Neil's Test Blog

Genesis 6.9-22, 7.24, 8.14-19
Romans 1.16-17, 3.22b-28
Matthew 7.21-29

One year on from the serious flooding in Yorkshire and the Humber, this week's readings are all about floods! The original 'Flood' was probably caused by the retreat of the ice sheet at the end of the last ice age, so to blame it on human sinfulness seems a bit unfair. But the next flood could indeed be the fault of humankind and some experts think significant climate change is now unavoidable. If so, what sort of ark are we going to build to protect the threatened flora and fauna of the world, not to mention the many millions of people living in low lying lands? There can be no doubt that God is calling us to radical action. Are we listening? One suspects that the current clamour for lower petrol and diesel prices tells us the answer.

Noah is a proverbial example of faithfulness, battling to save his family and, one presumes from the tiny dimensions of his frail three-decker craft, as many breeds of domesticated birds and animals as he could find, but acting on the strength of nothing more than personal conviction. It was Jesus who observed that his neighbours must have scoffed at Noah's endeavour right up until the moment when the storm broke.

But, of course, Jesus himself is the supreme example of faithfulness. The good news of his life, death and resurrection reveals God's righteousness 'through faith for faith'. This is because the Gospel shows us what 'righteousness' means by focusing on the life and witness of Jesus, a man who obeyed God's call to radical obedience even when it took him to a shameful and agonising death on a cross. So great was his faith that he believed God could transform failure into success and defeat into victory. So great was his faith that he believed he would be vindicated even if it only happened through his death. And so great was his faith that he was prepared to battle fearlessly against hatred, prejudice and privilege, armed only with the weapons of truth and love. And because he did this, his story can inspire the faith we need if we are to be put right with God ourselves.

Paul repeatedly emphasises that, without faith in the story of Jesus, our efforts to do what is right and live as God requires are doomed to fail. But Jesus' own message is slightly more subtle than that. He recognises that some people will declare allegiance to him without really listening to his true message of love and compassion.They will claim to be his followers, and even appear to have an effective ministry doing many deeds of power, but if their faith is not truly centred on his teaching and example it will be empty and they will prove - ultimately - to be false prophets and leaders. So faith by itself is not enough. It has to be the right kind of faith; a faith built on the kind of radical obedience to God's love which Jesus himself exemplifies; a faith which has the strength and quality to withstand whatever shocks life might throw at us.

We started by thinking about the very real threat of large scale flooding as a result of global warming. Jesus' teaching brings us back to the image of storms and floods, but this time as a a metaphor for everything which life might throw at us when things start to go wrong. He promises that, through faith in him, we can overcome.

Acts 2.42-47
The first Christians were a community, learning, sharing, praying and breaking bread together. Modern Christians talk about being a community or a family, but the first Christians actually lived the talk, even sitting light to their own possessions, which they held in common. And the first Christians made a serious difference to the world around them, causing awe and wonder by their signs and wonders. They enjoyed the goodwill of all the people, but - of course - this could not last. Daily the Lord was adding to their numbers and success breeds jealousy and opposition.

When the Church is marginalised and is concentrating on marginal things no one takes much notice of us. When the Church is making a serious difference ad being true to the teaching of Jesus it will inevitably provoke wonder and opposition in equal measures.

1 Peter 2.19-25
This is what the writer of 1 Peter explains in his letter. Christians must expect to suffer for doing what is right because that is what happened to Jesus. Indeed, the more we do what is right the more we will bring down suffering on our heads because, by implication, we will be challenging what is wrong and threatening its hold on the world. In the final analysis, that is what the Cross did. By his death on the Cross Jesus challenged the power of sin because he opened the possibility of ordinary people being set free from its hold. We need no longer be helpless victims of the genetic inheritance which makes us shallow, self-centred beings. We can, instead, discover the latent image of God within us. This is a cause for awe and wonder, but it also provokes stubborn opposition from those who do not welcome such radical change and are more comfortable with the way things were.

John 10.1-10
Jesus' simile of the sheepfold reinforces the same point. The sheep in the fold are the followers of Jesus. He himself is the Good Shepherd, who leads the flock by day and lies down across the gate to the sheepfold to protect it from harm at night - always placing himself between the flock and the danger which it faces. And we have already seen that the danger is very real. The flock is constantly threatened by rustlers who seek only to steal, kill and destroy.

These three passages make sombre reading. They warn that following Jesus is difficult and can be dangerous. However, it is worthwhile because of the potential which Jesus can unlock in us if we take his way seriously - when we put our trust in him he can transform both our individual lives and our life together in community.

Jeremiah 8.18-9.1
Jeremiah's lament is a reminder that Christians don't have to be relentlessly cheerful. He looks around for good news and can't find any. The harvest is over, but it has not been a good one. The people are hurting, but there is no one to heal them. They have made mistakes, and their errors are coming back to haunt them, a bit like the managers and directors of Northern Rock who gambled on an endless supply of cheap money and were caught out when times suddenly changed.

Unlike the people who have queued up not just to withdraw their deposits, but to point the finger of blame, Jeremiah chooses not to accuse anyone or rub salt in open wounds. He gets alongside the people in their suffering and mourns with them.

But, of course, it's not just Jeremiah who laments with those who have been bereaved, and mourns those who have died. For Jeremiah is reporting God's view point on disaster. Even when we are responsible for our own downfall, God chooses not to blame us but to share our pain. And the final proof of this is Jesus' death for us on the Cross.

Luke 15.1-10
It's easy to lose track of what this parable is really all about, and get bogged down in descriptions of shepherds and how they herd their flocks in Palestine by leading the way for them across the wilderness. But it's really not about sheep and shepherding. That's just an illustration of the underlying point which Jesus wants to make. He is aware of all of the people, then and now, who are disconnected from God. We can forget about them, and decide that they're simply not meant to get it together with God. Alternatively, we can hope that somehow they will find their way to God, stumbling upon the truth either by accident or by divine providence. Or we can actively go in search of them, which is what mission is all about.

Jesus is an activist. he would surely approve of this week's "Jesus Surf Classic" events in Devon and Cornwall, where some of the world's best Christian surfers are gathering to compete. Pippa Renyard, a member of one of the five Cornish branches of Christian Surfers UK, is reported in The Guardian as saying: "Surfers tend to be a group who don't necessarily connect with a dusty old building like a church. But God is not about a building. He is about a community. We don't try to ram it down people's throats but if they are interested they can talk about God with us and hopefully join the group."

Apparently, some traditional churches remain uninterested or suspicious, though not the Methodist Church in Polzeath, which has turned itself into a centre for Christian surfers and replaced some of the pews with a skateboarding ramp. What are we being called to do to rescue people disconnected from God in our community?

Jeremiah 2.4-13
This passage has two abiding issues at its core. The first is faithlessness - the refusal to believe in God or in permanent values. Residual belief in God remains high in our culture, with many people retaining a soft spot for God although they never get involved in any organised religion, but there are a lot of faithless people who have deliberately turned their backs on religion and spirituality. They have created alternative belief systems for themselves. Can we hope to convince them that these do not hold water? Probably not.

The second abiding issue is people who change their value systems or their goals for something that does not profit. For much of the last two centuries, many people in the West believed in the idea of progress - that human society, and individual life was steadily getting better. There has indeed been much material progress in the West during that time. Life expectancy is much greater than ever before and most of us live surrounded by an array of gadgets and labour-saving devices that would have amazed our ancestors. But are we happier than people used to be?

Two world wars helped to undermine confidence in the idea of progress. Today's news headlines can only further dampen any remaining optimism. We live in a society which is more hectic, more selfish and self-centered, and more unsure of itself.

When Harold Macmillan told the British people that they 'had never had it so good' people were actually a lot less well off, on average,than they are now. But statistics show that they felt more happy and satisfied with their lot. Have we exchanged the things which made us happy for things that do not really profit us? If so, what have we lost or left behind?

Hebrews 13.1-8. 15-16
The writer of Hebrews develops the theme explored by Jeremiah. But where Jeremiah is negative, bemoaning what we have lost by becoming faithless, the writer of Hebrews is positive. He celebrates the benefits and responsibilities of mutual love. He advises us to be content with our lot and not to strive for greater prosperity or a better lifestyle because what really matters is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and he will never leave us nor forsake us. But warm feelings are not enough. Love has to be expressed through real concern for other people, including prayer and action on their behalf. This - not empty praises - is what really pleases God.

What are the things we need to do to share God's love in our community, our City and our world?

Luke 14.1-14
The Gospel passage for this Sunday reinforces the same message about what really matters. We must beware of status-seeking. It is a trap, because the people who really matter to God are the humble, the poor and the disabled. To these we could add anyone who is left on the margins of society and overlooked in the scramble to get on. Who might be added to the list in our society today?

St Luke's story of Jesus' visit to the synagogue describes an encounter between right and wrong.[1] A place of worship might seem a surprising place to find wrong being done. Do we expect to encounter wrong-doing when we come to church? Isn't it a place where we expect to find only goodness, holiness, purity and love – a haven of peace and tranquillity in a sinful world?Isn't it supposed to be 'the house of God'?

The conflict between right and wrong in the synagogue that day hinges on two totally different understandings of what it means to be holy, and therefore what it means to encounter God. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews sets out the difference very starkly in his description of the difference between Moses' understanding of God and the understanding which Christians have.[2]

At Mount Sinai, when Moses took the people of Israel into the desert to receive the Law, the God they encountered there was terrifying. There was blazing fire, and darkness, and tempest – a huge and frightening thunder storm. And then there was a voice which could not be endured, like finger nails scraping on a blackboard, which told them that if even an innocent animal set foot on the holy mountain it must be put to death for invading God's holy space. Only Moses could safely approach this awesome place – because he was God's chosen prophet and leader – and even he trembled with fear because he was meeting a God who demanded total purity.

Contrast that experience with the Christian's encounter with God. We come not to a wilderness place lashed by thunder and lightning, not to Mount Sinai enveloped in threatening cloud, where we can only stand at a distance and listen to God's terrible voice; we come to the New Jerusalem, where we find a completely different kind of mountain top experience. This isn't a tempestuous encounter, it's a celebration, a festal gathering where angels, and the righteous who have been made perfect through their faith in Jesus Christ, party with the assembly of the firstborn, the original band of disciples and apostles. There isn't anything fearful or terrible about this encounter with God, instead its a joyful occasion filled with praise and rejoicing.

And yet some things don't change. God is still the judge of all the world and if we refuse to obey the one who is speaking to us from the New Jerusalem we do so at our peril, for we need to be made righteous if we are to enter God's presence. But there is a new covenant, or understanding, in place between God and creation. It isn't the covenant which Moses mediated to the people of Israel, which was based on fear. It's the covenant which Jesus mediated to us through his death on the cross, which is based on love.

The writer of 'Hebrews' pauses here to comment on the futility of the way so many human beings behave. Like the teenager who killed eleven year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool last week, there are many people who imagine that our significance and our sense of worth and importance come from our own power and status. For the vast majority of people who think this way, that sense of power and status is based on the size of their pay packet, the model of car they drive, the clothes they wear, the person on their arm when they go out at night, or the neighbourhood they live in. For some fitness fanatics it might be based instead on the size of their biceps or the distance they can run. For criminals it comes from carrying a knife or a gun. That's the kind of power which the Bible says Cain wielded when he murdered his brother Abel. It's a kind of power based on competition with our fellow human beings, and even on violence and aggression. But true significance and power, the kind that cannot be shaken or destroyed, comes from the total opposite. It's based on self-sacrifice, compassion and love. That kind of power, the power of Jesus, speaks a better word and has a far more enduring legacy than the fleeting power which is based on bullets and guns, or money and what it can buy. If we fail to listen to this enduring message of love we shall find ourselves back in the position that the cowering people of Israel were in at Mount Sinai, and there will be no escape from God's consuming fire.

Ancient Greek people imagined that heavenly things were more permanent and real than anything on earth. The writer of 'Hebrews' can't resist drawing on this idea. Whereas Mount Sinai, where the people of Israel had their terrifying encounter with God, was on earth, the New Jerusalem and the mediator of the new covenant are in Heaven. That simply underlines, for the writer, the permanence of the new deal which Jesus is offering. Perfect holiness, a holiness which nothing can diminish or tarnish, comes about through following the example of Jesus, not the example of Moses.

Centuries before the New Testament era, the Prophet Isaiah has a similar insight.[3] If the people of Israel get rid of slavery and exploitation, stop pointing the finger at wrongdoers and speaking evil of other people, if they offer food to the hungry and help the afflicted, then they too will leave the darkness and gloom of the tempest behind and find themselves basking in the bright sunshine of noonday. The Lord will then be able to guide them continually, and satisfy their needs and make them strong. They will flourish like a watered garden. They will be like a spring of water that never runs dry. And they will find themselves living in, and helping to build, the New Jersualem.

So far, so good. But the Prophet adds a further twist. If the People of Israel really want to be holy, acting with justice and compassion will not be sufficient. There is one thing more that they will have to do. They will have to refrain from trampling on the Sabbath by pursuing their own interests on God's holy day. Only if they follow the Ten Commandments by honouring the Sabbath, and stop using it to go their own ways and serve their own interests, will they receive the promises which God made to Jacob, that he would be the father of a great nation whose influence would spread to the ends of the earth.

Christians have used this same passage to justify keeping Sunday special and no wonder, because surely even Jesus would not have approved of treating the Sabbath just like any other day, as an opportunity to make money and get things done. This is what the leader of the synagogue must be thinking when he keeps telling the crowd, 'There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.' He's on solid ground, isn't he? The Bible appears to back him up. The nation of Israel will never flourish while people ignore the Sabbath and forget to keep it holy.

Jesus accuses him of being hypocritical because, he says, no one would leave a dumb animal without water on the Sabbath so why not heal human beings on the Sabbath too? But the leader of the synagogue isn't against healing people. He just thinks that someone with a chronic illness, like curvature of the spine, can safely wait until another day to seek a cure. Even if it 's contrary to God's will that she should suffer in this way, and even if we see illness as the work of Satan rather than an unavoidable bi-product of creation, isn't it more important to focus on God – and to take delight in worshipping him – on his holy day?

So why is this encounter a clash between right and wrong, and who is in the wrong here? The answer, of course, is that the leader of the synagogue is wrong, even though he seems to have the Bible on his side. And he's wrong because, while it certainly was important to keep the Sabbath holy, he's operating with an out-moded idea of what holiness means.

Holiness is about helping people to be put right with God. That should always be our first priority, at any time and in any place. If it means missing church, or interrupting our routine, or changing our traditional way of worshipping, so be it.

And being holy is the same thing as having compassion on those in need and loving our neighbours. Isaiah was right about that. But he would have been mistaken if he had imagined that keeping the Sabbath holy and honouring God was in conflict with helping people in need.

Actually, of course, he never says that it s. He says that serving our own interests on the Sabbath is wrong. No where does he say that we cannot help other people. The leader of the synagogue is jumping to conclusions. He assumes that serving the interests of other people will always be the opposite of taking taking delight in God., but the cross, of course, is the evidence that he is wrong. The crucifixion of Jesus is the most holy moment in history – the moment when God's glory is most perfectly revealed. But it isn't a moment when God is being honoured. It's a moment when God in Jesus is being put to shame and made to suffer because of his great compassion for humankind.

Finally, encountering holiness requires us to be open and receptive to what God is doing. And God can't be put in a box. The way God encountered people in the past may not be the way God chooses to encounter us today, or tomorrow. Just because God met people at Mount Sinai doesn't mean that he couldn't also be encountered on a cross. And just because we can often encounter God in prayer, or worship, or contemplation doesn't mean that we can't also encounter him in action and in other people.

One of the things that is most characteristic of people's meetings with Jesus is that it's a decisive moment in their lives. There and then they have to decide how to respond to him, whether to recognise that they are meeting someone holy who has been sent from God, or whether to see him as someone who is challenging God's will. The leader of the synagogue makes the wrong call. Because he's trapped in one particular way of thinking about holiness, he sees Jesus as an unwelcome disturber of sabbath worship. But the entire crowd rejoices at the wonderful things which Jesus is doing.

Can we, like the crowd, be ready to welcome changes and challenges, and to rejoice at the wonderful things God is still doing through his Spirit working in our Church, and in our world, today?

[1] Luke 13.10-17

[2] Hebrews 12.18-29

[3] Isaiah 58.9b-14

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