Tag Archive for 'Jesus'

Look at me

Published
by
Graeme
on August 10, 2008
in Faith
. 1 Comment

The following is part of my sermon for this morning. The sermon as a whole is based on the story of Peter walking on the water, and why he started to sink.

I believe that Jesus is desperately trying to reach out to many Christians who are floundering in their faith because they have taken their spiritual eyes of him. The tragedy is that many of those he is reaching out to, don’t even realise they have a problem! They are like the church in Ephesus that is spoken to by the angel in Revelation 2Open Link in New Window:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

When we are first saved we are so in love with Jesus that we follow him unreservedly. We would get out of the boat and walk on water for him, but slowly but surely there is the danger that we allow the problems of our lives to divert some of our attention from Jesus. And slowly but surely we lose the gleam of that first love. We stop taking risks for him, whilst at the same time carry on doing the stuff that he has asked us to do. Our willingness to be busy for Jesus takes over from simply being with him, and we become like Martha in Luke 10:38-42Open Link in New Window where she is so busy making sure everything is right, that she is in danger of missing out on simply spending time with Jesus.

And of course the real problem with Martha is that she didn’t even realise that what she was doing was wrong. In fact, she wanted her sister to join with her!

In Jesus’ response to this situation there is a sense of a gentle chastisement. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” I get the image in my mind that Jesus was gently patting the cushions next to him, trying to convey the sense that he simply wanted to spend time with her!

The root of everything that goes wrong in our faith is when we stop focussing on Jesus! When we concentrate on him then we can deal with whatever comes our way and our faith need not suffer. Of course it’s difficult, but its the only way!

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but…

Published
by
Graeme
on April 18, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

The best thing in life really is free! Thanks Jon for the reminder!

Dawn of a new day

Published
by
Graeme
on March 23, 2008
in Faith
. 0 Comments

In his book on Christian Community, “Life Together” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words:

“The Old Testament day begins at evening and ends with the going down of the sun. It is the time of expectation. The day of the New Testament church begins with the break of day and ends with the dawning light of the next morning. It is the time of fulfilment, the resurrection of the Lord. At night Christ was born, a light in the darkness; noonday turned to night when Christ suffered and died on the Cross. But in the dawn of Easter morning Christ rose in victory from the grave.”

At dawn on that first Easter morning, almost 2000 years ago, there was no hope; there was only desolation in the hearts of that handful of women who made their way to the garden tomb to anoint the body held within. It must have been a sombre and soul-destroying walk from their rented rooms to that borrowed grave.

Imagine for a moment the horror there must have been when they saw the tomb lying open. Surely it must have brought into their minds the ultimate finale to the events they had witnessed. Not only had Jesus been brutally flogged; not only had he been nailed to a cross; but now his burial place had been desecrated. How much more were they doing to have to bear?

But then, as they peered through the entrance to see the damage they feared had been done, they saw an angel; an angel who pronounced that Jesus was no longer there but had risen to life again.

This is the message that is the centre of our hope; this is the message that forms the centre of the gospel which we are called to proclaim!

This was no ordinary resurrection, if there can be such a thing. This was not the sort that we read of in the Old Testament or even like those in Jesus’ miracles. No this resurrection was unlike any ever witnessed, either before or since, for Jesus died full of our sin but rose empty of it. He took our sins to hell and then left them there so that we could stand blameless before our God.

This is the hope of this morning’s dawn; this is the hope of Easter; this is the hope of the gospel; that Jesus died and rose again, so that all who declare Jesus as Lord may not only live in eternity with him, but may also be signposts of that hope in this dark world.

The power of the cross

Published
by
Graeme
on March 21, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 1 Comment

This is the power of the Cross, that the man who contained the fullness of God himself died to free us from the burden of sin. He paid the price that we rightfully should pay, because He not only loves us, but is love. The result is that when we come before God we can stand before him in the sure and certain knowledge that because of the cross our sin have been redeemed!

Distressing disguises

Published
by
Graeme
on January 21, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 2 Comments

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening to an interview between Shane Claiborne and Krista Tippett that I downloaded from the American Public Media section of iTunesU. It’s well worth downloading if you get a chance as Claiborne is truly inspiring in the outworking of his faith.

The interview is full of sections that would be great to quote but the one that struck me most was something that Claiborne attributed to Mother Theresa:

In the poor we see Jesus in his most distressing disguises!

Whilst still listening a thought immediately popped into my head:

… and far too often we turn our faces away from him.

Why, despite everything that the Bible says about God’s particular regard for the poor, do so many of us find it difficult to put our belief into practice when it comes to this particular area?

Breath of fresh air

Published
by
Graeme
on December 28, 2007
in Mission and My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

For the whole of December I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Maggi Dawn called Beginnings and Endings. A series of Advent readings that go from 1st December right though to Epiphany on 6th January, they have lit up the wonders of Advent in a way that hasn’t happened before. On 26 December she wrote the following when writing about the way Jesus was looked after after he was born; the way he was kept as safe as possible by being swaddled and kept in the cleanest available space.

“We expect Jesus to be where it’s clean, but he is born into the mess of human life. We think of Jesus as safe and calm and serence, but he grows up to be the kind of leader who has his sleeves rolled up, ready to face reality and connect the spiritual world to the material one. We try to restrain him and keep him clean, but he breaks out of those expectations. Our idea of ‘holy’ is to protect God from anything unpleasant and unmentionable, yet Jesus’ idea of ‘holy’ is to bring the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world. He will not remain restrained, swaddled, safe, warm and still for very long.”

I love that thought that idea of bringng “the fresh air of heaven into the dirtiest and messiest corners of our world.” This simple, yet profound statement, strikes to the heart of who we are as Christians. You see everything about our task as human beings is geared around trying to make our lives more comfortable.

Providing increased comforts has been one of the hidden driving forces of virtually every step forward in technology. This drive towards increased comfort has been either of the very practical sort, ie transport, or instead to provide increased wealth, which provides the money for us to buy the ‘home comforts’ so many measure success by.

However, comfort poses something of a problem to us. Jesus famously warns people that sought to follow him that whilst foxes have holes, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. This makes the pathway of discipleship seem far from a comfortable lifestyle choice. Comfort does not easily go hand in hand with a gospel that seeks to reach into the dirty and messy places of the world. It doesn’t even matter whether these places are the physically dirty and messy places or those of our hearts and minds, either is an uncomfortable place to find ourselves in.

Recently, Phil Wall wrote an article on theRubicon that shows how comfort is something to be wary of because of its inherent ‘unrisky’ nature. He also made the powerful claim that,

“Taking faith filled risks within our comfort-oriented lives is a powerful antidote to spiritual impotency. … It is most often within the crucible of risk-induced challenge and hardship that God does his greatest work within us.”

Following Jesus’ lead in this is an inherently risky business. If Jesus was about reaching into the dirty and messy places of our world with the “fresh air of heaven” then surely, as his followers, we should be opening doors into these same areas so that the same fresh air reach those places too!

More meaning at Christmas

Published
by
Graeme
on December 18, 2007
in Faith
. 0 Comments

In the last post I wrote about some of the things we’ve been up to this Christmas! The other thing was on Sunday evening which was our Carol Service. Our normal Sunday night congregation is around a dozen people, but for our carol service we had 33 in the hall. This was wonderful as that is most who have been there since I’ve been at the corps!

This year the Carol Service was quite a traditional affair, with contributions from the band and songsters plus carols and readings. As is normal I did a short talk and it’s that I’d like to share with you!

I’m pretty certain that if you were to ask the majority of adults whether Christmas is about giving or receiving, then the answer that would come back is that it’s about giving.

This is true, but it seems that even giving is becoming detrimental to the Christmas spirit. There are various reasons for this but two stand out. Firstly, for many, it seems that each year they need to out do what they did last year. So the presents they give have to be bigger and better and more expensive than they did last year. What’s worse is that in a generation that seems to have everything available to them a lot of what is bought is simply unnecessary.

The second problem is in many ways a direct result of the first. At a time when the inhabitants of this country spent more than half a billion pounds on credit card last year and when the Citizens Advice Bureau has dealt with 1.7 million debt problems in the last 12 months, the follow up to Christmas this year is not going to be a happy time for many people.

But maybe that’s because the focus has got all screwed up! Maybe Christmas is not actually about giving after all! Maybe Christmas is actually about receiving.

Tonight we’ve sung carols and read parts of the Bible that talk about the arrival of Jesus Christ, the person who Christmas is all about.

You see Christmas is really about receiving the gift that God gave to us just over 2000 years ago. In a secular world it seems that maybe Father Christmas is the central figure of the Christmas story, but it’s not true, because really he’s just another symptom of a consumer led society!

The reality is that Christians believe that we are celebrating that God gave us the greatest gift that could ever be given. The first Christmas present was the best Christmas present ever, God’s own son.

God gave us the gift of Jesus so that he could heal the relationship between himself and us. He gave us Jesus so that the world would become a better place as those who believe in him live a life that reflects the gift.

The real meaning of Christmas is receiving this gift and accepting everything that comes with it!

This Christmas, what will be your response to the gift of that first Christmas?