An old inscription

When we removed three brass memorial plaques from the church wall for cleaning, we found an old inscription behind one of them. It was a verse from the Bible and it inspired my sermon last Sunday.

We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:10

I displayed the words on the big screen from the very start of the service, without comment.

Introduction

What do you think about having this message in your face? If you are a regular, you probably just thought to yourself, I wonder what Nick is up to now? If you're a visitor, perhaps you are sitting there thinking, how soon can I leave?

Because it isn't a very welcoming message, is it? It's a bit stark, a bit uncompromising. Okay, it's from the Bible, and quoting the Bible is a good thing, but there are other parts of the Bible that sound a little more friendly, aren't there?

And for a small, welcoming church, with a small welcoming congregation, and a small, welcoming vicar (hello, that's me!), surely we could have come up with something better.

Perhaps that's what people thought in the 1920's, when this Bible text was painted over and covered up with a plaque to commemorate Florence Barclay, the most famous vicar's wife of them all.

Because we discovered this week, when the plaques on this side of the church were taken away for cleaning and restoration, that this was what people had to look at before.

So why did one of the first two vicars of our church decide to put this verse up on the wall?

To answer that question, I decided we should hear the passage that it comes from read out today.

2 Corinthians 5:1-10

Now and then

The first thing I want to point out to you from this passage is that it paints a contrast for us. A contrast between what life is like now, and what life will be like one day.

Tent and a palace

If life now is like being in a ropey old tent, one day, we'll have a room in a palace. And in this respect, it's doing a very important job for us.

Pulled both ways

As Christians, where we are in the present is defined by how we see the past, and the future. We need to hold to both the past, and the future.

It may not seem a very comfortable place to be in, but actually it's very important. As Christians, we inherit an amazing story of God's dealings with the world chiefly through a people that he chose and brought into being, and then through one individual member of that people group, who became the means by which we all have hope for the future.

This is our story. I've begun reading the Bible through in a year again this year, and I've been struck by the number of times the Bible tells its own story. It's told once, repeated, summarised, little details expanded on, and the whole great arc repeated and hammered home again and again. It's the story of how God called one man, Abraham, and made an audacious promise to him, that he would be the father of a great nation, and that through him all nations would be blessed. And this promise came to Abraham when he was 75, and probably thinking about slowing down, and taking what was left of his life easy. And he had no children. And this old fellow had to leave home. Go to the country that God told him his descendants would inherit, have a son, and launch his son off as the patriarch of a whole new dynasty.

Quite a step. But he went, and it happened, just as God said, and a nation was born, and they lived in the Promised Land, and God looked after them until he got fed up with their lack of faith and allowed them to be conquered and taken into exile, and then he brought them back, and gave them their land, but they were never as powerful, always at the mercy of bigger empires, always longing for God to finish the job and send them someone who would set them free.

And in the end God sent that someone, who didn't free them by military conquest, but freed them more truly and deeply than they could ever have imagined, by making it possible for each and every single one of them, and not just them but anybody the world over to have a new relationship with God himself, free from their mistakes and their failures and their brokenness, free suddenly to be the people they had always dreamed they could be, free to work with him to bring heaven's rules down to earth as well.

Free to say to people who felt like they were living in fragile tents that were letting the weather in, that there was a secure shelter awaiting them. No longer at the mercy of the tides and currents of the world, but standing strong and confident in God's love. And because we're anchored to this story, it gives us confidence. We know who we are, because we know whose we are.

Judgement based on deeds

We're the people who have been set free to face Christ in his judgement seat, and not quake with fear. Free to stand in court before him, and when the question rings out, “how do you plead?” to say “Not Guilty.”

Anchored at both ends

How can this be? Well I've told the story, and said that we are the people who have this as our inheritance. This is one of our anchors in life. But we need more than this. My brother in law lives part of the year on a houseboat, and to keep it secure at its mooring, it needs two anchors – front and back. A few years ago, when our family went to France on a cross channel ferry, we saw that even a huge great ship like that still needs to be anchored, front and back.

With good old ropes.
In the same way, we need to be anchored not just to the past but also to the future. And this passage talks, doesn't it, about what the future looks like for us. It promises us hope. And hope is essential to our life. Without hope, we're nothing, we might as well give up.

We know who we are because we know where we've come from, we know in whose line we stand. But we also need to be anchored to the future, through our hope. The Bible does this for us in all sorts of ways, and one of the things it makes clear is that the story isn't over yet, it's still being told. The Bible places us, not at the end of the story looking back, but in the middle of the story, still shaping it.

The Philippians Creed

Let me give you a for instance. This is one of the the oldest fragments of Christian liturgy that we know about. It's an early Christian creed. Before any prayer books, before the New Testament, before the gospels were written, before Paul wrote his letters, or Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, Christians were meeting and saying these words together.

Have this mind among yourselves, 

which is yours in Christ Jesus, 

who, though he was in the form of God, 

did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 

but made himself nothing, 

taking the form of a servant, 

being born in the likeness of men. 

And being found in human form, 

he humbled himself by becoming obedient 

          to the point of death, 

even death on a cross. 

Therefore God has highly exalted him 

and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 

in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5-11

And what's really interesting about it is that the tense changes two thirds of the way through. This wonderful declaration of faith tells us that Jesus has emptied himself of heavenly glory, has become obedient unto death, has been raised, is seated at God's right hand, has been give this glorious new name … but that at this name every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that he really is the Lord of everything: heaven earth, and the depths below the earth. Everything will bow to him.

It hasn't happened yet. We're still waiting, still praying, still working for the day when it will be true. As Paul said, now we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.

So we're anchored to the future, waiting for it to come to pass.

All Creation Groans, by Candice Snyder

Paul says elsewhere that all of creation groans, waiting for the sons and daughters of God to come into their own. He also says, there are times when we don't know what to pray, and the Spirit intercedes through us with groans too deep for words. There are times when we face something that's so horrific we don't have words. There are people whose lives have been so trashed that there is nothing we can say. It's no good saying to them, don't worry, one day you'll go to a better place.

There are times when all we can do is groan, the Holy Spirit inside us sensing the pain of the world and groaning out to God, longing for the day when heaven's rules will apply on earth. That day is coming. 

We will stand before the judgement seat of Christ.

And in the meantime, if there's no abuse in heaven, then let's have no abuse on earth, if there's no slavery in heaven then let's pray for no slavery on earth, if there's no desperate poverty in heaven, then none here too. Because that's what we pray: "Your kingdom come on earth, as it already is in heaven.” Jesus said: if you give so much as a cup of water to one of these little ones, you will not lose your reward.

Conclusion

There is a day coming when all this will be true. It's a day of judgement. 

Now we don't like that word. It makes us feel uncomfortable.

But a word we do like is justice. The day of justice is a day when righteousness is honoured and seen for what it is. When wickedness is seen for what it is. When God ultimately tells the truth about everything and nobody will be saying "that's not fair." God will say, "this is what goodness looks like, this is what righteousness and compassion and love look like." 

Nobody will say that's not fair, because they will know it to be true, and they will be really surprised who God is pointing at as he says "this is what beauty is, this is what compassion is, this is what goodness is."

As for me, I want to stand before that judgement seat. 

I want to hear those words. 

I want to see who Jesus is pointing at, and I want to rejoice with him at the people who never got noticed, but went about making his kingdom come a little sooner that it might have done. 

And I want to believe that some of you will be the ones he is talking about. Because we're still living in this story. We're still shaping it. And we are called to work with God to make his kingdom come.

So take heart. You may groan in your earthly tent, but God's got a plan.You may be afraid of his judgement seat, but it's all about justice. God will right every wrong, he will wipe every tear, and right now he is calling us to play a part in his glorious solution to all the problems of our sorry world.

The Baptism of Christ

Someone on Twitter asked me to post my sermon. So, @pilgrimexplorer - this is for you!

Baptism of Christ

Question – why did Jesus get baptised?

He didn't need to – he wasn't a sinner. I've often felt for John the Baptist at the moment when Jesus turns up. Recognising the Messiah before him, he's clearly thinking, you don't need this – what are you doing here? John was baptising people as a sign of their repentance from their sins. So when the sinless one stands before him, he doesn't know what to do. Why does Jesus ask to be baptised? He is the one person alive at that time, or at any time, who doesn't need it.

Digression - The baptism furore

The argument has been about the “dumbing down” of the liturgy, and the removal of any reference to the devil.

Actually, I quite like these words – I think they can make sense to people. They are real about the fact that in life we all experience evil, without mentioning things that might cause sniggering.

Why does baptism matter?

Why does it matter? Because we all know that our lives are broken and incomplete, that we have made a mess of things, and that God through Jesus has done something about it. John in his letter says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

But there is a problem in all this that if we're not careful can tie us up in knots. Even after we have received God's forgiveness, even after we have been set free from the past in such a wonderful way, the fact of the matter is that we still mess up, We still sin. What's going on? How is it, that after God has forgiven us all our sis, and purified us from all unrighteousness, we aren't changed for ever completely? If we allow ourselves to think, or to say to people, “But the Bible says we don't sin any more, once we've come to Christ,” then as John goes on to say we make God out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

Or perhaps, when we find that we've slipped back into our old ways, that the things we longed to be set free from have still got us trapped, we panic, we think it hasn't worked. Perhaps God doesn't want me. Perhaps he isn't there.

Broken down cars – a wonderful illustration of what a physicist would call entropy – that things left to themselves don't automatically get better, they get worse. Things don't go from a disordered state to an ordered one, they tend towards chaos. Left to itself, everything breaks down. If you just let things run their course, if you don't intervene, things don't move towards a more perfect world, but towards a more broken, chaotic, disordered one. This is the world we live in.

So we can't afford to think of sin in black and white terms – either you're a sinner or you're forgiven and righteous. That isn't the way the world is. None of us have ever met a group of people who so live in such a cloud of righteousness and perfection that there is no sin in them. So what is the point in getting baptised? What is the point in going through this ritual that speaks of being cleansed from all kinds of dirt and brokenness if at the end of it, we're just as dirty and damaged as we ever were? Why are we deluding ourselves?

Transforming the rubbish

To help us understand the answer that God has – the real answer that God offers us to our situation, I want to tell you about a place in France that Gerard Kelly told me about last year when I was at Spring Harvest. He was one of the speakers at Spring Harvest, and he lives in Normandy, near the city of Caen, where he works with a community of Christians who do all sorts of mission work all over Europe, and who are particularly involved in starting a new church in that city.

One day, some of the members of his community came back saying that had found a really good place to go and pray for Caen. They described a park they had discovered, built on a hill just outside the city, called Colline AuxOuiseaux, the Hill of the Birds.
They talked about the lovely trees there, that there was a rose garden, with apparently their own new variety of rose, there were playparks, even a little zoo, and lovely views over the city. So the community started to go there regularly, to sit amongst the peace and pure air, and pray for the city. Then Gerard found out the history of the park. 40 years before, it had been the city rubbish dump, and for hundreds of years, people had brought all their rubbish out of the city, and piled it up here, building up this hill. But as the city had grown, this smelly, messy hill wasn't suitable any more – houses were getting closer and closer, and the smell was not something that people wanted to live with. So they stopped dumping the rubbish, and set to work transforming it into a park. And what had been a horrible place, became something beautiful where children went to play. In one place, they have dug into the hillside to reveal what it looks like below the surface.

It didn't happen straight away. It took twenty years for it to look anything like a park. The trees that were planted, didn't grow overnight. The rose garden, it didn't grow overnight. But what did they do? Did they sack the tree planters, the rose growers? Did they say, well I thought you were planting some trees, where are they? Where’s this rose garden then? No. They knew it took time. Now if it takes 20 years to sort out a rubbish dump, why should we think God can sort us out in 10 minutes?

It takes time in our lives to resow forgiveness and peace where bitterness and anger have been. But given time, with the time that God spends on us, we will no longer be known as a rubbish dump, we will no longer be known for our brokenness. The life of God will grow to displace our brokenness. This is the life to which baptism is the gateway.

Every day we have a choice – whether to live the old way, doing things out of our brokenness, or to live the new life that is opening up before us, of forgiveness and peace.

Growing the fruit

Now how does this come about? The picture that the Bible give us is of fruit, isn't it? But if you want to be a fruit, you don't go to a fancy dress shop and hire yourself a costume. That won't make you a tomato, or a bunch of grapes, no matter how good the costume. You cannot simply put on a bunch of behaviours and say “I am now a nice person.” You have to let God transform you from within. It's about growth, not manufacture. God sows good things into our life, he waters them, he wants us to nurture them as they grow, and then you see the fruit.

Guilt and shame

Now there's one final thing. And it's guilt. How we deal with guilt can be very helpful and wholesome, or it can bring us down into the dust.

Contrary to what you hear said sometimes theses days, guilt can be good. I know there are people who will say you should never feel guilt, you should never beat yourself up. But there is nothing wrong with feeling bad about doing something bad! If I've let someone down, or behaved badly, I want my conscience to tell me about it, before someone else points it out to me. I want to know for myself that I've been a jerk, rather than have to rely on my wife or my friends or my children having to say “Nick, when are you going to get your act together?” So guilt can be good. Conscience can be good.

But false guilt is a different matter. False guilt is a dangerous cancer that can destroy our relationship with God. If we allow the awareness of how broken we are to paralyse us, to stop us from taking action to change, it will cut us off from God. And here's how.

When God was walking in the Garden of Eden, saying “where are you Adam?” and Adam said I was hiding because I was naked and afraid, God said “Who told you that you were naked?”

When I was a young Christian, I used to feel guilty when I'd done wrong things and let God down. Sometimes I felt that because I had done such things, I had no right to come before God, as if I was pretending that nothing had happened. So I should keep my distance. And as the days went by, I began to feel even more guilty because my relationship with God had been wrong for so long. So it became harder and harder to pray, to go to church, to get back to where I should be. And what was God thinking?

I'll tell you what he was thinking. Nick, who told you that it's a good idea to stay away from me? I'm the only person who can really help. Who told you that when you do something you regret I don't want to talk to you? Who told you that you have no right to come into my presence when you've messed up? I didn't, the Bible didn't – where did it come from? Who have you been listening to?

So if you ever feel that your life is a mess, and you just can't come to church until you've got yourself sorted out, do you know what I'd like to say to you? Don't be so daft! The most useful thing you can do with the mess in your life is talk to God about it! Call me a hypocrite, call me what you like, but I'm going to keep coming back to God because he's the only one who can get my life sorted out. I'm not going to let shame keep me out of God's presence because it isn't God who tells me that I need to stay away.

So – why was Jesus baptised?

God wants to open a gateway to a new way of life in us. He wants to plant good things in us that will outgrow the bad stuff. Jesus endorsed this process by submitting to baptism himself. He was saying, this is the way that God is going to sort out the mess of the world. This is the way to do it. We submit to baptism, to enter through the gateway into this new life. The life that has begun in us is greater than the garbage it is beginning to displace and in due course, it will become the dominant force in our lives, if we let it. This is the Christian life. Let's live it.