Sermon 24th March 2013

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Luke 19 verses 28-40.

So: how’s your Latin?! If I were to say, “Vox populi, vox Dei”, who would know what that means? “The voice of the people is the voice of God”. Well, wouldn’t life be so much simpler if that saying was true! Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to do to know what God wanted was to take a vote? But, sadly, experience teaches us that all too often the voice of the people is, in fact, not the voice of God.

It’s not at all hard to think of countless examples of when that has been the case, when a popular cause has been far from the will of God. How about the Crusades? Or the Inquisition? What about the slave trade? Those are just 3 notorious times in history when people have claimed they knew what God wanted, and then later been proved badly wrong. But none of those instances comes even close to being as spectacularly wrong as what we’ve heard today. It just is not possible to be as wrong about the purpose of God as the crowds were on that first Palm Sunday.

As ever, the crowds could make a good case for believing what they did. Those were exciting times for anyone who had been following the travelling preacher from Nazareth. For the past 3 years he’d been doing amazing things – as well as preaching in ways that’d never been heard before. Jesus had given blind people their sight; he’d made lame people walk; he’d even brought the dead back to life – and there were numerous witnesses to all these miracles. All sorts of people had given up their lives to follow him: from hot-headed fishermen; to the hardest First-Century nuts of all, tax-collectors. Jesus had transformed their lives too: he’d even sent them out, to preach his message and do his work all over the place.

Of all people, we should understand this rather better than most. This Lent adults here have read through almost this entire story as it’s told by Luke. These events are fresh in our minds too, then. So, as we reach this day, and come to this part of the story, we should easily grasp why people thought that in Jesus God was doing a new and wonderful thing. Even if we do already know how this story ends, we can see how this event looks like it’s history in making. We may still need help with why these crowds were sure that any doubts they’d had were being dispelled before their eyes. So, to spell that out, until now in Luke Jesus stayed away from Jerusalem, Israel’s religious and political capital. But here Luke has him coming into the city, in ways that Jesus had obviously chosen to prove who he truly was. He was riding a donkey, one that he’d maybe acquired in a miraculous way. But even if there was a natural explanation for it, this was another sign of Jesus’ identity – and the obvious fulfilment of an Old Testament prophecy (as Matthew spells out in his Gospel).

As we heard, Luke laid it on thick – in keeping with Jesus’ own actions and intentions. There could not have been a more public time for Jesus to arrive. This was the Passover, the greatest festival of the Jewish religious year. Jerusalem would’ve been packed with people. At this feast the whole nation came to celebrate. Their hearts and minds were fixed on God’s deliverance of their people from slavery in Egypt centuries before. So could there be a better time, or place, for God to act for Israel again now, as he had done in the past?

The air around Jesus was ripe with symbolism. The crowd were sure that he had chosen this moment, and this way, to take the next step on his victorious journey. And so they began to shout. “God bless (GNB) / Blessed is (NIV) the king who comes in the name of the Lord” is what Luke tells us they cried out as they wound their way down through the Mount of Olives. And in one way they were quite right: Jesus was the king; he was arriving to do what God wanted. But that was also precisely the point where the crowd had things so spectacularly wrong.

If there had been a popular vote on what they thought God should do, the outcome would have been a landslide. Even the most pacifist religious people would have voted for God’s judgement to fall on Israel’s Roman occupiers. To have their God-given land back for themselves was what every 1^st-Century Jew dreamed of. To be safe, under God’s rule, in His kingdom, was a state that they hadn’t experienced for centuries. They wanted it again; and were sure that this is what God had promised He was going to do for them.

That was the voice of the crowd on that first Palm Sunday – in Luke, and in the other 3 Gospels too. People expected that God was about to rescue them. They believed they were seeing that starting to happen. And, in a way, Jesus hadn’t dampened their enthusiasm any. He hadn’t protested when they had put him on that colt. We know that he was quite capable of not doing what he didn’t want to. But he hadn’t told the crowd not to put their cloaks on the road. Jesus hadn’t insisted on approaching Jerusalem by a route that didn’t increase their excitement. And he knew what the crowd was up to: Jesus was well aware that this was the grandest sort of welcome – the welcome an Old Testament king could’ve expected. And he’d let them do it all.

In Luke, as in the other Gospels, Jesus didn’t even shush the crowd when they chanted Psalms as their anticipation heightened. That wasn’t unusual: people often sang as they came up to Jerusalem – as they still do today. But the particular Psalms that these crowds used were laden with significance. They spoke of God as king, who’d won the victory, now coming to establish His kingdom, and rescue his people. The Pharisees certainly understood what the crowd were saying about who, and what, they thought Jesus was.

Not for the first time in Luke’s account, they were horrified by this blasphemy that Jesus was allowing. It’s in Luke alone that they told him to order his followers to be quiet. Jesus refused: on the contrary, he told Pharisees that if people were silent, the stones would cry out. Jesus didn’t explain that; but we can easily read between these lines. He knew this was a key day; that his arrival deserved to be marked and celebrated in this way. And that surely only encouraged the crowd to build up their expectations of Jesus even higher.

But the crowds’ expectations were wrong: dangerously, and spectacularly, wrong. If they’d only listened to what Jesus had consistently said, time and again, they’d have known. In Luke’s telling of the story we only need look back to yesterday’s reading to see what Jesus had actually said. In Jericho, his last stop, some 18 miles before Jerusalem, Jesus spoke clearly about what was going to happen. And we know that this wasn’t for the first, but for at least the third, time that he had done so.

Luke makes it clear Jesus knew what lay ahead of him in Jerusalem. Far from what this excited crowd expected, and wanted – Roman downfall; God as king ruling in Jerusalem – God’s voice spoke in stark contrast to that popular voice. God’s plan was far greater, and Jesus had known that from the beginning, as Luke has shown time and again. Jesus knew that what he had to accomplish was far greater than ‘just’ the restoration of God’s kingdom in Israel. But he could only achieve that by being the sort of king that the crowd didn’t want.

Back in January here we heard Luke’s story of Jesus’ temptation by the Devil in the desert. We saw how the Devil offered Jesus a different, easier way. Jesus was offered a way to serve and please himself. But we also saw then how Jesus chose not to be distracted from doing what needed to be done. Even back then Jesus knew that what he had to do wasn’t for himself. Yes, there would be great rewards for him too; but that wasn’t the point. This was about opening the way to God for all people for all time. And Jesus couldn’t accomplish that by choosing an easy or glorious way for himself.

Simply put, Jesus knew that he had to die. That was why he had come to Jerusalem now, at Passover. Yes this was a time of national joy in Israel for their deliverance. But their safety in Egypt on the night the first-born died had been at the cost of blood. Now Jesus was here to offer his own blood, as a sacrifice to set all people free. It would involve pain suffering and humiliation on scale that we can’t even begin to imagine – though this week there are opportunities to make the attempt to try and do so.

For those who don’t know this, when it comes to it, Luke doesn’t pull any punches about what happened. Even though it’s John’s telling of events that we’ll read through here on Good Friday, we’re all being invited to read it in Luke as well. Be prepared: the death that Jesus endured wasn’t easy or sanitised. It was horrific – which is all that we should expect if we have listened to Jesus in Luke. Jesus said that he would be mocked, insulted, spit on, whipped and then crucified. And that is just what rode he into Jerusalem to face on that Palm Sunday.

Today isn’t a day to celebrate, then – or not in the way that these crowds did. The voice of God spoke very different words to those of the crowd. And it’s the voice of God that we need to listen to, then and now. The voice of God often says that the easy, popular, seemingly glorious way isn’t the right way. The voice of God says that the path we may have to walk is the selfless, serving, self-sacrificial way. We know that in Luke those who accompany Jesus are called ‘followers on the costly way’. To be a disciple of Jesus is to walk a path that involves suffering and pain that can be far beyond our worst imaginings. The popular voice may well tell us that it shouldn’t be like this, that we don’t deserve it. But the popular voice may well be wrong – as it was so clearly wrong on Palm Sunday.

Now I’m not saying that any of us can suffer like Jesus did. Of course we can’t, and won’t. But, whichever Gospel we read, those who follow Jesus are called to be like him, in his death as much as in his life. And so we need to pay very careful attention to these final days of his life. We need to note how the voice of the people was not the voice of God – and how Jesus chose to hear, and obey God’s voice. Throughout this week above all we need to see and hear how Jesus remained faithful to God to the end, despite the massive cost. Jesus ended his life as he had begun it: in obedience, faith, and trust in his Father God.

The voice of the people says that Easter is a great Spring holiday. The voice of the people says this is time to catch the first sun of the year (seeing snow outside, I don’t know why), to prepare for exams, and to eat lots of chocolate. I’d say that the popular voice is not the voice of God at Easter. This is time to remember, and give thanks to God for great sacrifice of his Son. It’s also time to think about how we’ll live the rest of our life. Will we listen to the popular voice, and seek an easy, safe and comfortable life for ourselves? Or will we instead commit ourselves to going God’s way, all the way? Will we follow Jesus’ example of self-giving to the point of death for the sake of others, and go with him along this costly way?

This is the point that our reading of Luke has now brought us to. At whatever level we may have engaged with it, this is the time to make some kind of a decision. Palm Sunday shows us the contrast between the voice of God and the voice of the people. Reality is that it is often true: there is a contrast; the voice of the people usually is not the voice of God. But which voice will we listen to? Jesus had to make a choice, one that would determine the fate of many millions of people. We know that of course he chose to obey the voice of God. The very least that we can do this week is to celebrate the costly choices that Jesus made for us. But today we too need to choose which voice we will hear and obey. So which voice will you decide to heed: the voice of people? Or the voice of God? Which road will you walk, this Holy Week, and beyond? And now let’s pray ...

Sermon 17th March 2013

Today, Ben Hughes preaches - based on the reading from Luke 14 verses 25-33.

The Cost of Discipleship

I think that today’s reading is one of those, ‘Have you seen my pet tiger?’ kind of stories. The elephant in the room story, a scorpion in a shoe story, a wasp under the vest, a hippopotamus in your luggage, a tic under the skin, a mouse in your glove-box, a whale in your bath, a snake in your handbag, a stonefish in the fruit bowl, a giraffe in the fridge, a cat in your engine.

It’s one of those stories that you read in the Bible that is inconvenient in the least, and outright ‘salt in a wound’ at worst’!

It is the kind of story that as comfortable Christians you might not wish to hear!

Or you could say on the other hand – it is Jesus is at his best … turning the world upside down, as Cameron illustrated last week … Jesus making himself most unpopular with the authorities of the day.

Hate your parents, though – ‘did I hear that right?’ you might ask.

Just to be really clear: Jesus probably didn’t hate his family or reject or abandon them.  We heard last week from the passage in John’s Gospel that Jesus instructed John to take care of his mother. Jesus would not have said this if he hated his family.

Jesus is talking about something else, and I think it is right to say that the word hate as we might understand is not the point that Jesus is making. I hope that is clear. I wouldn’t want you to leave today with the idea that it is right to hate anyone especially those that you should honour and love!

Even so it is still a challenging passage to read and a tricky one to understand so here goes!!

The cost of discipleship!

Have you ever started something that you cannot finish? I know I have!

There was a great article in the Guardian where people wrote in about their procrastination. My favourite was woman who started painting her kitchen. Fifteen years later it was still half painted with the pots and brushes still left out. Another man in work-avoiding an essay had learned to play the trumpet, play golf, read the collected works of Shakespeare. He still had not written the essay and had failed to his degree in the process!

You probably have your own stories your own experiences of procrastination. I know I have!

Jesus says if you’re going to follow me, do not give up half way!

That is the quite straightforward bit to understand.  It’s the other bit in our reading about the things that we love and particularly Jesus’ command about our families that is the tricky one and is the challenge.

Let’s just say: your life is all going to plan. You have it all under control and you believe you have it sorted. You’re a good person, you go to Church, you are a pillar of the community; you pay your taxes, love your family and do everything that is right for them. You keep all of God’s commandments and obey his laws and you have prospered well and you feel safe! Nobody can touch you! 

Then Jesus comes along and says to you, ‘Sell all you have and follow me’.  And he goes further still, and  says … ‘If you love anything or anyone greater than you love me … even your own family, then I am afraid – like salt that has lost its saltiness - you are useless to me’!

And that dear friends is what the Church calls – ‘the cost of discipleship’.

Or is it? Is that what Jesus really means? Are we to take it to take it literally? Hate your parents, your family? Give up everything in an apparently irrational way?

Perhaps we can read it as: being prepared to give up everything? Or does it mean … just those things that are binding you and blocking your spiritual growth, like an addiction perhaps? Or does Jesus mean those things that you think you have control over? Your family? I.e. those things that we think we control are in fact controlling us? Or is it about those things where we say to God: ‘That’s far enough – you do not cross that line please! This is my jurisdiction!’

You see, when we are presented with such a passage as this we do begin to scratch around looking for ways out, we procrastinate because we are uncomfortable and it is pretty strong, and partly because we want to understand what Jesus is really saying to us. There is a lot to lose!

The first thing we might learn, that wherever we are in our faith the best thing to do is to keep going. Stick at it, don’t give up.

Giving it all up? The cost of discipleship!

Well, to walk away from everything you hold dear and love is a very hard thing to do. And it is not a decision to be taken lightly.  To sell all you have in a sudden random way is unworkable, unrealistic and impractical. If you have ever attempted to de-clutter, it takes time and planning to strip a life of its possessions. Yes, you could suddenly lose everything in an unfortunate gas explosion or war as the poor Syrians are suffering at present; but that is not the same as making a planned decision to completely change your life direction. 

I have met people who have given up prosperous careers, sold houses and even gone against their parents’ advice to serve Jesus. For example, I met a city banker who after becoming a Christian left his job, his penthouse flat, sold his Ferrari to work with street orphans in Nairobi and Kampala because that is what God told him to do.

I still know a lady called Pauline who gave up her job as chief radiographer at the Middlesex hospital, gave her house to St John’s church, Ealing and now works as a missionary in the Middle East. She is really happy and fulfilled. It was her calling and God gave her the means to fulfil it.

But you might say, ‘Great stories Ben, that‘s not for me’. Fair enough! ‘That is not my calling’, you cry! ‘I am still waiting to hear – From God?’  Fair enough.  In the meantime then … what do we do? Well, we wait in expectation!

The second thing we might learn is that cost of discipleship starts with being prepared and listening!

Jesus also says: ‘understand that what you are taking on in serving me. It will mean trouble and persecution for you, do not be under any misapprehension, you will be rejected and like me’ he says, ‘and have to face what I faced.  Be prepared to go to your own Calvary. Prepared to chase your own cross!’

But as I said earlier, Jesus is God’s son and God is love – Jesus is love, tough love maybe, but it is the love that counts.

The cost of discipleship seems harsh, but in Christ it is measured in love and you have to look to eternity to see its real end.  And in the meantime, as many of you know, might be unbearable in the moment but as God’s promises hold, the reed may bend but it will never break. God will not allow that and in Christ His son we have a voice to plead on our behalf. And in that … be ready to keep going.

We are also flesh and bone.  God knows that, He made us in his image! – He knows that you need to eat, you need to be warm, and you need education, you feel pain and God knows that we will pass away. You need His protection and love beyond that. I must reiterate Jesus is not saying hate anyone. Jesus is telling us to put God first and be prepared to lose everything in this life to gain eternal life in the next.

The thing that Jesus wants us to do is place everything at God’s feet including families and friends, possessions and worries … How do we do that … prayer and covenant? God cares about all our needs and knows what they are before we ask! If objects become a burden, give them away! Don’t let anything come between you and the eternal gift of life!

So the third lesson might be to keep praying at all times.

Also we need to remember that when Jesus says hate your parents he is saying it in the context of the cost of discipleship.  He is also having a massive dig at the Pharisees and their love for hierarchies and inherited status. Jesus is rocking the pillars of their temple again. He is saying, ‘You’re not automatically saved through your mother’s blood … you’re not saved through your birthright! On the contrary you must hate where you come from if your identity is to be in God. You cannot be born of both flesh and spirit. It is the birth in the spirit and not the flesh that is the beginnings of real life!’

‘Birth in me’, Jesus says, ‘Not your blood line’. Give that up he warns if you want eternal life!

You see, Jesus says you cannot buy eternal life, you cannot earn it, you are not it, in fact you are nothing in yourself, and neither can your greatest achievements save you. Only by grace can you enter, only by grace can we be saved! You cannot bat both ways – love me and the world will hate you for it. This is the cost today, but persevere because the prize is eternal life in Christ. And what a prize that is!

So our fourth lesson! It’s so worth it: eternal life in Christ forever!!

Finally I feel I have to say this on Jesus’ point regarding family!

Sadly for some of us … families are not always happy places. Not necessarily happy memories … or pleasant experiences. Some children’s experience of home and family is so bad it is unmentionable.  Jesus is unique in what he says about the realities of family life. I cannot think of any other religion, political creed or adult organisation that does not speak of the family as an ideal or Holy Grail or some kind of perfection! But who is there then to speak up when it goes wrong we ask?

Jesus of course! That is one of the reasons I personally believe!

When you have suffered, been hurt and broken by the experience of home and parents! Where can you turn, who is there to help, who is on your side, who can listen?

Jesus of course!

When things go badly wrong and the world cannot help. We call on God to help in prayer, acknowledging our weakness, He can then move into our lives in a way no one else can. 

His Power made perfect in our weaknesses!

And in these times where we call on God becomes the process of rebuilding, reforming that is slow making of us as individuals in Christ – separate and independent from your earthly families.  And of course it is often painful. The pain of reforming and re-branding in God.  Like the refiner’s fire … will involve certain disassembly and recasting. And that process continues as we walk in Christ – more banging, melting down, filing and shaping to forge us in the people God wants us to be! It is a cost but what an end result!

Now like many of you, I am a parent and know that I will make dreadful mistakes. My children might need to hate me so that they can find their own faith and independence. I hope not – but if that is what is necessary then I will have to trust God hard as that might be. As Christians the cost is always apparently high and the risks apparently great! But God is a God of love and we have to always hold onto that hope.

At the start of this sermon I posed some possible interpretations of this challenging passage. I think the one that I want to emphasise and conclude with, is this: that we should be prepared to lose everything to Christ in joyful expectation. We must be prepared to hear his call. It might not happen but if we are prepared and ready, so be it. It very well might be a hard mean time – the in-between time as such but God will one give us the means by his Spirit and Grace to forbear any calling and He will honour us for anything that we have given up or sacrificed in His name. 

The cost of discipleship in Christ therefore is forbearance, preparation and a willingness to follow Christ even unto death. On the other hand not to is even more painful and ultimately it is terminal to live for yourself. So being on the path of righteousness … is to keep going, stick at it, pray constantly and be ready for Christ’s call on our lives each day, now and for evermore. Amen.

Sermon 10th March 2013

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of Luke. The reading is Luke 11, verses 37-54.

* Begin in a friendly way.

* Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

* Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

* Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

* Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

* Make the other person happy about doing the thing that you suggest.

* Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”

* Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.

* Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.

* Let the other person save face.

* Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

* Use encouragement. Make any fault seem easy to correct.

And how better to end such a series of quotes than with this absolute classic:

* The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

You will likely have heard many of these eminently sensible pieces of relational advice before. Chances are they will have cropped up in a range of your conversations and readings. At least some of them may well be ingrained in your life: much of this could be how you live your life. But maybe you, like me, didn’t know that they are all collected in one place. I have certainly used its title often enough over the years; but it was only this week that I downloaded Dale Carnegie’s Golden Rule Book. And, thanks to that, we all now know exactly how to ... yes, “Win Friends and Influence People” – just like Jesus so clearly did!

Of course I’ve deliberately picked out all the ‘rules’ that Jesus broke in his encounter with the Pharisee who’d invited him to lunch. But we wouldn’t need any list of rules – social or otherwise – compiled in any society, or in any century – to know that Jesus wasn’t pulling any punches here: not in any way, or on any topic. If it wasn’t Jesus (who we know in our heads to be always meek, always mild, and terribly polite!), we might even say that he was going for the jugular here. So it’s best not to read the Message version, then, where each time Jesus’ words are rendered: “You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!” Is this any way to win friends and influence people? Most of us would say that it’s not: but that didn’t stop Jesus!

Now, as you’d expect, there are good reasons for this encounter being included in the story. Those reasons apply primarily to the mission that Jesus had. And Luke then had his reasons for ensuring that such incidents were in his account. He wanted to keep this crucial dimension of the story very much alive as it unfolded, step by step, towards Jerusalem. For Luke, as for Jesus, unless this wider, bigger context was at least at the back of the reader’s mind, the rest of the story wouldn’t make sense. And so there are very good reasons for us not just to read, but to grasp the meaning of this encounter today. As Jesus’ disciples – which in Luke means that we are ‘followers on the costly way’, remember – our lives are to be just as shaped by this.

I realise that has the makings of a traditional 3-point sermon. We could 1^st explore the reasons Jesus had for doing this; 2^nd would be Luke’s reasons for telling us about it; and 3^rd are then the reasons that we need to learn from it. But what follows won’t quite be like that! Nothing in life is ever that neat or simple; and our calling is to engage with what is, in all its mess, and messiness. In that, as in all other things, Jesus himself is to be our example; and that not least applies here, I’d say. This is a classic example of Jesus engaging with the mess and the messiness of life as it exists, rather than as anyone thinks it ought to be. Having said that, we really mustn’t lose sight of the fact Jesus was being deliberately, overtly confrontational here.

As ever, a bit of context always helps to get us going. So, for those who are new, or haven’t been for a while, this Lent adults here are reading through pretty much all of Luke’s Gospel. We started on this particular version of the story of Jesus in the run-up to Christmas. We picked it up again afterwards, and got as far as Jesus choosing the first of his disciples as Lent began. From that point onwards the idea has been for each of us to take responsibility to keep up with the story between one Sunday and the next. Of course it’s never too late to join in, so do take the scheme of readings on paper from the back of church, or access it via our website. Each Sunday we’re having another 25-ish verse instalment, in the place where we happen to have got up to by then; and today that is to here, to this encounter.

In that sense it is ‘random’; but in another sense it is no co-incidence at all that we should have had this story today. Those who have been doing the daily readings well know that it’s far from the 1^st time that Jesus had bumped heads with this group of people. Back in chapter 6 there had been quite an argument about what could, and couldn’t, be done on the Sabbath. Jesus had then known exactly what he was doing when he had healed a man with a crippled hand on the Jewish holy day; and just what reaction he would get. That hadn’t made him any less confrontational at a supper with another Pharisee, in chapter 7. Again Jesus knew what they would think, and how they would react, when he said that a particular woman’s sins were forgiven; and he still did it!

It has all been quiet on this front since then: until now! But, as I’ve said, this dimension of Jesus’ life wasn’t ever too far beneath the surface. It was like a car-crash that was always waiting to happen, as it were: and Jesus didn’t often avoid it, it must be said. On this occasion it was the Pharisee who asked Jesus to lunch, after he’d finished a very interesting section of teaching. There’s nothing to suggest – as there is on other occasions – that this man was anything other than interested to find out more about Jesus. The simplest – and therefore the best – reading of this story is that Jesus wanted a confrontation! As a Jewish Rabbi he would have known exactly what was expected of him in that setting; he chose not to do it; and, when his host seemed only to have raised an eyebrow, Jesus tore into him: “You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!”

Now just to be clear this wasn’t a hygiene issue. Before they ate, religious people – though that’s perhaps a misleading label – performed a ritual washing. It, like much else in 1^st Century Jewish Law was very carefully laid out in terms of exactly what and how to do. To give us a flavour of it, one commentary I read quotes the regulations on carrying anything on a Sabbath. A man may not do so “in his right hand or in his left hand, in his bosom or on his shoulder”. He may carry it “on the back of his hand, or with his foot or with his mouth or with his elbow, or in his ear or in his hair or in his wallet carried mouth downwards, or between his wallet and his shirt, or in the hem of his shirt, or in his shoe or in his sandal”! Get me a lawyer, please, somebody: or maybe I need a firm of them!

Lawyer-firms were what the Pharisees had in abundance in Jesus’ day, of course. Their job was to try and codify every eventuality that might ever occur, so that people would then know exactly how to obey the Law in those circumstances. It all added up to a huge burden being laid on the people who had to try and live their daily lives and get everything right all the time. Again Tom Wright is particularly interesting in his commentary on this. I can’t lay out his entire argument now, but it offers a very different take to the traditional line. For many years the Pharisees and teachers of the law have been lumped together as forerunners of people like me! We clergy are seen as the religious leaders who tell people what they can and can’t do, and therefore make life both difficult and unGodly. Not surprisingly, I prefer Wright’s understanding that today’s leaders are very unlike Pharisees and teachers of the law – in the sense that we are trying to help people to live out faith. Rather than doing too much laying down of laws, we are, I hope, about helping people to find ways to live as people of faith in whatever circumstances they may be facing.

The Pharisees in particular were far more overtly political than that – and were a social pressure group besides. Their agenda was manipulative, and aimed at forcing God’s hand. They believed that if Israel had enough people who lived exactly by the Law then God would have to appear, and take over. Of course their main aim was to get rid of the Romans; but surely God would need people to help run His kingdom; people like the Pharisees, they thought; so there was quite some jockeying for personal position going on too – all of which Jesus was less than impressed with: “You’re hopeless, you Pharisees! Frauds!” They weren’t about loving God, living out His radical Kingdom of freedom and justice, which Jesus had come to bring in. It was much more about self-gain, self-promotion; and in the process they contaminated people, led them away from God. Jesus said that they made people unclean, having the same impact on them as if they had come into contact with unmarked graves!

The lawyers were equally as bad, if not worse, Jesus said just as clearly. The detail is all there in the passage; and again the Message version has Jesus calling them ‘hopeless’ too. Tom Wright suggests that the lawyers were a bit like the Press today. They took on a self-appointed role as society’s guardian – in a legal rather than a moral sense – but didn’t feel bound by those rules themselves, let alone any need to help real people to live real lives. God didn’t feature much for them either – or not in any of the ways that Jesus meant. And here, then, was the crux of the whole matter. For Jesus it’s not about what it looks like on the outside. God has always seen through that, to the inside. Remember when God told the prophet Samuel to anoint David as King of Israel? It wasn’t how he looked, but rather because he was a man after God’s own heart. It’s in our hearts where we either love, and want to live for, God; or for ourselves. Of course Jesus wanted to influence people on this matter: it was, it is vital; but doing it may involve risking friendship, when you have to tell it as it is.

Jesus told it as it was; and many people of his time hated him for it! This passage ends with the Pharisees and the lawyers so mad at him that they poured over his words, to see if they had cause to arrest him for them. At this stage they were looking to stay within the law; but that changed as these fundamental differences between themselves and Jesus became ever more stark. As I said at the start of Lent, this is a journey that was going in one main direction: to the cross. That is the bigger wider context for Jesus – and so for Luke telling the story of Jesus as it was. Here, then, is the conflict that leads step by step to the logic of the cross. It’s the inevitable result of facing such a fundamental challenge to everything that you believe in and live for: you either admit you’re wrong, and change; or you kill to keep hold of what you already know.

That is how it was for Jesus: and that’s why Luke told it – because it’s integral to the story. This is what makes it all make sense, in a weird, non-sensical way. People so want to hold on to what they believe about God that they’d rather kill God than admit they’re wrong! But what about us, then? What’s God saying to you today? When He looks inside you, does He see love for Him, for His radical Kingdom of freedom and justice? Will you risk friendship for the sake of influencing people for Him? Or does He see someone who’s trying to look good on the outside but is actually positioning yourself for your own advantage? And which way will you go from here? On this decision-day, will you stay for lunch with the Pharisees and the teachers of the law? Or will you journey on with Jesus, on the costly way that leads to the cross? Let’s pray ...

Sermon 3rd March 2013

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, preaches, based on the reading from Luke 9: verses 18-36

WHO IS JESUS? 

One solitary life.

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office.

He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave,

through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned – put together – have not affected the life of humankind on this earth as powerfully as that one, solitary life. 

Attributed to James Allen in 1926.

But why has Jesus had such an impact? The simple answer is that it’s because of who Jesus is that he has had such an impact on our world.

So who is he? Who is Jesus?

Plenty of people have their own ideas about who he is. When you do an internet search on “Who is Jesus?”, 291 million links pop up! We each have to make up our own minds, but surely we need to do so based on solid, historical facts about Jesus. There’s plenty of historical information about Jesus, not just in the Bible, but this Lent we’re working our way through what one of his disciples, Luke, wrote about him. In the first 8 chapters of Luke’s gospel, he says things like “who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?” “Who is this, that forgives sin?” And in today’s reading from chapter 9,we get answers to this crux question, who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? And so what? What does that matter for my life today in 21^st century London?

At the beginning of today’s reading from Luke, Jesus himself asks this question of his disciples, first in a slightly roundabout way. He asks, who do the crowds say I am?

And the disciples reply that: some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah or that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life. This isn’t ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, not a cosy comforting friend, but someone like the wild prophets of ancient or recent times,

who had stood up and spoken God’s word fearlessly against wicked and rebellious

kings and people.

But what about you, asks Jesus, who do YOU say I am? And Peter speaks up, “You are

God’s Messiah.

And Jesus strictly tells them not to tell anyone. What did this mean and why would Jesus say don’t tell anyone?

Well many Jews of Jesus’ day believed that God would send an anointed king, who would be a leader to free Israel from oppression and bring justice and peace to the world at last. Nobody knew when or where this anointed king would be born, though many believed he would be a true descendent of King David. God had made some wonderful promises about David’s future family. The word for anointed king in Hebrew was what we translate Messiah. In Greek it is Christ. The two are interchangeable.

So what would God’s Messiah be like? How would people recognise him? Nobody knew exactly, but there were many theories. A lot of people saw him as a warrior king who would defeat the pagan oppressors, the Romans, and establish Israel’s freedom. Others saw him as the one who would purge the temple and establish true worship. Everybody who believed in such a coming king, Messiah or Christ knew that he would fulfil Israel’s scriptures, and bring God’s kingdom into being at last. But nobody had a very clear idea

of what this would look like in practice.

Even so, Peter and the disciples saw in Jesus such a combination of authority, power, insight and fulfilment of the Scriptures that was enough to convince them that Jesus must be the true Messiah.

I say ‘true’ because in the first century there were several would-be Messiahs or Christs,

who came & went, attracting followers, who were quickly dispersed when their leader was caught and executed by the authorities. So one thing was certain. To be known as a would-be Messiah or Christ was to attract attention from the authorities, and most likely hostility too. Therefore for the moment, Jesus being the Messiah had to remain deadly secret. If it were to leak out it could be deadly indeed.

So first we’ve heard from Peter, and from Jesus himself, who Jesus is: God’s Messiah.

And as soon as this had been said out loud, Jesus started to explain what sort of Messiah or Christ he was. Far from the sort of victorious conquering king overthrowing the Romans

that they expected, Jesus talked of suffering and death! In verse 22 he said he must suffer much, be rejected by the religious authorities, put to death and 3 days later rise to life.

And bring in God’s kingdom that way! (verses 26/27)

The disciples didn’t understand it at the time. It was only much later, after it had all happened, that it began to make sense. Jesus was the one to bring in the kingdom of God, the ruling, healing power of God, to repair and restore humankind and our relationship with God. But he did that not with a political coup, but by his suffering, death and resurrection. It was his death on the cross in our place, that conquered our sin, evil and death. And one day he’ll return in glory to set up God’s kingdom rule forever.

So who is Jesus? We’ve heard what the disciples say about who he is; we’ve heard what Jesus himself said he about who he is. Now we get to SEE something of who he is. In the transfiguration. A week later, Jesus took Peter John and James up a hill to pray. (Again. We see Jesus going off to pray a lot.) While he is praying, his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. And he is joined by Moses and Elijah, who represent the law and the prophets from the Old Testament, as Jesus would be the fulfilment of both.

All three of them appear in heavenly glory. They literally shone with the glory of God! I love the word glory! Because it’s so beyond my understanding, beyond anything we can grasp. We can only get a taste of it, but even that taste is exquisite. Think of pictures you sometimes see of the stars and planets in the universe, zillions of them, zillions of miles big,

absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, majestic and awe inspiring. Or a glorious sunset, flaming across the sky, or the dazzling glory of the diamonds of the crown jewels. Glory, splendour, beauty, power, majesty!

Jesus, and Moses & Elijah shone, literally shone, with God’s glory. They were so bathed in his love, power and beauty that they shone with light. And Jesus and Moses and Elijah talked – about Jesus’ dying in Jerusalem. That was how the Messiah would be king.

And in the midst of this glorious spectacle, literally, Peter blurted out, Let’s make 3 tents for you! Luke says,“He didn’t know what he was saying.”! Honestly, you wouldn’t put this in if you were making it up, would you?! It’s priceless!

But before Peter can stop blabbering, something else extraordinary happened. A voice came from a cloud, saying “This is my Son, whom I have chosen, listen to him.”

And then it’s over. Moses and Elijah are gone, and Jesus and the disciples came down

the hill. The disciples were so overwhelmed, and confused probably, they didn’t tell a soul until much much later.

 “This is my Son, whom I have chosen, listen to him.” Now we hear from God who Jesus is,

he’s God’s chosen Son, the one we should listen to.

So who is Jesus? He’s God’s Messiah, or Christ, that is the anointed one from God, his own Son. One we should listen to. Well that makes sense, if Jesus is God’s Son, the Messiah or Christ, that is, anointed by God in some special unique way, then we’d be pretty foolish

not to listen to him.

And what he says, is FOLLOW ME.

Let’s go back to the part in the middle of our reading, verses 23 to 25. “If anyone wants to come with me, he must forget self, take up his cross every day, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Will a person gain anything if he wins the whole world but is himself lost or defeated? Of course not!”

Jesus says Follow me – come where I lead, do what I say, build your life around my priorities and my will, not your own. This means absolute surrender to Jesus, to give up my own plans and ambitions, accept and put God’s first.

When we’ve seen who Jesus is, the only appropriate response is to follow him wholeheartedly, putting him first as the absolute master of my life, the absolute focal point of my life. No half measures here. Think again of the vastness of the universe – I said earlier it was zillions of miles huge, but to be more accurate it’s 93 billion light years across,

where a light year is just under 6 trillion miles. Think how powerful God the creator must be!

Can you say to that God’s son, I’ll follow you just a bit?! Follow you when it suits me?!

I want you to love me and be my friend, and answer my prayers and forgive my sins – be my personal assistant if you like – but not have charge of my life? No. Jesus is God’s anointed Messiah, and he calls us to follow him wholeheartedly. If he’s not the highest priority in my life, if I’m not ready to give everything for him, I haven’t really grasped who Jesus is.

And Jesus spells out what following him will mean, when he says we’re to forget or deny ourselves and take up our cross. Taking up your cross didn’t mean simply carrying a burden. Jesus’ disciples knew what a cross was. Everyone did. It was a means of execution, and an excruciating one at that. People in those days saw criminals being crucified, and saw them have to carry their cross, or at least the cross beam if they weren’t strong enough to carry it all, to the place outside the town where crucifixions took place.

Carrying your cross meant carrying your execution device while facing ridicule along the way to death.

So when Jesus says we’re to take up our cross, he means we’re to willingly embrace the ways we can die to self, to our self centredness, and take every opportunity to learn to root out our selfishness and sin.

There’s a famous anonymous description of what dying to self looks like;

When you are forgotten or neglected, and you don't sting or hurt with the oversight,

but your heart is happy being counted worthy to suffer for Christ;

That is dying to self.

When your good is misinterpreted, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinion ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence;

That is dying to self.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any annoyance; when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus did;

That is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption that is the will of God;

That is dying to self.

When you never refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown;

That is dying to self.

When you can see your brother prosper & have his needs met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater

and you are in desperate circumstances;

That is dying to self.

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself

and can humbly submit, inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart;

That is dying to self.

This is hard stuff, isn’t it?! BUT the consequence of this taking up our cross, of denying self,

of losing our own self centred life, is actually, surprisingly, to find it! When we give everything we are & have to Jesus, paradoxically we find a new identity, a new self, in him, in his love.

“For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

The Greek word used for life in this passage is not the one used for physical life, bio,

but psyche – our self, or inner life. As we do away with our old selfish self, as we deny it and put it to death, we find, through Jesus, a new, true self, the self as God designed each of us to be. Jesus says we find ourselves by finding him.

The ordinary way of trying to find yourself is by gaining things from the world, wealth, status, family, relationships. If you have some of those things, you’re really someone! But Jesus says

the whole world can’t give you a lasting, true sense of self – you’ll never know if you have enough of those things, and keep wanting more. And if something happens to them,

you’ll not just be unhappy, you’ll feel you’re falling apart – because you’ve built your sense of self on those things. Anyway, you won’t be able to keep hold of those things forever,

they’ll pass away, and you will.

Jesus says if you build your self on following me, you cannot lose that self, it’s your true self, your very self, as God designed – because you were designed to follow me.

And following is a journey. It has to begin, we have to set off. Have you started this journey? There’s a decision to be made to set off! To go on this journey means I let go of control of my life; I give up self determination to follow Jesus. It means I will go where he says, do what he says, I will obey, with no IFs or BUTs, I’ll drop my conditions. When we’ve said those things, we’ve begun the journey.

And that is only the beginning. A journey is a process, it takes time, and following Jesus takes a life time. We’re to keep going. Jesus said to take up our cross every day.

And yes we’re bound to veer off the path of following Jesus, often. But every time we look to Jesus again,

and get following again.

So today the question comes back to us, who do we say Jesus is? Will we listen to him, will we deny ourselves take up our cross and follow him? How will we do that today?

And now let’s pray.........

(With thanks and acknowledgement for Tom Wright and Tim Keller’s ideas that fed in to this sermon)