Sermon 7th January 2007
Here is the first sermon of 2007 from our Vicar, Cameron Barker. It is based on the reading from Luke 3: 1-6
2007 in church begins with a short quiz – to test your knowledge of contemporary history. In case this idea doesn’t grab you, by the way, let me say that it’s light relief compared to how next week’s sermon will begin!
Anyway, this week I’m inviting you to identify the year. So, what year was it, when: Leonid Brezhnev was leader of USSR; Mao Tse-tung was leader of PR China; Nicolae Ceausescu was the leader of Romania; Idi Amin ruled Uganda; Pol Pot was in charge in Cambodia; Paul VI was Pope; and Donald Coggan was Archbishop of Canterbury. What year was that, then? … (1975 or 1976)
That’s a relief! I started to feel old when my computer’s spell-check questioned so many of those names. But I did hope that several of you would at least get close to the year. I trust that none of you cheated by using your Blackberry to access the Internet – which would have defeated the object of the exercise! The point simply was to get you to identify the year – in the same way that Luke invited his readers to identify the year that he was writing about.
Luke was most likely writing 30-something years after the events he described at the start of chapter 3. That makes it very similar to the exercise we’ve just done – as does that list of names! Luke’s list may not mean much to most of us nearly 2 000 later. But, like our list – the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury excepted, of course! – these were names to strike fear into the hearts of their hearers.
Tiberius was the second Roman Emperor – and he ruled the known ancient world with a rod of iron. By this point in his reign he was already insisting on being worshipped as a god. Anyone who refused – as any honourable Jew would have done – faced summary execution. Rome never brooked any opposition – and Rome ruled Israel, as the people who lived there knew all too well!
In the 1st Century AD Rome had ruled Israel for about 100 years. In the southern part, Judea, it was now direct rule – in the person of Pontius Pilate, the Governor. He may have lived mostly on the coast, but he also kept a palace in Jerusalem. As we know from the life of Jesus, Pilate was well capable of visiting Jerusalem to sentence rebels to death in the name of Rome. It may have been another source of outrage to the natives – but they were a subject people, who therefore wouldn’t dare complain too much.
And the natives were equally powerless to challenge the status quo in the north of their country too. Up there the spoils were being divided between the half-brothers Herod and Philip. Their father, Herod, the so-called ‘Great’, was one of the most hated people in Israel’s recent history. He had founded the local self-declared ‘royal’ household that had welcomed the Romans in. And his sons were no better than he had been. They also collaborated with the enemy occupier, willingly doing Rome’s bidding, in Rome’s brutal way – and making themselves even richer as they did so.
These were desperate days for Israel back in 28-30 AD, the time that Luke wrote about. For devout Jews it’d been desperate for a much longer time. 400 years had gone by since God had last sent a prophet to his people. 400 years of silence and apparent divine abandonment. And now the Romans were taking charge of even that area of Israel’s life! High priests?! Any decent Jew would tell you that there could only ever be one of them, and that he had the job for life. But the Romans hadn’t liked Annas. So they’d replaced him, with Caiaphas – his own son-in-law! How bad was that? But what could anyone do about it? Nothing!
But then, at that time, in those circumstances, the word of God came to someone again, at last. It came to someone about whom we heard rather a lot in the run-up to Christmas. Actually what we heard about was the promise of this person’s birth; his father’s reaction to that promise; and also his father’s reaction to the birth itself. No, not Jesus – but John the Baptist! In about 28-30 AD the word of God came to John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah. He was in the desert, ready and waiting for it. He’d spent his whole life since his special birth to elderly parents preparing for this moment.
Now, John and Jesus were born at pretty much the same time, and certainly less than 9 months apart. So, to state the obvious, some time had passed since their births! We may only be starting Luke chapter 3, but there’s been quite a time-gap since the story that chapter 2 ended with. That itself had already been a big step forward in time. Luke had skipped from when Jesus was 8 days old, to when he was 12 years old! This step is even larger – on another 18 years or so! But by now Luke was keen to get to the meat of this amazing story that had changed his whole life.
Luke wrote down in full the results of his careful research into the story of Jesus. He did that deliberately, both for himself, and for the people he wrote his book for. Luke was a Gentile, a non-Jew. Like his fellow gospel-writer, Mark, he hadn’t been one of Jesus’ disciples himself. But, also like Mark, he’d quickly become involved in the life of the early church. We don’t know how Luke got involved. But we know that he wrote the book of Acts, where he appeared as one of Paul’s travelling companions. Again like Mark, Luke had talked to those who’d had first-hand experience of Jesus. He had heard and recorded their stories. And now he wrote them all down, so his non-Jewish audience could also know who Jesus was.
It’s important that we know the background to this book. This is basically what adults will be studying here for the next 3 months – Luke’s account of what came after the Christmas drama. This is a good book to study in its own right anyway, but we have extra reason to do so. Those who were here last week heard Adrian say that our Year of Growing Outwards can’t be over! And it isn’t! At the start of this year we’ll go on thinking about how we can be more mission-shaped as a church. We’re also going to do things about becoming more mission-shaped. So do make sure that you are at the Listening Day on 27th January – to find out and help shape the what! Don’t worry if you can’t make it – looking at Luke on Sundays is going to help us too!
We won’t reach the key verse in Luke in this series. So let me read you now the verse that tells us what Luke believed is at the heart of the Gospel. In Jesus’ own words, this was – and is – his purpose: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”. That was what Luke wanted to communicate to his readers. He wanted them to know how Jesus longed to find them and save them, just as he’d done for Luke himself. And that is the same task that the church has been engaged in ever since: telling and showing people this good news about what Jesus has done and why!
This is why we want, and need, to be more mission-shaped! We believe in a God who in his son has come to seek and to save the lost. This is the truth that we were reminded of at Christmas. This God gave up the splendour of heaven for the squalor of a stable. He chose to be born in that place, in those dark times – to seek and save the lost. So how can we, who once were lost but now have been found by him, not do what Luke did? How can we not tell and show as many people as we can the good news of God in Christ?
The next big event in the Christian year is Easter. That’s when we’ll remember exactly what Jesus did for the lost, and just how high a price he paid for us. But we’ve got some time before we get there. So we can concentrate now on being prepared for it; which is just what we’re going to do! This week and next, before the big joint Churches Together service, we’ll look at the ministry of John the Baptist. He was the one to whom the word of God came, in the desert, at that time. As we heard in our reading, the specific task that he was given was to get people ready for Jesus. John’s job was to prepare the way for the Lord – and to do it in a fashion that enabled everyone to see God’s salvation!
That was an important part of the prophecy for a Gentile like Luke. It’s important for us too, though much less of an issue for us today. What’s more important, though – then and now – is how John got people ready to receive the Lord. We’ll look at that in much more detail next week, and it’ll get very practical too! But I’d best alert you now to this fact – that it’s all about repentance! This isn’t a topic that we have spent much time on – yet, anyway! The Christian life is more than ‘just’ about repentance, of course; but it’s never less than it. And John’s message to that effect may be a very timely one as we try to become more mission-shaped.
As I say, we’ll go into it in much more detail next week. But in case you won’t be here, or to whet your appetite, I’ll say this now. This is how John the Baptist preached to the people who were desperate to hear from God! They knew what God had done for them in the past. They knew – even if only vaguely – what he’d promised to do for them in the future. They knew that they needed God to rescue them from this slavery now, like he had done before. They hoped and trusted that he would do it. But John’s message still came as a shock. He echoed the OT prophets rather too closely – by saying that repentance had to go before God’s rescue!
John offered people a symbol of repentance, in the form of baptism. Again as we’ll hear next week, the sign didn’t mean anything in itself. What mattered were the changed lives that had to go with the sign: that’s what made it real. And so that’s what I want to offer to you for a possible New Year’s Resolution – not baptism, but the evidence of a changed life that makes your baptism real!
All significant spiritual advances begin with a turning from something that gets in the way of us obeying God. For all of us there are things that get in the way of obeying God. So, at the start of 2007, will you repent of whatever that is for you? And will you then go on repenting of it, by living a changed life this year? If we do want to be more mission-shaped this year then it will take all of us being obedient to where God is leading us. And that means you as well as me! So will you use these next two weeks to prepare the way for what the Lord wants to do here this year; by repenting? And will you then choose to obey God, by finding ways to tell and show others the good news of God in Christ? I’m going to be bold enough to pray that we will. So let’s pray …
2007 in church begins with a short quiz – to test your knowledge of contemporary history. In case this idea doesn’t grab you, by the way, let me say that it’s light relief compared to how next week’s sermon will begin!
Anyway, this week I’m inviting you to identify the year. So, what year was it, when: Leonid Brezhnev was leader of USSR; Mao Tse-tung was leader of PR China; Nicolae Ceausescu was the leader of Romania; Idi Amin ruled Uganda; Pol Pot was in charge in Cambodia; Paul VI was Pope; and Donald Coggan was Archbishop of Canterbury. What year was that, then? … (1975 or 1976)
That’s a relief! I started to feel old when my computer’s spell-check questioned so many of those names. But I did hope that several of you would at least get close to the year. I trust that none of you cheated by using your Blackberry to access the Internet – which would have defeated the object of the exercise! The point simply was to get you to identify the year – in the same way that Luke invited his readers to identify the year that he was writing about.
Luke was most likely writing 30-something years after the events he described at the start of chapter 3. That makes it very similar to the exercise we’ve just done – as does that list of names! Luke’s list may not mean much to most of us nearly 2 000 later. But, like our list – the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury excepted, of course! – these were names to strike fear into the hearts of their hearers.
Tiberius was the second Roman Emperor – and he ruled the known ancient world with a rod of iron. By this point in his reign he was already insisting on being worshipped as a god. Anyone who refused – as any honourable Jew would have done – faced summary execution. Rome never brooked any opposition – and Rome ruled Israel, as the people who lived there knew all too well!
In the 1st Century AD Rome had ruled Israel for about 100 years. In the southern part, Judea, it was now direct rule – in the person of Pontius Pilate, the Governor. He may have lived mostly on the coast, but he also kept a palace in Jerusalem. As we know from the life of Jesus, Pilate was well capable of visiting Jerusalem to sentence rebels to death in the name of Rome. It may have been another source of outrage to the natives – but they were a subject people, who therefore wouldn’t dare complain too much.
And the natives were equally powerless to challenge the status quo in the north of their country too. Up there the spoils were being divided between the half-brothers Herod and Philip. Their father, Herod, the so-called ‘Great’, was one of the most hated people in Israel’s recent history. He had founded the local self-declared ‘royal’ household that had welcomed the Romans in. And his sons were no better than he had been. They also collaborated with the enemy occupier, willingly doing Rome’s bidding, in Rome’s brutal way – and making themselves even richer as they did so.
These were desperate days for Israel back in 28-30 AD, the time that Luke wrote about. For devout Jews it’d been desperate for a much longer time. 400 years had gone by since God had last sent a prophet to his people. 400 years of silence and apparent divine abandonment. And now the Romans were taking charge of even that area of Israel’s life! High priests?! Any decent Jew would tell you that there could only ever be one of them, and that he had the job for life. But the Romans hadn’t liked Annas. So they’d replaced him, with Caiaphas – his own son-in-law! How bad was that? But what could anyone do about it? Nothing!
But then, at that time, in those circumstances, the word of God came to someone again, at last. It came to someone about whom we heard rather a lot in the run-up to Christmas. Actually what we heard about was the promise of this person’s birth; his father’s reaction to that promise; and also his father’s reaction to the birth itself. No, not Jesus – but John the Baptist! In about 28-30 AD the word of God came to John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah. He was in the desert, ready and waiting for it. He’d spent his whole life since his special birth to elderly parents preparing for this moment.
Now, John and Jesus were born at pretty much the same time, and certainly less than 9 months apart. So, to state the obvious, some time had passed since their births! We may only be starting Luke chapter 3, but there’s been quite a time-gap since the story that chapter 2 ended with. That itself had already been a big step forward in time. Luke had skipped from when Jesus was 8 days old, to when he was 12 years old! This step is even larger – on another 18 years or so! But by now Luke was keen to get to the meat of this amazing story that had changed his whole life.
Luke wrote down in full the results of his careful research into the story of Jesus. He did that deliberately, both for himself, and for the people he wrote his book for. Luke was a Gentile, a non-Jew. Like his fellow gospel-writer, Mark, he hadn’t been one of Jesus’ disciples himself. But, also like Mark, he’d quickly become involved in the life of the early church. We don’t know how Luke got involved. But we know that he wrote the book of Acts, where he appeared as one of Paul’s travelling companions. Again like Mark, Luke had talked to those who’d had first-hand experience of Jesus. He had heard and recorded their stories. And now he wrote them all down, so his non-Jewish audience could also know who Jesus was.
It’s important that we know the background to this book. This is basically what adults will be studying here for the next 3 months – Luke’s account of what came after the Christmas drama. This is a good book to study in its own right anyway, but we have extra reason to do so. Those who were here last week heard Adrian say that our Year of Growing Outwards can’t be over! And it isn’t! At the start of this year we’ll go on thinking about how we can be more mission-shaped as a church. We’re also going to do things about becoming more mission-shaped. So do make sure that you are at the Listening Day on 27th January – to find out and help shape the what! Don’t worry if you can’t make it – looking at Luke on Sundays is going to help us too!
We won’t reach the key verse in Luke in this series. So let me read you now the verse that tells us what Luke believed is at the heart of the Gospel. In Jesus’ own words, this was – and is – his purpose: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”. That was what Luke wanted to communicate to his readers. He wanted them to know how Jesus longed to find them and save them, just as he’d done for Luke himself. And that is the same task that the church has been engaged in ever since: telling and showing people this good news about what Jesus has done and why!
This is why we want, and need, to be more mission-shaped! We believe in a God who in his son has come to seek and to save the lost. This is the truth that we were reminded of at Christmas. This God gave up the splendour of heaven for the squalor of a stable. He chose to be born in that place, in those dark times – to seek and save the lost. So how can we, who once were lost but now have been found by him, not do what Luke did? How can we not tell and show as many people as we can the good news of God in Christ?
The next big event in the Christian year is Easter. That’s when we’ll remember exactly what Jesus did for the lost, and just how high a price he paid for us. But we’ve got some time before we get there. So we can concentrate now on being prepared for it; which is just what we’re going to do! This week and next, before the big joint Churches Together service, we’ll look at the ministry of John the Baptist. He was the one to whom the word of God came, in the desert, at that time. As we heard in our reading, the specific task that he was given was to get people ready for Jesus. John’s job was to prepare the way for the Lord – and to do it in a fashion that enabled everyone to see God’s salvation!
That was an important part of the prophecy for a Gentile like Luke. It’s important for us too, though much less of an issue for us today. What’s more important, though – then and now – is how John got people ready to receive the Lord. We’ll look at that in much more detail next week, and it’ll get very practical too! But I’d best alert you now to this fact – that it’s all about repentance! This isn’t a topic that we have spent much time on – yet, anyway! The Christian life is more than ‘just’ about repentance, of course; but it’s never less than it. And John’s message to that effect may be a very timely one as we try to become more mission-shaped.
As I say, we’ll go into it in much more detail next week. But in case you won’t be here, or to whet your appetite, I’ll say this now. This is how John the Baptist preached to the people who were desperate to hear from God! They knew what God had done for them in the past. They knew – even if only vaguely – what he’d promised to do for them in the future. They knew that they needed God to rescue them from this slavery now, like he had done before. They hoped and trusted that he would do it. But John’s message still came as a shock. He echoed the OT prophets rather too closely – by saying that repentance had to go before God’s rescue!
John offered people a symbol of repentance, in the form of baptism. Again as we’ll hear next week, the sign didn’t mean anything in itself. What mattered were the changed lives that had to go with the sign: that’s what made it real. And so that’s what I want to offer to you for a possible New Year’s Resolution – not baptism, but the evidence of a changed life that makes your baptism real!
All significant spiritual advances begin with a turning from something that gets in the way of us obeying God. For all of us there are things that get in the way of obeying God. So, at the start of 2007, will you repent of whatever that is for you? And will you then go on repenting of it, by living a changed life this year? If we do want to be more mission-shaped this year then it will take all of us being obedient to where God is leading us. And that means you as well as me! So will you use these next two weeks to prepare the way for what the Lord wants to do here this year; by repenting? And will you then choose to obey God, by finding ways to tell and show others the good news of God in Christ? I’m going to be bold enough to pray that we will. So let’s pray …
posted by Parish Administrator at 10:40 pm
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