John 20. 19-23

Easter 2 - More on encountering the Risen Jesus
Last week we looked at the puzzle at the end of mark's Gospel, and learned that it is in encountering Jesus that we are set free from confusion, fear and uncertainty. Being Easter people, believing in the Resurrection means encountering Jesus today.  And it means being transformed by that encounter.  We are going to look at one of these encounters this morning.  We will try to learn how an encounter with Jesus will transform our lives.

1. Community... They were together (verse 19).  Behind closed doors, but all in the one place.  Jesus loves to reveal himself to us. He reveals himself to us when we are on our own, but he loves to reveal himself to us when we are together (See John 21. 2) to pour out his Spirit when we are together (See Acts 2. 1, 4 24ff), united in prayer, and to join us ever closer by giving us his spirit (Acts 2. 44).

2. Evidence... We see his hands and side (verse 20).  This is not a ghost.  This is the real Jesus, the lamb of God, different yet the same, bearing the wounds of crucifixion, yet fully alive!  A physical body yet able to pass through walls.   Jesus gives evidence that he is really alive, that it is really him, and that God cares about the physical world.

3. Peace... (verse 19, 21) “Shalom” is Jesus' response to their confusion, fear and uncertainty. Our English word peace is more about the absence of conflict.   “Shalom” is bigger than than that. It is about total well-being.  On the Cross he said “it is finished!”, so now he is able to say “Shalom!” and really to impart peace.    Jesus is our peace, so his creative word bestows peace.  We need to hear the word of God, and to receive what he wants to bestow on us  through his word.  What he speaks about, he speaks into our lives.  Shalom.  Total well-being. And shalom is the springboard for mission.  

4. Mission...(verse 21) As the Father has sent me so I am sending you.  How does the Father send us?

• It starts with God.  Not a double mission but an extension of the mission of Jesus.  “One single action, the great movement of the missionary heart of God.”(Milne)  
• it is incarnational.  Jesus was sent physically.  The word became flesh.  As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.  We are sent incarnationally.  Not just to talk about Jesus as a nice person or a good idea.  But to demonstrate the father’s love and to introduce Jesus as a  real person. 
• It combines submission and authority.  Matthew 28.  18-20 tells us “All authority is given to me..therefore go...” As his messengers we have the authority and dignity of the One who sent us.  But in order to exercise that authority we must live in full submission to him.  The authority to ask “in my Name” (John 16. 23f) is for those who remain joined to Jesus and bear fruit (John 15. 5-8) 
• It is sacrificial.  For Jesus, it was the sacrifice of the cross.  It was being despised and rejected.  In being lifted up form the earth on the cross, people were drawn to him.  We all want to be respected; we all dislike being looked upon as idiots for what we believe.  Now, sometimes we are idiots.  We talk in archaic language and expect people to understand it.  We live in our little religious ghetto that is designed for us, and complain because nobody else wants to come in and join us.  We need to do the best we can in terms of communication, and in terms of understanding and responding to what is going on out there in society.  But once we have sorted that out, we will still find that we are looked on as idiots.   We will still be called narrow-minded, bigoted, out-dated, superstitious. 
  

5. Holy Spirit...(verse 2,2)  Mission is a call to the impossible!  But Jesus breathed on his disciples and said “Receive Holy Spirit!”   Who is the Holy Spirit and what does he come to do in our lives?  Jesus gives an object lesson. The Holy Spirit is breathed into the disciples, just as the breadth of God was breathed into man at the creation.

• The Father's work.  The coming of the Spirit is the beginning of the New creation.  “The ruach – wind, Spirit or breath – of God was moving on the face of the deep” Genesis 1. 2.  In breathing the Spirit into them, Jesus was saying that a new beginning was happening, as the the Spirit comes from the Father to make a new creation.  
• The Son's Presence  In breathing on the disciples "Jesus communicates and commits himself to the disciples" (Wm. Temple). When the Spirit comes, Jesus comes! 
• The Spirit's power.  Alive, pulsing with the life of his resurrected humanity, vibrant with his God-life –he breathes on them.  His life, his God-life, imparted to them,breathed into their lungs, entering their bloodstream, energising every muscle in their bodies and every synapse in their brains. That's what the Holy Spirit comes to do.  To distinguish between what happens here and what happens in Acts 2,  is to miss the point. The Holy Spirit wants to fill our lungs and energise of lives.  If you are not experiencing that respiratory work of the Spirit in the whole of your being, then be assured that is what he wants to do. You need to have Jesus breathe upon you afresh and receive Holy Spirit afresh today.
  

6. Grace... (verse  23)  Jesus says “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”  It's tempting to tie that in with mission: those to whom we preach the Gospel are those to whom we give forgiveness. Yes, to withhold the Gospel is to withhold divine forgiveness.  But this ministry is a Holy Spirit ministry, and it is a ministry "given to the body” (William Temple).  The whole of life is about forgiveness and grace – in our dealing with one another as well as in our mission in the world.  Loving one another is not a distraction from mission – it is the essential preparation for mission.  The Spirit comes to make us grace givers.  

"Jesus vision is not of a multitude of inspired individuals" but "a community bound together by...the Spirit, sent forth to gather his 'other sheep'"(Milne)

© Gilmour Lilly April 2016

Mark 16:

So the three women found the stone rolled away from the tomb, met an angel who told them Jesus had risen, and that they were to tell his friends to go to Galilee where they would meet him.  The women ran off in panic and said nothing to anyone – because they were afraid. 

Isn't that a strange way to end a “Gospel”?    After all, a “gospel” is not just a biography: it is “good News” written so that people may believe.  There are four possibilities...

1. Mark didn't know, or wasn't bothered, about what happened next.   That is highly unlikely. Mark gives us a bit of a spoiler in v. 7: “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”  There's obviously something else to follow.  Mark had spent time with Peter (we think Peter told the story to Mark and Mark wrote it down) and with Paul.  Peter knew the story and paul was clear hom important that story was (1 C0r 15.1)  So Mark's Gospel needs what the other Gospels have – the actual meeting with Jesus promised in verse 7.
2. Mark wrote more but what he wrote has been lost, perhaps torn off the end of the scroll.  I don't believe that answer either: the first thing you would do if you knew the last page of the book had been damaged, would be to re-write it from memory.
3. Mark wrote the next section that we call verses 9-20.   There is in the AV and in small print in many other Bibles, a “Longer ending” to the Gospel.  It is a good ending in its way – but it's not Mark's original ending. One old manuscript names an author, an elder called Antipas.  I believe it was written by someone – to sum up what the different Gospels say about the resurrection – and then used to fill the obvious gap. Because there is an obvious gap.
4. Mark was prevented from finishing the work fully: wither by sudden death, murder, arrest and imprisonment.  Maybe he was getting the story from Peter, stopped for a break, and Peter was arrested.   That requires a wee bit of imagination. 

There are problems with every possibility suggested. Whatever the reason,  I believe Mark wanted to write more but was prevented for some reason.   And I believe that the ending we have in our footnotes, although not from Mark, is “Scripture”. 

Mark, then, as it stands,  tells a story that ends – yes, ends – with confusion, fear, and uncertainty, and with an uneasy silence about the whole resurrection message.... He knows it has happened. He has heard that from Peter.  He knows it is important – he has learned that from Paul.  But he also knows about doubt and fear.... he has been there.  So it's OK to take a break, stop for the night, have a meal, with the words “For they were afraid” freshly written on the page.  It's OK to pause there and recognise the reality of “Confusion,  Fear, Uncertainty”. These are as much part of an honest telling of the Resurrection story, as are victory, joy, and hope. 

Mark knew it.  He may well have been the young man who ran away naked, leaving his cloak in the hands of the soldier who made a grab at him, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He certainly ran away again, later, when the going got tough in Pamphylia (Acts 13. 13).

Peter knew it.  Mark records that the angel said to the women “Go and tell my disciples – and Peter...”  Peter had failed so badly by denying Jesus, that he only felt fit to be a fisherman, not a disciple.  He knew about uncertainty, fear, and confusion.  

The Gospel writers all admit the first witnesses to the resurrection didn't believe their eyes and the first people to hear the report didn't believe what they were hearing!  John tells us about Mary crying in the garden, and then he tells us about Thomas.  Matthew tells us the women were “Afraid yet filled with joy”, and that even after meeting with Jesus “”Some doubted”.  Luke tells us the women’s “words seemed to them like nonsense and gives us the story of the two on the road to Emmaus. 

We are like that too. “Confusion,  Fear, Uncertainty”  all too often reflects where the Church is at – resurrection or not.  We are afraid: afraid of being too supernatural; afraid for our reputation; afraid of the future; afraid of change; afraid of our culture.   We are confused: we hear voices questioning what we believe.  Are we sure we believe it? How do we answer?  What does this resurrection imply in our lives?  We want certainty, but “faith is the evidence of things unseen....”  And all so often, our uncertainty, our fear, our confusion, mean we don't feel able to talk about what is really important.  We are silent about the resurrection, about the supernatural, about the power of Jesus to change lives today.   We fail.  We let Jesus down.  Or am I the only one?

I believe we need to face the uncertainty, to face the mess inside. It's OK, with Mark, to pause, to put the pen down and reflect, at this point of failure and uncertainty.  Someone very wisely said during Holy Week “You have to mourn to celebrate!”   I don't believe in “re-enacting” the death and resurrection – but I do believe it is hugely helpful to be able to pause, reflect on the two sides to the Passion-tide coin – the death of Christ for our sins and his resurrection – and to “Experience Easter” on the back of having solemnly remembered – called to mind – the suffering of Christ for us. 

And you have to mourn your own sin and failure, to celebrate fully the victory and power of Jesus. 

But you have to move on from there.  Just as it is a mystery why Mark left his Gospel unfinished, is really is a mystery  why we get stuck in our confusion, fear and uncertainty. There are lots of possible answers to do with hurt, lack of knowledge, deliberate disobedience, enemy attack and the fallen state of the world.    How can we get out of that place?

Mark gives the spoiler in verse 7.  The disciples were meant to meet up with Jesus in Galilee.  Antipas's (if that was who wrote verses 9-20) summary of the resurrection appearances points us to the other Gospels, and they are united in this:  it was in meeting with Jesus, in encountering Jesus, that confidence, hope, joy and victory replaced  uncertainty, fear, and confusion.  It was in meeting with Jesus – and in the coming of his Spirit – that John and Peter and Mark and Paul. were transformed.  It was in meeting Jesus that the disciples became a movement, a community, something life-changing. 

 And it is in meeting Jesus, in an encounter with Jesus and a touch from his holy Spirit (which is an encounter with Jesus!) that we are set free from  uncertainty, fear, and confusion today.  We need to seek that encounter at the Lord’s table, in the word, in prayer including silent waiting on God, and in praise and worship.  

Someone recently said “Resurrection is the Christian term for defiance”.  Resurrection was the way Jesus defied death.  Imagine death as a great big hand: all of that hand held Jesus – physically, emotionally, spiritually Jesus as in the grip of death.  But Jesus showed he is bigger, stronger than death itself.  “Death could not keep his prey. He tore the bars away!”  In his resurrection Jesus defied all the powers, political and religious – that had opposed him.

Because of the resurrection, we can be victorious over our sins, over our habits, over our fears.  Because of the resurrection, we can defy the powers that say “the church is finished!”   We can defy the sneering intellectualism that says “there is no god, man is the master of all things, glory to man in the highest.” ut that comes not just from knowign about the resurrection. It come as we meet Jesus.  We need to encounter him today.  

We need to do what Mark clearly intended to do.  We need to return to the narrative, where we are in confusion, fear, uncertainty, pick up the pen,  and write up the truth of our encounter with Jesus. 

© Gilmour Lilly April 2016

 

John 12. 1-19: Palm Sunday

In John's telling of the story, Palm Sunday begins with a dinner the night before. (Verses 1-11).  Just a couple of miles from Jerusalem, in the village called Bethany, six days before the Passover, Jesus turned up.  And some people put on a dinner in his honour.  (Probably a guy called Simon the Leper – who obviously had his owns story to tell – it seems that Matthew 26 and Mark 14 are telling the same story).  Bethany was significant as the place where the Lazarus family lived: Martha, the one who got things done, Mary, the thinker, and Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 

And in the more intimate setting of a dinner, what people were comes to the surface.  Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Simon the Leper, Judas, Jesus.  We need to meet closely with people, to be real with them, in order to grow.  We need the small group as well as the larger one.

Jesus loves a good meal with friends – time to share food and relax, celebrate, laugh, talk deeply.  In fact his public ministry had started at a dinner – a wedding feast at which he had turned water into wine – the “First Sign” in John's Gospel.  That was a joyful celebration.

And even ahead of then, before Jesus had started his public work, out in the desert, Satan had tempted him... about food:  “Turn these stones into bread if you are the Son of God”.  The temptation in a fairly poor, rural environment, to provide bread for the hungry, was about being a popular, cheap-grace Messiah who could buy his way into people's hearts and then whip them up into a mob that would proclaim him king (rather in the way Donald Trump is taking America by storm by capitalising on people's frustrations today). That was the danger Jesus faced when he fed the five thousand and probably why he took time, with his disciples away from the situation, to send the crowd away.  Once when the disciples urged Jesus to have something to eat, he answered “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”  (John 4. 34)

So when Jesus turned up at Bethany,  he was after the real food – doing the Father’s will.  Not getting a  quick fix.  Not pulling a crowd; but being in the centre of Father’s will.  He knew about the dangers. He knew people were plotting against him. But he was there, doing the father's will.  His mind was clearly settled on this. As a  result, this meal was a bit more quiet, reflective and thoughtful.  The passover was coming. Everyone was getting into the frame of mind of mind for a solemn religious feast; and people could see the clouds gathering,  could sense the danger for Jesus.

And at the dinner were Martha, serving as she always seemed to do.  And Lazarus himself.  Just by being there alive, he pointed to Jesus being the Messiah.  (That was why some of the powers that be were out to kill not only Jesus but Lazarus as well!)   It was in the practical things – wine at a wedding, food for hungry crowds, healing the sick and raising the dead, that Jesus the King, demonstrated what his Kingdom was going to be like and showed himself to be the King.  

So, at the end of his earthly ministry they put on a dinner in his honour – friends, people who had reason to thank him for his ministry.   Marys and Marthas and Lazaruses and Simons:  those whose lives had been changed by his teaching; people whose lives had been changed by the power of God at work in him. They could all recognise him as Messiah, Son of God. 

And Mary came and did her bit, too: that involved a bottle of perfume, Nard, from a plant that grows in the Himalayas, worth a year's wages.  This wasn’t' something Mary had picked up cheap from the Avon lady!  Judas starts to get picky and say “What a waste – all that money could have gone to the poor” (as he looked after Jesus' poor relief fund it would have gone to him). So Jesus said that in advance, Mary had anointed him for his burial.  And in anointing him for his burial, she was in a way anointing him as victorious King. 

She may not have fully understood all of this; she simply wanted to say “thank you” – but Jesus says “it was intended” by God.  Sometimes our actions have bigger, deeper significance, than we are aware of.  We want to say “thank you” but how we say it does something in the heavenlies.  

So much comes together here, at this meal: Jesus' sense of purpose and surrender.  His identity as Lord, God and Messiah; his Kingship and the Kingdom he came to bring; and his sufferings as the pathway to glory.  The King is going to be enthroned. The Son is going to be glorified....   It's all been said, quietly, reverently at the dinner table.  The anointing at Bethany expresses the royal dignity of Jesus in preparation for his triumphal entry. It is as king that he enters (not merely a pretender).    John knows that Jesus, at a meal, with friends, is anointed King.

So the next day, the King, anointed as David was by Samuel, steps out, heads for Jerusalem – and is immediately recognised by the crowds.  It's Jesus, the miracle worker; the guy who raises the dead.  Jerusalem was full of people.  There could have been up to two million people in the city at Passover.  They grabbed palm branches – which were symbols of the Jewish nation – and began waving them like flags – exactly like flags.  The begin to sing and shout “Hosanna –  O God, save!  Blessed is he who comes I the name of the Lord”  They were quoting from Psalm 118. 25-27.  For many of them is was just a reminder of their history and a hope of a King who would set them free from the Romans.  But the Psalm is about a person who struggles and is victorious over death itself.  Good words for Jesus, who came to bring a Kingdom that was bigger the the Jewish nation, that was for the nations; Good words for Jesus whose Kingdom was going to triumph through is humiliation and death.   Good words for Jesus who would be able to say “The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death. (Ps 118. 18)

Jesus fulfils the OT promises.  HE knows he is heading from his anointign to his coronation...  he is going to be glorified. 

For John, what happens on the road into Jerusalem is the public celebration of what had already been sealed in the house in Bethany.  So John misses out some for the detail that the synoptic gospels describe.  Instead he talks about the way the disciples (himself included) didn't get it at that point. After he has been glorified, the disciples will understand. Describing things after the event, John talks about Jesus being glorified.  He knows that glory is where all this difficult path leads to.  Palm Sunday brings together Jesus' surrender and suffering; his divinity , Kingship and Kingdom; his suffering and his glory.

At the end of the story, as at the end of the anointing story, John reminds us of Lazarus, the living evidence of who Jesus is.  The Lazarus story is spreading around the city, even as the Pharisees, the priests and powerful people are plotting to get rid of Jesus.  It looks like they can't win.   The Pharisees say to one another “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”  John, with the benefit of hindsight, drops that in.  Palm Sunday, the last supper, the cross, are going to lead to glory.  People are going to be drawn to Jesus.  Lifted up from the earth, people from every nation are going to be drawn to him.  The enemy can’t win.  He is defeated.  Jesus is the victor.  He is glorified.  He becomes King through this process of emptying himself, dying on a cross and rising again.  Golgotha is his Westminster Abbey.  Holy Week is his coronation. 

And John, in the context of a suffering church,  drops that in. After the resurrection and yet living through the struggles of the early Church,  Jesus is the victor.  The enemy can't win. 

And still the Church goes through its struggles, makes its mistakes; it loses the heart of the Western world, (church attendance n Scotland fell by 13.5% in the last decade: half a million people gave up on church); it experiences persecution (More people were martyred for their faith in the twentieth century than in any other century since the Church began.  The figure is 200 million.)  But like  John, we need to say “The enemy can't win.  He is defeated. Jesus is the victor.”  

© Gilmour Lilly March 2016

Love won another

Leviticus 19. 17-18, 33-34; John 13. 31-38

We have been thinking about our love for God – in response to the majesty of who he is, and to God's love for us. We finished last time by realising that to respond with love to God, always involves loving people as well. We are going to look a bit closer at that today.

So we can sum up the commands in two: Love the Lord with heart, soul and strength (Deut 6. 4-5); and love your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19. 17-18). Neighbour in Leviticus is a wide-ranging word. “All our duties to our fellow men summed up in these words. Jesus and Paul agree about that. (Matt 22.39f Rom 13.9)

But then, Leviticus (chapter 19 verses 33-34) goes on to say “The foreigner living among you must be treated as one born among you. Love him as yourself”. The foreigner or stranger is the person who is travelling through, the person who has just arrived, the person who has no rights. And God's word says “Love his as yourself; love him the same as any other neighbour.”

William Temple says, “My neighbour is anyone with whom I have anything at all to do even by accident and even though he's the kind of person that I naturally hate or despise”.

And both neighbour and stranger, we are to love as ourselves. That is something we struggle with.

Some of us – self included – are not very brilliant at loving ourselves. We are taught to be “Self-effacing, self-denying” But I believe the Lord wants us to have proper sense of love for ourselves. Talking about marriage and Jesus' love for us, Paul says “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church...” Eph 5. 29

I think we would all agree that self-harming is a symptom of something being wrong. Substance abuse, self mutilation (cutting, hair-pulling), eating disorders, and habitual overwork are all forms of self-harm. As Bible-believing Christians we tend to be more down on alcoholics than workaholics, so we need to be consistent. God doesn't want us to be self-harming. He wants us to live emotionally healthy lives, loving ourselves in the right way. The markers of love are:

• Esteem, and we need a right self-esteem. Secular psychotherapy says “You have to big people up. There are no moral absolutes. Nobody's a sinner: that's bad for your self-esteem.” But Christianity says “Jesus loves me and died for me: that's good for my self-esteem!”
• Enjoyment. Not to enjoy our own company so much we don't mix with other people, or to admire ourselves in the mirror for hours. But to enjoy being the people God made us to be.
• Extravagance. Perhaps that's not quite the right word for ourselves: it's not all about spending on ourselves, treating ourselves. But we need to be able to be kind to ourselves. We need to be able to receive.
• Expectancy. We need to believe in ourselves; to have goals,targets, an aim in life. That doesn't need to be crazy, unrealistic stuff or materialistic ambition; but we need to aim to be the best we can be, and to make the best of each day's opportunities and to be a blessing to other people. That rescues “Self-love” from being simply an exercise in self indulgence.

And loving my neighbour as myself means “I am to care as much of his interest as for my own.” (William Temple) That means loving our neighbours with esteem: we value something in their lives; with enjoyment (we learn to enjoy being with people); with extravagance and generosity; and with expectancy as we believe that whoever they are they can grow and develop and find faith in Jesus. We need to treat ourselves, our neighbours and our natural enemies with equal love.

In John, Jesus gives us a “New Commandment!”: “Love one another as I have loved you!”

This is what Archbishop Ussher called the eleventh commandment. It adds something to “Love your neighbour as yourself”. What is new about the “New Commandment”?

To answer that, let's note where and when Jesus said these words: in the upper room, after washing the disciples' feet and breaking bread with them. And before he goes on to talk about the future: the long-term hope of heaven “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14. 1) the coming of the Spirit (John 14. 16) the call to fruitful service (John 15)

• It sets a new standard. It takes us way beyond “love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus says this after he washes the disciples feet, and says “You must wash the feet of one another. He says it after he takes bread and says, “This is my body, broken for you.” “As I have loved you” means “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15. 13). That is a tough call. Where the Esteem disappears and the enjoyment cools, love continues to be extravagant, sacrificial. It takes us back to loving with all our strength.
• It needs s new power. William Temple says this new commandment is “The impossible thing. [Jesus] himself will make it possible but till then it is not possible.” Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to come and live inside his people. We need the Spirit's power to love as Christ loved us.
• It is based on a new covenant. The commandment is new because it is the law of the new covenant which Jesus is to establish to his death.
• It is for a new people. The new commandment is for the messianic community living between the advents of the Messiah.
• It is based on a new relationship with Jesus. In John 15. 10-12, Jesus says “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love... My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.”

The other thing “ new” thing troubles some people: it seems to have narrowed the focus down to “Love one another.” Is Jesus telling us to become a big, “holy huddle” when he tells us to “Love one another”? The answer is “No!”, a great big “No!” for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Leviticus – and Jesus – say “Love your neighbour as yourself.” And when a clever-clogs asked Jesus “Who is my neighbour” Jesus told a story about an outsider – a Samaritan – who showed love when cream of the insiders – priests and Levites – failed to do so. (Luke 10. 25-37) God's heart is always for the outsiders. Remember, “love your neighbour as yourself – even if he is a stranger.

Secondly, Jesus says “Everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another.” How does that work?

• Loving one another makes the Church a wee, working model of the Trinity. We keep Christ's commands and love one another as Jesus keeps the Father's commands and loves the Father. What a wonderful privilege to be involved in the things of god!
• Loving community proves that the Good news of Jesus has changed our lives. Francis Schaeffer calls love “The final apologetic.” In the second century the pagans said "behold how these Christians love each other! How ready they are to die for each other. "
• To love like Jesus is to love inclusively indiscriminately and universally. Jesus loved us sacrificially, so the point of dying for us, before we were his people. So we need to love people, before they are our brothers in Christ.
• As we learn to love one another – with Esteem, enjoyment, extravagance and expectation, we gain the skill to love or neighbours – even if they are strangers, with Esteem, Enjoyment, Extravagance and Expectancy.

Jesus doesn't want us to love one another like a holy huddle. He wants us to love one another as a springboard to loving service that can win other people to him. Mother Teresa had a prayer as she ministered to the destitute and dying in Calcutta: “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.”

© Gilmour Lilly March 2016

We love because He first loved us: God's love and ours.

Psalm 47
Psalm 47 has all the excitement of a coronation – and the King is the Lord himself.  He is Lord of all the earth, sovereign over creation, sovereign over the nations.  And he loves “Jacob” – the people of Israel who are his people.

Why should God love Israel – or us?  Not because of their great strength.  They were nothing special....  But God chose them and loved them.   But his plan and his love extend to all the nations.  His plan is that The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham.   

When John says in 1 John 4 that “God is love” that is not a new, freshly invented “New Testament concept”.  It is one that goes back to the beginning. Before Moses says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength”   (Dt 6) he says “Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength”  (Dt 4. 37:  the first mention of of God's love ).  God's love  –  “Ahav” – has always been there.  He made men and women for relationship with himself. 

I have been reading the “minor prophets” - the wee, short books at the end of the old testament.  They record God's anger at the mess his people have got themselves into, his grief over their unfaithfulness to him, his judgement and his promise of restoration and healing. For Hosea it was the unfaithfulness of God's people worshipping idols.  For Amos and Micah, it was oppression violence and injustice.  For Haggai it was the self-seeking complacency that left the temple in ruins.  For Malachi it was giving God second best.  

And that is how he loves, in response to the fact that his people broke their covenant with him.  They went far away from him, worshipping the grotesque fertility gods of their neighbours.  They oppressed each other.   God wanted them back.  He wanted them cleaned, set free, and treating one another with justice. 

See also
Jeremiah 31. 3
God's everlasting (through all generations) love (Hebrew "ahav") and covenant-keeping (Hebrew "chesedh") … not extinguished even by the nation's sin, offers hope of national restoration.  

Zeph 3. 7
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.   He will take great delight in you; in his love (Hebrew "ahava" – feminine form with same meaning) he will no longer rebuke you,  but will rejoice over you with singing.’   There is a tenderness in God's love.  Look how he longs for us to be walking with him.

The love of God is not a hard-nosed, cold determination to pursue us and possess us – it's not a psychopathic love that turns to hate if it doesn't get what it wants.  Stalking, bullying, and physical violence sometimes follow when that happens.  In south east Asia it often leads to acid attacks against young women.  God's love is tough enough to do what it takes to win us back to him – but at heart it is tender and sacrificial. 

Remember from last week?  Esteem?  Enjoyment/yearning for presence?  Extravagant sacrifice? Expectant hope.  God comes to us what that sort of love. 

• We are his creatures; we bear his image; he esteems us.
• He made us for his presence and when we put ourselves at a distance, he yearns for us.
• He goes to extravagant lengths to save us
• He believes in us. 

1 John 4. 7-21
“This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”

Because God is love, all true love is “of God”, comes from Him.  People who don't follow Jesus can be show much love.  That is because we are created in God's image so when anyone shows love it can only come from God.  But true, real love starts with God, reaches out to us, and takes root in our lives as we respond to God's love by loving him and loving others.  That's the love that shows we are “born of God.”  (verse

This is how we know what love is like.... v 9-10,  love is not just described but defined:  love is God sending his son for us.  Love is reaching out to the beloved.  Love is forgiving sins whatever the cost.   But why does a loving God need a sacrifice?  That is the wrong question.  For John, sacrifice and love explain and illustrate each other.   A loving god aches to heal the hurt so a loving God bears the wounds inflicted on him by mankind.  

See also
John 3. 16.       For god so loved the world...
1 John 3. 16.     This is how we know what love is....
Romans 5. 8    God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ephesians 2. 4f    But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.

And that is how God wants us to love one another.

“We love” John says “because he first loved us”.  Some Greek manuscripts actually say “we love him” or “we love God”.  Although it's not in the best manuscripts, that seems to be the point.  We love – God  first and then one other – because He first loved us.  

The evidence that our faith is for real, is found in possession of the Spirit and acknowledging  the  truth about Jesus!  (v 13-18). Is is alos found in love – for the invisible God, demonstrated in love for visible brothers and neighbours with often visible faults and weaknesses.
With all our strength. Sacrificial love that bears the pain, takes the initiative, heals the hurt.
With all our heart. Esteem,  Enjoyment, Extravagance and Expectancy in our relationships with each other, and in the way we live in the world.

We finish with two “Jesus” stories: one an encounter with Jesus, the other a parable Jesus told :
Luke 7. 36-50: a woman weeping at Jesus' feet, drying his feet with her hair, pouring her precious ointment on his feet, in an extravagant expression of love, and Jesus says “He who is forgiven much loves much. “
Matthew 18. 23-35: a man owes ten thousand talents (one talent was twenty years wages for a labourer.  So the guy owed about 3 billion pounds! Silly money!)  and is forgiven.  But he then goes and starts beating up one of his mates who owes him a hundred denarii – maybe £4500 (A denarius was a day's wages so a hundred denarii was four months wages: a fair amount of money but nothing in comparison!) God's love and forgiveness is meant to make us love and forgive. 

The New testament will never allow us just to say “Thank-you” for this love.  It is never enough to love God back, in response to the love he has show to us.  Consistently, God's love shown to us in Christ woos us to love him in return – and always to show that by loving one another, loving our enemies, loving the lost and the broken.  

Galatians 3. 20  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

© Gilmour Lilly February 2016

Deuteronomy 6. 1-9

Love the Lord your God...

Twice in the last couple of months, God has spoken to me about my relationship with him. The second time, I was watching a video on the computer, with David Carr, a pastor from Birmingham, who was talking about love for the Lord and love for others.  He linked loving the Lord with loving others and said that when you do love others they will respond to you.  And I sensed the Lord speak to me, challenging my about having “lost my first love” for him.  That's what brought me to this text.

Deuteronomy should really be called “These are the words!”  That is its Hebrew title (taken from the first words on the book!)  And that is important – because we need to hear Deuteronomy as “The words of Moses” - his big “pep-talk” to the people.  It's also important because “These are the words” was a common way to begin a covenant document.  So Deuteronomy is not only Moses' pep-talk, but, as God's prophet, his words are the covenant that God makes with his people and renews when they mess up. 

So we hear the first and greatest commandment in this context:  they are part of Moses' pep-talk, the lynch-pin of the covenant God is making with his people.  Before anything else really – before any other demands, any other rules, Moses tells the people – speaking for God – “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength.”   They once asked Jesus “What is the greatest commandment?”  that question, (Matthew 22, 37-40) and that is how he answered.  But he also added, the second is Love your neighbour as yourself.  (Lev. 19.18)

That's the first thing God wants from us: our love.  All the other stuff follows on from that:
worshipping God alone (6. 14), 
avoiding images the pagans worship (ch 7), spiritualists and fortune-tellers (18. 9-13),
eating the right food (ch 14.1-22)
paying tithes;  keeping the festivals (ch 16) giving the right sacrifices (ch 17),
forgiving debtors and freeing slaves – caring for the lest and lowest (ch 15),
dealing properly with serious crime (19. 21),
marriage and divorce,
and even care for animals (22. 6f) and health and safety (22. 8)

God wants the love of our heart, soul and strength.
Heart means the centre of you – not just (as in English) emotions but thinking, remembering, wanting, happiness, anxiety.  All of these things that are deep inside up, the OT includes under the heading of “Heart”.
Soul means “whole person”. In Hebrew thought you don't have a soul, you are a soul. “Soul” is related to the word “to breathe”.  It includes the drives, experiences and functions that makes us human.
Strength is force, abundance, or muchness.  It's connected with the word for a glowing, red-hot stick from the fire, that can burn what it touches.  It has energy that reaches beyond itself.

So what is this thing we call “love?” 
The Christian faith's greatest theologian, Paul describes what a loving lifestyle is like in 1 Corinthians 13, which is all about actions and attitudes towards one another. It is about decisions we make, to behave and think in a particular way, in our interactions toward other people. We would all do well to dwell deeply in these words and put them into practise in all our relationships including our marriages.  Paul tells us how to love with all our strength: how to reach out to others in love.  But Paul says you can do all sorts of sacrificial things and still not have love.  He recognises that love is an experience as well as a decision.

But what does it mean to lvoe with our hearts?  What is love in the deepest, inside part of us? 
Biologist Helen Fisher talks about lust, attraction and attachment, as three separate systems driven by different hormones.
Another biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as "unconditional selflessness" that assures co-operation and survival.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg talks about intimacy, passion and commitment: and recognises that these are present both in sexual and non-sexual relationships.
Philosopher James Giles says it is about vulnerability and care.  He also talks about love as an experience and as anticipation. 

C S Lewis and others talk about the four Greek words for love – agape is selfless love, philia is brotherly or friendly love, eros is sexual love and storge is the love between one who is dependent and one who provides (child and parent). But in the Old Testament, ONE word is used for all of these loves.  It's the same word in Deuteronomy 6. 5, (love the Lord...) and Leviticus 19. 18 (Love your neighbour...); the saem word for sexual love – Isaac loved Rebecca (Gen 24. 67) and Isaac loved Rebecca (Gen 29. 18;  Jacob loved Rachel...)   the same s word for family love (Gen 37. 3 Jacob loved Joseph), friendship (Ruth 4. 15 (Ruth loved Naomi, David loved Jonathan, 1 Sam 18. 1) and the same word for God's love (Ps 47. 4 , Ps 146. 8;  Isa 43. 4,  Jer 31. 3.)   Same word, over and over.  God's love for us, our love for God, and for our neighbours, the love between husband and wife, parents and childes, and friends.  It's this Hebrew word Ahav  ....  So I suspect the Greeks were not fully right.  While the four loves are different in intensity and how they are expressed, they also have common ground, some things that are the same in all of them. 

What is happening on the inside of a person, when they experience  this thing we call “love?”  I want to suggest four things that are common to very kind of lvoe – although they have different expression and different intensity in different relationships...  

1. Esteem – admiration, respect for who the other is.  In other words, something makes you value the other person – whether that person is your wife, your best friend or your newborn baby.   You admire their beauty, their rippling muscles, their sense of humour, or just value the fact that they are your flesh and blood. They matter to you.  This person is important.   Paul says love doesn't boast about self nor dishonour others.  Love treats people with respect that areise from Esteem. 
2. Enjoyment of, or yearning for, presence.  You want to be with the one you love.  When you are with them, you enjoy their presence.   When you are separated you miss them.  If your husband or wife is away for a few days, don't you get excited when you know they are coming home?  When you have to leave your baby with someone  for a few hours, don't you think “Will she be OK?”   In Rom 1:11 and Phil 1:8 Paul longs to see his Christian friends.
3. Extravagant, generous sacrifice.  Yielding yourself and what is yours to the other.  In love, you want to give.  That balances out the other thing about enjoyment: you don't simply want your life to be enriched by having the other person around, you want to bless and enrich their life too.  And it means that you will be ready to change your life, surrender your preferences, for the other person.  Love is not self-seeking, says Paul.
4. Expectancy, hope for future accomplishment.  A belief in what your partnership can do and be.  That may be a young couple getting married and hoping to have a family who will all, of course, be beautiful, successful and good. Or it may be four lads from Liverpool starting their own rock group.  Paul says love believes and hopes.

So we can think about how these traits work in our human relationships; in the life of the Church, in our families.  We can think about how they work in loving our enemies; and in loving our selves.. But we need to recover these traits in our love for God.  These are the heart things: Esteem, Enjoyment, Extravagance, Expectancy.  Awe and wonder at who he is; yearning for more of his presence; surrendering our lives to him, and living hopefully, by faith.  These things need to be there in our relationship with God.   And when they are, the foundation is laid for healthy loving of others, including our neighbours as ourselves.

But how is this love to be ignited and maintained in our relationship with God? God says “Shema, Israel: Listen....”  The answer is in the text.

Firstly we need to be the “our” in “The Lord our God”.  Israel had seen God at work in their life together.  They knew themselves to be his people.  God draws us into a relationship with himself and calls us His people.   The first of those times recently when God spoke to me about my relationship with him, was the day after Glen Frey, of the Eagles, died. He wrote the song “Desperado.”  I used to associate that song with people who are living messed up lives, far away from God.  But I was listening to  the day after Glen Frey died, and it struck me as being about me:   “You better let somebody love you before it's too late.”  It's possible to be too busy, too angry, too afraid to get close to God. We need to opt in – to choose to love the Lord.

Secondly, it is a response to who God is.   “The Lord our God is one.”  He is one, not many. He is unique.  He is not one god among many.  He is the one true God.  In the pagan world with many gods, that was a game changer, and it still is.  The pagan gods were often kind of like us – only with superpowers.  They squabbled among themselves, they fell in love.  But The Lord our God isn't like us.  He is holy and mysterious.  We love – because he is awesome, powerful, mysterious, indescribable!  We love because he is faithful, reliable, just, fair, and holy.  The ultimate duty – to love God – is founded on the ultimate truth: God is ONE.

Arthur Aron says we are biologically wired to fall in love, if we (1) Reveal to each other intimate details about our lives for half an hour. And (2)  stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes. And I think that is how to fall in love with God, too.  (1) revelation: read God's word, absorb the truth about who God is.  And  (2) Contemplation.  In contemplation we are not looking for revelation.  We are connecting with what is already revealed.  Paul says “we all beholding the glory of God are being transformed from one degree of glory to another.  So, gaze at the truth you have learned about God.  Gaze at it in silence and fall in love with Him! 

© Gilmour Lilly February 2016

John 9: The Sixth Sign

John 9

A disturbing question. v2. Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

This Jerusalem resident is one of my favourites. He is the complete opposite in many ways of the disabled guy at the pool of Bethesda. He's strong, independent, feisty, and courageous, as we shall learn. Sitting at his usual corner, listening intently to the voices that passed by, he probably heard the question – some guys asking their Rabbi who sinned, him of his parents.

That may seem odd to us – but it was part of the world-view of Jesus' time. Disease, particularly something like a child being born blind, was seen a s a punishment for sin. So the disciples' quesiton was “did his parents sin, or maybe he sinned in the womb?” That may seem strange to us – but that's what people of Jesus' day believed. The same idea is still around today. The Hindu doctrine of karma: punishment for sin in a past life. And I have heard people say, " I wonder what I have done to deserve this?"

We understand the idea of mistakes and consequences: stress, diet and substance abuse can all affect our health; and our exploitation greed and aggression can affect other people. We live in a fallen, broken world, where suffering is all around us. But the idea that disease is a direct punishment from God, is one we must consign to the dustbin of history. The point of the book of Job is that God throws out such a shallow and simplistic theology of suffering. And Jesus dismisses it too. It's a horrible idea.

A disturbing answer? v3. Neither, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

But... if Jesus is suggesting that God just randomly sends disease for his own glory, well, that's even worse! (“Even more worser” as my youngest once said.) But that's what some of us believe. We allow ourselves to live in a boxed in world, where everything happens in a predetermined way for a purpose. The inevitable result of that thinking, is that if God has sent along our illness, it must be for the purpose – so who are we are we to argue with that by asking God to heal us?

But that is not what Jesus says and it is not where Jesus' thinking leads. Look carefully at the words the disciples used and Jesus uses. "Who sinned that this man was born blind..." (v. 2) "… that God's works might be displayed." There is the same word, the same sentence structure, in both the question and the answer. Neither is talking about purpose but about consequence. The disciples aren't suggesting the parents sinned deliberately to cause their child to be born blind. Rather, that his blindness was a consequence of their sin. And Jesus isn't suggesting that God send the disease in order to bring about his glory, but rather that the consequence of the disease could be his glory.

We live in a fallen world where suffering in general is the consequence of the fall. Where bad stuff happens. Bruce Milne says “there is a dimension in suffering which defies 'explanation'...” The nearest we come to understanding the mystery of suffering is at the cross – and even there, even Jesus asks the question “Why?” (Mt 27.46)" No wonder – with ideas like “somehow we deserved this” or “God sent it for a purpose” – we have problems with the healing ministry.

See God work

“The Message” helpfully translates v3 – “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. Look instead for what God can do.” Jesus isn't interested here in the question “Why?” he is interested in demonstrating the works of God. The positive consequence of the man's blindness is that god's works may be brought into the light, plainly seen, And that is what Jesus is all about: verse four says “We must be working the works of him who sent me, as long as there is daylight to work by!” For Jesus, the right question isn’t “Why did this happen?” but “How can the works of a loving Father be worked in this situation? So Jesus spits on the ground and makes a wee paste of mud, puts it on the man's eyes sends him off to wash in the pool of Siloam and he comes back his eyes open seeing! The outcome of all that can be that God's glory is seen.

The story tells us about healing; Bruce Milne says “the existence of human suffering and blindness is a call to work.” We are called upon to engage in a broken, darkened, struggling world. We are called to do the Father's works – to make them visible – with Jesus, in the power of the Spirit.

Now I see

At first, as the man walks around town, people are nudging each other and saying things like “What happened to him – I'm sure that's the blind beggar guy, and it looks like he can see as well as I can” and “Nah – it's just a look-alike.” Being the kind of outgoing guy he was, when he heard that sort of thing, he was straight in there: “No, really it's me; I'm the same guy! The guy they call Jesus did it, with a bit of mud; sent me to wash my face in the pool of Siloam, and it worked!”

In an effort to understand what is happening, some of them go to the rabbis and law teachers, and eventually take the man who had been blind along. What's the official line on all this? Well, the Pharisees give the man a grilling – loads of questions: who did this? How did it happen. He must be lying, bring in his parents: they will soon discredit this rubbish... Well, the parents confirmed his story – although they seem a bit scared of the authorities and they would rather let their son speak for himself. He's well able to do that.

The whole story and many of the details shout – repeat like a football chant – the glory of God, revealed in Jesus, and who Jesus is.

• Siloam means “Sent” – and John sees the co-incidence: Jesus is the one the Father sent into the world.
• He cheekily breaks the Sabbath by making some ointment. What he uses – dust – reflects the creation of the world and suggests a new creation.
• One of the marks of the coming kingdom is the receiving of sight by the blind (Isaiah 29. 18 , 55. Five)
• In the background, the feast of feast of Tabernacles (full of lights) is being played out.
• Jesus says he is the light of the world (v5). Those who trust him do not walk in darkness.

You can hear it coming across in every action: Jesus! Messiah! Jesus! Creator! Jesus! Light of the world! Jesus! Son of God! The works of the father are being seen; the son is being identified for who he is. The one who restores physical sight can open our eyes to spiritual truth as well.

Are we blind?

The Pharisees can only see the world through their own narrow lens: their eyes are already blinded to the realities of who Jesus is. Jesus has broken the law (healed on the Sabbath) so he can't be an good. But the man replies “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (I love him!) When they keep asking him questions he comes back at them with “Why the questions: do you want to become his followers too?” (v 27) Eventually they get so angry they throw him out of the synagogue and cut him off from the worshipping community.

When Jesus hears about this he goes looking for the man, introduces himself to him, and invites him to take a step of faith. It's simple. The blind man can now see, spiritually as well as physically.

Jesus says, “For judgement I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” The Pharisees – religious, intellectual, respectable people – are shown to be blind – and not only blind, but guilty, because they don’t admit they are in need.

So there two ways to respond to Jesus, the light of the world. You can put your faith in him – which begins be admitting you are blind, don't see, don't understand. Or you can remain blinded by your own presuppositions, and turn away form the light.

© Gilmour Lilly February 2016