Can a nation be changed? Matthew 21. 1-16 (Palm Sunday 17 April)

Can a nation be changed?

Protest in Sanaa, Yemen (February 3, 2011) by Sallam from Yemen from Wikipedia commons

Hot, Middle Eastern sunshine, busy streets, crowds of people shouting for freedom.  It all sounds familiar. We have seen it in Cairo, Tunis, Benghazi, and in other parts of the Arab world.  Men and women who want to see their nations changed, who want rid of greedy and cruel unelected governments.  Can a nation be changed?

The same question was on the minds of this little group of men - and yes, at the start it had to be men - who had signed up to "Follow" the Rabbi called Yeshua, to learn from him and be part of this "kingdom. As they journey together to Jerusalem, they don't look like much of a force for change: a few Galilean fishermen, rough homespun clothes and rough, calloused hands.  Can a nation be changed?

The question was on the minds of the crowds, people from all over the nation who had come up to Jerusalem for Passover. They were a real mixture. There were people from the farms and villages, rich and poor, some with only the clothes they stood up in.  There were the city poor, too: the labourers, the ordinary people, those who were poor and those who were pushed around. There were the disturbed and disabled with their ragged clothes and begging bowls. Some didn't know anything about Jesus; others had probably heard him; some had come to him desperate for his healing. There were the children: those who were too young to understand.  There were those who knew the ancient faith-words and those who didn't, because though they were God-fearers, they were outsiders. A whole crowd of people. A rabble. A rag tag bunch of ordinary people.  And they are asking, "Can a nation be changed?"

Can a nation be changed? Jesus apparently thought the answer was "yes!"  A nation could be changed.  So he sent two of his friends into the city to borrow a donkey and her colt. He could read the questions in their eyes: "We could end up getting arrested as Donkey thieves!"  So he tells them, "If anyone asks what you're doing tell them the master needs them."  They might have wanted to say, "But, Jesus, if you're going to enter Jerusalem as King, wouldn't a big white horse be better?"  And if they did, Jesus  Jesus would answer, "No, I know what I am doing. It's all set up.  Go and get me the donkey..." Jesus was setting up this march, this demonstration.  The disciples threw their cloaks over the donkey and Jesus rode on it, down into the city.  It was like he was saying, "Yes, I am the coming King. I am fulfilling the ancient words. I am here to change the nation!"  


And people caught the atmosphere of the moment, they read the code (Zechariah 9. 9: you king is coming, riding a donkey)... they joined in the demonstration... some spread their cloaks in the road, others cut palm fronds to spread on the road... "He's here, the King, the one who comes in the name of the Lord..." so they began quoting Psalm 118:25f   Save us, LORD, save us! Hosanna! Give us success, O LORD!   May God bless the one who comes in the name of the LORD!  Save our nation, change our nation, Jesus!"    The whole city was in an uproar!  Can a nation be changed? It looked like the time had come.

But what would that change be like?  In Jerusalem, Jesus headed for the Temple, the "God" place, the spiritual heart of the nation... and there, in the outer courts of the place where people made sacrifices God, in the place where people worshipped Him, the bit of the temple where all nations could come, there people were selling lambs and pigeons (for sacrifices) and changing Roman Denarii for Judean Shekels for the offering.  Jesus cleared them all out. What a scene! Sheep and birds everywhere; neat piles of coins scattered on the floor; men yelling - probably using words you wouldn't want to use in church!   This Kingdom wants to change hearts.  It demands that people turn from greed, oppression, apathy, self-interest, and prejudice, to God. It calls people to be generous, honest, inclusive...  There in the temple, Jesus demonstrated that he was about changing not just the nation but also the world, by changing the heart...

And there in the temple, loads of broken people came to him, and he healed them. He changed what is fallen, broken, damaged, in the created world, into something whole.  It's a demonstration of the change in the very fabric of the created universe, which the Kingdom brings: every healing is a foretaste of the new heaven and the new earth.

Then the respectable old men, the ones in charge of the Temple, were asking, "Do you hear those kids?" They were angry at the things Jesus was doing, the things people were saying about him and who these people were.   Jesus has an answer: Psalm 8. 2: "out of the mouths of bairns" you Lord have brought perfect praise.  It's the Lord who is at work here.

Can a nation be changed?  Can a world be changed? Yes, when God is at work.  2Cor  5:19 says "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself." In Jesus, God is at work.  The rubbish in the world is dealt with because the rubbish inside us is dealt with.  And like the rag-tag band of disciples, like the rag-tag crowd with their palm branches, we are invited to be part of it.

We need to stop looking for the big, white horse and take hold of the donkey: to embrace the fact that Jesus and his world-changing Kingdom are really for the last, the lost and the least. I was challenged this week, about how middle-class some of my values, assumptions and attitudes are.   Jesus is "the humble king". Unless we embrace the humility, where do we leave the poor, the broken, and the addicted?

But if we can take hold of the donkey, embrace the humility, if we can be changed, then a nation and a world can be changed...

This Kingdom belongs, as it has always belonged, to the little people who are prepared just simply be what they were, singing their praises. Respectable, powerful people have to swallow pride to enter in. We have to say, "We will have this man to reign over us."

© Gilmour Lilly April 2011

Ephesians 2. 11-22 - Joined together

Whoops!
The way Paul refers to his Ephesian friends doesn't look very complementary.  (v.11)  "Paul, you're slipping up here... making a big thing of the difference between Jew and non Jew.   We need to understand how huge was the separation that existed.  Think of the divisions that exist today: race, language, customs and habits, behaviour, cultural identity, sexuality, food, religion.   The sense of division couldn't be much worse than that Paul refers to between Jew and Gentile.  It was racial, national; it was about the identity of a group of people; it was about language, customs, habits.  It was about religion, expressed particularly in ideas of religious purity.  It was about conviction: the certain belief for Jews that everyone else was separated from God.  Born in the wrong place, to the wrong family, and the Jewish outlook was "We cannot accept you, because God doesn't accept you."And Paul knows he's on difficult territory. He is distinctly unhappy with that divided way of looking at things - and people.  He admits it when he says "you were called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcised" and when he says that circumcision is just something done to a man's body.  It doesn't mean anything of spiritual significance.


But he still goes on...(v. 12) 
Whatever you want to say about circumcision just being a bit of surgery done to the body, Paul still goes on to force the point. See verse 12.  The gentiles were genuinely lost and genuinely far away from Christ. For special place of Jews see Rom 9. 4f.  They had covenants, law, and promises from God. He spoke to their patriarchs. Humanly speaking, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, the Christ.  So the Gentiles, people like the Ephesians, were really and truly lost.  The Jews at least had some hope, because they had the promise of the Messiah coming.  That gave them the responsibility for how they would respond to the Messiah.   But without that promise, the Gentiles were completely hopeless and Godless.  This division, then was a very real thing.

But now...(v. 13) 

... and After

Before...

Paul makes a contrast between then and now.  He contrasts "Once" (v. 1) and "at that time" (v. 2) with "Now" (v. 3) It's like one of these "before-and-after adverts.  He is still, in fact, unwrapping what God has done for us through Jesus. Because of the Grace of God previously described, there is a "Now" in contrast to the past in the Ephesians' lives.   You've been made alive and saved (v5) seated in heaven (v. 6); created for good works (v10). And now Paul goes on... You guys have been brought from that "outsider" status to being "near" right in the very heart of things, right into God's presence... by the blood of Christ.  Hallelujah.  .


Jesus is our peace!
Jesus is our peace.  He shows us what peace is like.  He gives us it. He embodies it.  Jesus the "Prince of Peace" (Isa 9. 6) is peace in person. To know Jesus is to know peace itself. The Old Testament word, "Shalom" means every kind of peace.  It means the end of fighting.  It means relationships are sorted out. It means harmony and wholeness and healing. Paul is particularly interested in reconciliation.  Great news for the Ephesians who were once on the wrong side of the fence. But they have not just been brought inside the fence, through Jesus' blood.  The fence no longer exists. The fence means the law, the rulebook.  Paul is thinking about the fence between us and God. And he is thinking about the fence between Jew and non-Jew.  He isn't just talking about their salvation. He is talking about the miracle of reconciliation.  Humanity was divided, by this wall, this fence, between the race who were God's people and everyone  else.  But now that divide has been broken down.  Jesus has made two things into one thing.  He has made one new person, a new humanity.  That's the direct, unmistakable outcome of being a new person in Christ, of being raised to new life and seated in the heavenly places in Christ.  Each person who knows Jesus, is part of God's new humanity, a new, fresh, united, redeemed version of the human race where all the old dividing walls, of race, language, culture, food, customs, gender, are all done away with.  We are a new rainbow humanity that is black, brown and white, male and female, old and young, able-bodied and disabled. We are one new humanity.  When Jesus died, the hostility, the divisions, the disunity died too, on the cross.  Isn't that amazing?  That peace is something for those who were near, like the Jews. It is something for those who were far away, like the Gentiles.  We all have access in one Spirit to the Father.


No longer strangers... 
Paul summarises his big point.  The Ephesians are no longer foreigners, people who are not at home.  They are fully integrated, fully counted in to the new humanity, into the Church of God.  Paul is getting excited about the kind of life that should be seen in this new humanity, the Church.


We the Church - all together - are 
* Fellow citizens in a new kingdom.  Every believer belongs.  No Christian is an outsider, a foreigner, a person away from home.  No Christian is a partial citizen, a second-class citizen in the new community. Every Christian is a full member of the new nation.
* Members of a household.  Every believer is a full member of the family.  Nobody stands and watches while the family has a meal together. Nobody's sleeping on the couch.  Everyone is a member of the household.
* Built into a house/temple.  Every believer is part of the structure of the church.  (v. 20a). Every time someone comes to Jesus, the temple grows, a new brick or plank is put in place.  We are "fitted together", (v 21: the word can apply either to a building or a body!) Every Christian is part of it.
* Founded on the same heritage. We are all built onto the same foundations of truth revealed through
o Apostles: those sent out by Jesus himself, and given responsibility for making sure that the Good News continued to travel outwards in mission.
o Prophets: those inspired by the Spirit to speak from god.
o Jesus: the "highest-corner", the most important stone.
The Church must always be founded on truth; it must always be moving outwards with the Good News; it must always be inspired by the Spirit and fully focussed on Jesus.
* A dwelling place for God.  Just as God really inhabited the temple, in Christ God really inhabits the Church by the Spirit.



What is the Church?
It consists of people who "once were lost but now are found" all of us.  It holds together despite differences through the reconciliation that Jesus has achieved. It is the New Humanity. It is this body/household/house, where God dwells.  Amen?

© Gilmour Lilly April 2011

Ephesians 2. 1-10 "In Christ". April 3rd

The Story...
Ephesus was a big exciting city.  In some ways the world of a city in the Roman Empire was quite like today's world.  There were some people making loads of money; and others were poor - in fact slaves.  Some were trying to get on with their lives; some loved to party. Some filled their lives with sex and booze.  Some were involved in magic and occult stuff.  There was everything in Ephesus. And one day a bald-headed man called Paul came to Ephesus, and started preaching, "God is Emperor, the true King.  His rule is totally good.  He has set up his government not by sending an army but by sending Jesus who died to deal with everything that isn't good in the world.  We know what Jesus did work, because he rose again from the dead.  Because he's alive today we can have a transforming encounter with God, know his power inside us and enter his Kingdom - if we allow him in."  Loads of people wanted to connect with this "kingdom of God, were baptised, and joined Paul.   Their lives were changed.  The ones who were sleeping around stopped. The drunks sobered up.  Those who were into magic and the occult brought all their charms and books of spells, and had a huge bonfire. People stopped buying gold and silver idols from the jewellers' shops. It was amazing.

The point... 
That's the story Paul is referring to when he says to those Ephesian Christians, "You were dead in the wrong stuff you used to do... living exactly the same as everyone else at work and at school... what was the point of all that stuff?   But God made you alive with Christ.  His death took away your death and his resurrection gives you new life. His being seated in Heaven seats you in heaven too.    Dying rising again and sharing glory, is what has happened to every Christian.  That doesn't mean we have no more pain or trouble.  It means that we can rise above it all. It means we can always bring it to God and bring something if the Kingdom of heaven down to our world - because as far as he's concerned we're already in heaven.

I had a group of P3 children in Church on Wednesday. The baptistery was opened, and the children asked, "What is the bath for?"  One little lad was sure he knew.  He said "when you bring dead people into church you put them up there and they go down into the hole."  The little chap had got the church and the crematorium mixed up in his head; but he got the theology exactly right. When a person comes to Jesus, the old, rubbishy, me-first, try-everything-going,  what's-the-point-of-it-all life is dead and buried and you are made alive as a brand new person.  When you signed up with Jesus and were baptised, you died too, to the old way of living, and rose to a new kind of life that shares his victory, and already is seated in heaven.

This all happened not because you deserved it; it happened through God's grace.  Sometimes we have explained GRACE to by saying it's God's Riches At Christ's expense; I prefer God's Redemptive Action Continually Experienced. It's not just about the Cross. The word "Grace" is close to the words for joy and thanks.   Grace is the beauty and generosity that brings joy and makes us say "Thank-you."

I love music; and I like to play music, though I'm not that good.  But I have three sons who are all good musicians. A few years ago I had a guy called Iain Wills came from Glasgow to do minister in Gloucester.  And Iain said, "I could bring my guitar and lead worship."  I said to Iain, "You don't have to: I breed guitarists!" Now I could go to the School concert and here Pete playing in the Jazz band, and think to myself, "haven't I done well to raise such a good musician?"  But I'd be wrong.  "It's nothing to do with me."   So usually I just went and enjoyed the music. That's how we receive God's grace.  We juts drink it in.   Grace means, "It's nothing to do with me." It's something that flows freely and unconditionally from God.  It's his gift.

Getting practical...
That is what has actually happened to some of you.  It has happened.  Sometimes you don't look like it has happened. Sometimes you don't feel like it has happened. Maybe when you are at home and your Mum asks you to tidy your room, you don't behave as if you're a new person. Maybe then, when you've reacted wrong to Mum, or when someone treats you badly, you don't feel like a new person.  But Paul uses the past tense.  God made you alive.  You were living the same as everyone else. God has raised you up.  God has forgiven you, not because you deserve it, but by his grace.  It's past. It's done.

We need to let facts rule over our feelings. You don't feel different to the people around you.  You don't feel very forgiven. You don't feel victorious or triumphant.  You don't feel saved.  But Paul says, "It has all happened".  The fact is that two thousand years ago, Jesus took all our rubbish away and sat down at father's right hand, as if to say "job done!"  The fact is that he promised never to turn away anyone who comes to him.  The fact is that you have Trusted him and Turned to him.  I want you to learn to trust the facts instead of the feelings. You can trust the facts. You can't trust the feelings. There may be deep things inside that need to be healed so our feelings can come into line.  If you trust the facts, that will help heal the feelings.

So, we believe these facts.  Jesus came and died.  Jesus is alive.  I have trusted him. "It's all grace.  So I don't need to bother how I live my life."  We can carry on exactly as we were before we came to Jesus.  We can give Mum a bad time when she tells us to clean our room.

But we are his workmanship (literally, his poetry). We are God's project; his work of art.  He has created us, not just to enjoy ourselves, but for good works.

How does that affect my life?  "I'm created for good works. So now I'm weird!"   Does it mean that now I'm a Christian, I can't fit in any more?  Can't have friends. Got to sing hymns all the time and generally be old-fashioned. One of the kids who came from School on Wednesday asked me a very unnerving question? "Is the Church all old people?"   (Where did she get that idea from??) So do I have to hang about with old people, doing a bunch of "old person" stuff all the time?

But God has already prepared these good works for us to walk in them. These good works that are part of God's big purpose, to make a whole new universe where God rules.  It's not about being weird. It's about seeking God's Kingdom - healing, justice, peace, purity in our world. We walk in God's purpose, instead of walking in our old sinful way of life.

So, and with this I will come in to land, there are two places I want you to move into.
1. I want you, spiritually, now, to take your seat in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

2.  I want you to walk in the good works God has prepared for you to do.  I want you to make that journey of discovery, of working with God in his world.



© Gilmour Lilly April 2011