVE

Father God,

Bless the children and their teachers, go with them and teach them about Your love and joy.

Bless us as we remain here, stay with us and teach us about Your love and joy.

Bring us together again after the service, closer to You and closer to each other.

Amen.

READING Psalm 145.

Psalm 145 is an acrostic psalm, with a bit of a twist. /the central verses are m-l-k (not k-l-m, as the alphabet goes), which spells out the constanents of ‘melek’ – Hebrew for ‘king’. (see page 197 of ‘The Poems and Psalms of the Hebrew Bible). So the king is the centre of the psalm, just as He is the centre of His kingdom.This is the only psalm that is called a ’song of praise’ (pg. 209).

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Lord, in faith and trust we bring our requests before You today.

In faith that You will hear us and in trust that You will answer.

We ask You to bless us with Your Presence, knowing that You have promised to be with us always.

We ask You to bless those we know who are suffering, knowing that You have promised to heal and to soothe all those who come to You.

We ask You to bless the World with Your Peace and Your Justice, knowing that You have promised to claim it as Your own.

In faith and trust, we lay all our concerns before You, knowing that they are Your concerns too.

Amen.

SONG – ‘The Kingdom of God is Justice and Joy’ (or ‘Immortal Invisible’)

DURING WHICH THE COLLECTION WILL BE TAKEN UP

COLLECTION PRAYER

We dedicate this money, Lord, for the work of the church, and we ask you to use all that we have and are in your service. Amen.

Last time that I was here, I declared that my New Year’s Resolution was to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Today, I wanted to talk a bit more about looking out for the kingdom of God. If we’re going to look our for it, then we need to know what the kingdom of God will look like. Otherwise we’ll have great difficulty recognising it when we see it.

Let’s look at what Jesus had to say about the kingdom of God.

READING. Matthew 13:24-43.

SONG – ‘At the name of Jesus’

‘The parable explains how the kingdom can be present in the world without wiping out all opposition.’ - Carson quoted in Pillar Commentary pg 351.

 

I don’t think that the parable does explain. But it does give us a picture.

My husband is an engineer and he likes to see everything in terms of diagrams. He draws out pictures of databases and circuits, showing how the things that he programs work. And God is a lot like that, He draws us pictures so that we can see how His world fits together.

What can we see in this picture?

Darnel looks a lot like wheat, apparently, right up until it produces fruit. And good and evil can look very alike too. It is by the results that we know what we’re dealing with.

My younger brother is very fond of philosophy and last weekend he asked me whether I favoured an intentional morality or a results-centred morality. I think that the two are really the same thing. If our intentions are bad then the fruit that we bear will be bad. We will become obviously rotten. The fruits of good intentions are the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We will recoginse the ‘wheat’ by the presence of these things and the ‘darnel’ by their absence.

But it can be very hard to tell the difference on first sight. Which is a good reason for not taking it upon ourselves to stand in judgement of others. When the time for the harvest comes, God will have no difficulty in discerning between the wheat and the darnel. Until that time, we grow side by side.

People who do wrong couldn’t be taken out of the world without destroying all of us. God has promised not to repeat the flood.

If we are to be given yet another chance every time that we do something wrong then so must everyone else. If we were given time to repent and turn back towards God then so must be everyone else.

The wrongs are so much a part of our world that they cannot be uprooted until the end, when the harvest is over.

In America you can buy these bumper stickers to go on your car that say ‘In the Event of Rapture this Car will Be Without a Driver’. I don’t want to talk about hope and arrogance today. So let’s leave aside the question of how the driver can be so sure.

When they first started, I read a few of the ‘Left Behind’ series of books. These books are an attempt to imagine how the prophecies about the End Times might be fulfilled, and what the world might be like in the days following the Rapture.

The books open with absolute chaos as people all over the world are ’snatched’ up by God. Planes fall out of the sky, babies disappear from hosptials, and thousands of cars are suddenly driver-less. The result of this imagining of the Rapture is terrible!

And I think this gives us some idea of what would happen if suddenly God snatched up a load of people from the world. Our world is a strange place.

So much beauty cannot exist without pain. Heroism cannot exist without danger. Generosity cannot appear, except where there is want.

That is not to say, however, that the world needs evil.

Chocolate used to be a good thing that came out of other people’s suffering, but, since Fairtrade we have learned that nobody needs to suffer in order to produce chocolate.

At celebrations we find ourselves capable of displaying generosity without any great need to act as a setting.

I do not think that evil is necessary in order for good to exist. But I can understand how such a philosophy could have arisen in our world, where evil is so interlaced with good that to pluck up one would be to pluck up all together.

God’s Kingdom, then, is spread about the world, mingling with the kingdom of this world, growing up side by side.

What would it mean if God prevented all pain and all evil in this world?

Have you seen that advert for children’s medicine with the over-protective parents? There’s one who stands over her child with a fire-extinguisher as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. There’s another mother wrapping her daughter in foil as she finshes a race at school. The commentary reminds us that parents can’t take care of their children all the time.

At some point you have to let your children take minor risks. And maybe that’s the same for God. If He caught us every time we tripped, we would never bother learning how to run without slipping.

The pain and the suffering are an intergral, and occaisonaly necessary, part of our world.

But that only tells us the difficulty of recognising the kingdom of God. Luckily Jesus goes on to talk more about what the Kingdom is like.

 

The next picture that Christ showed us was that of a mustard seed growing into a tree. This is one of those speeches of Christ’s that has puzzled a lot of people.

You see, mustard seeds aren’t the smallest seeds.

Certain epiphytic orchids of the tropical rain forest produce the world’s smallest seeds. One seed weighs about one 35 millionths of an ounce (1/35,000,000) or 0.81 micrograms. Some seeds are only about 1/300th of an inch long (85 micrometers). The world’s largest seed comes from the coco-de-mer palm (Lodoicea maldivica), native to the Seychelles Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Although it belongs to a different genus from true coconut palms (Cocos), this enormous seed is often called the “double coconut.” A single seed may be 12 inches (30 cm) long, nearly three feet (0.9 m) in circumference and weigh 40 pounds (18 kg). (http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0601.htm#seed)

Mustard seeds, on the other hand, are about 1mm in diameter.

And mustard trees aren’t all that big. They’re more like bushes and grow to about six foot high. If you have a quick look on the internet you’ll find allsorts of convulted explanations, telling you that some mustard bushes are very big indeed and that they would qualify as ‘trees’ according to Jesus’ contemporary listeners. You would also find the explanation that Christ was only talking about seeds that his listeners would have heard of, and so the orchid seeds are irrelavent.

Who would have thought that such a simple metaphor would have caused so much fuss. Of course, on one level it is all very clear: mustard seeds are very small, mustard bushes are very much bigger! We don’t need to worry about whether Christ was lying.

 

‘So here’s what Jesus was saying, that heaven is like a seed you plant, the tiniest of seeds, expecting to get a bush, actually a pretty big bush from such a small seed, and what you get is a tree, larger than anything else in the garden, bigger and better than you would have ever expected. It’s not just the concept of a huge thing coming from a small thing, like I have seen some translations make the story a pine nut and a huge pine tree - no, heaven is more than what you expect, impossible for you to completely imagine, better than your wildest dreams! Jesus wasn’t referring to some obscure tree and as the Creator himself, he certainly knew that trees don’t grow from mustard seeds - but he wanted us to understand that is exactly what heaven is like - the impossible come to life.’ (http://heavenartproject.blogspot.com/2007/07/mustard-tree.html)

I do wonder if there is a slightly more intricate point being made here. I very much like the idea that a mustard seed is a bit of a surprise. If you were expecting a bush, then a tree would be a surprise! And I think that God’s kingdom is like that. You may have signed up expecting a bit of an adventure, but it turns out to be much more than you imagined it would be!

Our last picture is of a woman working leaven into flour. Now, I didn’t want to hear the NIV translation of this passage, because it talks about a woman working ‘yeast’ into the dough. Obviously, that makes it a little easier for me to understand – when I make bread, I use yeast to make it rise. But, it isn’t the right image for this passage.

The woman works ‘leaven’ into the flour to make a new batch of dough. Now ‘leaven’ is not new yeast, it is a bit of dough left over from the last batch. So the image of the Kingdom as leaven, shows how something new grows out of something older – just like the mustard seed parable. This is particularly important in view of Matthew’s next comment. Matthew reminds us that, in speaking in parables, Christ was fulfilling prophecy. And so we see how the old leaven is worked into the new flour, to make a new loaf of bread. The words of the prophets are worked into the world around Christ and a new Kingdom begins to grow.

Jesus was always very clear that His coming didn’t undermine the relationship that the old prophets had had with God. The Kingdom that Christ is ushering in is a continuation and a fulfillment of the Kingdom that David saw when he wrote the Psalms.

The new community was not supposed to replace the old community, it was an extension and a growing of that old community. As Christians we do not replace the Jews as the people of God. But we do fulfill their promise. They were a sign to the world that one day God would make all people His people, and we are the fulfillment of that promise.

So it is that the Kingdom of God is like leaven – the promise of the old bread working through a new batch of flour to produce a new loaf.

To conclude, what all of these parables have in common is growth.

Growth is a major characteristic of God’s Kingdom. It is very fashionable today to say that a big church is not a sign of a blessed church. And I think that is probably right. After all, the darnel grows as well as the wheat. But, the wheat does grow!

The Kingdom of God doesn’t stay still! Growth may not always resemble worldly success, but we should expect change and development.

God is a Creator and He is always at work, making things new and making His Kingdom grow. It’s not only about the spread of Christianity from twelve men in Jerusalem, all over the world. Nor is the growth about the church gaining more power. We have tried that and the fruits were not good.

The growth of the kingdom of God is within us, as we become closer to Christ and more like Him. We can recognise the Kingdom of God in ourselves when we find ourselves acting more kindly, demonstrating more patience, feeling more faith, doing more good. As we grow into the likeness of Christ, so we feel the growth of the Kingdom of God.

There is a new fashion amongst diets. A new idea of writing down everything that you eat. Apparently, the mere act of noticing what you are eating causes you to eat more healthily. So, if we are more attentive of our own growth; if we watch ourselves carefully, looking out for the Kingdom of God growing inside us, perhaps we will find the same effect.

Christ told His disciples in the garden to watch and pray, and I cannot think of any better advice than that. If we want God’s Kingdom to grow, that is all we have to do: watch and pray.

SONG – ‘I Cannot Tell’

BLESSING

The light of God surrounds us;

The love of God enfolds us;

The power of God protects us;

The presence of God watches over us.

Wherever we are, God is.

And all is well.

I led a service on December 30th. It was a particularly scary one as I was a ‘visiting preacher’ and my parents were in the congregation! The minister of the church (who asked me to take the service) suggested something informal, so I decided not to preach a full sermon. Instead I had three little talks and tried to use the carols to hold the whole service together in one movement. Everyone was very kind and polite afterwards and I enjoyed myself!

Welcome

I hope that you all had a very happy Christmas. I think that sometimes the days after Christmas can seem like a bit of a let down.

So I went on excel and I calculated that it is now 231 days until my birthday.

It’s good to have something to look forward to.

Let’s start our worship this morning by singing It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

Prayers

Let’s pray together.

Lord Jesus Christ,

your birth at Bethlehem

draws us to kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth:

accept our heartfelt praise

as we worship you,

our Saviour and our eternal God. Amen.

Now we will have this morning’s reading: Matthew 2:1-18

Let’s sing again, O Little Town of Bethlehem.

Intercessory Prayers

That carol always makes me feel a little bit sad, it makes me think about all the things that haven’t changed since that first Christmas Day. In fact, both of the first two carols we’ve sung this morning are carols that I think are a little bit sad.

Let’s pray for all the people who have been hurt or upset this Christmas time.

Jesus, whose mother was Mary:

we pray for families

We think of those for whom Christmas was a time of separation and arguments,

we think also of those who are grieving for loved ones.

and we ask You to grant them Your Peace.

Lord Jesus,

hear our prayer.

Jesus, cradled in a manger:

we pray for the homeless.

We think of those who had no home to decorate this Christmas.

We ask that You would protect them and provide for them.

Lord Jesus,

hear our prayer.

Jesus, sharing the stable with the animals:

we pray for creation.

We think of all the dangers and risks that assail Your World.

We ask that You would grant us wisdom and strength to be good stewards of the world.

Lord Jesus,

hear our prayer.

Jesus, worshipped by shepherds and kings:

we pray for the people of the world.

We think of all those who spent Christmas in countries suffering from famine or war.

We ask that You would be with all World-Leaders, grant them wisdom and humility.

Lord Jesus,

hear our prayer.

Jesus, our Emmanuel:

we pray for those in particular need.

We think of all those known to us who are suffering or sorrowing at this time.

We ask You to bless all those whom we love, this day and always.

Lord Jesus,

hear our prayer.

Now we will sing In the Bleak Midwinter.

 

Matthew 2

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
” ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east^[e] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

 

Talk about the Badness of the World.

The lamentation in Jeremiah is powerful, amazingly so. All those years before it happened God was already mourning this terrible loss. His compassion and His love stretches across the centuries. It is an amazing thing to see God mourning for something that isn’t to happen for five hundred years. But it’s sad too, poignant.

 

After the glory comes the crash. After Christmas comes the tidying up, the headaches, the bills, the dawning realisation that the world is still at war. At Christmas people often tell the story of the German and English troops who stopped fighting one Christmas Day and played football between the trenches. It captures the spirit of Christmas, or does it? Surely the spirit of Christmas can’t be one glowing day in the midst of a calender full of pain and misery? And what message does that have for us this morning? Can we look forward to nothing between now and next Christmas?

 

Maybe that’s the problem with treating Christmas Day as our big festival. Christmas is the beginning of the story. At Christmas we have the rest still to come. Christmas is a time of hope and of potential. The rest of the story is when the real stuff happens.

 

And, of course, there never was a moment of bliss. There was a couple travelling a long distance and there was a woman having a baby in a stable. Hasn’t it ever bothered you that the choir of angels visited the shepherds and not the holy family themselves? Couldn’t Mary have done with a choir of angels? Couldn’t the stable have been brightened up a bit? Most Nativity scenes have an angel or a star at the top, because otherwise the scene is just too bleak to make a decent decoration, but I’m not convinced that it’s accurate. I suspect that the stable was a fairly bleak place all along. I am not convinced that Mary and Joseph ever saw the bright star or the choir of angels. I don’t think that the shepherds and the magi would have been quite the same. They’re too human to really lift the scene to the decorative heights.

 

But that’s ok. Because we don’t actually want a shiny stable. That wouldn’t be telling the right story. If God is to save us from the worst of this world, then He has to descend to the very depths. He couldn’t have been born a king in a palace. He couldn’t even have been born in a clean and sterile 21^st century hospital with a midwife and a gynaecologist standing by. To save us from the worst, God had to come down and see us and live with us as one of us at our very worst.

 

God has no rose-tinted view of life. From the moment Christ came into the world, He saw it for what it really is. He knows all about dirt and greed and longing. He knows about refugees and poverty and unjust trials. He knows about disfunctional relationships and loss and arguments. God came into this world with all it’s political intrigue and violence and oppression. None of those things mean that God is not here with us.

 

We will see terrible things on the news, even at Christmas. And that doesn’t mean that God is not here, with us. Because that’s what Christmas was all about in the first place: God is with us.

 

And, since God is with us, we can help to make this world a better place.

That’s why this next carol is one of my favourites.

Let’s sing Good King Wenceslas – which is, I think, the perfect time to take up the offertory.

 

Offertory Prayer.

Father God,

Take our money and use it to do Your work.

Take our talents and use them to do build Your kingdom.

Take our all and use us for Your glory.

Amen.

 

Talk about the Wonder of the Incarnation.

When we hear this story of the Slaughter of the Innocents I hope that we all sympathise with the bereaved families. We empathise with their suffering and pain. Loss is something that we all recognise and fear experiencing for ourselves.

 

God sympathises with these mourners too, just as God sympathises with all those who mourn today. God understands their pain and suffering and, which is even more amazing, God has felt it too. One of the wonderful messages of Christmas is that God became a person, just like us, and He suffered and was sad, just like us.

 

Sometimes when you’re feeling upset and someone says ‘I know how you feel’ it can make everything seem worse! It can make you feel cross and you might want to shout and say ‘you don’t know how I feel, how could you know how I feel, you’ve never been through anything like this!’

 

Well, God became a person and so He really does understand what it is like to be a person. He isn’t a distant God who makes up lots of rules that work well in theory but not in practice. He has lived as a person and He has died as a person; He does know what being a person is like. That’s one of the reasons why Christmas is so special to us. Christmas reminds us that God isn’t just a God who likes us from a distance, He has lived on Earth with people, He has been a person, God is with us, right up close and He still likes us!

 

But, God doesn’t only like the ‘goodies’ in stories. God likes bad people too. God doesn’t only know how the mourners feel, He also knows how Herod feels. God is beside Herod as well as beside the mourners and the babies.

 

This might not sound like very good news at first, but in fact it is the best news of all. God knows what it’s like to be tempted to do bad things. And that’s not just good news for Herod, it’s also good news for us.

 

Everyone in this room has done some things that they shouldn’t have done. We’re all mean sometimes and we’re all selfish sometimes. We probably haven’t done what Herod did, but that doesn’t make us ‘goodies’.

 

The mystery and the wonder of the Incarnation is that God became one of us. It was not a sanitised version of our world, it was not a soft and safe version of our world. God became as fragile and as weak as we are.

 

When Matthew tells the story of Christmas he puts this story straight after the story of Jesus’ birth and so He shows us why Jesus came. Jesus came into the Earth because people do terrible things, just like the terrible thing that Herod did.

 

Matthew tells us of the wonder of the Magi’s visit and straight after that he tells us of the horror of the Slaughter of the Innocents. The glory of the King come to earth is quickly followed by a stark reminder of why he came.

 

He came, not to save us from the dangers of this world, not to make everything safe and happy and nice. He came to save us from ourselves. Because the only thing worse than being killed or tortured is to be someone who kills and tortures. God came to save us from the worst of ourselves. He came so that we wouldn’t be Herod anymore.

 

The man who ordered the slaughter of every baby boy under two, belongs in this story. It’s for his sake, and for yours, and for mine, and for everyone who has ever done or thought or said anything trully awful, it is for our sakes, that the whole thing happened in the first place.

 

So it’s ok if Christmas wasn’t picture-perfect. It’s ok if you’ve got some worries as you move into 2008. It’s ok if your New Year’s Resolution could best be summarised as: be a completely different person in every single way. None of that means that God isn’t with you.

 

Let us celebrate the God who became man by singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

 

Keeping the Spirit of Advent Alive.

The story isn’t over yet. Christmas Day is the first day of the Christian Year. This is where it all begins. And we focus on the little baby in a manger because the baby Jesus reminds us of the potential of life.

 

When a new baby is born. There is always a sense of wonder. All that potential is amazing, because a baby could become anything! You never know what a tiny baby is going to grow up to achieve. Once upon a time Mother Teresa was a tiny baby, so was Neil Armstrong.

 

And the tiny baby Jesus reminds us of the potential not only of that one tiny baby, but of the whole world. What did the angels say to the shepherds?

 

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

 

The angels told the shepherds that the baby was sign of God’s salvation that was to come. The baby being born is not the culmination of the plan – of course not, what kind of a plan would that be? There is a lot more to come! The baby is a sign.

 

God became a baby in order to tell us something! God Himself descended to Earth and became a little baby person to show us that He was going to save the world!

 

Do you remember the story of Noah? Do you remember after Noah and his family had got off the boat, when all the floodwater had gone down, God put a special sign in the sky? What was that? It was a rainbow, of course.

 

And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. (Genesis 9:12-15)

 

God put the rainbow there as a sign of His promise. So that Noah would be sure that God meant what He said (and God ALWAYS means what He says), God put a rainbow in the sky.

 

And when the angels told the shepherds of God’s plan to save the world, they told them that God had prepared a sign of that too.

 

Not just any sign, not a rainbow this time, nor a star, in fact this sign is a sign so amazing that it changed the way the world thought and talked and counted days, a sign that changed the whole world: God Himself lying in a manger.

 

This coming of God has changed the world, of course it has, would we be here if God had not come to earth as a baby all those years ago? Would any of us know each other? Would we live our lives the way that we do?

 

Would we live where we live? Would we do the jobs that we do? Would our country even be the same place?

 

No, nothing would be as it is now if God had not come as a baby.

 

Lots of things have happened because God was a baby.

 

But, on top of all of that, the baby is a sign to us.

 

God came to earth once as a baby and so we know for certain that He will come again. And next time God will not be a baby. Next time there will be more angels and trumpets and God will come as God, in full glory, not as a man at all.

 

We know this will happen because of that baby who was once lying in a manger.

 

At the end of ‘A Christmas Carol’ Scrooge promises: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year”.

 

As we go into 2008 I expect that a lot of us are thinking about making resolutions of our own. I do not think that Scrooge’s resolution is a bad one, but I think that we can do better.

 

I would suggest that instead of Christmas we try to keep the spirit of Advent all year round. Christmas is not an ending or a completion. Christmas is a promise and a hope.

 

During Advent we all wait and prepare. We get excited and we look forward to the great moment of Christmas day.

 

We could try to live like that all year. We could try to spend next year watching and waiting and hoping and preparing for the next bit of the story.

 

God’s plan is not finished yet. God still has more surprises for us. So as we go into 2008 I invite you to join with me in looking out for the coming of God’s New Kingdom.

 

Christmas brings us a lot to celebrate of course and I hope that this year has been one full of reasons for celebration for all of us, but, I am convinced that the best is yet to come! I will end with a short passage from the very end of the last book of the Narnia Chronicles. The end of ‘The Last Battle’ is actually the beginning of a far more exciting story, and so Christmas is only the beginning of the Real Story.

 

The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most trully say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them is was only the beginning of the real story. All their life so far had only been the coverand the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The Nicence Creed ends with the words:

I look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come.

As I start 2008 I mean to take those words as my inspiration and I invite you to do the same. Next year, let’s look out for the life of the world to come. God willing, we might even see it!

 

• 9:4 ‘the very image of my cousin Tobit’ – would it be desirable to be the ‘very image’ of your parents? Is that what parents look for in their children?

• 10:7 – anxiety for Tobias causes a rift between his parents. How could we avoid alienating others when we’re anxious? Could Phillipians 4:6-7 be read in light of this as concern that anxiety can separate us from God?

• 11:13 – what does it mean for Anna and Tobit to call Tobias the light of their eyes?

• 11:15 – Did God cause Tobit to go blind? (see Job 1:20-22)

• Why does Tobit praise God for his healing? Doesn’t he think that Tobias (or Raphael) has healed him?

• If healing is miraculous, what function does the fish’ liver, heart and gall play? (similarly, why does Jesus use mud in John 9?) Can this tell us anything about the function of medicine in a Christian understanding of the world?

• How does God chose whom He will heal and whom he will not? (1Corinthians 12, Luke 17:9)

Extra Credit:

A Miraculous Healing?

Gary was on the back of a motorcycle when a woman hit them head on several years earlier. He spent months in the hospital, and although most of his injuries had healed, he had a ruptured disk that caused him unending pain. Often it would be so bad that he would have to leave work early. A co-worker offered to see if he could help with hands on Christian healing and although Gary was not certain he believed it possible, he knew the doctors had told him there was nothing else they could do. Every time his pain became too much, he went to the co-worker who put his hands on his back and prayed for his healing. The heat was intense, and after a minute or two the pain would subside. However, a few hours later it would return. He was discouraged that although the healing would work for a while, the pain would eventually return. However, over the next few weeks the pain took longer and longer to return, and was less and less severe. After 5 or 6 weeks the pain was gone for good. Gary returned to the doctor for his periodical checkup. The doctor was astounded that the ruptured disk had healed! According to him, ruptured disks do not heal. When pressed for an explaination the doctor said the only possible explaination was that obviously there had been a mixup on his X-RAYS before (every time they took them) and that the file X-Ray’s were of someone else. However Gary and I know the truth. http://www.execonn.com/stories/heal1.html

• Do you have any trouble believing this story? Are people still healed miraculously today (Mark 16:18, James 5:14)?

 

Another Perspective.

I’ve mentioned religion before, relating how, as a surgeon, I’ve seen faith, for some people, make facing deadly illness easier. (I’ve also indicated that I’ve seen it accomplish just the opposite.) Patients’ faith clearly can make it easier for me, when giving bad news and when caring for the dying. But this. These prayer circles, this continuing belief that healing will happen if enough people pray — and, implicitly, if the girl herself is godly enough — is setting the poor child up for a death bathed in self-recrimination. I must also say this: there’s something perverse to the point of revulsion in the idea of a god that will heal the girl if enough people pray for her. What sort of god is that? To believe that, you must believe he deliberately made her ill, is putting her through enormous pain and suffering, with the express plan to make it all better only if enough people tell him how great he is; and to keep it up unto her death if they don’t. If that sort of god is out there, we’re in big, big, BIG trouble. If people survive an illness because of prayer, does that mean that god has rejected those that didn’t pray? If you pray for cure and don’t get it, and if you believe that praying can lead to cure, then mustn’t you accept that God heard your prayers and said no? If so, are you going to hell? But if you say either outcome is God’s will, then what’s the value of the prayer in the first place? In this case, it seems, it’s only to make the girl feel guilty and unworthy. How sad. Since the whole idea is so internally inconsistent, give the poor kid a break. And what of children who have no one to pray for them? If prayer works, what’s going on with those kids? Does this prayer-tabulating yet perfect god not care about them? Or isn’t he paying attention? http://surgeonsblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/bless-child.html

• If this is the effect on non-believers, does that mean that prayers for healing aren’t a good witness after all?

We have a long passage tonight; we’re going to cover the heart (and the liver!) of the Tobit story.

I’m hoping to save healing for another week, if possible. I am also planning on discussing demons and angels in a week of their own, so tonight I thought that we could concentrate on the idea of demons as anthropomorphising sinful impulses.

• 6:12 – Raphael tells Tobias that he has ‘a hereditary claim’ to marry Sarah. This ought to sound rather out of place to us! But it is a standard Old Testament attitude (see Ruth 4:4-5). Is this misogyny?

• ‘Moreover, the girl is sensible, brave, and very beautiful, and her father is a good man’ – is this an accurate description of the perfect wife? (If in doubt check out Proverbs 31:10-end)

• The importance of marrying within the family is a common concern in the Old Testament (see Judges 14:3). This practice would have ensured that the couple would share their faith. Is marriage between a believer and an unbeliever a bad idea ? (check Ezra 9:1-2 and 2Corinthians 6:14) The Christian world-view is completely different to the non-Christian’s world-view, isn’t it? (see John 15:18)

• Raguel gives Sarah to Tobias to be his wife. Is this kind of arranged marriage a manner of oppressing women, or is it a perfectly acceptable social custom?

• Looking at 6:14-15 and 8:7 I think that we could interpret the ‘demon’ that kills Sarah’s husbands as the demon of lust. Look at 1Corinthians 7:1-9, which also pairs lust with the Devil. Does lust have any place in a healthy sexual relationship?

• Does praying before sex (a kind of grace, I guess) make sense, or is it a bit out of place?

• 8:8 – ‘they both said ‘Amen, Amen.” I really like this image of the couple, it is a great image of unity. Is ‘unity without shame’ a decent description of marriage? (see Genesis 2:18-25)

• Jack Dominion writes ‘every time we make love we are in the presence of God¹‘ – discuss.

Optional Extras!

• There is a very clear implication that sex belongs within marriage, is that idea out of place in today’s society? (have a look at Proverbs 5:15-23)

• There are many fairy tales about risks around sex, in which people turn into animals or die during copulation. In French, ‘la petite mort’ is a slang expression for orgasm. Why does fear surround sex (see how Sarah’s mother urges her to ‘have courage’)? Is it possible that Tobit was written as a godly fairy tale to help dispel the fear of sex?

• Is lust a kind of idolatry (see Romans 1:20-2:3)

 

Does the Bible forbid sex outside of marriage?²

In the Old Testament there are two major word groups used for sexual misconduct which is not necessarily adulterous [I think we can agree that the Bible condemns adultery]. There are words for ordinary prostitution, words for prostitutes and technical terms for temple prostitutes (part of the Canaanite nature religions). There are, however, no words for people who have sex outside of marriage.

Virginity is certainly important for brides in the Old Testament (see Deuteronomy 22:13-21). But we cannot avoid the interpretation of this as a social construct. Before reliable contraception it was vital that brides were virgins if children were to know their biological heritage.

In the New Testament, the Greek word ‘porneia’ is usually translated as ‘fornication’ or ’sexual immorality’. Perhaps the vaguer definition is more sensible, since ‘porne’ is a female prostitute and ‘pornos’ is a male prostitute.

In 1Thessalonians 4:1-8 Paul says that we must avoid ‘porneia’ in order to avoid taking advantage of others. Whatever other conclusion we come to, I think this is a vital rule: sex must not be used to hurt others.

 

1Let’s Make Love, Jack Dominion, Darton Longman And Todd, London, 2001.

 

2These notes are drawn from my reading of Marriage: Sex in the Service of God, Christopher Ash, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 2003.

.

• Preparing to die, Tobit gives his son some words of advice (4:3-19), is this good advice?

• Most of the advice relates well to Proverbs (c.f. Proverbs 1:7-8 (honouring parents), chapter 5 (avoid commiting adultery) 16:18 (pride), 20:1 (excessive drinking)).

• Tobit is certainly very interested in money (as is the writer of Proverbs, see 3:9, 3:27, 11:25, 19:17, 20:10). And this is also something that interested Christ (see Matthew 19:21-24 (the rich young man), Mark 12:41-44 (the widow’s mite), Luke 20:20-25 (give unto Ceasar etc.)). Do we talk enough about money in church today?

• In the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9) we see the generous use of money is an outward sign of inward salvation. Is this a fair assessment? Should Christians handle money in a special way?

• Does living like a Christian mean being less practical than ‘non-spiritual’ people (see Matthew 6:19-27)? Tobit’s wife certainly seems against Tobias going to fetch the money (Tobit 5:18-20).

• When the Raphael foretells that Tobit will soon be healed, Tobit doesn’t seem to hear him (Tobit 5:10). Is this a case of not believing God’s promise (similar to Hezakiah 2Kins 20:1-11)?

• It can be very tempting to offer platitudes, telling someone that we ‘just know’ everything will turn out alright (see Job 8:5-7), but can it be a dangerous thing to do? If we state platitudes to each other then how will we know when to believe in a promise from God? How could Tobit know that Raphael was speaking out of knowledge and not just trying to cheer him up?

A Few Interesting Facts about Money.

• Average household debt in the UK is £8,681 (excluding mortgages). This figure increases to £20,189 if the average is based on the number of households who actually have some form of unsecured loan.¹

• A quarter of Brits (25%) have no idea how much they spend in a week, and a similar number (26%) have no idea of their monthly cash flow. This lack of knowledge extends into other financial aspects of life. Only half (51%) the population know the balance on their credit cards and nearly half (46%) have no idea what interest rates they receive on their savings or are paying on their accounts and debts.

• Britain ’s personal debt is increasing by £1million every four minutes.

• Nearly a quarter of the population are worried they will not be able to keep up with their debt repayments in the next three months.²

 

1http://www.creditaction.org.uk/debt-statistics.html

 

2http://moneystuff.co.uk/debt_summary.html

My Initial Thoughts on Tobit.

I have divided Tobit into sections:

• Death: 1:1-2:10.

• Suicide: 3:1-17

• Alms-giving: 4:1-21

• Marriage: 2:11-14 & 6:9-7:18

• Sex: 8:1-9:6

• Parents: 10:1-11:6

• Healing: 6:6-8 & 11:7-17

• Angels: 5:1-6:5 & 12:1-22

• Prophecy: 13 & 14

This should allow me to take my Bible Study group through Tobit, discussing one topic each week.

 

Week One: Death.

Starting Thoughts.

1:1-2: intro. Before the story begins, presumably added later.

Shalmanser occurs in 2Kings 17. He apparently reigned from 727-722BC.

1:3: story in the first person. Rather exciting, as not many Biblical books are written in the first person.

Isn’t Tobit boastful? I remember a guy who visited Christian Focus once said ‘I’m the best Christian I know’ and we were all rather bemused. Here’s Tobit saying ‘I did many acts of charity for my kinsmen’, good for Tobit! I guess it’s a cultural thing. British people don’t boast.

1:4: I suspect that we could get a fairly clear date from this. When did the tribe of Naphtali break away from David’s dynasty? I think that the Israel/Judah split is about 922BC (Naphtali is one of the nine tribes that forms Israel) [http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/biblicalhistory/ss/ErasJewishHist_4.htm]

2:17-22: The Assyrians left bodies on high places to be eaten by ravens, but Tobit still buried his people. This part of the story is reminiscent of Antigone [http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html].

Antigone, when she is being tried for her life for the crime of burying her brother (who had led a campaign against her uncle’s sovreignty and so was condemmed to lie unburied) explained her position:

Creon: Now, tell me thou-not in many words, but briefly-knewest thou that an edict had forbidden this?

Antigone: I knew it: could I help it? It was public.

Creon: And thou didst indeed dare to transgress that law?

Antigone: Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict; not such are the laws set among men by the justice who dwells with the gods below; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life is not of to-day or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth.

The origins of the tale remain obscure. Although set in Nineveh, in the period of the Assyrian Empire, the most dramatic and mysterious part of the story takes place in Media and many scholars agree that key features contain strong hints of Zoroastrianism, the old Iranian religion adopted by the Magi of Media and later by the powerful empire of the Persians (from whom the Parsis of today are descended). From my researches into the story I formed the view that the dog, which in its positive representation is unique in Judaic/Christian literature, could be explained by an earlier Zoroastrian foundation to the story, a supposition which is borne out by the fact that Raghes, to which Tobit travelled in his youth, was known as ‘Zoroaster’s city’. For the Zoroastrians the dog was a sacred animal whose function was twofold: the dog was one means by which the bodies of the dead were disposed of, a ritual which makes good practical sense in a hot climate but which, for the Zoroastrians, had the more crucial religious function of sparing human contact with dead matter. The Assyrians, in fact, like the Jews they took into captivity, practised grave burial. Tobit’s preoccupation with burial of the dead is made more intelligible if seen to be set against the Magian practice of exposing the corpse to wild dogs and carrion eating birds of prey. [http://www.salleyvickers.com/pages/missgarnetsangel/zoroastrian_background.htm]

 

Zoroastrian burial rites center on exposure of the dead. After death, a dog is brought before the corpse (preferably a “four-eyed” dog, i.e., with a spot above each eye, believed to increase the efficacy of its gaze). The rite is repeated five times a day. After the first one, fire is brought into the room where it is kept burning until three days after the removal of the corpse to the Tower of Silence. The removal must be done during the daytime. The interior of the Tower of Silence is built in three concentric circles, one each for men, women, and children. The corpses are exposed there naked. The vultures do not take long—an hour or two at the most—to strip the flesh off the bones, and these, dried by the sun, are later swept into the central well. Formerly the bones were kept in an ossuary, the astodan, to preserve them from rain and animals. The morning of the fourth day is marked by the most solemn observance in the death ritual, for it is then that the departed soul reaches the next world and appears before the deities who are to pass judgment over it. [http://www.religionfacts.com/zoroastrianism/index.htm]

 

It seems to me that the real questions raised by Tobit’s actions are to do with conforming with society. To what extent is such conformation desirable? At what point does conformation become dangerous? The verses below might help to initiate discussion.

John 15:19: If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Romans 12:2: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

2 Corinthians 5:18-20: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

Romans 13:1: Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

So, where do we draw the lines? How do we know when to obey and when to stand against the world? Did Tobit chose the right lines to draw?

 

Is it always wrong to boast? The below verses may well help with this.

Psalm 44:8: In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever.

Jeremiah 9:23-24: This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.

2 Corinthians 10:13: We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you.

A week tomorrow, I am leading Communion for the first time!

While trying to prepare a service and write a sermon, I became fascinated with the line ‘every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’.

It’s been an uphill battle and I don’t think that I have got to the bottom of this one line. But, this is where I am.

Readings: 1Corinthians 11:23-32 and Ezekiel 2:9-3:11.

Movement of Repentance.

Paul expresses very clearly in this passage, the intimate connection between Communion and Repentance.

Paul tells us that before we take communion, we must examine ourselves.

To take communion without repentance, is to dishonour the sacrifice of Christ.

Repentance is about looking all around. Looking back at what you have been and what you have done, looking inwards at what you are and what you are doing, and looking forwards at what you will be and what you will do.

So before we join together in communion, let us take some time to reflect on ourselves.

Let us think of the week that has just gone by, of the day that we have just lived.

Let us think of the things that we have done, which we knew were wrong: of the times we lost our temper, of the times we were selfish or greedy, of the rubbish that we dropped, of the insults that we said and thought.

Let us think of the things that we refused to do, even though we knew that we should have done them: of the people we ignored, of the jobs that we left undone or half-completed, of the corners that we cut and the blind eyes that we turned.

Let us think of the people that we have hurt: the people we know and offended, the people we passed in the street and treated badly, the shop assistants with whom we were impatient, the slow walkers whom we pushed past in the street, the people we may never meet but whom we have none the less hurt: the poor people whom we allow to be exploited when we buy cheap items without bothering to consider their sources, the people who go behind us in restaurants, toilets and trains, cleaning up after us.

Repentance is not just about looking back at what we have done. It is also about taking stock of where we are now, looking honestly at ourselves. It is about recognising our own sinfulness and accepting responsibility for what we have done wrong.

Let us take a moment to consider ourselves. Let us see who we really are. Let us face our inward natures honestly. Considering our fears and our hopes, our weaknesses and our strengths, our desires and our needs.

Let us look at who we are. Let us remember the wonder of what God has made. We are a part of His creation, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Let us consider our own natural gifts and talents, all of those good things that God has made us to be.

Let us consider where we are and what we have done with God’s gifts. This is a time to take stock of our achievements and our failings.

What have we done that makes us proud? Think of something that you have done that makes you feel good inside. Think of some good work well done, some difficulty endured, some small sacrifice that you have made. What have you done that makes you feel proud?

What have we done that makes us sorry? Think of something that you knew you shouldn’t do, but did anyway. Think of a moment when you gave in to your selfishness and pleased yourself at someone else’s expense. What have you done that makes you feel sorry?

Finally, repentance is about looking forward. It is about resolving to do better next time and it is about choosing to make amends for what we have done.

We cannot divide ourselves up and allow the worshipping part of us to disassociate itself from the sinning part of us! If we repent today, then we should still be trying to avoid our sin tomorrow.

The mouth that receives this communion cannot go on to curse Christ! That is dishonouring His sacrifice for us.

Repentance is not only about resolving not to do something again. To trully repent, we must turn in another direction. It is far easier to try to DO something than it is to try to NOT DO something. Before we come to communion, we must make things right with those we have hurt. If they were here, we could apologise to them. If we will see them tomorrow, we might resolve now to put things right. If we have hurt people whom we may never meet, we can still consider recompense.

Have you hurt someone? Do you owe someone an apology?

Is there a bad habit that you need to break? Do you have to cut something out of your life that is tempting you?

If you need to make a resultion, then make it now. It’s no use feeling sorry, if we cannot be sorry. Repentance is an action, it is not an emotion. We can choose to turn the other way and to do the things that God wants us to do.

Let’s pray together:

Father God, we have all done things that we wish we hadn’t done.

We have all had momentary lapses of judgement and we have all, from time to time, cut ourselves too much slack and allowed ourselves to do things that we shouldn’t have done.

I have been lazy, short-tempered and self-indulgent. I am sorry.

We are sorry.

We want to turn away from these things. We want to stop living our lives our way and to start to live them Your way.

Please, Lord, help us to do better.

You sent Your own Son to die so that we could be forgiven and have a fresh start.

Thank You, Lord.

You sent Your Holy Spirit to live inside of us so that we can do great things for You.

Thank You, Lord.

May Your Kingdom come Lord, in the world and in each one of us.

Amen.

 

Sermon

Like Repentance, approaching Communion involves looking in three directions.

Firstly, we must look back at what Christ has done.

We make sense of the world by telling stories (which is good for me, because I love stories!).

And we all create a self-image for ourselves by telling stories about ourselves to other people. A great example would be those ‘confessional’ programs we see on television (like ‘Trisha’ and ‘Jeremy Kyle’). People enter the studio and these little boxes appear below them on the screen, summarising their ’story’ in a sentence or two.

Sometimes we can see new stories that we might like to include in our own story. Most adverts work by presenting a story that they hope we will aspire to include in our own narrative. We see an advert for an air freshener, for example, and rather than just saying: this is a new air freshner that smells nice, they say: I have a busy life, my family are happy and active, we do sports and then we all come home and relax together in front of the television, this air-freshner is a part of that story.

When we participate in Communion, we are re-telling Christ’s story and incorporating it into our own story. So that His redemptive death becomes our redemption.

Ezekiel’s eating the scroll strikes me as a pre-figuring of communion. We too are eating a story of woe. Like Ezekiel, we find that this story of woe tastes sweet to us, for what was bitter sacrifice to Christ is sweet salvation on our lips.

As we eat bread and wine here and now, we are not only remembering and commemorating what has already happened, we are also participating in an event ourselves.

Taking communion is the participation in the drama of God.

Taking communion is a sacrament: making the invisible realities visible and concrete.

“to withdraw to the real world where we are given eyes to see and ears to hear the advent of a Kingdom that the world has taught us to regard as only fantasy” [William Willimon, quoted in WoP]

Taking communion is a way of re-rooting ourselves in the real world. It is a way of reminding ourselves that there is a greater story than our own story, that there is something beyond death, that there is a plan behind all the chaos of life. When we taste the bread and the wine we make the spiritual realities concrete and physical and we feel them as real.

Communion is about accepting the love of Christ, it’s as simple as that.

The institution of communion doesn’t occur in John’s gospel. He doesn’t mention Christ giving bread and wine and calling it His body and His blood at all. Instead John describes how Christ stripped to the waist, knelt down and washed His disciples’ feet.

And Jack Dominion (a writer I greatly admire!) sees these two actions as accomplishing the same thing. Both are an outpouring of love, received with confusion, but acceptance.

“[The disciples] were not persuaded by [Christ’s] logic – indeed, they were even astonished by what He said and did, because they did not expect it. The real persuassion was that they felt loved. Love has a unique power which surpasses every other human experience. [. . .]

Jesus offers Himself and, in the transformation of the bread and wine, we are recepients of His total maturity, security, love, certainty of His self-esteem – the total recognition of Himself as a loving person. [. . .]

[T]he availability of each one of us is constrained by our physical, emotional, social and spiritual limitations. In the Eucharist, Jesus overcomes these limitations, offering Himself totally and in His entirety. It is a moment of limitless love[.]”

Kurt hates my conviction that this is one moment both then and now and forever. But, the offer that Christ made on that day was made to us just as surely as it was made to the disciples, “Take, eat, this is my body”, “Take, drink, this is my blood”.

Jonson said that Shakespeare was a writer not only for his own generation “but for all time”, and I think that there are many interesting debates to be had about the truth of such a statement. But there is no debate about this one: Christ’s sacrifice and Christ’s offer and Christ’s redemption were not only for that one meal two thousand years ago, not only for those people who stood by and watched Him die, not only for that one man to whom He said ‘tonight you will dine with me’, they are for all of us, for all time.

Christ’s sacrifice is for you.

Christ’s redemption is for you.

Christ’s offer is for you.

“Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you.”

We look back to what has been before, and we need to re-live the old story in order to work out where we are now and how we are going to re-write our new story.

Communion is about making sense of our lives again in the light of God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice. No longer is our story one of our own attempts and failures, now it is a story of our burgeoning relationship with God. All our faults and failings can be redeemed. Our weaknesses can be transformed and this world, that once seemed so chaotic and frightening, becomes a place of order, where one great plan is being worked out and one great story is being told.

When we take communion we are telling the story of Christ’s death. We are telling it to ourselves as individuals, we are telling it to ourselves as a congregation and we are telling it to God – reminding Him of His promise to us – and we are telling it to the rest of the world. For every time we take communion we are adding our voices to the great telling of the story.

To take communion is not a passive experience. To take communion is to take up the challenge. It is to become part of the biggest missionary team of all. It is to become part of the body of Christ.

We fill our stomachs with Christ’s story and then we must go and speak His word to our people. Ezekiel’s scroll filled his stomach and so he was filled with the word and the knowledge of God. We too eat the Word of God, and it will fill our stomachs so that we are filled with the Spirit of God. Because this is not ordinary bread that we eat.

It is not given to satisfy our bodily hunger, doesn’t Paul say that if we are hungry we should eat at home? We do not eat communion because we are hungry, we eat it so that Christ may be in us.

To eat communion is to become a witness of Christ’s work. Once we have eaten at this table we are bound to proclaim Christ’s message, we have no alternative.

None of us can say that we follow Christ but we are not witnesses for Him. None of us may say that we are not called to tell the story. That is not an option.

Like Ezekiel we are sent, not to an obscure people who speak a language that we do not understand, but to our own people. We are missionaries to those whom we understand and who understand us.

When I first felt obliged to preach on this passage I thought that I was looking to answer a question. I thought that I was going to find out – by prayer and by study – to whom we are proclaiming the death of Christ when we take communion. But I was wrong.

I am here to ask a question. To whom are you proclaiming Christ’s death?

Perhaps we are proclaiming Christ’s death to ourselves and to one another. Reminding ourselves of the sacrifice that our life has necessitated and reminding each other that Christ has died for each one of us.

It is our duty and our privilege to declare the good news and we all have our own mission field. Most of us are not called to spend years in Africa or China. Most of us are not called to distribute Bibles in languages that we do not know. Most of us are like Ezekiel, we are sent to our own people. Who are your people? To whom are you proclaiming Christ’s death?

We drink of the cup that Christ offers us and we then carry Christ Himself inside of us. We have now a gospel to proclaim. And our every action must serve to proclaim that gospel.

We proclaim Christ’s death when we buy a Big Issue on the street. We proclaim Christ’s death when we stop to pick up litter that someone else has dropped. We proclaim Christ’s death when we choose to buy fair-trade coffee, when we take the time to talk to someone we know to be lonely. We proclaim Christ’s death in the way that we dress, in the way that we decorate our houses. Christ’s death is a part of us, it fills us up like a spring of living water.

And, finally, at Communion we look forward.

Paul says ‘whenever you eat this bread or drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’.

Have you seen those badges that say “be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet”?

Well, Paul reminds me of those badges. He tells us that whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Our faith is not complete and our story is not yet finished.

We are awaiting the Lord’s return in triunph, when He will bring all things to completion and take up His rightful place as ruler of the earth.

The earth is the Lord’s, but He is not ruling it yet! We wait, with bated breath for the Lord’s return! And we remember that in communion, even as we celebrate the victory that is already Christ’s, we anticipate the final triumph that is yet to come.

And, until Christ does return, to rule over a world where all is as it should be, there will still be sin. Until Christ reigns over all, there will still be sin. We will continue to fail and we will continue, every single day, to make new reasons for Christ’s death to be necessary. Until He comes, His death will always be necessary.

“The Christian faith is not yet finished [. . .] these are ’signs and wonders’ pointing toward the as-yet-to-be-realised triumph of God.” [Thomas Long ‘The Witness of Preaching’]

As we take Communion, we are looking forward to the final triumph!

Communion reminds us where we are. It commemorates what has been and looks forward to what is to come. As we eat, we are remembering, we are participating and we are proclaiming. Communion is a joining of ourselves with God. In communion we are experiencing a spiritual reality as a physical reality. It is a moment in which we touch the real world. (because there is a more real world than this room in which we sit).

But ultimately none of this matters. Communion is not about understanding and it is not about explaining. Communion is acceptance of Christ. And it is not acceptance by word or by thought or by emotion, it is an action. We eat the bread, we drink the wine, we are in communion with God.

It is a mystery and it is intended to be. If my words have not helped you to prepare for this moment, then ignore them. This moment, this bread and this wine is what you came for.

I would that you met God in my words. I would that you met God in our worship. But do not worry if you did not. It is here, in this meal that you will meet Him. I do not invite you here, Christ does.

When I was preparing for this sermon, I went into the Lytlton Well Christian Bookshop in Malvern to look for a book about Communion – what it means and what is happening when we take it. I explained to the person working there that I was planning on preaching on communion and he said that he didn’t think that he had ever heard a sermon about communion. “It’s just something that you do” he said. And, of course, he is absolutely right!

We need not understand what is happening. We need aquiese to no set creed, we need say no set words, we need feel no particular emotion. We are invited to eat. Only that.

 

‘you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.’ (2 Corinthians 3:3)

 

Tobit is an Apocryphal book. It is not part of the Protestant Bible. You can read Tobit for free here: http://www.hope.edu/bandstra/BIBLE/TOB/TOB1.HTM

Apocrypha means ‘hidden things’ in Greek.

The problem is that different branches of Christianity regard different books as ‘hidden’. Tobit is a good example of this because it is accepted as cannonical by both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches.

As far as I can tell, the oldest surviving copy of Tobit is a Alexandrian (5th Century BC).

The earliest canonical lists all contain the Book of Tobias; they are those of the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), the Councils of Carthage (A.D. 397 and 419), St. Innocent I (A.D. 405), St. Augustine (A.D. 397). [see the Catholic Encyclopedia for more on this http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14749c.htm]

My first question, at this point, is as follows: in this time of eccumenism, is it time for us to re-examine the apocryphal books, if nothing else then for the sake of respecting our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world?

But, it is not an easy task.

“The precise genre of Tobit is difficult to determine. Like the book of Judith, Tobit may be a roman à clef or an extended parable. It may be an inspired, parabolic retelling of a popular folktale. The genre does not matter as long as the original readers could identify what kind of work they were reading, thus protecting the divine truthfulness of the book.” [taken from a neat essay entitled ‘Saving Judith and Tobit’, written by a Roman Catholic-convert, you can read the full thing here: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2003/0307bt.asp]

That’s a very odd statement. If the original readers could identify the precise genre then good for them, but if we cannot identify the genre for ourselves then doesn’t that put a huge obstacle in the way of our interpreting the book? However, that is not an insurmountable obstacle. Don’t we have difficulty deciding how we should read all the books from Genesis (is it a scientific text, an historic record or a parable?) to Revelation (apocalyptic literature, prophecy, coded message or what?)? We don’t let this difficulty stop us from tackling those texts, so we should not let it stop us from tackling Tobit.

So, this is the first post, and I hope to begin an exploration of Tobit.

P.S. there is of course a far less spiritual reason for my sudden interest in Tobit. I’ve just read ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ by Sally Vickers [see her website: http://www.salleyvickers.com/pages/missgarnetsangel/zoroastrian_background.htm]