Category: Lectionary Ramblings

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

September 10th 2014: Acts 9:19b-31

Read Acts 9:19b-31 here

Quite often in my Christian experience, I’ve found that being cautious is the de facto position. We are cautious to believe people in the veracity of their conversion experience stories, particularly if they include things we consider to be miraculous. We are cautious to allow people into positions of leadership, authority or teaching, particularly if we can’t first have sight or give ear to what they’re going to say, to ensure that it fits with our “programme” or our “platform”. Often this is for good reason. Those of us who are called to lead have a responsibility before God to lead and shepherd the flock we have had entrusted to us to the best of the abilities we have, and in the provision of God. Sometimes though, as in the case of Saul/Paul, the bubbling over of the Spirit cannot be quenched. It has to come out. Jesus has to be proclaimed.

How do we harbour this? The balance between the need for discipleship, first and foremost, followed by education and training on the one hand, and the desire to follow the leading of the Spirit in to spontaneous, unmediated opportunities for ministry on the other? I think like most things, it is a “both-and” situation rather than an “either-or”. Even in this story, the disciples are justifiably cautious – they know Saul’s reputation and it could easily have been an elaborate ruse to infiltrate the group and crush them from within. However, with the seal and mark of the Spirit comes the authenticity of faith – the proof of the pudding as it were, is the fruit of the ministry Paul undertakes in the synagogues of Damascus.

If you have a sense of vocation or calling, don’t wait, start to act on it. Be wise in seeking and gaining instruction and wisdom, but let’s be a Church of vitality and risk, rather than a stale Church marked by our caution and conservatism.

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September 9th 2014: Acts 9:1-19a

Read Acts 9:1-19a here

“why do you persecute me?”

Jesus doesn’t ask Saul why he is systematically hunting down and killing his followers. He asks why Saul is persecuting him, personally. When we face trials and troubles for “the sake of the name” it is easy for us to take them personally, to ask God to strengthen us that we may endure/succeed/overcome/be victorious. Ultimately though, Jesus’s question here is instructive and crucial. Just as we have seen earlier in Acts that the disciples were thankful for being counted worthy to suffer (something many of us find it hard to understand from the comfort of our cushy Western lifestyles) so we see here that persecution isn’t just about silencing the followers of a faith, it is about trying to stamp the faith out itself. Saul may well have thought that if enough Christians were dispatched, the fledgling faith would fizzle out. When he is faced with Jesus, however, the fruitlessness of the aim of persecution becomes obvious. This is not a man-made faith dreamed up and lived out in a fantastical fashion. This is the clearest and truest reality there has ever been. Jesus, the very God takes Saul’s persecution personally, and acts to show its futility. The future of the Church would never be the same as a result.

Many people face pressure for their faith. Even as people seek to stamp out Jesus by crushing his followers, history tells us that this will never truly work. If you find yourself facing trouble today for the sake of Jesus, rejoice (if you can, it’s hard!) in knowing that fear leads people to seek to stamp him out, and that he won’t be defeated, whatever any of us think. Know too that he has promised to be with you, right until the end. You can do this, because he has done it all.

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September 8th 2014: Acts 8:26-40

Read Acts 8:26-40 here

Theere are several elements of the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch that merit attention for me. One is the fact that the Eunuch was reading Isaiah at all. Why was he doing so? How did he come upon this prophet? How did Philip see what he was reading? Was he looking perplexed and so Philip was led to ask whether he understood what he was reading? And why did he think Philip could explain it to him? So many questions that we can never know the answers to.

I can see this passage as being a key driver for expository preaching. If a “not-yet-believer” knows, or believes, that in the explaining of Scripture life and hope might reside, how much more might those of us believe benefit from gaining greater understanding of Scripture? It was quite neat, however, for Luke in this story to write the narrative in this way. Did this really happen as Luke reports?

If we take this kind of story the wrong way, we can put pressure on ourselves, and on God, perhaps more pertinently, to always speak powerfully for salvation, every time we open our mouths to talk about God. I might lack faith, but I can’t really see that this always happens, however much we feverishly hope and pray that it might do, or manipulate our thoughts and feelings to try and prove that it does.

What really gets me about this story comes in verse 39, in which we find Philip immediately spirited away, in a similar fashion to that which happened to Jesus on the road from Jerusalem. We’re told that the Eunuch went on his way joyfully. Who saw this? Was he not perplexed by what had just occurred? What about Philip? How did he feel?

So many questions. It might sound like I’m sceptical. Perhaps I am. The key thing for me is that God was glorified by what he called Philip to do and what transpired. The danger for us is to seek the miraculous, or the stupefying as being the only means in which God acts. This is not the caae. For me, there has to be more to the action and life of God than this. What do you think?

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September 7th 2014: Romans 13:8-14 (Talk Text)

What does it mean to love one another? Here are a few ideas. See if you like any of them…

 

  • Being nice to people
  • Being nice to people you don’t like
  • Being generous, or sharing what you have so that others don’t go short/go hungry
  • Treating everyone the same as you.
  • Expecting everyone to agree with you.

 

At different times I think most of us, if we are honest, have limited our ideas of love to one of these, or a mixture of them. It can be pretty difficult to love at times can’t it. Some of us have bad experiences of giving or receiving “love” from those who we trusted to care for us, but who instead let us down. Some of us have done that to people we cared very deeply about. It’s easy for us to spend our whole lives feeling guilty, like we don’t deserve love from anybody, or from God. One of the things that this kind of thinking does is make it very hard for us to love ourselves.

 

As we look at the reading from this morning, Paul is telling us that the whole of the law, that complex system God created for people to relate to Him, themselves, and one another, can be summed up in the phrase “love your neighbor as yourself.” Growing up in Church I was more than aware of the old phrase, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Many of us have heard this many times. We think we understand what it is to love God (although I’m not sure any of us really do), we work hard at loving other people in some of the ways I’ve described above, but we’re not very good at loving ourselves.       A few years ago, a fellow minister pulled me up short when I was saying about how much I loved God, and sought to love others, but I didn’t want to love myself, because I was always sinning, always messing up etc. He very clearly explained to me that in order to love my neighbor, those around me, I had to love myself too. To say that I love God and my neighbor without loving myself is to lie. Don’t become all about yourself though. We are to put others first. Living in a community of faith and hope like Emmanuel, my dream is that as each of us puts others first, we too will have an other who will put us first. Wouldn’t that be great?

 

Without love we cannot please God. God is love and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. So how are we to live in love?

 

Well, I think what our reading this morning invites us to do is “clothe ourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ”. This doesn’t mean wearing Jesus like a coat, that would be a bit too odd. What it means is, I think, get to know Jesus, get to know Him and His ways of living. Understand what He asked people to be, how He asked people to live. After all, it was him who said that the whole of the law was summed up in the command to love. If we clothe ourselves with Christ, putting Christ first rather than what the bible calls the desires of the flesh, but which means here, our own selfishness and our own desires, we will see that we are meant to live for God, to serve Him and others. Jesus came to serve us, and as we follow His way, one of the best ways we can do this is to lay down our life for our friends, our neighbours.

 

Who is our neighbor? Everyone, not just the people who live near us, or the people sitting next to us this morning.

 

If we’re going to lay down our lives for our friends, we might give time, money, food, prayer to them, just as we were talking about last week, but there’s something else we can give to them too. As I said earlier, everything we’re asked to do is summed up in the command to love our neighbours as ourselves. And again, as I said earlier, without God there is no love. God didn’t just invent love, He is love. It is His character, His personality, His essence. It defines Him even more clearly than my beard, my wheelchair or my dog collar define me. Jesus lived, died, rose and ascended to heaven to express in the most complete and powerful way possible that God loves us, so that we might have life and have it to the full. Most of us here this morning are here because we know Jesus, or about Jesus, in some way. Most of us are here because we were invited, or welcomed, or felt the need or desire, to respond to Jesus and His love, and to follow after Him. If you don’t know Jesus this morning, or you’re skeptical about Him and what I’m saying about Him, then come and talk to me afterwards. If you know Jesus though, I hope you’d agree that the message of life we’ve been given is the best news we could ever have.

 

So, one of the best ways we can have as Christians to love one another is to tell the story of our lives, as far as we can to tell people about what we believe and why we do. We don’t all have to eloquent, or preach standing on tables. I’ll never manage that. What we can be is open and honest. Do we really believe that God loves us? Do we really want to love others? Then let’s be a community that loves ourselves, loves God, loves one another, and invites people to join with us and share in the joy and hope that we’ve been welcomed in to.

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September 6th 2014: Acts 8:4-25

Read Acts 8:4-25 here

It’s easy for us to be seduced by the trappings of success, or to chase after it. This is what seems to happen to Simon the Sorcerer here. Having seen what has happened in Samaaria, believed and been baptised. He fundamentally misunderstands the gift of the Spirit, offering to pay to receive them. As is normal, Peter reacts gruffly, abruptly and without much grace at all. It’s easy for us to identify with him. A lot of us have known, or even been ourselves, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, someone who wants the glory but doesn’t want to make the heart commitment, or sacrifice, or suffer. We can judge them. Most of us can probably think of “celebrity pastors”. A lot of them end up falling or failing publicly. Often, I have caught myself enjoying this failure. What a terrible thing to have to admit.

Peter’s retort to Simon is that his heart isn’t in the right place, and so he has no place in the inheritance of the kingdom. How Peter is able to make such a statement with impunity I’m not sure. I don’t quite understand how his heart was in the right place and Simon’s wasn’t, but that’s probably a debate for another day. We must fight against taking the moral high ground in issues of faith, morality and ethics. Our task is to love God, love our neighbours and love ourselves, not judge or decry the lives of others.

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September 3rd 2014: Acts 7:17-43, September 4th 2014: Acts 7:44-53 and September 5th 2014: Acts 7:54-8:3

Read Acts 7:17-8:3 here

Things move tremendously quickly in the story of the fledgling Church through the end of Acts 7 and the start of Chapter 8. Stephen’s compelling history of the people of God and the failings of the current Jewish leadership to acknowledge the Lordship of God in Christ lead to his own murder, and the eruption of a great persecution against the Church. Jesus had warned that persecution would come because of following Him, and we have already read recently of the disciples rejoicing about being deemed worthy of suffering “for the name”. Personally I wonder if persecution was inevitable, whether the authorities were merely waiting for an excuse, or whether Stephen’s blasphemous speech brought it about. I wonder if Stephen knew what he was doing when he saw Christ in heaven. Did the disciples welcome the persecution as a sign of the imminent return of Jesus?

Do we see it as a privilege to suffer? I’m not sure I do. Do we see suffering as an aspect of the Christian life to rejoice in? I’m not sure I do.

Clearly, to align ourselves with Jesus invites the potential for suffering, as well as life, hope and a future. The evident confidence and conviction of the early followers of Jesus in the truth of their cause is something we would all benefit from. How do we gain it? As far removed historically as we are from these events it can be difficult. Cultivate relationship with God. Prayer is a conversation. Scripture is there for us to dialogue with, so as to gain an insight in to the character of our God, and the character and actions desired of us. Build fellowship and community with other believers. Disagree well. Ask for wisdom to see and know God in the everyday, as well as experiencing His love and grace in the miraculous. Most of all, have faith and hope. We have a tendency to see both of these as tentative, and head-knowledge-based. Rather these are decisions of the heart. Choose to trust. Choose to hope. Whatever might come to us, whether we think it is good or bad, it is this hope that will point us towards God, who ultimately is the only sustainer.

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September 1st 2014: Acts 6

Read Acts 6 here

My favourite verse here is verse 7. After a description of the choosing of the men among the disciples who were “full of the spirit and wisdom” to serve at table, we are told immediately, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, that the word of God continued to spread and that many came to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ. It is interesting that it was not capability, but character which effected the choice of those to serve, but even more interesting for me is the idea that, having chosen and given out roles with integrity and wisdom, this had an impact on the spreading of the gospel. How often do we talk about gifts and talents, veiled language of capability and validity? We place certain roles (Preacher, Music Leader/Choir Master, Flower Rota Co-ordinator, it could be anything depending on what Church you are in) above others and honour certain types of people particularly because of what they can do, not necessarily who they are. Our Churches run the risk of being just like the rest of the world, but with prejudices legitimised by super-spiritual language. None of us are more special than any other. It is character that marks us out as having any kind of suitability, not anything else. There are more than enough skills to go round, is there enough integrity?

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August 31st 2014: Matthew 16:21-28 (Talk text)

Here is the text of the talk I gave to my Church yesterday morning, which can act as a Lectionary Rambling for that day! (I got a bit behind with being away at the end of last week and over the weekend. Many apologies!)

————–

I wonder, how many of us are backseat drivers? You know the sort of person. You’re being driven around, but you don’t think too much of the quality of the driving, or you see an opportunity to overtake, or you think your driver is moving too fast or too slow, or you worry about running into oncoming sheep. When I was young, my grandmother had a wonderful habit of doing this. We’d round a bend and she’d be gripping the door handle, silently praying for deliverance. I find now as I get older (having reached the grand old age of 30) that I do the same. It doesn’t matter who is driving. Nor does it matter that I can’t drive. I have a kind of messed up Spidey-sense for danger or potential difficulty. Quite often I find myself bracing, or holding the car door, or imagining some terrible thing is about to happen. But the thing is, it never does. I’m here to tell the embarrassing tale. And more than this, I’m not the one in the driving seat.

 

Jesus is talking about something similar in our reading today. It’s a mistake for us to think that we’re in charge, that life is all about us, that we control everything. God is in charge. He loves us. He knows what is best for us. He has offered us life now, and eternally. We can be forgiven, free, hopeful, joyful. Quite often though, we just want what we want, don’t we?

 

I don’t know about you, but I like getting my own way. I like eating the food I like, when I want to. I like watching the TV programmes I want to watch when I want to watch them. I like working hard, making my life better, getting my own way, doing my own thing, even making sure that life for Jo and I is good because I am doing well and working hard. In and of itself, working hard for my own future and for my family isn’t a bad thing, but as Jesus warns us in our reading this morning, we have to be careful. What good is it for us to work so hard that we gain the whole world, but we forget that we are made for God? What good is it for us to be “successful” or even “rich” if we lose the bigger picture of what life is about?

 

So what is life all about? Well Jesus loves us. God has had our names and our lives on His heart and mind since before eternity. We are made for Him, for His pleasure, and to love one another, as well as loving ourselves. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. Jesus died so that we could be forgiven for all the ways we’ve lived and will live that don’t please God. Jesus rose again to show that He was more powerful than any power in all of creation, even death. Jesus went up to heaven to be with His Father to spend the whole of our lives praying for us, so that, when the time comes, we can join God in the age to come.

 

“Anyone who wants to follow after me has to let me lead” says Jesus. We don’t like that so much often. We think we’d be better at leading. “Self-help is no help at all”. Again, not so keen on that one. We’re told that God helps those who help themselves. This is nonsense. God waits for us to come to Him with arms wide open, to rely on Him, to trust Him. Are we willing? Are we brave enough?

 

“What could you ever trade your soul for?” asks Jesus. Well indeed. I’m not sure my soul is my own to trade anyway. That kind of thinking comes from thinking or wishing that I was in the driving seat.

 

After all, soon, Jesus promises, He will come with His angels, all will be changed, all will be new. There will be no more death, no more pain, no more tears, only freedom, hope and joy. It is something for us to hold on to hope for. How do we prepare for a life like that? We put God first in our lives. We seek to follow Him as best we can and accept His love and forgiveness when we get things wrong. We look out for others, we put their needs and what they want before what we need or want. We share, we play nicely together, we talk well of each other. We are generous, we give of ourselves, just as Jesus gave of Himself for us. The best way that we can be remembered when people talk about us is to be known as people who made sacrifices, loved God and loved people.

 

“But, Haydon” you might ask, “what difference does all that make? What should I do differently?” Well here’s what I think. This week, find ways to put other people first. Find ways to care for one another, to serve one another. Share food, share games or books. Give time to each other. Most of all, pray for each other, pray for the people you meet, that God would give you a chance to show them how much He loves them, and that he would help you to love them too.

 

So, what kind of a person do we want to be? Are you going to carry on trying to backseat drive your life, or barge Jesus out of the way to get in to the driving seat and put your foot down on the accelerator, or are you going to be content to let Him drive and enjoy the ride?

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August 30th 2014: Acts 5:27-42

Read Acts 5:27-42 here

“Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

His speech persuaded them. They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.”

“If it is of God, you will not be able to stop these men”. This is quite some wisdom from Gamiliel. Even in the midst of what amounted to blasphemy, he was able to keep his head and sense that there may have been something of God in what the apostles were doing and teaching. It is also, perhaps likely that he thought that their “revolt” would fade away just as the others he recounted had done. Whether or not he was speaking out of reverence for what God might do, or ridiculing the apostles, I do not know, but still, he hit upon something important. God cannot be thwarted. His purposes cannot be denied. We might think we’re in charge, or that we are defeating those who act in the name of God, but if people are actually working in the name of God (and who are we to tell whether they are or not?) nothing we can do will stop them from succeeding. Sometimes it is best for us to stand back and watch for signs of the action of God, particularly when God might act in a way which is beyond our usual understanding of His function. Shockingly God can act however He wants to. We would do well to remember that.

Later in the reading this morning, we see the apostles rejoicing because they were counted worthy to “suffer disgrace for the Name”. There are places all over the world where people heed this call today. Much of our teaching at the present time does not lead us to rejoice over being considered worthy to suffer because of Jesus. I wonder if our soft teaching will be challenged in the coming months and years.

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August 29th 2014: Acts 5:12-26

Read Acts 5:12-26 here

“Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy”

In today’s reading we find one of the first examples of persecution of Christians. Why does it happen? Jealousy. Jealousy is at the root of most problems in human life. We find it so hard to live and co-exist together? Why is that? I’ll never know. Is it because we don’t think we’re good enough without having power over others? Is it because we don’t like our own lives, see someone who has a life we wish we had so strive to steal it for ourselves? Is it a fear, a need to protect a truth which is more than capable of defending itself? Whatever it is, rather than casting ourselves favourably when set against the leaders depicted poorly in this story, let’s be aware that jealousy is something we all fall into and are prone to, and resolve not to be persecutors ourselves.