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Minister’s Message -June 23, 2024

Bible reading was (selected from 1 Samuel 17).

Message.

One of the great classics of Christian literature is John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”. I suspect that it’s not much read today, but generations of children were brought up on it and it became almost as well-known as the Bible itself. Many of its characters are still familiar: Obstinate, Pliable, Mr Worldly Wiseman and Valiant-for-Truth; so are some of its locations (many based on real places in Bedfordshire): the Slough of Despond, the House Beautiful, the Hill Difficulty, By-Path Meadow, Vanity Fair, the Delectable Mountains and the Celestial City.

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Minister’s Message – June 9, 2024

Bible reading: 1 Samuel 8:1-22.

When Samuel grew old, he made his sons judges in Israel. The older son was named Joel and the younger one Abijah. They did not follow their father’s example; they were interested only in making money, so they accepted bribes and did not decide cases honestly.Then all the leaders of Israel met together, went to Samuel in Ramah, and said to him, “Look, you are getting old and your sons don’t follow your example. So then, appoint a king to rule over us, so that we will have a king, as other countries have.”Samuel was displeased with their request for a king; so he prayed to the Lord who said, “Listen to everything the people say to you. You are not the one they have rejected; I am the one they have rejected as their king. Ever since I brought them out of Egypt, they have turned away from me and worshipped other gods; and now they are doing to you what they have always done to me. So then, listen to them, but give them strict warnings and explain how their kings will treat them.”Samuel told the people who were asking him for a king everything that the Lord had said to him. “This is how your king will treat you,” Samuel explained. “He will make soldiers of your sons; some of them will serve in his war chariots, others in his cavalry, and others will run before his chariots. He will make some of them officers in charge of a thousand men, and others in charge of fifty men. Your sons will have to plough his fields, harvest his crops, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. Your daughters will have to make perfumes for him and work as his cooks and his bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his officials. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your grapes for his court officers and other officials. He will take your servants and your best cattle and donkeys and make them work for him. He will take a tenth of your flocks. And you yourselves will become his slaves. When that time comes, you will complain bitterly because of your king, whom you yourselves chose, but the Lord will not listen to your complaints.”The people paid no attention to Samuel, but said, “No! We want a king, so that we will be like other nations, with our own king to rule us and to lead us out to war and to fight our battles.” Samuel listened to everything they said and then went and told it to the Lord. The Lord answered, “Do what they want and give them a king.” Then Samuel told all the men of Israel to go back home.

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Minister’s Message – June 2 2024

Bible reading: 1 Samuel 3:1-18.

In those days, when the boy Samuel was serving the Lord under the direction of Eli, there were very few messages from the Lord, and visions from him were quite rare.One night Eli, who was now almost blind, was sleeping in his own room; Samuel was sleeping in the sanctuary, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Before dawn, while the lamp was still burning, the Lord called Samuel. He answered, “Yes, sir!” and ran to Eli saying, “You called me, and here I am.”But Eli answered, “I didn’t call you; go back to bed.” So Samuel went back to bed.The Lord called Samuel again. The boy did not know that it was the Lord, because the Lord had never spoken to him before. So he got up, went to Eli, and said, “You called me, and here I am.”But Eli answered, “My son, I didn’t call you; go back to bed.”

The Lord called Samuel a third time; he got up, went to Eli, and said, “You called me, and here I am.” Then Eli realized that it was the Lord who was calling the boy. So he said to him, “Go back to bed; and if he calls you again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went back to bed.The Lord came and stood there, and called as he had before, “Samuel! Samuel!” This time Samuel answered, “Speak; your servant is listening.”The Lord said to him, “I am going to do something to the people of Israel that is so terrible that everyone who hears about it will be stunned. On that day I will carry out all my threats against Eli’s family, from beginning to end. I have already told him that I am going to punish his family forever because his sons have spoken evil things against me. Eli knew they were doing this, but he did not stop them. So I solemnly declare to the family of Eli that no sacrifice or offering will ever be able to remove the consequences of this terrible sin.”Samuel stayed in bed until morning; then he got up and opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli about the vision. Eli called him, “Samuel, my boy!”“Yes, sir,” answered Samuel.“What did the Lord tell you?” Eli asked. “Don’t keep anything from me. God will punish you severely if you don’t tell me everything he said.”So Samuel told him everything; he did not keep anything back. Eli said, “He is the Lord; he will do whatever seems best to him.”

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Minister’s Message – May 26, 2024

Reading:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

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Minister’s Message – May 19, 2024

Bible reading: Acts 2:1-14.

Message.

Some years ago, Moira and I were on holiday in Hungary and visited the historic city of Székesfehérvár: it’s about an hour’s journey by train from Budapest. When we got to the station to catch the train back, I was pleased to see from the timetable that a fast train was due in about ten minutes. I went to the ticket counter and said (or tried to say), “Budapest – Intercity – ketto (which means ‘two’)”. The ticket lady said something in Hungarian which I didn’t understand, and didn’t offer us any tickets. I tried again and had the same result; for some reason the tickets weren’t forthcoming. Eventually I did manage to buy two ordinary second-class tickets, but I was puzzled.

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Minister’s Message – May 12, 2024

Bible reading: Acts 1:12-17, 21-26.

[After Jesus’ Ascension] the apostles went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is about half a mile away from the city. They entered the city and went up to the room where they were staying: Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Patriot, and Judas son of James. They gathered frequently to pray as a group, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.

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Minister’s Message – May 5, 2024

Bible reading: Acts 10.

Message.

Simon Peter never thought he’d be famous; he just expected to spend his life as a fisherman (hopefully a successful one) at Capernaum. But that Jesus bloke had changed everything; he’d called Peter to follow him and that is what, with a few wobbles, he had done. As time passed, Peter had become one of the most prominent (or perhaps most outspoken) of the disciples. It was he who had first dared to say what they’d all been thinking: that Jesus really was the hoped-for Messiah, sent from God. It was he who was taken aside by Jesus as the others were eating their breakfast and told, “Feed my sheep”. And it was he who stood up in front of the Jerusalem crowd at Pentecost and tried to explain the amazing sights they had seen and sounds thy had heard. After his sermon, and after he and John had very publicly healed a lame man outside the Temple, Peter had become a marked man, the figurehead of this new and controversial religious sect. 

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Minister’s Message – April 28, 2024

Bible reading: John 20:19-23.

It was late that Sunday evening, and the disciples were gathered together behind locked doors, because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities. Then Jesus came and stood among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. After saying this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy at seeing the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

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Minister’s Message – April 21, 2024

Bible reading: John 20:19-27.

“Do as I say, not as I do”: that’s a phrase we’ve all heard, and probably used ourselves. It is of course a light-hearted acknowledgement that we’re all hypocrites, that none of us live up to the standards we set for ourselves or (more importantly) ask of others.

The first recorded instance of this phrase came in a book called “Table Talk”, written about 350 years ago by John Selden. I’d never heard of him so I decided to find out. I discovered that Selden was a scholarly man from West Sussex who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s. He was a historian with particular interests in the British constitution and ancient Jewish law, he was a Member of Parliament for Lancaster, he took part in the Westminster Assembly which produced its famous Confession of the Protestant faith, he was appointed to be Keeper of the Records at the Tower of London, he assembled a notable library which was donated to Oxford University after his death, and he was chosen to be the Master of Trinity Hall, one of the colleges of Cambridge University – a position which he turned down. The poet John Milton called Selden “the chief of learned men reputed in this land”.

As a keen Christian, Selden had quite a lot to say about preachers. He wrote, “Nothing is more mistaken than that speech ‘Preach the Gospel’; for ’tis not to make long harangues, as they do now-a-days but to tell the news of Christ’s coming into the world”. He also stated, “Preaching by the spirit, as they call it, is most esteemed by the common people, because they cannot abide art or learning, which they have not been bred up in … They say to the preachers, ‘You come with your school-learning: here’s such a one who has the spirit’.” Hmm …! And Selden was dead against people who insisted that they needed to hear two sermons on a Sunday because their souls, just like their bodies, required two good meals: “I may as well argue, I ought to have two noses because I have two eyes, or two mouths because I have two ears. What have meals and sermons to do one with another?”

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed Selden’s pithy comments! For they are the context in which he used the phrase I started with: “Preachers say, ‘Do as I say, not as I do. But if the physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, and he do quite another, could I believe him?’” I think he’s got a point!

Jesus would never have said, “Do as I say, not as I do”! For he didn’t merely say, “Follow me” (which I think implies rather more than just putting our feet in his footprints); he also encouraged people to check that were no discrepancies between what he said and what he did. Jesus was keenly aware that God had sent him to be his incarnation or representative on earth, a task which meant perfect obedience to his Father. And, before he left the world, Jesus gave his disciples their marching orders: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. God the Father sent Jesus into the world; in precisely the same way, it seems, Jesus sends his disciples. The Canadian theologian Michael Goheen dresses this up in fancier language: “The ‘as’ in this text tells us that the mission of Jesus to Israel is to serve as a paradigm for the mission of his followers to the nations”. Jesus is our model, not just for day-to-day behaviour but for mission. Indeed, God’s mission ought to be (but rarely is) the primary aim in our lives.

As Jesus told his disciples that they were being sent as he had been, he was picking up a theme of obedient submission to his Father which threads itself throughout John’s gospel. For instance, in ch.4 Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work”; and in ch.5 he says, “I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me”. The pattern continues in ch.6: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me”; in ch.7: “‘My teaching is not mine but his who sent me”; and in ch.8: “I declare to the world what I have heard from the one who sent me”. Jesus is very aware that God has sent him to represent him on earth by his words and actions.

As the Passion nears, a new slant on this theme emerges: Jesus begins to talk about sending the disciples into the world to represent himself and, by proxy, God. In his great prayer for unity in ch.17 he says to the Father: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world … so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. And he takes this up in today’s reading: we may have only moved on a few days, but we’ve passed both the darkness of Good Friday and the glory of Easter Day. It’s now that Jesus charges the disciples to go into the world, just as he had been sent into it by the Father. The words are quieter and less vivid than the so-called “Great Commission” we find in Matthew’s Gospel, but they are just as authoritative.

I have laboured this point; that’s because I want to show you how Jesus’ saw his sending of the disciples to minister in the world as nothing less than the continuation of his own ministry. He came as his Father’s envoy or representative; and he’s asking his disciples, then and always, to continue in a similar vein – remember how, many years later, Paul wrote, “We are ambassadors for Christ, God is speaking to you through us”. What we have here isn’t a high-powered command, instead it’s the natural assumption which says, “Of course this is the way that things will be”. Jesus puts what’s been called a “mission imperative” at the heart of our faith. Mission isn’t a “bolt-on extra” for enthusiastic believers; it is fundamental to our faith. As John Stott wrote, “Mission’ is an activity of God which arises out of the very nature of God. The living God of the Bible is a sending God, which is what ‘mission’ means. He sent the prophets to Israel. He sent his Son into the world. His Son sent out the apostles, the seventy and the Church”.

Last week I mentioned a detail in the original Greek text of our Bible passage which gave us an insight we might not have thought of. I’m going to do the same today, and (bear with me!) it comes from the fact that ancient Greek verbs work in a subtly different way to English ones. In particular they make a distinction between an act which is once-and-for-all and finished, and one which started in the past but continues on into the present. Our verse contains the second of these versions for, when Jesus said that he had been “sent” by the Father he didn’t not mean that he’d been given his instructions and told to “get on with it”. Rather, there was a sense in which his “being sent” was an ongoing process which lasted for the entire time that he was on earth. He “was” sent initially (that’s the Christmas story) but he continued to “be sent” over the years; his commission was ongoing, he had to maintain contact with his Father and keep on obeying him.

The same is apparently true with Jesus’ sending of his disciples. He was not giving them a one-off order which they had to memorise and obey: again there was a sense in which their “sentness” was a daily process. And, by inference, the same is true for us: we aren’t like soldiers who open a set of sealed orders, discover what we have to do, and then begin our task without further ado; we are in fact aware of being constantly sent, prodded or recommissioned (whichever you prefer!) by Jesus. Christ gives – and never rescinds – his command to carry out the job for which God has sent, and is still sending, us.

But what is this task? I haven’t told you yet; but it’s one which Jesus outlined at the beginning of his ministry when he went to the Nazareth synagogue and read a passage from Isaiah: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight for the blind, to set free the oppressed and to announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people. He gave further details at the end of his ministry when he told his followers to make disciples of all people, baptizing and teaching. And he gave a catch-all – if highly challenging – definition of his ministry when he said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served; he came to serve and to give his life to redeem many people”. Christians have often argued over whether our mission is to proclaim Jesus’ message or whether it is practical service to the community. Evangelicals have often stressed the former, more liberal Christians have stressed the latter. But Jesus taught and showed us that these two types of service are complementary: “holistic mission” must surely be the name of the game. And that’s something in which we all, with our different gifts, should be engaging.

This task of effectively being “little Jesuses” in the world is both an awesome privilege and a huge responsibility! How on earth can we go about it? Indeed, how dare we even try? Fortunately it’s not a task that we have to carry out alone as, in the rest of this verse, Jesus tells us about the tools or the help he offers us to do his work. But that’s all for this morning; our thinking is “To Be Continued” in Episode 2 – which, God willing, will be next Sunday. Can you stand the suspense?