The Faith we share at Highbury
At Highbury we don’t have a set of articles of faith
for people to sign up to. Neither do we
expect people to subscribe to any long drawn out creedal statement. We invite people who want to become fully
part of our church to make the simplest statement of faith as they respond to
the following question: Do you believe
in God and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?
We very much hope that people at Highbury will
explore their faith with us and come to a deeper understanding of what that
faith is about. It can sometimes be
helpful to turn to statements that other people have made in order to help in
that process. One of the most ancient
statements of faith from the early days of the Christian church is the Apostles
Creed. You may find it helpful to
reflect on the various parts of this statement as you explore what is at the
heart of the faith.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the great Creeds
of the Christian Church were formulated once the Christian faith had become
recognised by the state, by the Roman Empire.
They seem to miss out one fundamentally important dimension at the heart
of Christanity. They make no mention of
what Christians do, concentrating exclusively on what Christians believe. Maybe that’s because any statement about
what Christians should do is likely to be seen as pretty subversive by the
powers that be. After all, it won’t be
long before you are reminded that Jesus invites us not just to love God and to
love our neighbour but to love our enemies too.
That’s risky stuff.
No wonder by the time Christianity is tamed into a state religion that
its statements of faith omit such talk.
That’s why alongside the Apostles creed which speaks
of what Christians believe, I have added my reflections on one of the finest
statements on what Christians are called to do. It comes from Jesus himself and is contained in Matthew’s Gospel.
It’s called the Sermon on the Mount.
I believe … reflections on the
Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of
the Holy Spirit,
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died, and was buried.
On the third day he rose
again.
And is seated at the right hand
of the Father.
He will come again to judge the
living and dead.
A glimpse of God’s rule – the Beatitudes Matthew 5:1-12
The
task we all share – salt and light Matthew
5:13-17
The heart of the matter – the law and the prophets Matthew 5:18-20
What it takes … to love your neighbour Matthew 5:21-48
What it takes … to love God Matthew
6:1 – 7:12
What counts is having the right attitude Matthew 7:1
The choice is ours … deeds not words! Matthew 7:13-27
I believe ...
According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary there
are four definitions of the word ‘believe’.
Each of them can be applied to our Christian faith.
1. accept as true or as
conveying the truth When I make a statement about my faith and say I believe ... I stick my
neck out and make the claim that I accept as true the Christian faith, which
for me conveys the truth about God, the world and how we should live our lives.
2. think, suppose - for me the Christian
faith is faith. It cannot be proved
beyond all possible doubt - at the end of the day it remains faith. It involves taking a risk, venturing out in
faith before you have got everything neatly tied up. One of the people Jesus commended for their faith was the man who
said, I believe help me in my doubting.
3. have faith in the
existence
of, have confidence in, have trust in the advisability of ... I have
faith in the existence of God ... but much more than that I have confidence in
the reality of Jesus Christ and his presence with me come what may. That means I have trust in the advisability
of making every attempt to take his teaching seriously and live the life of
love for God and for other people.
have
(especially religious) faith. That, I suppose says it
all. I believe means for me that I have
faith ... not just any faith but Christian faith. What is such faith? One
of the best definitions can be found at the beginning of a classic chapter all
about faith in the Bible: Hebrews
chapter 11 - faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen.
It
makes sense to me. I cannot prove
it. But then there are lots of things I
cannot prove. I cannot disprove it
either. I simply believe it. And it makes sense to believe it.
I
stand on a mountain top and see a magnificent view; I stand on the sea shore
and feel the wind blowing through me; I peer through a pen-like microscope with
a magnification of 30x and I see the age old wonder of a tiny lichen; I gaze up
at the stars on the clearest of moonless nights; I observe the birth of a baby
who passes through childhood to
adolescence and beyond; I witness the mystery of dying and the profoundest
sense of something more beyond ... and it fills me with awe and with
wonder. There must be something more
than all I can see. I cannot prove
it. I do believe it. I believe in God.
I
watch the news and I see hatred in the havoc wrought by terrorism; I see the
horror of natural disaster; a policeman calls and I learn the tragedy of a life
cut short too soon, I call and share, and touch all too briefly lives that
hurt, and for a moment I feel a pain that is too much to bear. If there is nothing more, I cannot begin to
make sense of it at all. There has to
be something more to make sense of any of it.
I cannot prove it. I do believe
it. And believing it helps me to begin
to make sense of this wonderful, tragic world of ours.
I
believe in ... God.
I believe in ... God the
Father
The
beauty of nature and its wide open spaces, the miracle of new life and the
complexity of this wonderful world of ours makes it impossible for me not to be
believe in God. I am not alone ...
many, many people have a sense of something other, something more, something
beyond all that we can see. There is as
much fascination with things spiritual and religious now as ever there has
been.
I
want to go further, I want to know what this God is like, what this God has to
do with me, what this God expects of me.
This is what excites me so much about everything that happened in and
around the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I return to his story, I hear it again, I
tell it again, I hear the impact it has on so many people ... and this year I
share in making a video of it specially for Easter and beyond, Jesus, today,
tomorrow for ever? ... and yet again I discover that this Jesus does
something remarkable, something unique.
He
opens up an understanding of God as One who is not distant but as close as can
be, One who is not detached but in the most intimate of relationships. ‘You believe in God,’ said Jesus at that
last supper on the night before he died, ‘believe also in me ... I am the way,
the truth and the life ... no one comes to the Father except through me. ‘
That’s it. Jesus opens up an
understanding of God not just as God but as Father ... and it is not just an
understanding that he opens up. He
draws me into a close relationship with God as my Father the One who cares with
the deepest possible love for me and enables me to say
...
I believe in God the Father.
I had not done it
before. In the Summer I dug up lots of
old daffodil bulbs. I left them to dry
out. In the Autumn I divided them and
planted a lot more daffodil bulbs. In
the Winter they began to appear. And in
the Spring they flowered in all their beauty, albeit a little too late for St
David’s Day!
I never cease to be amazed
at the sheer miracle of it all. A
wizened, seemingly dead piece of bulbous material, buried in the dirt, yet
coming to such beautiful life! I turn up
an Encyclopaedia article, in the section on The Living Planet, in the sub-section
The Biosphere, I find diagrams of an ecosystem model, of the nitrogen cycle and
of primary production in the biosphere and I begin to read about
photosynthesising organisms. But
something is missing.
I turn to the New Oxford
Book of English Verse, to the collection of poems by William Wordsworth And
then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. What truth there is in those wonderful
words!
I turn to Genesis 1 … and
it’s nothing like the Encyclopaedia article.
It has all the feel of powerful poetry.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and
there was light. What truth there
is in those wonderful words! They make
me want to say …
I believe in God … maker
of heaven and earth.
On
a mountain top, under a clear night sky, as the spring flowers blossom again
... I can believe in God. More than
that, I have to believe in God. If God
really is maker of heaven and earth, creator not just of all that is, but of
you and of me ... then I would expect this God to let me in on the secret. What is this God like? How does he want us to live in the created
world? It makes sense to me that this
God would make me aware of a presence to guide and protect, to enable me to
fulfil the part I am intended to fulfil in the created order.
2000
years ago something happened in human history which made people who witnessed
it stop in their tracks and think again about the nature of God. It gave them new and radically different
guidelines for living their lives in a created world. It gave them a sense of a very remarkable presence which could
guide and protect them. It gave them a
sense of fulfilment they had never had before.
A
man appeared on the scene called Jesus.
People had thought of God as almighty, as maker of heaven and earth ...
he opened up a new way of thinking of God as a loving Father. He spoke of the rule of God being
established in people’s hearts and homes, in people’s communities in the world
at large. His teaching turned people
inside out and the world upside down ... with its commitment to the poor, to
the sad, and to a way of righteousness which involved love not just for the
people you get on with, but for enemies too.
In his presence people felt as if they were in the presence of none
other than God. And for the first time
they felt a strange sense of fulfilment as if they had a peace deep within
themselves that the world could not give.
Down
through those 2000 years people have felt the same way. I count myself as one of them. I too can say ...
I
believe in Jesus.
It
is not a surname. It is definitely not
a swear-word. Occasionally it is
mistaken for the first. All too
frequently it is mis-used as the second.
Originally it meant the world to the people who first dared to use it.
And
it took courage to use it. Real
daring. Many, many people were called
Jesus. It was one of the commonest
names around. But only one person could
ever be called Christ.
There
were people who claimed to be Christ, but their claims turned out to be pretty
hollow. Jesus hardly ever claimed to be
Christ himself. He was different from
all the others. But as people heard his
teaching and found that it really did make a difference in their lives, as they
saw the remarkable things that he was doing, they began to feel it in their
bones. Jesus was none other than the
one they had all been waiting for. He
was, in their own Hebrew language, the Messiah. That means in English, the anointed one of God. But it’s the Greek version of the word
that’s really stuck. Christ.
It
had been the best part of six hundred years since Israel had last had a
King. Their Kings had been ‘anointed’
by God. The King had not just ruled as
a great human authority. The King had
made the rule of God become a reality in the life of the nation and in the
lives of the people who belonged to that nation.
Ever
since the last King had fallen, the people of Israel had looked to a time when
one would come who would be ‘anointed by God’, who would be ‘the Messiah’, ‘the
Christ’. He would make the rule of God a reality once more.
Then
Jesus had come on the scene. His whole
message, everything he did had to do with the rule of God becoming real in
people’s lives. Not for him the
military might of the kings of old:
instead, he came in peace to make God’s rule a reality in people’s lives
using one of the most powerful tools for change ... love.
That
is one of the things that excites me most about Jesus. He really is ‘the One’, anointed by God, who
makes the rule of God a reality by means of a love that is as real now as it
has ever been. That’s why I don’t just
believe in Jesus ...
I
believe in Jesus Christ.
I believe in ... Jesus
Christ, his only Son
Son
of God! That’s a big claim. In more ways than you might think. One of the things that drew me first to
Jesus Christ was the radical nature of his teaching. Love God, love your neighbour, love your enemy! Good news to the poor, release to the
captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed; comfort
for the sad, a hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, the challenge
of peace-making. It is all about the
Kingdom of God ... the rule of God coming into your heart, into your home into
your world. What a difference it would
make if people took it seriously!
That’s
the appeal of Jesus Christ. People have
taken him seriously ... and they still do.
Take the first Jewish followers of Jesus. It had been 500 years since there had last been a king for the
nation of Israel. Kings had been
anointed and given the title of Son of God.
Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God had come ... to see him as the
Son of God was to recognise him as king and to see in him the one who in a
unique way made the rule of God a reality.
That was some claim!
To
call Jesus Son of God was just as audacious for the very first Gentile
followers of Jesus. As far as the
Romans were concerned there was no king but Caesar. But Caesar was very much more than another king. The Emperor Caesar Augustus had come up with
the idea not long before the birth of Christ.
Regarding his father, Julius Caesar, as a god he styled himself ‘son of
God’. It was an idea that caught on and
spread like wildfire around the Roman Empire.
For the followers of Jesus to look to Jesus as ‘Son of God’ and to seek
to live by the values of the Kingdom of God that he proclaimed was downright
subversive.
For
Jew and Gentile alike to call Jesus ‘Son of God’ was to make an enormous claim
for the Kingdom of God. By the time
John came to write his Gospel, this way of looking at Jesus really had caught
on. John reflected on it ... and
realised that it tied in with a strand of Jesus’ teaching that was very special
to him. Jesus had opened up a new way
of seeing God as ‘abba’, father. Jesus
felt so close to this ‘father God’ that he spoke of being one with his father. It was as if all that it meant to be God was
there in Jesus. If God is love, the
love Jesus shared was nothing other than the love of God.
Now
as at the first it is an audacious claim, but one that I am able to make ...
I
believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son.
I believe in ... Jesus
Christ our Lord
It
trips off the tongue so easily. How
easy it is to miss its significance.
And yet it means so much. Though
we value the great creeds of the Christian church as very helpful descriptions
of the Christian faith, we do not invite people to recite any one of them on a
regular basis. Neither do we insist
that people are able to subscribe to a particular credal statement in order to
belong to our church. We believe that
faith is very much more personal than that, and that it cannot be reduced to
any single formula of words. Yet we do
insist that those who share in the full life of our church in church
membership, at church meeting and in all our decision making are people who
share a Christian commitment. And so we
ask a very simple question of faith: Do you believe in God and accept Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Saviour? Behind
that question is one of the earliest statements of faith that appears in the
New Testament. Paul expresses the hope
in Philippians 2:11 that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord;
and he maintains in I Corinthians 12:3 that no once can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’
except by the Holy Spirit.
What
does it mean for us to say Jesus is Lord?
First of all we must put aside all thought of the old feudal system and
all the controversies over the House of Lords.
To say that Jesus is Lord has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of
allegiance owed to the Lord of the Manor, let alone the kind of allegiance [if
any!!] owed to the Lords of the Realm!
To
say Jesus is Lord has much more profound significance. It is no coincidence that Doubting Thomas
cried out ‘My Lord, and my God’ when he saw the risen Jesus and believed (John
20:28). The most revered name for God
given in the Old Testament was so special that it is never uttered by Jewish
people. The four Hebrew letters YHWH
stand out in any Hebrew text; modern English translators follow the precedent
set by the first Greek Translators and use the word ‘LORD’ ... and they spell it
that way in capital letters in order to make the name of God stand out.
To
believe in Jesus as Lord is to believe in Jesus as the one who in a most
profound way makes the presence of God real in our lives. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who opens
up a window on to the reality of the God who is love and who gives us the opportunity
to approach the Creator God of the Universe and know him most intimately as our
Father. There are all sorts of
implications about my care of God’s world, my commitment to God’s family, and
my concern in love for God’s creation when I say,
I
believe in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I believe in ... Jesus
... conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
Faced
with darkest tragedy whether it be on the global scale we have witnessed in the
last couple of weeks, or at the most personal level in our own lives, the
niceties of theological doctrine and dogma seem far removed from the realities
of the world and of our own lives.
And
yet in these ancient words of Christian conviction we touch something profound
at the heart of our Christian faith which has a bearing on the tragic realities
of our world.
Those
who followed in the footsteps of Jesus were moved by his teaching and realised
that he was opening up for them a new way of life to follow. It was a way of life based on love for one’s
neighbour. It was a way of life that
didn’t stop there. It was a way of life
that was based on love for one’s enemy.
It was a way of life that celebrated the blessing of forgiveness and
rejected the curse of hatred.
They
followed him to the cross and felt as if everything was lost. And then something happened which convinced
them that all was not lost. They knew
He continued to be with them - the crucified Christ was alive. And they knew it because that unseen yet so
real power he had promised them from God had been let loose in their
world. They described it as the power
of the Holy Spirit. It was as if they
had another comforter, a helper, a friend in this Spirit of God.
They
looked back and they began to realise that this man was in some way more than a
man. It was as if he had opened up for
them a window on to the reality of God.
It came home to them that the God who was God of the Universe was a God
of love who cared for them as a Father and breathed his very Spirit into their
lives. They began to grasp the very
nature of God. John summed it up for
all the others when he said, God is Love.
God is not some static entity - God is God in Loving Relationship. Paul put it another way when he spoke of the
Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy
Spirit.
To
understand God as Love shapes my response to the tragedy I see in the world
around me and prompts me to say I believe in Jesus not just as one who opens up
a window on to God as Father but as one who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and releases the power of the Spirit in all
his love, joy, peace and patience into our lives and through us into our
world. It is important to me to say …
I
believe in ... Jesus ... conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
I believe in ... Jesus
... born of the Virgin Mary
For
me it is not so much the miraculous nature of the birth of Jesus Christ as the
much greater miracle of his whole life, death and resurrection that makes all
the difference to my faith. It is in
his compassionate love, his powerful teaching, his sacrificial death, his
victorious resurrection that I catch a glimpse of the reality of a God who is
Love. It is in the touch that breaks
down barriers, the healing that restores broken lives, the conviction that
raises up the poor and brings down the powerful, the word that satisfies that
deep-down hunger for meaning and purpose in life, the transformation of so many
people whose lives were changed by their encounter with the living Christ that
I sense the reality of God in his love for all the world.
The
stories of the miraculous birth of Jesus were not told in order to convince
people that Jesus was in some way uniquely God ... the people who told those
stories had already been convinced by the transformation that had come into
their lives through meeting with the living Lord Jesus Christ. It comes as something of a surprise to a
generation that is always seeking ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’ that the virgin birth
is actually only mentioned twice in the New Testament - at the beginning of
Matthew and at the beginning of Luke.
By contrast the life, death and resurrection of Christ and the impact he
had transforming the lives of many people fills every page of the New
Testament.
If
you want to meet with the living Christ and discover a window opening up on to
a whole new way of seeing God as Abba, Father, the One who is Love ... look
again at his teaching, look at the people he met and the difference he made to
their lives, look at the cross, look at the resurrection, look at the Way of
Life he opened up for people to follow.
And as you begin to glimpse God in Jesus Christ, then, and only then,
return to those birth stories.
There
you will see God meeting humanity at the point at which it hurts most ... in a
painful birth, in a place with no shelter, in a town experiencing cruel
repression, in a family that has to seek asylum in the face of
persecution. And yet through the pain,
there is a sense of awe and wonder ... for God is present in the middle of all
these troubled times. It is that awe
and that wonder that I bring to mind as I say ...
I
believe in Jesus born of the Virgin Mary.
I believe ... he suffered
under Pontius Pilate
“Inflexible,
stubborn, and cruel” that was the verdict on Pontius Pilate in a letter written
by Herod Agrippa to the Emperor Gaius Caesar in AD 41. Why should such a man figure so large in the
most ancient of the Church’s creeds?
The answer shows why there is a strange appropriateness in arriving at
this statement of belief this Christmas of all Christmases. Pilate’s presence in the creed is a stark
and disturbing reminder of the world Jesus was born into. It wasn’t a comfortable world. It was, to coin a phrase a ‘post-11th-September-world’. It was a world where the terror let loose in
Bethlehem shortly after the birth of Jesus was re-visited on the people of
Galilee by Pilate (see Luke 13:1). It
was a terror which all too often found expression in the fearful instrument of
torture and death devised by the Romans to keep their conquered peoples in
subjugation - the cross. It was a
terror which at the hands of Pilate caught up with Jesus himself and brought
him to the point at which he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned
me?’ It was into just such a world
where the feeling of God-forsakenness could so easily take a hold that Jesus
Christ was born. In spite of all the
appearances God was still there ... with Jesus even though at that moment of
darkest dereliction he was not aware of it.
It is the presence of God in the darkness that is of such crucial
significance to the faith that is important to me. Through our lives and by our prayers the risen Jesus still comes
into our world holding a lantern of light and hope. Through our prayers, our giving, and our Christian lives I am
convinced that God in Christ is present with those who suffer at the hands of
‘inflexible, stubborn and cruel’ men. I
believe it is important for us all to remember as we celebrate the birth of
Jesus that
he
suffered under Pontius Pilate.
I believe in Jesus Christ
who was crucified
In
the Jewish world it was the ultimate sign of being cut off from all the
goodness of God. In the Roman world it
was a profoundly disturbing symbol of subjugation used to keep a conquered
people down. In anyone’s book it was a
deeply shocking form of execution which stripped all human dignity from its
victims. This was what Jesus Christ was
subjected to. I want to remember the
Jewishness of Jesus and the Jewishness of the world he was a part of. I find that way of thinking helpful. It was as if on the cross Jesus carried on
his shoulders all the consequences of
the evil-doings of humanity at its worst.
All that separates us from God
was heaped on his shoulders. And he
absorbed it all. Look to Christ on the
cross, see the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, and discover
the release that the wonderful forgiving love of God can bring into our
lives. I also want to remember the way
that Jesus stood his ground against the powers that be. He stood his ground not by giving as good as
he got, but by returning good for evil.
That innocent death on a cross is not only an inspiration to any called
on to take a stand against all that is evil in this world of ours, it is also a
profound sign that the ultimate victory belongs not to the powers that be, but
to a greater power, the power of the goodness of God. For all that, it is the sheer awfulness, the sheer horror of the
cross that is most important to me.
Whether we like it or not - and I am not alone when I say I do not like
it! - we live in a world that can at times seem terrifyingly cruel. As a new year begins its cruelty is all too
evident, not least in the place where Jesus was crucified. At those moments when feelings of
God-forsakenness overwhelm ... I believe it is crucially important that we can
look to the cross of Christ and remember that he’s been to the point at which
he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? More than that he has opened up for us a way
back from that point of desolation. It
is because of all that Christ has shared on the cross that I can come to the
point of saying, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. That’s why it’s important for me to believe
in
Jesus
Christ who was crucified.
I believe in Jesus ...
dead and buried
There
is an awful finality to those words.
Dead and Buried. What’s the
point of including them in a statement of your faith? Couldn’t we leave it a little vaguer than that? Isn’t it enough
to say he suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucfied? Why be so blunt? Dead and buried. Wouldn’t it be better left unsaid?
Two
things prompt me to value these three words in the Apostles’ Creed, that
ancient statement of Christian faith.
First, I believe that’s what happened.
And it needs saying. As Matthew
tells us in his Gospel there were those from the very first who maintained that
Jesus did not really die. Since then
from time to time, people have shared that view. It is worth remembering that Muslims think very highly of Jesus
as a great Prophetic leader. It is a
point of difference between Christianity and Islam to say that Jesus actually
did die and really was buried. Only
this conviction can pave the way for the resurrection and the reality of
resurrection victory over death, a reality that we can share. Only this conviction can bring home to us
the stark reality that Jesus shared every dimension of human experience, not
least the ending, in his case very abrupt ending, of his life.
Second,
I value these three words in the Apostles’ creed because they remind us that
unmentionable things that it’s tempting to consider better left unsaid ... need
to be spoken about. Dead and
buried. Following the death of someone
you love the grieving process takes you through different stages - among them there
is a sense of shock that amounts to denial.
In that period most of all people need to talk, and tell their story not
just once but sometimes many times over.
And other people need to be prepared to listen. Simply to tell the story of the death of a
loved one to someone who is prepared to take the time to listen has a therapeutic
effect. It helps to move you through
that stage in the grieving process of shock and denial. Dead and buried. We don’t like to think of it.
But it’s much better brought out into the open and shared, than bottled
up and in another sense buried. After
all, dead and buried is not the end of the story ... for Jesus and for us
there’s something more beyond! All the
same it is important for me to say …
I
believe in Jesus ... dead and buried
I believe ... he
descended into hell
It
goes from bad to worse!
As
if it wasn’t bad enough to say I believe in Jesus ... dead and buried. The older words of the creed go on to say
that he descended into hell. Arguably
it is more accurate to say with the modern versions of the Apostles’ creed ‘he
descended to the dead’. But it doesn’t
have the same ring to it. And it
doesn’t have the same meaning. And
those older words capture something which in a strange way is very important to
me.
For
me hell is very real. I grew up in the
immediate aftermath of the holocaust with the imminent threat of nuclear
holocaust hanging over our heads. There
has been no escaping the ‘inhumanity of man to man’ in the last Century and
with new depths to which Terrorism has sunk, no escaping it in the present
Century either. If you want to catch a
glimpse of the awfulness take a look at some newsreel footage of the last half
century.
Hell
is the sheer awfulness of the utter separateness of being totally cut off from
the goodness of God. It is not some
distant, future place to be feared; it can be experienced here and now ... and
it is full of fear. I would like to
think that it doesn’t last beyond this life ... as I read my Bible I cannot
help but fear that it has a dimension beyond this life too.
And
it was experienced by Christ. For
evidence look no further than those words from the cross: ‘My God!
My God! Why have you forsaken
me?’ That abject sense of
God-forsaken-ness which Christ
experienced in those moments of agony was for me that moment when he touched
hell and all it means to be cut off from the goodness of God.
And
he came through it! And opened up a way
for us to go through the experience of this hell and emerge into the light of a
day filled with the life and the goodness and the love of God. That’s the wonderful message of Easter - and
the offer is there for everyone to share.
In the presence of this risen Christ our task is to bring the light of
the love of God into the darkness of the hell people experience wherever that
may be and so share with them the way into the presence of God in all his
love. That’s why …
I believe ... on the
third day he rose again
At
last we’ve got there. It seems to have
been a long time coming. This ancient
statement of Christian faith is absorbed with the dark side of things. The words seem to go on and on about
suffering, death, hell and the sheer awfulness of being apart from God. And now comes in one single line a
celebration of resurrection victory.
Wouldn’t
we put it differently nowadays?
Wouldn’t we be less absorbed by the dark side of things? Wouldn’t we want to devote much more space
to the triumph? Maybe. Perhaps.
But I’m not so sure. With war in
Afganistan and the threat of war in Iraq; with little short of war in Jerusalem,
Israel and Palestine, and with the new order of terrorism, maybe things aren’t quite so different.
The
powerful significance of Christian faith is not just that it speaks to a dark
world, but much more than that. It is
that Christian faith opens up a way through that dark world ... a way that
leads not to nothingness, but to life in all its fullness.
The
very first people to be described as ‘Christians’ had heard all about this Life
for themselves; they had seen it with their own eyes; they had looked at it and
touched it with their own hands. They
saw. And the believed. On the third day he rose again from the
dead. In the darkness of their world
this conviction was a wonderful blessing to them as it empowered to live their
lives to the full in love for those most in need as they followed in the
footsteps of Christ. Jesus was
convinced that even greater blessings were in store for those who had not seen
for themselves, but who nevertheless came to believe. I count myself among those who have not seen ... but have come to
the point at which they can say,
I
believe that on the third day he rose
again from the dead.
I believe ... he ascended
into heaven
Twenty years ago I did not make the
connection. My attention was drawn to it in an unexpectedly glowing newspaper
review. Twenty years on it has been re-released. Considerably extended,
digitally enhanced, E.T. retains the magic it had all those years ago, and if
anything has grown in stature. By which I mean, of course, the film ... not the
creature.
I had spotted the obvious allusions at the
time: a finger reminiscent of the touch of Creator and Created in Leonardo’s
Sistine Chapel ceiling, animated memorably in the opening credits of the South
Bank Show. A sense of the other in the sonorous tones echoing across the hills.
An Other that keeps in touch ... albeit on the phone!
What I had not noticed was the
significance of the structure of the film. The novelisation makes it explicit
in the second sentence: “Were someone to come upon this landing site, they
might, for a moment, think that a gigantic old Christmas tree ornament had
fallen from the night sky.”
Those who accept the One who comes among
them are of course the children, and those who are prepared to become like
children. It is the adult authorities who reject him and are fearful of him. It
is at the point at which they at last arrive to capture him in the form of a
spaceman-like soldier clad in protective gear that at last he dies.
That death is a most poignant moment. But
it is not the end. “A beam of golden light shot through inner space. It was
more ancient than the oldest fossil. There are those who claim it was the
healing soul of Earth itself, flickering a single thread of what it knew toward
its alien visitor. Whatever it was, it touched E.T.’s healing finger and caused
it to glow. He healed himself.”
There it is: the moment of resurrection
inspired by that Leonardo painting.
But that too is not the end. Hope, faith
are restored among those children who had accepted him. But not so among the
adults. It was the newspaper review that caught my eye when it said the story
came to an end with the Ascension.
I looked again at the end of the
novelisation. And of course, there it is. The cycle chase and the moment when
all is lost and the cycles take off over the trees and over the rooftops. But
that’s not the scene that captures for me the significance of the Ascension. We
need to move on to the final scene at the space ship, the sonorous tones
echoing once more from beyond.
In one last moving moment ET touched
Elliott’s forehead, and made the intricate wave-sign over it with his finger
tips. “I’ll be right here” he said, fingertip glowing over Elliott’s chest.
That’s it. The promise of Christ’s
presence: “I’ll be with you for ever, even to the end of the age.”
“Then the old botanist walked up the
gangplank. The inner light of the Great Gem glowed above him, and he felt the
millionfold circuits of its awareness lighting in him, until his heart, like
Elliott’s, had filled, not with loneliness but with love.”
That’s it for me. From the most unexpected
source I am reminded of the significance that comes home to me when I say
I believe he ascended into heaven.
I believe ... he is seated at the right hand of the Father
One
of the remarkable things about Jesus is that he opened up for us all a window
on to God which enables us to see God not just as awesome and mighty, but in
the most intimate terms as loving and caring.
Prayer becomes an expression of that intimate relationship as we address
God in the most personal of ways as Our Abba, Father. O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all
because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer!
There
is, however, a danger that we lose our sense of awe at the wonder and majesty
of the God we believe in. In an
exaggerated intimacy prayer can degenerate into a cosy conversation with the
almighty, indulged in by a holy huddle.
Jesus
had a prophetic message to share with everyone who would listen to him. It had to do with the sovereignty of a God
who rules in our hearts, in our homes and in our world. Jesus was quite clear ... we all need to
make a fresh start because this rule of God, this kingdom of God has come so
near that it has broken into our world.
Like the tiny seed that grows into a great tree which has room for all
the birds of the air ... so this rule of God is on the move and growing.
We
may start our prayer by saying Our Father, but it’s not long before we are
saying Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What is that rule of God like? Look again to Jesus ... but this time see
him in your mind’s eye not as one of us, bringing healing and love into hurting
and lonely lives. See him in his
majesty, the Prince of Peace, become the King of Kings. One with God, he is seated at the right hand
of the Father - able to take all our hurts and share them with the Father, able
to take all God’s love and share it with us.
This is the Jesus who calls us to follow him and be part of a movement
to bring the Kingdom of God down to earth.
It’s an exciting challenge that can make the world of difference ... in
only we let it. That’s the kind of
picture I have in my mind’s eye when I say
I
believe he is seated at the right hand of the Father.
I believe .... he will come again
It
always seems to me to be a pity that some people reduce the ‘coming again’ of
Jesus Christ to single ‘second coming’ at the end of time. That is to limit the scope of the Bible’s
teaching and to do an injustice to the teaching of Jesus himself.
There
is a wonderful comfort contained in these words. Jesus promises to be there for us at difficult times, at painful
times and at joyful times too. Indeed
he promises to be with his followers right through to the end of time. That sense of the presence of Christ brings
comfort, strengthening and peace as we sense that he will come again ... and
again ... and again to meet our every need.
There
is an equally powerful challenge contained in these words. As he came towards the end of his life’s
ministry Jesus told a disturbing story about sheep and goats [see Matthew
25:31-46]. He spoke of the way that he
would come again at the most unexpected of times in the guise of the prisoner
needing a visit, the sick person needing care, the hungry person needing food,
the famine stricken victim needing clothing.
To feed the hungry, to visit the prisoner, to clothe the naked, to visit
the sick is to show compassion to Christ himself. We need constantly to be on the look-out for the coming again of
Christ in the person whose needs we can meet.
At
the same time, these words do speak about endings. They speak of the ending each one of us can look forward to. At the beginning of John 14 Jesus speaks of
the way he is going to prepare a place for each one of us. And then he says those wonderful words ...
“and if I go and prepare a place for
you I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there
you may be also.” What a marvellous
promise for each of us to take to heart.
And
these words speak of the ending of all things.
The Bible begins at the very beginning in Genesis, and ends at the very
end. The conviction of our biblical
faith is that God is there both at the beginning and at the end. Jesus’ own thoughts about a glorious coming
at the end times are taken up elsewhere in the New Testament and supremely in
Revelation. Even though the world’s
ending will be as cataclysmic as its beginning, yet God is there, his glory is
fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth of that wonderful vision in
Revelation 21.
In
so many different ways it is a fundamental part of my faith in Jesus Christ
that ...
I
believe he will come again.
I believe ... he will come again
to judge the living and
the dead
Surely
not! That’s a little bit too near the
mark. It encroaches on your comfort
zone. And surely religion’s not meant
to do that. Isn’t it all about making
you feel comfy? In this modern day and
age we surely cannot talk about judgement?
Or
can we?
Intriguingly
our modern age has re-introduced us to this fundamental part of our Christian
faith. The modern world may fight shy
of the idea of ‘judgement’ but it attaches a great deal of value to the notion
of ‘accountability’. Accountability has
become the norm in every walk of life.
If we spend money on behalf of someone else we have to give a careful
account of the way we have spent it. In
work we have to give an account of the way we spend our time. We are accountable for our actions not only
in the world of work: in the life of the church in our pastoral care of one
another, in our dealings with children and with vulnerable people we have to be
accountable for our actions. It would
be quite wrong to think anything else.
We
are accountable to one another. But we
are at the same time accountable to God.
He created us. He gave us
freedom and responsibility to make our own decisions. He reaches out in love to each of us before ever we have done
anything to deserve it. He provides us
with the guidelines we need to live life to the full. Talk of ‘judgement’ should not be used as a threat to cajole
people into becoming Christians. It is a salutary reminder to all of us who
are Christians that we are indeed accountable to God. ‘Are you prepared to meet your Maker?’ is not a question to fear,
but one of the most helpful questions to ask ourselves as we weigh up our
priorities in the light of our accountability before God.
As
I say this part of the creed I would like to echo the words of the Queen’s
Christmas Broadcast 2000 quoted in many a Jubilee service this year: “For me the teachings of Christ and my personal accountability before God provide
a framework in which I try to lead my life.”
As I read again Matthew 25:31ff I find myself having to say ...
I believe he will come
again to judge the living and the dead.
Rooted in history, the
Christian faith at the same time has a relevance today which is shot through
with the presence of God. The God we
believe in is that power, that force, that being which is beyond all things and
behind all things and around all things and within all things. He touched our humanity at a single point in
time around 2000 years ago in the
birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Meet with this Jesus Christ in the pages of
history, in the pages of the New Testament and the experience opens up for you
a window on to the intimate nature of God as a loving Father who forgives and
restores and renews.
Leave it there and the
Christian faith becomes simply part of our heritage. But the Christian faith does not stop there. There’s something more. And that something more is what makes the
Christian faith so special. The Creator
God who in Jesus Christ discloses himself as loving Father to all of creation
has released the power of his presence not just into the world, but into our
lives too. It’s special to God ...
that’s why it’s called ‘Holy’. It’s
unseen like the breath that gives life, like he wind that has such power, it’s
gentle filled with peace like the dove ... that’s why it’s called ‘Spirit’.
As the Holy Spirit of God
touches that spirit within us that makes us human a new life is sparked
off. He is the One who makes the
presence of Jesus real here and now.
Called alongside us Jesus said he would be a comforter, a strengthener,
a counsellor always with us releasing into our hearts the very presence of
God. (John 14-16) Take seriously the teaching of Jesus and his
way of selfless loving is beyond the grasp of anyone with the frailties that
come with being a human being. But this
force, this energy, this Holy Spirit of God as we bear the fruit of the Spirit
in the very way we lead our lives: the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
(Galatians 5:22-23)
Take the teaching of Jesus
seriously and we all need to do more than we are really capable of ... it is
the Spirit of God who gives each of us the gifts that we need to play our part
as the people of God following in the footsteps of Jesus. (Romans 12, I Corinthians 12-14).
So how can we receive this
strength we need to round off our Christian lives? Even as we take the first steps towards faith the Holy Spirit is
there (John 16:7-15). No one can make
the profession of faith that Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit is at work
within their hearts (I Corinthians 12:3).
At the same time it needs to be our constant prayer that the Holy Spirit
will fill our hearts and keep on filling them with that presence we each
need. May the God of hope will us with
all joy and peace in believing so that we may abound in hope by the power of
the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13).
How important it is to be
able to say …
‘You
can be a Christian without belong to a church’. There is a certain degree of truth in that comment - Christianity
is certainly something very personal, Christian faith is something that links
us in the most intimate and personal of ways to God our Father. And yet I cannot help but feel that to hold
such a view is to miss the point of what it means to be a Christian and what it
means to belong to church.
At
the heart of Christianity is a very personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and
Saviour. But it is a personal faith
which cannot be lived out in isolation from other people. On the one hand, it is a personal faith that
is made real in the love and concern that we each of us show towards other
people. At the same time it is a
personal faith which binds us together with other people who share that faith
and also seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. It is as one meets with those other people
that one can learn more about what it is that Jesus Christ stands for; it is as
one shares with those other people that one can become part of the movement for
change and for new life which Jesus invites all his followers to be part of.
Trying
to go it alone in Christian faith in a troubling and troubled world is asking a
lot of anyone. It is more than Jesus
asks of any of us. He invites us to
come together to be a support to each other.
The
ancient apostles’ creed regards the Church as fundamental to the Christian
faith. I go along with that. I am committed to the Church not as an
optional extra to the faith that is important to me, but as a fundamental part
of it. The Church is very much the body of Christ - and as I share with others
in the community of the Church I sense that together we can be the hands of
Christ reaching out to a world of need.
How
sad that for the church has let some people down and in its back-biting, its
squabbling and in its hypocrisy it has prompted people to turn their back on
the support and strengthening it can give.
How important for us who belong to see to it that our church is an open
community of Christian love which truly does give a welcome to all wishing to
share in Christian friendship, explore Christian faith and engage in Christian
mission. For me it is so important that
I too can say,
I believe in ... the
church.
I believe in ... the holy ... church
‘Holy’
is a word I am quite prepared to use when it comes to describing what God is
like. The first and third of the
definitions in the Concise Oxford Dictionary seem to fit the bill: morally and spiritually excellent or
perfect, and to be revered ... consecrated, sacred.
I
am not quite so easy about using ‘holy’ to describe the church. The Church is not a building; it’s not an
institution: it is people. And the
people who make up the church would be the first to accept that they are far
from perfect either morally or spiritually, and deserve to be revered no more
than anyone else! Indeed the Church’s
history is full of so many shameful things that it is difficult to see that it
is consecrated or sacred even.
In
what sense can we claim to believe in ... the holy ... church? The answer perhaps lies in the second
definition offered in the dictionary.
‘Holy’ is defined as ‘belonging to, devoted to, or empowered by, God. I like that definition. I think it begins to get us somewhere.
To
say that we believe in ‘the holy church’ is to say that the church we belong
to, the church we are part of, the church we make up ... does not belong to us,
individually or as a group. It belongs
to God. We need to remember that when
we consider our plans for the church and as we shape what our church is
like. We need to remember it belongs to
God ... and not to us.
To
believe in the holy church is to be ‘devoted’ to God. To be devoted to something is to be prepared to give your all to
it. To be devoted to a person is to be
prepared to give all you have and more to that person. To be devoted to God is to give your all in
his service. We need to remember that’s
what’s involved in being part of the Church.
Perhaps
most importantly of all to believe in the holiness of the Church is to recognise
that we have a power from beyond ourselves to draw on ... and that power comes
from God. To belong to the Church is to
be ‘empowered’ by God. And without his
power we won’t begin to achieve anything worthwhile! That, more than anything, is what makes me say
I
believe in the holy church.
I believe in ... the catholic church
This part of the ancient statement of faith
that has come to be known as the Apostles’ Creed always excites me. I really do believe that being part of the
Church is a fundamental part of the Christian faith. Of course, faith is something very personal, and it is possible
to have a very real faith without ‘going to church’. But at the same time, it seems to me that to have faith in Jesus
Christ means that one wants to seek out others who are also following in the
footsteps of Jesus. This faith is
something to share. And shared with others
it is the kind of faith that can grow and make even more difference to people
around. For me it is important to
belong to a Church and so be a part of a group of people seeking to live out
their faith and make real God’s love in their lives for the good of people
around them.
But
to belong to one church is to belong to the whole world-wide church of Jesus
Christ. That’s what excites me about
belonging to Highbury - through Highbury I am linked into a partnership of
people, a family of believers, a movement that reaches to all corners of the
world and shares a commitment to Jesus Christ.
The
word ‘catholic’ means simply, universal, world-wide, whole - the church I
believe in can be encountered round the corner from anyone in a local gathering
of people who share in their journey of faith.
The church I believe in stretches across the world, and for that mattter
across the ages. And that excites
me. That’s why I can say with all my
heart,
I
believe in the ... catholic church.
I believe ... in the communion of saints
No
- that line in the ancient Apostles Creed has nothing whatsoever to do with any
service of Holy Communion that’s restricted only to those who have somehow or
other made the grade and become a Saint with a capital ‘S’.
In
the New Testament the word ‘saint’ is used quite differently from the way it
has come to be used in popular parlance.
It is used of all God’s people.
It is a reminder that we are all called to be set apart for God and to
be ready to stand up and be counted in our Christian commitment.
‘Communion’
is not just about what you do as you eat bread and drink wine in that service
we often think of as Holy Communion.
Communion simply means fellowship, a coming together with each other in
the closest possible of bonds, the bond of love.
The
Communion of Saints, therefore, is that fellowship in love of all who are God’s people. To believe in the communion of saints is to believe that we are
part of a wonderful world-wide fellowship of people that knows no bounds of space
or of time. We are bound in love with
all those who have gone before us and with all those who have gone after us.
It
is mistaken to think that it’s all right to try and make contact with the
dead. All sorts of dangers are
associated with practices associated with that idea. AT the heart of the Christian faith that is dear to me is
something very much more special and precious than that. It is the sense that we are surrounded by a
wonderful crowd of witnesses - some we see around us, some we could see if we
travelled that far, and many we can no longer see. We are part of this one great fellowship of God’s loving
people. And that’s something to rejoice
over!
The
next time you are invited to say the words of the Apostles Creed and you come
to this line ... think of those who have gone before you in the faith - dearly
loved ones whose passing is sorely missed ... and discover a wonderful joy as
you join me in saying:
I believe in the
communion of saints.
I believe in ... the forgiveness of sins
I
preached my first sermon well over thirty years ago. It was on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That got to the heart of the Christian faith
for me. What’s Christianity all
about? You can sum it up in those two
wonderful commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your
neighbour as yourself. If you want to
know who your neighbour is, read the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke
10:25-37. It won’t be long before you
will be challenged to get your mind round the commandment Jesus asked us to
take equally seriously: Love your enemies.
Set
out to follow that way of life and it won’t be long before all sorts of
difficulties and problems come your way.
How you can you do it at all consistently? Aren’t their areas of grey where easy solutions to complex
questions about right and wrong are impossible to come by? Is it ever possible to live up to such a
challenging way of life.
If
Christianity were no more than such a set of challenges it would be a recipe
for nervous breakdown as anyone taking them seriously begins to sink under the
burden of their obligations. But as I
took up preaching and began to dig further into the Christian faith I
discovered that there’s much more to it than that. I discovered another text which has since become my
favourite. It’s in I John 4:10. “This is love. It is not
that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his one and only Son to be the
means by which our sins are forgiven.”
That’s
what’s so special about Jesus and this Christianity. Alongside the challenges, he offers a remarkable, forgiving love,
nowhere seen more powerfully than on the cross and in the resurrection. That’s what takes the burden of obligation
away ... and then makes it possible to have another go at taking seriously the
way of loving mapped out for us all by Jesus.
That’s what makes it so important for me to say ...
I believe in the
forgiveness of sins.
I believe in ... the resurrection of the body
The
parish church in the Shropshire village of Minsterley has a surprise in store
for the unwary. Shortly after becoming
minister of the Congregational church in the village I was taken aback to see
what greeted me when I went to my first
service in the local anglican church.
There, above the door, was a skull and cross bones! What had I come to? The home of a rollicking band of pirates? Not a bit of it. This was ‘deadly’ serious stuff.
The seventeenth century church was typical of its age. It was a period when people were convinced
that at the last day those bones, those dry bones would all come together again
and people would rise up from their graves.
After all the Creed taught everyone to believe in ‘the resurrection of
the body’. That’s why they always made
sure that they buried the Parson the opposite way round to everyone else ... so
he would be able to preach to his Congregation again. Unless, of course, he found himself somewhere else! Perish the thought!
We’ve
moved on and in our enlightened age we don’t think the same way. Gone are the skull and crossed bones from
our church doors, and I for one have no qualms about cremation. In fact I’ve booked my slot already, though
I haven’t specified a date!!
So
does that mean I’ve at last come to a line in the creed I cannot say. Not a bit of it. This is one of those lines
that means a lot to me. I do believe in life after death. I do believe in the
resurrection. It is a miracle I do not
begin to understand. But I believe when
Jesus Christ offers me a share in his resurrection victory it is going to be me
who is raised again after death. The
real me, the whole me, everything that makes me me. In Jesus’s day they didn’t separate out body, mind, spirit,
soul. They lump them all together and
regard people as people body-mind-spirit-and-soul. You can take any of those words in the New Testament and they
imply any of the other words as well.
They amount to your whole self.
And that’s what I believe is raised in the resurrection victory that in
Christ I too will share. It’s not that
my soul drifts off into the ether, or that some disembodied spirit flies around
somewhere other. The me that is me, the
whole person I am is raised to glory and becomes more whole, more real, more
complete than ever it has been. As
soon as you try putting all that in words, the words themselves begin to fail
you. But somehow they mean a lot to me. And instead of using all those words I’d
rather keep it simple and simply say,
I believe in ... the
resurrection of the body.
I believe … in the life everlasting
They say that the bottom line is what counts. That applies not only when you are looking
at accounts! It’s what counts in the
creed as well. But perhaps not in the
way you might think!
How appropriate to arrive at the climax to the
Apostles’ Creed as Easter approaches.
How significant this year of all years to arrive at this point as we
face war and all its terrifying uncertainties.
[I fear, as I write, that by the time you read this war’s inexorable
time-table will have taken its course.]
These few words get to the heart of something
fundamentally important in the faith that is so significant for me. I believe in life after death. If this life were all there is, God help
us. We would be living in bleak times
indeed. I could not begin to make sense
of the tragedy of war on a global scale, or those much more personal tragedies
that can be no less devastating.
Surely, there can be meaning this side of dying only if this is not all
there is … only if there is something more beyond.
In the story of Jesus Christ who lived a life of
selfless love, died a God-forsaken death in the cruellest of ways, and on the
third day rose again from the dead there is a glimpse of a resurrection victory
that through the faith we share in Jesus Christ we too may share. It is as if he has opened up a gateway on to
a whole new life that can help us to make sense of this life here and now.
So, does all this faith we have been exploring for
the last couple of years boil down to pie in the sky when you die?
Not a bit of it!
Hiding
behind these words is a much deeper truth that means the world to me as
well. This phrase has a ring to it in
English that makes it memorable. I
believe in the resurrection of the body and in the life everlasting. But that word ‘everlasting’ doesn’t do
justice to the New Testament promise of Eternal Life. The everlasting, eternal life I believe in is not just something
that goes on to infinity the other side of dying. It is a whole new order of living that starts here and now. It is a life in tune with the God of
creation, it is a life directed by the risen Christ and the selfless love he
stands for, it is a life inspired by the unseen yet very real presence of the
Holy Spirit of God. It is a life shot
through with love. To believe in ‘the
life everlasting’ or better still in ‘Eternal Life’ is to believe as much in
Life before death, as in life after death.
And that means a commitment of selfless love not only to God but to
people in their greatest need. What
that life of Love entails we shall begin to explore next month as Pentecost
approaches. I believe as much in Life
Before Death as I believe in Life after Death.
I’d much rather say, I believe in … Eternal Life. But I’ll go with the
words handed down to us and say,
I
believe in the life everlasting.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if
were able to catch a glimpse of what it was like for the rule of God to become
a reality in our own individual lives, in our family life, in the community
life we share together and in our world?
That’s exactly what’s on
offer from Jesus. In his teaching and
in the way he reached out to bring healing into people’s lives, Jesus gives us
a glimpse of what it’s like when God’s rule becomes a reality in our lives.
What he has to say can come
as a bit of a surprise.
The blessings of God’s rule
come not to those who are spiritually super-charged and lead a high-powered
spiritual life. They actually come to
people who are only too aware of their own spiritual inadequacies. They come to people who find themselves
overwhelmed by the sadnesses of life at its most tragic. They come to ordinary people caught up in
the ordinary, everyday world with all its troubles.
God’s rule comes not so much
through the acquisition of power, but through a yearning for righteousness and
justice. One significant key to unlock
the rule of God in one’s life is to seek a forgiving attitude of mind and
another key is to nurture a deep-down integrity in the things that you do.
The blessings of God’s rule
come to those who are pro-active in working for peace in a troubled world and
in troubled lives. Taking the rule of
God seriously in one’s life involves being prepared to be ruffle people’s
feathers and take a stand even when that results in saying and doing very
unpopular things.
Matthew 5:1-12
I have always thought of it
as a challenge. And a big challenge at
that! If you want to be followers of
Jesus who take his teaching seriously then this is what you have got to be
like. You have got to be like salt
giving flavour and zest to the world, you have got to be like a light shining
out in a world of darkness.
I looked again at the words
Jesus used recently and I noticed something that I hadn’t spotted before. He doesn’t say those words as a challenge at
all! He makes them a statement. He simply says as a matter of fact – ‘You
are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world.
That comes as something of a
surprise … especially when you think of the people he was speaking to. These words come right at the beginning of
what Matthew thinks of as the key-note speech Jesus gave right at the very
beginning of his ministry. This was the
moment when he outlined for the benefit of those who were just beginning to
take him seriously what it would take to follow him. To a motley bunch of people just taking the first steps of faith
he explained what it would be like to be part of a new community of people who
were prepared to take seriously the rule of God in their own lives.
It is to this crowd of
ordinary people who have yet to establish themselves in their faith that Jesus
says, ‘You are the salt of the earth’.
It’s not that they have to work hard to reach that standard of
commitment. No, they are already ‘the
light of the world’.
It is not so much a
challenge as a statement for us to take to heart. We are the ones through whom the light of God’s presence in
Christ shines into our world of darkness.
We need to ask ourselves whether we are allowing that light to
shine. That’s a question worth thinking
about!
Matthew 5:13-16
If there’s one
thing you can say about Jesus and his teaching it’s that you know where he
stands. Or at least, you know the basic
principles that he takes a stand on. It
seems to me that he maps out the principles and then leaves it to each one of
us who wants to follow in his footsteps to work out for ourselves what exactly
we need to do in our own lives, in the
place where we work, in the community that we are part of, in our own homes,
with our own families and in our own everyday commitments.
As he outlined
the things that were of fundamental importance to him he made it quite clear
that he had come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets that make up what we
think of as the Old Testament. He had
come to fulfil them. [See Matthew
5:17-20] Read through the prophets you
cannot get away from the fact that God has to do with every part of our lives –
not just the personal bits, but the bits that have to do with the way governments
govern and whole countries organise themselves. Things like justice, righteousness, a commitment to people who
are poor and disadvantaged come to the fore time and time again. God’s word is there not just to be read or
listened to … it needs to be taken seriously and put into action. That’s precisely what Jesus came to do and
to encourage us to do as well. It’s
only when God’s word is listened to and put into action that we can begin to
get things right in our own lives, in our family life and in the society we
belong to.
And as for the
law you can sum it up quite simply.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind and with all your strength.
And Love your Neighbour as you love yourself.
Matthew 5:18-20
Jesus was in no two minds
about it. There’s one simple way to sum
up all that God expects of us. You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind and with all your strength.
And you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Right at the beginning of
his teaching ministry he set out his stall.
We have come to think of the programme he outlined as the Sermon on the
Mount. It can be found in Matthew
chapters 5 to 7. At first sight it
seems as if he ranges over an awful lot of subjects. Actually the nub of what he had to say is summed up in these two
statements.
He deals with them in
reverse order. In Matthew chapter 5
verses 21 to 48 he maps out what it takes to love your neighbour.
Jesus stuck at what he
started … and saw it all the way through.
Even when that resulted in his having to go to the cross. It was on the cross that he came to the
point at which he was able to say ‘It is finished’. That’s what he expects of us as well. This business of loving your neighbour is not always easy. But he expects us to stick at it … through a
whole life-time until we get to the point when we can echo the word he found
himself using and say –It is finished, we have run the course, we have
completed the task Jesus set us to do.
[verse 48]. That’s the expectation
Jesus has for us … and it’s the work of a life-time – but the most worthwhile
work imaginable!
Matthew 5:21-48
There’s no doubt about
it. Christian commitment carries with
it high expectations. It is all about a
life committed to love for one’s neighbour.
Nowhere is Jesus clearer about the kind of expectations involved than in
the Sermon on the Mount. Read through
chapter five of Matthew’s Gospel and you can be in no doubt about the
challenges there are in following in the footsteps of Jesus.
If the Christian faith were
no more than a challenge to this kind of commitment to love, to justice and to
peace it would be a recipe for disaster.
The demands are so great either no one’s going to take them seriously,
or people who do take them seriously will buckle under the demands placed upon
them.
Jesus not only extends a
challenge to his followers to shape their lives in a way that will make a world
of difference not only to them and their families but to the world they live
in. At the same time he offers a
resource of inner strength to draw on in order to sustain a life of such
commitment.
In a sense that’s the other side of the coin.
One side is all about loving your neighbour and all that that
takes. The other side of the coin is
all about loving God. That’s because it
is as we grow in our love of God that we shall discover in God’s presence a
resource we can draw on in order to sustain us in our Christian commitment.
So it is that in the second
main part of his great Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus
develops his thinking on the spiritual resources we can draw on in our
relationship with God. He has the most
wonderful guidelines to give on prayer, not only offering a remarkable set of
words that has come down to us as The Lord’s Prayer, but also making very
practical suggestions on the practicalities of how and when to pray. [See Matthew chapter 6 verses 5 to 15]. He has all sorts of things to say about the
very personal nature of religious practice [verses 1 to 4] and the value of
giving up things that are precious and fasting [verses 16 to 18]. Jesus has the most wonderful way of setting
things in perspective. His anti-dote to
the kind of fear, worry and anxiety that would bedevil us if his way of life
were nothing more than a set of challenges, is simply to take each day at a
time. [verses 19 to 34]
The second major part of
his so-called Sermon on the Mount is all about the kind of spirituality we need
to under-pin the kind of pro-active commitment to love, justice and peace that
is at the heart of the Christian way of life.
To love God and to love your neighbour are but two sides of the same
coin.
Matthew 6:1 – 7:12
Jesus knew exactly where he
stood. He stood for God’s rule in
people’s hearts, in people’s homes, in the world at large. He called it ‘The Kingdom of God’. In his wonderful sermon on the mount he took
his stand on the need to Love Your Neighbour.
He was quite clear that to rise to the challenge that entails you need a
spiritual core to your life. And so he
took his stand on the need to Love God.
Chapter 5 of Matthew’s
Gospel is all about what it takes to love your neighbour. Chapter 6 is all about what it takes to love
God.
Thank God that chapter 7
begins in the way it does.
By the time you get to the
end of chapter six of Matthew’s Gospel you are in great danger.
If you are convinced and if
you want to take your stand with Jesus, beware.
There is a pitfall that all
too many people who have followed in the footsteps of Jesus have fallen
into. It is a trap that lies in wait
for us all.
The danger is that we think
of ourselves as holier than others. A
self-righteousness creeps in. It’s all too easy to appear smug. And even easier to be smug. Watch out, says Jesus. The one thing he cannot abide is a
‘holier-than-thou’ attitude that can be so destructive.
Anyone who is thinking of
taking a stand with Jesus should take Matthew chapter 7 verse 1 to heart. ‘Judge not that you be not judged’.
Jesus urges us with all his
heart, never be judgmental. What a
difference it would have made if Christians down through the centuries had
taken that command seriously. What a
difference it will make if we do!
Matthew 7:1
What a way to finish the
powerful key note speech setting out all that he stood for. Jesus had drawn back the curtain for a
moment to enable us to catch a glimpse of what it’s like when God’s rule takes
a hold in people’s lives. It’s those
who mourn who find they are comforted; those who make peace find they are
regarded as the children of God; and those who are hungry for justice in a
world of injustice who find satisfaction.
Indeed they become a kind of beacon light to dispel the darkness of the
world. Jesus takes a stand on two
things – love for other people and love for God. And he warns against being judgemental. And finally he suggests that we have choices to make. Do we take him seriously? Are we up for it?
How easy it is to trivialise
the story he tells at the at the end of the Sermon on the Mount is! The choice is ours – to ignore Christ’s
words and fail to act on them is to be like a foolish builder who builds his
house on sand only to find it’s destroyed by the rains and the floods. To hear Christ’s words and put them into
action is to be like the wise man who built his house on the rock. That choice between the way of wisdom and
the way of folly would have rung a bell with Jesus’s first hearers. They would have recognised that it was taken
from the pages of the Book of Proverbs.
The first nine chapters set out the stark contrast between the way of
the wise who heeds the word of God, and the way of the fool who ignores
it. And the Book is linked with the
wisest King in the history of Israel – Solomon. And what was he famous for? For being the man who built a house on the rock. It was the house of God, the temple, built
on the rock in Jerusalem. The temple
was the place where, as it were, the presence of God was grounded. One place in one location – for us far
away. No, says Jesus. In his presence there’s a greater ‘temple’
by far. It is as if every one of us who
hears his words and acts on them becomes in the place where we are a ‘temple’ –
a place where God’s presence is grounded and made real in the experience of
other people. The choice is ours. What are we going to make of it. Take Jesus’s words seriously, put them into
action and the very presence of God will come through you and spread out into
the world around. I know the choice I
want to make. Do you?
Matthew 7:13-27