Dear Friends

Greetings on this Ascension Sunday as we celebrate and reflect on mystery of the ascension of Christ.

Our order of service is as follows today:

1. Welcome and Announcements
2. Opening Hymn: "Jesus Shall Reign" (YouTube link to Keith and Kirstyn Getty)
3. Prayer - (Video)
4. Children's Song "When it's stormy"
5. Children's Message Part 1 (Video - by Brian)
6. Children's Message Part 2 (YouTube video)
7. Readings (Video)
8. Sermon - Christ's Ascension - Who fills the universe. (Audio)
9. Hymn: "Have you seen Jesus my Lord" (YouTube video - a 'meditation' on the sermon).
10. Prayers of Intercession (Video)
11. Closing Hymn: "Jesus is Lord, the cry that echoes through creation" (YouTube - Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend).
12. Sermon Text

CLOSING HYMN: "Jesus is Lord the cry that echoes through Creation"
Keith Getty & Stuart Townsend

SERMON TEXT
The Ascension of Christ - Whose Presence Fills the Universe​

Luke 24:50-53 & Ephesians 4:7-10 

On Wednesday it was Ascension Day, 39 days after Easter Sunday.
In the Bible, there are perhaps at least three perspectives (one could possibly say three understandings) of the ascension of Christ.
​
The first is in the book of Luke 24 and Acts 1. Forty Days after Jesus Resurrection, the writer of Luke’s Gospel pictures a scene in which Jesus is standing with his disciples and he begins to rise in in front of their eyes, kind of levitating up into the sky, where he disappears from their sight through the clouds.

It is a concrete pictorial description of something that might in fact be beyond words.

The description in the books of Luke and Acts follows the popular ancient world-view of a three tiered universe where earth was in the middle. Below ground was hades, the place of the dead, and then above the sky, beyond the dome of the sky, or the firmament as the book of Genesis would put it, is the realm of heaven, where God sits on a throne looking down upon us all.

In the books of Luke and Acts then, the author has composed a story to try and enable early Christian believers to picture in their minds how Christ who was now risen, had ascended to God above the sky in the heaven.

But interestingly, John’s Gospel also makes reference to the ascension of Christ, and he doesn't follow the time frame of Luke and Acts. In John’s Gospel, the ascension of Christ happens almost immediately after the Resurrection. You will remember that in John’s Gospel, the risen Christ meets Mary Magdalene in the garden outside the empty tomb. She thinks he is a gardener. He calls her by name, saying “Mary”. In that instant she recognises him, turns towards him and Jesus says to her “Do not hold on to me, for I have to ascend to the Father. God instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Later that same evening, while the disciples are together behind locked doors, Jesus comes and stands amongst them.

The implication in John’s Gospel is that in the interim, Jesus has somehow already ascended to the Father, for a week later, according to John’s Gospel, Thomas can now reach out and touch the hands and side of Jesus.

So we have two texts in the New Testament that both speak of Jesus ascending to the Father, but the timing is different.

Then we come to the book of Ephesians and we discover more references to the ascension of Christ. Early on in Ephesians, the writer, believed by many to be the apostle Paul, refers to Christ being raised from the dead, and being seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms, with God placing all things under his feet and making Christ the head of all.

In Chapter 1 of Ephesians, the resurrection of Christ and His ascension are not two distinct events, but rather almost two inter-changeable ideas or perhaps two ways of describing the same thing.

But in Ephesians Chapter 4 the idea of the ascension of Christ takes on an even greater and deeper significance. In chapter 1 Jesus is seated next to the Father in the heavenly realms, but in chapter 4 the ascension of Christ is described in completely different terms. In chapter 4:10 Paul writes “He who descended is the very one who ascended, higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.”

Higher than all the Heavens in order to fill the whole Universe. In Chapter 4:10, the ascension of Christ is a cosmic event. In Ephesians 4:10, the presence of Christ is now cosmically linked to the presence of God.

To speak of God seated on a throne is to use picture language to try and describe something that is indescribable. If God is the highest authority in the universe, then using human picture language, it becomes useful to imagine God on a throne. And if God has somehow made Jesus King, then is becomes equally necessary to describe Jesus as sitting on a throne at the right hand side of God. This is language that is meant to help ordinary human beings like us have some image to grasp onto and hold in our minds. But just so that we don’t try to take that image too literally, and to remind us that it is a metaphor and a picture describing something essentially indescribable, the writer of Ephesians then blows our minds with a cosmic picture where the ascension of Christ means that Christ has gone beyond even the highest heavens in order to fill the whole universe.

And so, if we are to ask the question “Where is Christ?” The author of Ephesians tells us that it is almost like the Presence of Christ has exploded and expanded filling the whole universe. In other words, the ascension of Christ means that, like God, the presence of Christ fills all things, the whole universe.

The life of Christ has become a window and a doorway into encountering the One whose Presence fill’s the whole universe. If according to the writer of Ephesians, Christ’s presence fills all things, and the whole universe, then it could be said that Christ is to be found within every atom, within every neutron, within every electron, and within the tiniest particle or wave energy in the universe.

This is an amazing thing when you begin to think about it. If Christ is Love, then by implication, Christ’s ascension means that Christ’s love fill’s the entire universe.To put it another way, everything is in Christ, and Christ is in everything. This is the language that is used in John’s Gospel where in John 14. It was the lectionary passage. In that passage, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to the Father. This sounds like the language of ascension. But he also tells them that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”. And then in verse 20, Jesus expands this idea to tell us that a day will come when we will discover that He is in the Father, but also that we are in him and he is in us. 

It seems that the life of the Spirit is an inside job. To have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, as the writer of Ephesians puts it in Ephesians 1:18 is to have our eyes opened to discover the Presence of God, and the Presence of Christ in all things, filling the entire universe. And according to Ephesians 4:10, when we do that, then we will have truly understood what the Ascension really means. 

Or as the Poet William Blake put it… "To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour."

The Gospel of Thomas is a gospel that was never included in the New Testament. It is a book of sayings of Jesus, quite a number of which appear in the 4 Gospels we have in the Bible, as well as quite a few that do not. Within the Gospel of Thomas there is a wonderful saying of Jesus that expresses the same sense of Ephesians 4:10 which speaks of the presence of God and Christ filling all things:

In Saying 77 Jesus says: “I am the light that is over all. I am the All. The All came forth out of me. And to me the All has come.” “Split a piece of wood – I am there. Lift the stone, and you will find me there.”

And in Saying 113, the disciples ask Jesus, “...The Kingdom, what day will it come?” To which Jesus replies, “...The Kingdom of the Father is spread out across the earth, but people do not see it.”

The ascension of Christ reminds us that the whole universe and the whole of creation is the Temple of God’s Presence. Or another way of putting it that the Universe is the very body of Christ and Christ is the heart or soul of the universe.

And so on this Ascension Sunday, may the eyes of our hearts be enlightened (Eph 1:18), that in their opening, we may come to see the Presence of Christ in everything, so that, using words from Ephesians 1:23 we come to see Christ who is the Fullness of Him who fills all things. Amen.

As a meditation on this perspective on the ascension of Christ, I am now going to invite us to reflect on the words of a beautiful song written by Dean Slater “Have you seen Jesus my Lord” that invites us to see Christ in all of creation.

​ Dear Friends

Greetings again in the Name of Christ as we join online for this act of Sunday worship.

Our order of service is as follows:

1. Welcome, announcements and opening prayer (Video)
2. Hymn - I am so glad (Audio)
3. Children's Song - Wide Wide as the Ocean (Video)
4. Children's video - From Youtube
5. Reading from the Book of Jonah (Video)
6. Sermon (Audio)
7. Prayers of Intercession (Video)
8. Closing Hymn - There's a Wideness in God's Mercy (Brian's tune)
​                               OR Alternative Traditional Tune
9. The Story of Jonah as told by a little girl (Youtube link)
​10. Sermon Text

READING - From the Book of Jonah

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession

​The Story of Jonah - As Told By a Little Girl (From Youtube)

​SERMON TEXT 
Jonah 1:1-3 ; 3:1-10; 4:1-3
Where is Your Ninevah? 

Just before my trip to South Africa, I had begun to read a book by US author Rev. Michael Dowd entitled “Thank God for Evolution”. In the book he does the work of integrating the Christian faith with an evolutionary perspective on history. 

He believes that evolution rather than being a threat to our faith in God can in fact deepen and enrich our faith. 

Early on in the book he says that the process of evolution in human beings has seen, over time, a general increase in the human hearts capacity for compassion.  In the earliest phases of our human journey, he writes that the boundaries of the human heart were determined by clan. Later these boundaries were expanded to include a tribe made up of a number of clans. Later as humanity developed further the boundaries of the human heart were expanded to include people from various tribes making up a nation. And in more recent history it has seen the ability of human beings to begin to identify a common humanity beyond our national identities. What we are also beginning to see is a growth in fellow feeling across species as well, with human beings having an increasing sense of compassion towards animals with movements against cruelty.  This has not been a completely linear journey. There have clearly been steps forward and steps backward. But this has been the general trajectory over time with the evolutionary growth of humanity. 

And this theme is what the book of Jonah is all about.  Most often when we think of the story of Jonah, the emphasis is on a man being swallowed by a whale, and surviving to tell the tale, a detail in the story that just defies all our modern scientific understanding. And so the story of Jonah for some Christians has become a test of faith of whether you believe such a miracle can happen or not and by implication whether you believe in the Bible or not. 

But what if the Jonah story was never meant to be interpreted in this way at all?

What if the book of Jonah was always meant to be read as a satirical parable challenging it’s first readers to consider the wideness of God’s mercy and compassion for their enemies? What questions would we ask of the story then? And maybe, what questions might the story of Jonah begin to ask of us?

One of the most important questions to ask when interpreting the Bible is the question of context. When was the book of Jonah written? Who were it’s first hearers? What did it mean to them? 

To answer that question scholars say that it would have been written after the Jewish exile in Babylon. 

The people of Israel had returned from exile to the city of Jerusalem. They were listening to the preaching of Ezra and Nehemiah with both Ezra and Nehemiah have taking on a strong stance against anyone who is not a pure Jew. They have forced Jewish men to send away their foreign wives as well as their children born from those wives.  This was a period of harsh narrow nationalism where foreigners were regarded as pagans, falling outside of the embrace of God’s grace and favour. 

In this context, one inspired, prophetic Jewish story-teller tells a story, a satirical parable, to remind the people of Israel that God’s mercy is for all people, not just the Jews or Israelites. 

Just as a newspaper cartoonist uses satire, comedy and exaggeration to make people think deeply about whats going on, so the story of Jonah likewise uses satire and humour to get under the armour of his listeners to challenge them with the wide-embracing love, mercy and compassion of God. 

First of all, the name Jonah is significant, meaning “dove” or “pigeon”.  In the story of Noah and the Ark, the dove symbolised peace on earth because of the olive branch it brought back to the ark to indicate the end of God’s wrath over humankind and his Creation. And so, the book of Jonah opens with God calling Jonah to live up to his name, and to be an instrument of God’s peace and forgiveness, delivering an olive branch so to speak, to the city of Nineveh.

What is the significance of the City of Nineveh?  From a Jewish perspective, the City of Nineveh was an evil city, the capital of the ancient, hated, powerful and ruthless Assyrian Empire.  For the ancient Israelites, the Assyrian Empire had once invaded the Northern Kingdom of Israel and had virtually obliterated 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel, deporting the captives all over their empire and stripping them of their identity. This was a cruel and ruthless empire. In the minds of the Hebrews, this was an ancient enemy, a detested, evil city that they believed deserved God’s judgement and destruction. 

And so God call’s on Jonah, whose name symbolises the end of God’s wrath, to go to the capital city of his people’s ancient enemy to preach to them. 

How does Jonah respond? Jonah runs in the opposite direction. He wants to have nothing to do with what God is calling him to do.   Why does he run in the opposite direction? Because he knows who God is. He says, “I know who you are, you are a God of mercy.  I am not going to be part of a plan where you come to the people of Nineveh and express your mercy through me.”  Jonah is refusing to be used as an instrument of God’s peace and compassion to his people’s ancient enemies.  He is refusing to live up to his own name. 

And so Jonah runs in the opposite direction. Where God calls him to go East to Nineveh, he begins to travel West to Tarshish, a city in ancient Spain. Perhaps the idea of lying on the sunny beaches of Spain appealed to him more than going to the detested city of his ancient enemies.

In the next scene, Jonah is on a boat sailing to Tarshish, and a great storm arises.  Alan Storey says that wherever you have the cold winds of narrow nationalism and exclucivism being met by the warm winds of God’s universal love and compassion, a perfect storm is going to erupt. 

The satire in the story is revealed in the boat, when the pagan sailors, who are supposedly godless and far from God, are depicted down on their knees, praying to God, while Jonah, the one called to be God’s servant is depicted sleeping below deck.  The author of this story is driving home the point that God is a God of all nations and all people, unlike the preaching of Ezra and Nehemiah who  suggested that somehow God was only interested in the true people of Israel. 

Jonah rouses himself from sleep, comes above deck, and as Tim Mackie puts it, he begins to spout forth a whole lot of religious mumbo jumbo about his God being the God who made the heavens and the earth and the oceans. He owns up and  admits that the storm is his fault because he has been disobedient to the God of heaven and earth, but,  rather than turn around and do what God has asked of him, to go and be an instrument of peace to his ancient enemies, Jonah would rather commit suicide, telling the sailors to throw him overboard.  The sailors are reluctant to do so. They don’t want his blood on their hands, but in the end he persuades them and over he goes, into the stormy waters. 

But God has not given up on this disobedient rebellious messenger.  Jonah gets swallowed by a large fish.  Interesting, in the story there is no reference to a whale, just a large fish.  Psychologically speaking, I find this detail of the story interesting. A psychology of the brain will tell you that we all have a reptilian brain, the amygdala, the small central core of our brain that we share with reptiles. It is the part of our brain that is activated by fear and responds with either fight or flight.  In Jonah’s case his response is one of flight. It is quite symbolic. His narrow nationalistic exclusivism, filled with a fundamental fear, has made him psychologically regress. Being swallowed by a fish is symbolic of him being consumed by his reptilian brain. In a complimentary way, Alan Storey suggests that Jonah being swallowed by the fish is symbolic of Jonah becoming swallowed by his narrow minded nationalism. And so in the story, Jonah ends up on the bottom of the ocean in the belly of a great fish. 

Now water in ancient Jewish mythology was often symbolic of chaos and evil.  As Alan Storey suggests, the history of the world reminds us again and again that narrow-minded and narrow-hearted nationalism and hatred will take you into the depths of chaos and evil. It was the story of Nazi Germany and Facist Italy, or Rwanda and it is the story of every nation that has walked down this road.  

But in the all-embracing love and compassion of God, Jonah is not abandoned in these watery depths.  The evolutionary impulse that God has placed in humanity, and all of life, is to grow and expand ourselves. We cannot remain in our places of narrowness and regression forever. 

In the belly of the great fish, Jonah utters a prayer. As Tim Mackie says, Jonah never technically repents, but he does thank God for not abandoning him and promises to obey from this point on. 

And so the fish spits Jonah out onto the shore of Nineveh. God has not given up on Jonah, but neither has God given up on extending his mercy to the people of Nineveh.  There are things we cannot avoid in life, and when we try to avoid life’s challenges, they come back to us. God’s challenge to Jonah in the story comes back to him a second time.

This time Jonah gives in. But a bit like a rebellious teenager, Jonah drags his feet as he walks into Nineveh. And once inside Nineveh, Jonah put’s absolutely no effort into this task given him by God. He preaches the worst sermon ever.  Just five words in the Hebrew text. “Forty days and Nineveh will be over-turned”.  No nice warm introduction. No three point sermon with a rousing conclusion. Just five Hebrew words… Jonah is finally obedient to God, but he gives the bare minimum.  He makes no mention of what Nineveh has done wrong or what they should do in response.  There is no mention of God, and no mention of who is going to over-turn them. 

Jonah gives them the bare-minimum perhaps in the hopes that they will simply ignore him and they will not respond to the invitation of God’s mercy. 

But if Jonah was hoping that nobody would listen to him, he is mistaken. No sooner has he delivered his bare-minimum five word sermon, we read that the whole city of Nineveh is cut to the heart, from the king on his throne, right down to the very bottom of society, everyone dresses in sack-cloth and ashes, even the cows and animals. It is part of the satire of the story, that even the animals repent at the preaching of Jonah.  

In addition, yet again, these evil pagans from Nineveh show themselves to be more responsive and more faithful to God than God’s servant Jonah. 

Jonah in the meanwhile has retreated to a hill over-looking the city where he can sulk. Perhaps  he is watching and waiting in anticipation, still hoping that he is going to see a Sodom and Gomorrah moment where God’s fire and brimstone are rained down upon them. 

And while he is waiting and watching, a strange little sub-plot begins to unfold.  The sun is growing hot, and so the God character in the story makes a vine grow up over Jonah to provide shade for him which makes Jonah very happy.  The next day as this sub-plot unfolds, a worm begins to eat away at the roots of the vine, and the vine dies along with Jonah’s shade. Jonah is in a foul mood. He hold’s God responsible for it all. Jonah is so fuming mad about everything that has happened that he just wants to die. 

God’s response to Jonah begins to pack home the punch of the whole story. God responds saying to Jonah that his priorities are all wrong. He cares more for this plant that has died that a whole city of people whom God loves and cares for. 
 
What's the point of the story? Is it that God can do miraculous things like saving someone by having them swallowed up by a great fish and then spat up on the shore? 

Or is the story meant to be a mirror that we hold up to our own faces?  Challenging our own narrow-heartedness that would regard some people as being outside of God’s grace and mercy irredeemable and only worthy of destruction, when God sees them as God’s children whom God would wish to save.  It is a story that remind us of the wide-embracing love of God, that includes and embraces even our enemies. 

The story leaves us with some questions: Who or what is your Nineveh?  They place or the person, or the people that are your hated enemies that you see as being outside of the embrace of God’s concern and mercy? The people or person that we don't want to extend mercy to? The person or the people that we would rejoice over if they had a downfall, or if they were no-more? What would it mean for you to be an instrument of God’s grace and mercy to your Nineveh? An ex-spouse? A person who betrayed or cheated you in? Another nationality? People of another religion?  Who or what is your Nineveh?  

Lastly, what does it mean for you that in the story, that the God-character continues to love and care for Jonah, despite all his anger, rebelliousness and lack of faithfulness? 

I am the Good Shepherd.
John 10:1-11; Jeremiah 23:1-4 / Ezekiel 34 1-31

As I said before the reading for today, one of the gifts of scripture is that it is rather like a diamond with many sides and facets. Last week I explored certain facets of the text. Today, I would like to look again at the same text and explore it perhaps from a slightly different angle.

In our passage, there are so many rich images, metaphors and figures of speech. It is interesting that the voice of Jesus in the passage actually uses the very phrase “figures of speech”. One could also use the term ‘archetypal’. When I use the term archetypal it refers to an image, metaphor or symbol that somehow gets to the root of our common human experience.

The first image we come across in the passage is in verse 1 is the image of the thief and the robber. Later on we read that the thief or robber comes to rob, kill and destroy. In verses 1-2 the thief or robber tries to deceive and short-cut the system for personal gain, climbing over fences instead of entering through the gate.

In the passage itself, Jesus is referring to the political and religious leaders of Israel. They are the one’s that Jesus is accusing of acting as robbers and thieves. Acting out of deceitful self-interest and personal gain. This accusation of acting deceitfully for purposes of personal gain is one that is not an uncommon accusation to be made against political leaders. It is perhaps less common to hear it being directed at religious leaders. Sometimes, we have overlook some of the self-serving tendencies in political leaders, especially if in the bigger picture we feel that they are acting in our best interest. But somehow religious leaders who act like thieves often in our minds seems less forgivable.

For those of us who are religious leaders, this passage comes as quite a challenge. In what ways do I act in self-interest, deceitfully climbing over fences, taking short-cuts instead of entering openly through the gate.

The truth is that it is not only political and religious leaders who have the ability to be thieves and robbers. It is true for all of us. There is a thief and a robber in each of our hearts that is ever so subtley willing to manipulate things to serve our own purposes and potential gain.

By contrast to the thieves and robbers in this passage, we see the image of the Good Shepherd. This theme of the Good Shepherd is one that goes back to the Old Testament in the writings of the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In Ezekiel 34, the prophet laments at the shepherds of Israel, the religious and political leaders, who have acted with no regard for the well-being of the sheep. They have only been concerned about themselves.

The prophet laments: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally….My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

Where religious and political leaders had become corrupt and self-serving, the hope expressed by Ezekiel and Jeremiah was that God himself would come to be the shepherd of the people of Israel.

The Good Shepherd is one who places the needs of the sheep above selfish ambition, self-aggrandisement and selfish glory. The Good Shepherd in our passage is one who generously and genuinely cares for the sheep under his watch. The Good Shepherd is described as one who knows the sheep by name. This is one who genuinely cares.

Thirdly, in our passage, we have the image of the gate through which the sheep can pass into safety and into green pasture. In our passage, the Good Shepherd is also the Gate for the Sheep, the doorway into health, safety and life.

Fourthly in our passage, we see the important image of listening. The primary job of the sheep in this passage is to listen. It is through listening to the One who cares for them and knows them by name that they are brought to safety, health and life. It is an interesting perspective on the spiritual life, that our primary job is to become deep listeners, learning to listen to the voice of wisdom in our hearts, which is none-other than the voice of the Good Shepherd. It is an interesting question to ask: If you had to listen deeply to the voice of wisdom in your life at this moment, what might the voice of wisdom be saying to you? What is the wise word that you are most needing to hear today? If we as a world had to be listening for the voice of wisdom today, what might we collectively as humanity be hearing at this time.

Lastly, there is the image of a life of fullness and abundance, a life that is so full that it overflows, overflowing with love and joy and kindness towards others. When we begin to listen deeply to the voice of wisdom, the voice of the Good Shepherd within our hearts rather then the voice of the thief or the robber, the promise is a life that overflows. That is one of the potential meanings of the Greek word used in our passage. Life in excess. What does one do when one has excess, the natural thing is to share it with others. A life that overflows towards others.

Last week I was sent a moving story told by a Jewish Rabbi that so beautifully captures many of the themes, metaphors and figures of speech in this passage, the themes of the thief, a good shepherd, a gate that leads to safety, a life that grows through listening, and becomes a life that overflows towards others… It goes like this:

A young man went over to an older man at a wedding. “Do you remember me?” he asked

"I don't remember you, who are you?" said the older man. 

So he introduced himself.

“Ah! You were my student! Third grade, you were my student. Wow, I haven't seen you in so many years, how has your life been, what are you involved in?” said the older man.

“I’m a teacher!” he replied

“Wow! Just like me! What inspired you to become a teacher?”

“What inspired me to become a teacher was you!” the younger man replied.

"How did I inspire you to become a teacher?” the older man asked.

“I saw what an impact you had on me, and I realised what an impact I could have on children, and so I decided to go into education.”

“What kind of an impact did I have on you?” he asked.

“I‘ll remind you,” said the younger man, “but I’m sure you will remember the story.”

“There was this one day, one of my friends got himself a beautiful new wrist watch. His mother or father had bought it for him, and I had dreamt of such a watch and I couldn’t afford one. So I decided to steal his watch. He had it in his pocket. I took his watch. I stole it.

He came into the class and complained to you the teacher that somebody had just stolen his watch.

And so you made an announcement, “Whoever took this boys watch, would you please return it.”

I was too embarrassed and I didn't want to return it, so I didn't return it. So you locked the door, and you said, “I’m going to have to line everybody up, and empty their pockets, in order to get back the watch.”

And that's what you did. And I thought to myself, “This is going to be the most shameful moment of my life.”

And then you said, all you boys, line up at the wall. And I want everybody to have their eyes closed. Everybody’s eyes must be closed. And you went from pocket to pocket, and everybody’s eyes were closed, and then you came to my pocket, you found the watch, and you took it out, and you continued to go through everybody's pockets with their eyes closed. Then you said, “Ok, everybody can open their eyes.”

You gave the watch back to it’s owner and you never ever said a word to me, throughout the entire year. You never mentioned the story, you never mentioned the episode.

And when I thought to myself how you saved my dignity that day, instead of being stereotyped as a thief, and a liar, as a despicable child, you really saved my soul, you saved my dignity. And you never mentioned it to anybody else, not just to the owner, but not even to me. It happened, it was over, I understood the message, and when I looked at that, I saw it and said “Wow, this is what a teacher is, this is what an educator is, this is what I want to do with my life.” And therefore I want into education.

And the older man as he was listening said, “Wow! That’s amazing! That’s a really amazing story.”

And the younger man said, “But don’t you remember? Don’t you remember the story? When you see me, and when you hear my name, I’m sure you must remember the story that I stole the watch and what you did, and that you didn't want to embarrass me and you made everybody stand with their eyes closed, and that I’m that person.

And the older man replied, “Well, actually I don’t know, I wouldn't know that it was you.”

And he said, “But why not, it’s a pretty dramatic story.”

He said, “Because I also closed my eyes.”

Just a few questions to close: Who are the Good Shepherds who have made a difference in your life? Those who have been like a gate for you into safety and into good pasture. Who has inspired your life to be one that overflows with abundance and blessing towards others? If you had to listen to the voice of Wisdom, the Voice of the Good Shepherd within you heart today, what might that voice be saying to you in your life, in your particular circumstances today? Lastly, it is not just the voice of the thief and robber that lives inside us, by God’s grace there is also a good shepherd in each of us. When in your life have you had the joy and privilege of being a good shepherd for someone else like the older teacher in this story who made such an impact on the life and direction of his pupil.

Dear Friends

A variety of churches (65 in total) across the UK recently recorded a beautiful song as a blessing over the UK at this difficult time. Please click the button below to watch it on YouTube. Enjoy! 

SERMON- John 10:1-10.
I Am the Gate

“All of humanity’s problems stem from their inability to sit quietly, alone in a room.”

This is a quote from Blaise Pascal. He was a child prodigy, a mathematician and scientist who lived in France in the mid 1600s who had a life-changing religious experience at the age of 34.

It was in his unfinished book Pensées ("Thoughts") that he expressed this opinion that “All of humanity’s problems stem from their inability to sit quietly, alone in a room.”

It is admittedly quite a sweeping statement, but one that is worth contemplating for a while. Ours is a world that has become so busy with such high stress levels, in which sitting alone in a room is one of the last things that people are either willing or able to do.

But just imagine a world in which children, from a young age, were taught the art of sitting quietly, learning to acquire a taste or an appreciation for silence and stillness, an ability to sit with one’s thoughts watching them change and flow, instead of allowing those thoughts to be like a slave-driver constantly pushing one to doing this and then that with no end.

Imagine a world where all adults made time to sit quietly alone, with no external stimulation, just resting quietly in the silence for an hour every day, allowing their minds to process their experiences from the day, allowing their thoughts to slowly settle, (in an image I am borrowing from Wendy), like a snow-globe that had been shaken up and then left to sit on the mantle piece, to quietly return to a place of rest.

What kind of society might we live in if this ability to sit quietly everyday was something that was encouraged and cultivated and highly valued?

I suspect it would be a society that would have few stress related health problems. Perhaps a society that might not need quite as much constant entertainment and amusement. Maybe a society that was a little more in touch with the rhythms of nature and even the rhythms and needs of our own body. When one sits like that in silence, one ends up doing a lot of listening. Maybe it might be a society with a better ability to listen, a better ability to listen to each other, without jumping in prematurely to try and fix things before we have deeply heard what someone else is trying to say?

What other problems might humanity be saved from if we all learned the ability to sit quietly alone in a room?

I wonder if this lockdown period might give us some clues?

We would perhaps all consume less than we do….
There would be less traffic on the roads…
There would be less noise…
Maybe perhaps less pollution…
Perhaps less heart-attacks and strokes…
More goundedness, less compulsion….?

In our passage today, Jesus is described as the the gate for the sheep.

What does it mean that Jesus is a gate, or a doorway?

In the evenings in the past week, Wendy and I have been watching Philip Pullman’s TV series “His Dark Materials”. It is a fantasy story in which there are parallel worlds. And in the story it is possible to move from one world to a different one by passing through a portal of light.

George our little cat recently had such an experience…. Or so he thought.

George and Annie have recently learned that they can jump from the oil tank up onto the lower roof of our extension room. It has brought much joy and fascination to the two cats, but much anxiety for Wendy. It has also meant a bit of handy-man work for me as I have built a bit of a bridge for them to prevent them from slipping and falling instead of jumping across up onto the roof.

One of the things that George and Annie have discovered is that from on top of the roof of the extension room, if the humans are kind enough to let them in, they can enter the house from the bathroom window. This was a paritcularly amazing discovery for George. The first time I let him in through the bathroom window, as he entered, it was almost as if he was seeing the house as if for the first time, looking this way and that, almost in amazement that this was actually his home. Coming in through the bathroom window from the outside was a bit like entering a portal into a new dimension, or so it seemed that very first time he did it.

What is interesting in our passage is that the Greek word for gate or doorway in this passage can also be translated as portal. That is quite an evocative word. It suggests that Jesus’ life is a portal into a whole new kind of life.

Our passage describes this new kind of life with two words:

The first is the Greek word sozo, which is normally translated as saved. – The word ‘saved’ has in some ways become one of those Christian cliche’s. Are you saved? We are often asked. But what does it mean? The Greek word has a number of different meanings. One of those meanings is to be brought to wholeness. To be saved is to be brought into a life of greater wholeness. A life of greater balance.

The other word that describes the new kind of life that Jesus invites us to step into is the word abundant.
The word abundant in Greek is the word perissos. The word peri is the same word that is used in the word peri-meter. A perimeter is a path that encompasses/surrounds something. Abundant Life in this context could mean a deep sense of connection and oneness with the whole of life that surrounds us. It is an expansion of our being that brings us into connection and communion with others and the encompassing life of God.

Most of our lives are lived with a sense of separation. I am a separate person. And from this painful sense of separation come all our fears and anxieties. From this sense of separateness from others we try and desperately bridge the gap between us and the rest of life, sometimes in healthy ways, but also often in unhealthy ways.

In our passage, we read that the life of Jesus is a doorway, a gate, or a portal into a new kind of life, defined not by our anxious sense of separation, but by a life of deep inner connectedness with the whole of life, which in the final analysis is the very life of God, whose life and being, as we have explored in recent weeks, fills all things… Over all, Through all, and In all. Or as an ancient philosopher is said to have written, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference encompasses all things.”

How is it that Jesus life is a doorway or a gate, or a portal into this life of wholeness and deep inner connectedness with God’s life that surrounds and encompasses us?

Because Jesus’ life was and is, a Life in tune with the very Being of God.

That’s what I believe is meant in this passage when we read that Jesus says: “I Am” the gate for the sheep.
“I AM” is the name for the Divine. It suggests that GOD is Beingness itself. When Jesus says “I AM” the gate for the sheep, his life is at One with the Life and Being of God.

Another way of putting it is that Jesus Life is Centred and Grounded in the stillness and fullness of God’s Being. God’s Being is the centre of Jesus’ Being, and in this way, Jesus is a doorway, a gate, a portal for us to step into God’s Being as well.

When we discern the still centre of God’s Being in Jesus, we begin to touch and uncover the still centre of God’s being in ourselves and others. And in discovering the still centre in ourselves, we awaken to a new life of wholeness and connectedness. Wholeness and Connectedness with the Life of God that surrounds us, holds us, and that lives in and through us.

I believe that there are two essential things we can do to discern the Still Centre of God’s Beingness in Jesus, God’s I-Am-ness that was and is the ground of Jesus Being.

Firstly, we can meditate deeply on the life of Jesus. Our passage uses the phrase, “listening to his voice”. My sheep listen to my voice. The voice of Jesus is not only heard in the words he speaks. The voice of Jesus in the Gospel stories is also heard in the way Jesus interacts with others. It is heard in his actions. In his gestures. In his silences. To hear the voice of Jesus, is to read the Gospels in such a way that we listen to the whole Beingness of Jesus, listening for His deep Groundedness in God, in the One he calls Abba.

Secondly, we can learn to discern the Still Centre of God’s Beingness in Jesus, by learning ourselves to sit in stillness and silence and aloneness. Throughout the Gospels, you find Jesus withdrawing into stillness, silence, and aloneness in quiet places. In Mark’s Gospel, “Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus went off to a lonely place to pray.” Stillness, Silence, Aloneness. This seems to have been the engine room of his own Spiritual Life. The place of Jesus’ groundedness and his wholeness.

And so we hear the invitation…. To meditate deeply on the life of Jesus to discern the still centre of his life. And secondly, to practice sitting in God’s stillness, and in being touched in that Stillness by the Beingness of God to discover a new sense of wholeness and wellness welling up from within, and to discover a new sense of abundance, a life more deeply connected and at One with the Whole of Life around us, the very Life of God in all things.

In lockdown, we have learned that sometimes we can save the world, by just remaining in our homes. Is it possible that we can also help to solve many of our worlds problems and the problems of humanity by simply learning to sit quietly alone in a room?

Or quietly alone, staring out the window watching the birds fly past, the wind blowing gently in the trees, or silently watching the cows or sheep as they graze, and in so doing so, imperceptibly beginning to Connect with the One-ness and the Stillness of God at the Centre of our Being and at the very Centre of all of Life.

Amen.

Dear Friends

We remember with love, Sadie Gregg at this time, the beloved wife of the late Alfie Gregg, and a faithful and long-standing member of the Dromore Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. Sadie died peacefully in her sleep at home on Saturday night in Maypole Park.

She will be deeply missed by her son and daughter-in-law Alfie and Margaret, her grand-children, Bronwyn (and Darren), Alison, Stephen, and great grandchildren, Kirsty, Megan, Ewin, Rianna and Charlotte. 

A private funeral and burial will take place for her tomorrow, Tuesday 21 April at 12:00 at the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church. For obvious reasons at this time, only close family members attending. While it will be a private funeral just at the grave-side, you are invited to pause for a moment at 12:00 tomorrow to remember her. 

God of all, 
We pray for those we love but see no longer.
Grant them your peace. 
Let light perpetual shine upon them, 
and in Your loving wisdom and almighty power,
work in them the good purposes of your perfect will. 
Through Christ our Lord. Amen. 

SERMON - Where is God in the Coronavirus?
John  1:1-24 / Acts 17:16ff

On Thursday a week and a half ago on William Crawley’s lunch time Talk Back show on Radio Ulster, he interviewed a number of the church leaders from some of the bigger denominations in Northern Ireland; Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Methodist Church in Ireland, Church of Ireland the Catholic Church as well as the head of the Ireland Council of Churches.  As might have been anticipated, there were a few difficult questions put to them by callers. I don't remember the exact questions but they were along the following lines: “Where is God in this time of coronavirus?” And related to that question, “Is the Coronavirus a judgement from God?”

I don't think any on the panel had quite anticipated or prepared themselves for some of these questions as they found themselves having to think on their feet. I said to Wendy that if I am ever ask to appear on a Radio show at a time of crisis, she should please remind me to prepare myself to answer some difficult questions. 

On the question of God’s judgement, one of the participants said that he would not rule out that the coronavirus is a judgement from God but that he said it is too early to decide and would require some kind of confirmation. Most of the other participants distanced themselves from that answer, with some denying completely that it was a judgement from God. 

Having had the luxury of a bit of time to consider the question, I share a few thoughts on these two questions in the hope that they might be helpful. 

Firstly, in answering the question “Is the Coronavirus a judgement from God?” it needs to be remembered that viruses occur naturally in the world and in fact play a vitally important function in the natural world. I am not a biologist, but reading online it is clear that viruses are probably the most numerous of all biological entities  on the planet and occur in every ecosystem there is on earth.  In a tablespoon of sea water, one is likely to find thousands of different kinds of viruses. 

Scientiests will tell you that from an evolutionary perspective, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity and thus a vital driver of evolution from the earliest phases to the present. Without viruses we wouldn't live in this amazing, beautiful and diverse world in which we live.  

Scientists estimate that out of the roughly 100 million types of viruses that exist in the world, and play a vital role in keeping eco-systems diverse and balanced, only 21 of these viruses are harmful to human beings. 

To suggest that the coronavirus is a judgement from God is to suggest that God has deliberately engineered one of these viruses to do great harm upon humanity because of our sinfulness.  But surely, if this is one’s conception of God, God could have designed a far more efficient way of judging and removing the bad of this world... because it is clear that good people are also contracting this virus. If it was meant to be a judgement against sinners then it is a very inefficient one, with a lot of collateral damage as people in the military might say.

For me, it is enough to say that viruses are naturally occuring and play a vital role in the biological diversity and harmony of the natural world, and that sometimes, under certain causes and conditions, certain viruses can have a major impact on human life, as they do on all life-forms, animals, reptiles and birds throughout the world, throughout the ages.  This is the way that it has been for hundreds of thousands of years. One of the reasons that this virus is affecting the world so badly at the moment is because of the massive levels of globalisation and massive rise in human population.  In past centuries and millennia, a virus outbreak would have severely affected a small group of people and not spread further because lines of contact between different groups across the world would have been far more limited. 

Is the coronavirus a judgement from God? My answer would be no. It is part of the naturally occurring rhythms of nature. As virus’s have played an important role in the evolution of the world and humanity, perhaps this one in its own way, will change us for the better? 

Then secondly, in answering the question: “Where is God in the coronavirus?” a lot depends on what picture or understanding one has of God. 

Now for most of Christian and Jewish history, the image that has probably been most influential in shaping our understanding of God is the story of the calling of Isaiah in Isaiah 6:1-8, where Isaiah says that in a kind of a vision or dream, he saw God high an lifted up on a throne and the train of his robe filled the temple. It is from this passage of scripture that most Christian’s around the world have come to conceive of God as an elderly male human being with a long white flowing robe and white hair.  Our patriarchal cultural filters have latched onto this image and from it, we have come to imagine God as a supreme, big, powerful male human being projected onto the screen of universe, a little bit like the Wizard of Oz, pulling the levers of creation behind the scenes. 

But this is not the only image of God in Scripture. 

In what follows, I would like to briefly comment on three alternative images that we find in the Bible, all of them from the New Testament. 

The first comes from John’s Gospel, in the story of the encounter of Jesus with the Woman at the well. When she begins to ask Jesus where God is supremely located and where God should be worshipped, whether in the Temple in Samaria or the Temple of Jerusalem. But Jesus answers her by giving her a new understanding of God. God is Spirit he says to her, and in future, the true worshippers will worship God in Spirit and in Truth.  The word for Spirit is the same as the word for Breathe. And the word that is used for Truth in this passage is a word that means Reality, where all our illusions and mental misconceptions have been wiped away.  

From this passage, God is not a great big powerful human being on a throne somewhere else, but rather God is the Breathe of Life that breathes through all of life and all of creation. God is the animating Spirit of Life and the hidden Intelligence behind all of life. To live the spiritual life is to live in harmony with this Great Breathe of Life or the Great Spirit of Life that lives and breathes in and through all things and that Jesus described with the word Abba, the great loving and compassionate source of all things. 

The second passage compliments this passage and comes from the book of Acts where the Apostle Paul is speaking in the Aereopagus in Athens, and quoting a Greek philosopher, speaking of God, Paul says: He is not far away, for “In Him we live and move and have our being.” And directly afterwards, quoting from another Greek philosopher, Paul says “We are indeed his offspring.”

He is not far away, for in Him we live and move and have our being, and we are his offspring. Contrary to the image of God seated far away on a throne somewhere else, in this passage God is the Source and the Ground of our being, in Whose Presence we are moving every moment of every day.  In a way, it is a passage that suggests that we live inside the womb of God.  We are God’s offspring in whom we live, and whose life sustains us and helps us to grow. 

And then a third passage that again is complimentary of these two is found in Ephesians 4:6, where the writer, believed by many to have been the apostle Paul describes God as the Father (in other words Abba, the Loving Source who Jesus spoke of) who is Over all, Through all and In all. 

God is the Loving Source, whose Life is in all things, whose Life is through all things, and whose Life is over all things.  This idea is echoed in the words of that beautiful hymn Immortal Invisible: 

“Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise…

...To all life Thou givest
to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all.”

And so getting back to the question we started with in this sermon: “Where is God then in this time of Coronavirus?”

One answer to that question is that God is living God’s Life in and through all of us: God is not far away, for in God we live and move and have our being. God is the Breathe of Life in each life-form in this world. God is in each insect, God is in each animal, God is in each flower, God is in the drops of rain that water the earth, God is in the soil from which we grow our crops. God is in the hands of those who are reaching out to serve, help and heal during this time of coronavirus. God is in those who are protecting us and feeding us. God is also in those who are struggling and suffering due to Covid-19. God is in those who have died from the coronavirus. God is in those who grieve.  God is the Mysterious Breathe of Life at work in all, through all and over all. 

This is the mystery of the Christian message: that God has chosen to incarnate God-self in and through God’s creation. God is not separate from us, but God is in fact our Real and True Self and that God is thus living and experiencing the fullness of life in and through each of us: The glorious and liberating parts of life, as well as the difficult and painful parts of life. God is not separate from us in all of this. Our pain is God’s pain. Our joy is God’s joy. Our suffering is God’s suffering. 

On Good Friday as we remembered the death of Jesus by cruel crucifixion, our Christian tradition invited us to recognise that God does not stand at a distance from this world, but that God is in the midst of it. For those who have eyes to see, God is to be seen in the dying, suffering figure of Christ on the cross.  

And yet, God is not just in all and through all, God is also over all. And maybe that is where our hope lies. God is in this world of joy and pain, but God is also the great Mystery that  transcends that goes beyond this world of mystery of joy and pain. 

And perhaps that connects us with the image of the Resurrected Jesus from last Sunday… In the Risen Christ we see the mystery of God revealed also beyond, transcending this world of of pain and suffering, where every tear is wiped away. The mystery of God, not only in all and through all, but somehow also beyond and over all.  Amen.