Highbury
Congregational Church
Congregational Church
A place to
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
John
A series of sermons preached between Christmas and Easter 2006 at Highbury by Richard Cleaves.
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-called ‘wisdom literature’ of the Old Testament has been defined as ‘the ability to cope.
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new - John 2
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up - a Celebration of Baptism - John 9
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away - a visiting preacher
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new -
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up -
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away -
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
Coping with Growing Up
A Celebration of Baptism
When I was very small
Children are special – I noticed on the mantel piece a lovely picture of handprints and a poem to go with it too. I don’t know whether this was the poem but I found it the other day and it seems to me to be rather lovely.
What a lovely thought … but hidden away in those words is something that none of us can escape.
Every day I’m growing …
However beautiful and special the little baby is, they’re already growing. And they’ve been growing for quite some time already.
Every day I’m growing
– I’ll be grown some day.
How true that is … there’s no escaping it.
Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, Maturity, Middle Age, Old Age.
At each stage we see things differently.
How small our world is in infancy as a baby. How exciting it seems in childhood. How troubling it can seem in adolescence. How full of hope in youth.
I’m not sure how it looks at maturity – I’ve either not reached that one yet, or that’s one I skipped on the way!
In Middle Age how full of trouble the world can feel, and yet so filled with potential …
And at old age … we had a wonderful elderly member of our first church who couldn’t contain his glee at the prospect of discovering what heaven was really like that he would say rubbing his hands with glee of old age … it gets more and more exciting the older you get!
One thing’s for sure.
At each stage we see things differently.
What stage are you at now?
How do you see things now?
Seeing things for the very first time - one man’s experience in John 9
There’s a wonderful story in the Bible in chapter 9 of John’s Gospel that tells of a man who was born blind and who came to see things for the very first time in his life.
Some people wanted to link the fact that he had been born blind with sins that he had committed or his parents had committed. But Jesus didn’t have any time for such nonsense.
No, what so many people saw as an insurmountable problem Jesus saw as the most wonderful opportunity to show the wonder of God’s glory at work.
While I am in the world, Jesus said, I am the light for the world.
Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with the spittle; he rubbed the mud on the man’s eyes and invited him to go and wash in a nearby pool, the pool of Siloam.
So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.
John 9:1-12 - DVD
What’s fascinating in this story is the way in which this man came to see who Jesus was in stages.
Maybe what is true of our lives in general – that we go through different stages and see things in different ways - is also true of the religious experience we have in our lives. In just the same way we go through different stages and see things in different ways.
Track through the rest of John chapter 9 and you see the stages this man went through as he came to see Jesus and who he was.
The Stages of Christian Experience - getting to know who Jesus is
Something momentous happens as Jesus brings light into this man’s dark world.
Straight after the man regains his sight he is put on the spot as people ask him what’s happened. He describes Jesus in an ordinary every day kind of way
Stage 1 - recognising “The man called Jesus …’ verse 11
There’s a lot of debate and argument among the religious authorities about exactly what has happened. They put the man who is at the centre of the story on the spot and ask him for his views on Jesus: ‘What do you say about him?’
Stage 2 - The man replies, ‘He is a prophet’. Verse 17
The religious authorities cannot accept what has happened: they are convinced that Jesus is up to no good. They track the man down again and raise the stakes, trying to persuade him to condemn Jesus. But he will do nothing of the sort.
“I do not know if he is a sinner or not,” the man replied. “One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see.” Verse 25.
By now the man is getting quite worked up. He is convinced that this man called Jesus who is a prophet is good. Only such a person could have helped him in the way that he did.
Stage 3 - recognising that Jesus comes from God
‘This man came from God’ is the conclusion he reached. Indeed, he says, ‘Unless this man came from God he would not be able to do a thing.” Verse 33
All of this has being going on away from Jesus. At this point in the story Jesus becomes aware of what is going on and what the man is having to put up with.
Stage 4 - recognising that Jesus brings God down to earth and raises us to heaven
When Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and asked him a very pointed and telling question. At a number of key moments in John’s Gospel Jesus has been identified as someone who in a very remarkable way brings God down to earth and has a strange effect on people of giving them that feeling that he is bringing them right into God’s presence. The phrase that’s used to capture this almost larger than life feel about Jesus is the phrase ‘the Son of Man’.
That’s what Jesus uses here.
When Jesus heard what had happened he found the man and asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
The man turns to Jesus … ‘Tell me who he is, sir, so that I can believe in him.”
Stage 5 - arriving at faith
Quietly, Jesus says, ‘You have already seen him, and he is the one who is talking with you now.”
And then comes the final stage in this man’s journey towards a living faith in Jesus.
Verse 38 is one of those remarkable moments.
“I believe, Lord!” the man said, and knelt down before Jesus.
Baptism as a Sacrament of Grace shared with infants
Today in a baptism service we are in at the very earliest stage of this little boy’s development. His infancy. This is the moment when we celebrate the wonderful gift of God’s love poured out on him as a sheer gift of grace, before he has done anything to get to know.
It is our prayer that as he grows older and goes through all the stages of development through childhood, into adolescence and beyond into adulthood, that he will also go through stages at which he gets to know more about this Jesus. Our prayer is that he will come to the point at which he will be able to say for himself I believe in God and in Jesus Christ as my Lord.
Maybe he will need to go through stages to get there. Maybe these are the stages we need to go through as well.
Baptism a Celebration of Something Momentous that has Happened
It all started for the blind man with something momentous that happened to him.
As we baptise a tiny little baby we are celebrating the fact that something really momentous has happened for this little child. Not just that he has been born … that’s miraculous enough. But also that God’s love reaches out to him, that God knows him by name, that God’s love through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit flows over him.
Baptism leads on to the five stages of Christian Experience
1) getting to know the man called Jesus
As he grows older we will tell him stories of Jesus – we do that in church, maybe at home, as I go into school with assemblies. On Thursday 8th April we are going to show the Miracle Maker.
Our hope is that he will get to know ‘the man called Jesus’.
2) seeing the power and relevance of all he has to say
Then as he grows older our hope is that he will see that this Jesus has something to say. Something very powerful to say about the way God wants us to live in this world – with love for one another and even with love for our enemies. That’s the stage at which we realise this Jesus is a prophet.
3) seeing that this Jesus is from God
As he becomes aware of the goodness of Jesus’ teaching, our hope is that he will come to realise that this Jesus is a man from God, indeed that in Jesus there is something extra special that brings God down to earth and raises people in to the presence of God.
4) seeing that Jesus brings God down to earth and raises us up to heaven
This is that very special person who spans heaven and earth, nothing less than the Son of Man.
5) arriving at faith in Jesus as Lord
And then we hope he comes to the point at which he says for himself, I believe … this is for me. Not because parents want him to or other people think it’s a good idea, but because he wants to. I believe, Lord.
Today at baptism we celebrate the gift of God’s love in the hope that in the fullness of time this little one will go through those stages of religious experience can come to say, I believe, Lord.
The Final Stage is but the Beginning of a Whole New Way of living.
But do you know – for the man born blind all this story happened in one day … or maybe a couple of days. This was but the beginning for the man who had been born blind. It was the beginning of the rest of his life.
Once we have gone through those stages to the point at which we can say I believe, Lord, we shall just be at the beginning of a whole new way of living.
