Sermon 22nd January 2016

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Taylor, continues our study of the story of Jesus from the book of Matthew. The reading is from Matthew chapter 8 verses 23-34. 

Who is this man? 

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.
Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their father filled the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he filled with horse manure.
That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his presents crying bitterly. "Why are you crying?" the father asked.
"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff. I'll constantly need new batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." answered the pessimist twin.
Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked.
To which his optimist son replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

I wonder how optimistic you’re feeling this morning? How optimistic about your life, your future? How confident in your ability to handle it? To handle the challenges YOU face, day to day and in the long run? The challenges of your life, and of our city, our nation and our world in 2017, political changes and all?

However confident we may feel about our life and our world, even on our best and brightest days, when we’re most optimistic, (or perhaps when we best fool ourselves about our abilities and control over life,) deep down we know there are some things life can throw at us that are beyond our control. There are some things that we cannot overcome by simply trying harder, things that will not respond to “pull your socks up” or “raise your game”. There are problems way beyond all that.

For a start there’s illness and disease, which strikes where it will. We don’t try and get ill, it just happens. (Well, once we tried to ‘make’ our son catch chicken pox from his big sister, to get it over with, and we bathed them together and shared spoons and everything – nope, John didn’t catch it!)

There are reminders all around us of illness, disease and disability, physical and mental, that we cannot control. Thankfully many people can be treated, even cured – but we all know there are many that cannot, and face life-limiting or deteriorating health conditions. Out of our control.

As are natural disasters. Hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes. Just this week we’ve watched the search for survivors at the quake-triggered avalanche that deluged a hotel in Italy. Warnings about the severity of the drought in the horn of Africa, in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya is currently threatening over 15 million people and expected to worsen. In other parts of the world it’s the opposite, it’s floods and typhoons that claim many lives. Natural disasters out of human control.

And then there’s evil. In the last few days we’ve heard about widespread abuse in children’s homes in Northern Ireland, the murder of 16 year old Leonnie Weeks, never mind the ongoing mass horrors of war, torture and terrorism.

I realise that’s rather sobering, especially if you started the day happy and optimistic. But whatever mood we’re each in, confident or despairing, our Bible reading today clearly brings good news! The great news that Jesus has authority and power over every aspect of our world and our lives! Even disease, natural disaster and evil.

It’s all in Matthew chapter 8. Let’s look over it again.

2 weeks ago Cameron preached on the first part of this chapter, which started with the story of the healing of the man with leprosy, in verses 1 to 4. Next the Roman officer and his servant in verses 5 to13: Jesus healing again, but this time at a distance, in response to the officer’s remarkable faith. Then last week when Trevor was preaching there were more stories of healing, Peter’s mother in law and then many people, in verses 14 to 17, before the discussion of the cost of being a follower of Jesus. In this chapter of Matthew’s gospel alone, Jesus has conclusively demonstrated his authority and power over disease and sickness.

And then, the storm on the lake. Have you ever been in a boat in a storm? I haven’t, but I think the sea can be a bit scary even when it’s calm. As Bishop Tom Wright says in his excellent commentary on Matthew’s gospel: “Standing beside the ocean, there’s so much of it, for a start! When the tide comes in, up a beach, imagine how many gallons of water have moved down the coastline. And it’s doing that all the time, day & night. Then stand beside it when the wind gets up. Watch how those millions of gallons leap & dance about like water splashing in a child’s bath. Then, if you dare, stand on the deck of a small boat as it sets out into those waves. Feel their power lift the boat high in the air and drop it down again with a crash and a smack. Watch the huge waves rise up, and up, in front of you, like a monster in a horror movie, alive and threatening.” Scary stuff!

The Sea of Galilee was – and is – prone to sudden storms. Apparently it’s to do with the geography, being on a fault line, being nearly 700ft below sea level, and how the mountains and valleys lie around it. The weather can change from calm to massive storm in minutes! Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the lake, probably about 20ft long wooden boat with sails, when one of these storms suddenly hit. The waves towered over the boat – also 20ft high or higher – with no motor, or life jackets or radio calls for help – and the disciples were scared stiff, even though some of them were experienced fishermen, used to this lake. Right to be scared stiff too.

But Jesus was asleep! Asleep! Can you imagine?! And the disciples woke him up saying,

we’re going to die!

And Jesus said, “Why are you so frightened? How little faith you have!” And then, he simply ordered the wind and the waves to be calm, and they were!

Extraordinary! “Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

“How little faith you have!” Little faith. The proper response to Jesus is faith. Faith that is quite simply a trust that Jesus is the sovereign one who has authority and power over everything. We’ll come back to this idea of faith in a minute, but for now let’s notice that the disciples didn’t have much of this faith, just a little. But they started to ask questions: What does this mean? What sort of man is this? Good questions! Answers are coming, we need to keep reading! Having noted how Jesus demonstrated his authority and power over the natural world. First over disease, then over nature.

On to the story of the men with demons, and Jesus had authority and power over them too. Tom Wright again: “In a way, it’s the same sort of thing. Think of the wild sea, with wind and waves doing their worst. Now turn that into a human being, with the wind and waves inside them. Not a bad image for how it is with some people who find that, for whatever reason, their imagination and emotions, their thinking and acting, seem to have been taken over by forces beyond their control.

Today we struggle, in the modern Western world, to explain what’s going on inside people like that. In Jesus’ time, and in many parts of our world today, the accepted explanation is that some evil force or forces have taken them over. Devils or demons was the regular way of describing that condition. Modern western medicine has found alternative diagnoses for many people in this turbulent state, but there remain some for whom the ancient explanation still seems to be the best.”

But however we understand what the root of the men’s problem was, the point of the story is that Jesus had authority over not only the wind and the waves on the lake, but also over the shadowy forces of sickness & evil, however we describe them.

Let’s look at what happened. There were 2 men, who lived among the burial caves, so fierce that no one dared travel on that road.

In other words they were violent, isolated, and alienated from normal life, creating a no go area around them. And these very disturbed men, at once cried out to Jesus, “What do you want with us, Son of God?”

Son of God?! Matthew doesn’t use the term Son of God very much, he prefers Son of Man; as a good Jew he’d rather not say or write the word God. In the Old Testament, Son of God is often a way of describing God’s coming king, or messiah. And the demons asking Jesus if he has come to punish them before the right time, shows they know who he is, and they know that he will one day come in a final judgement, to do away with all the powers of evil, and rule a new heaven and earth with justice, love, peace and joy for all. The demons know their ultimate fate, but want to carry on causing havoc as long as possible. But with one word, “GO”, Jesus sends them away to their fate, into the pigs, who are then drowned in the lake.

It’s an aside, but we have to ask, what about the pigs, poor pigs? Well let’s remember that to Jews pigs were unclean animals, not cute stars of Babe as they might be to us. And to non Jews, Gentiles, pigs were food, and this herd was of substantial financial value. Did Jesus have to let the pigs be drowned? I don’t know, but it seems Jesus is valuing the freedom and health of the men more highly than the price of the pigs.

And the men are freed, are healed, to begin a new life. Presumably they came back to live in community and peace. And so this chapter of Matthew’s gospel ends, with Jesus having shown his authority and power over evil. Over sickness, nature and evil.

How then, might we respond to this? We see several different responses in the passage.

One was the questioning, asking “What sort of man is this?” Who is this man?

We might be here in church this morning, not sure who Jesus really was and is. If so, keep asking, keep thinking, keep reading the gospels, keep talking with others. Who is Jesus? is truly one of the most important questions of our lives! The little booklet, “Why Jesus?” at the back may help you continue your questioning. The demons in the story knew Jesus was the Son of God, and Matthew presents that as the answer to the question, and I’d urge you to keep asking to see if that answer makes sense and is relevant to you!

…………………………….

Another response to Jesus came at the very end of the chapter, when the people begged him to leave their territory. Why would they want Jesus to go away? Well I should think they were afraid of his supernatural power. They had never seen anything like it before and I imagine it was pretty overwhelming. Way beyond their understanding, never mind control.

They may have been upset about the loss of the herd of pigs, more than thrilled about the men’s deliverance; I don’t imagine people thought very highly or kindly of those violent and unruly men!

And we might hear about Jesus’ authority and power, and think, I don’t want anything to do with that, or him! If I accepted his authority in my life, what might Jesus do, or want me to do? Trevor talked last week about the cost of commitment; there is a cost. But asking Jesus to go away, would be a big mistake, the biggest missed opportunity of a lifetime! To reject Jesus, the chance to know him, his love and forgiveness, and power to live a new way, God’s way, would be the biggest loss, for now and for eternity.

So what would be the best response to Jesus, the most appropriate response to his authority and power? Faith! You little faiths! Yes we may have only a little, like the disciples, but it only takes a little to get started.

Having faith in Jesus, and trusting him, following him, is the best and appropriate response to someone with authority and power over everything. Everything the physical world and the non-physical world can throw at us. Jesus is the one we can trust with every aspect of our lives, not only in the good times but in the difficult times too.

The storms of life (if you like) can arise very suddenly and unexpectedly: a medical diagnosis, the death of a loved one, the loss of our job or home, financial ruin, a relationship betrayal or breakdown. We can trust Jesus to lead us through every situation in life, knowing his love and presence with us.

Of course he doesn’t always take away the problem, any more than he removed all sickness, natural disaster and evil then. We know that from the Bible: Jesus didn’t make a pain-free, suffering-free world. “Even” the circumstances of his birth, the Christmas story we’ve so recently celebrated, ends with ALL the baby boys under 2 years old being killed by jealous King Herod. We might call that evil. Right through to the torturous way Jesus was put to death, even though he was an innocent man. For now, our world is shot through with suffering and death, with disease, natural disaster and evil. Not forever, because he said he would return in judgement, to end all that and create a new heaven and new earth for eternity, full of his kingly rule, justice, mercy, love, peace and joy.

So having faith and trust in Jesus, and his authority and power over the world, then and now, doesn’t mean life becomes easy. It means we choose to believe and keep following Jesus regardless, choose to keep living his way regardless, and knowing his love and presence with us no matter what. That’s the Jesus we’re invited to have faith in, and trust, now as then.

So what will OUR response to Jesus be, this morning?

Keep questioning, don’t push him away, have faith and trust. Let’s pray that we might…