Know where you’re going ….

 

There was once an elderly and slightly forgetful Bishop who was traveling by train to perform a confirmation service. He misplaced his ticket and wasn’t able to produce it when requested by the conductor. "It's quite all right, Bishop, we know who you are. It’s no problem" The bishop replied, "You don't understand - without the ticket, I don't know where I'm going."

Our readings this morning have made it clear that the best way to go in life is towards God, which is very helpful for us !

In our Old Testament reading we heard a call or an invitation to seek the Lord while He may be found. This seems a rather gentle statement from Isaiah who sometimes had harsh words to say as he called people to repentance. However, in this passage he shows the ways that we receive an invitation from God. I really like this. God invites us into relationship with Him.

In the Psalm we were reminded of how when we are spiritually thirsty this is when we can know where to turn and so receive the amazing and life giving love of God. The Psalmists soul clung to God and so does ours when we know where we are going. 

So far so good for encouraging readings but then in the letter to the Corinthians we are reminded that others had turned away from God and gone their own way. A way which sounds rather hair raising and front page tabloid worthy with various displays of bad behaviour. 

There is a call though to be careful reminding people to stand firm. That is to keep knowing where they are going, which is to get closer to God. This is incredible, we are being shown that the right way is always to get closer to God, and if we mess up we are turning to God who invites us, in whom we find our spiritual drink and life and who will not let us be tested beyond all we can bear.

In our gospel reading (Luke 13:1-9) we heard of people going to Jesus with questions. The questions that they asked aren’t that different to the type of questions we might ask Jesus. 

In the reading we heard of people going to Jesus because they were concerned, naturally, that Pilate had killed some Galileans, they were confused it seemed like a senseless attack. But as  people went to Jesus He reminded them that, sadly everyone suffers. To do this He reminded them of the people on whom a tower had fallen.  No one ever deserves to suffer. In all the suffering though we are reminded that God is with us and He loves us. Jesus showed this as He told the story of the fig tree. 

I think that this is the best bit of the gospel reading. 

Now I am no gardener, I remember my Mum in law buying us a beautiful rose plant once, she said we didn’t need to do anything with it, meaning we didn’t need to plant it. So we put it outside the back door and went on holiday. When we got back we discovered that the plant was dead. Apparently putting it under a shelter which stopped it getting wet and not watering it before we went wasn’t a good idea !

Anyway in our gospel reading the man with the fig tree, who had looked after it well was not very happy. He had looked after the fig tree for three years but it had never produced any fruit. For this reason he wanted the Gardener to cut the tree down. The gardener refused to give up and he suggested waiting to see if it would produce fruit one day.

In this story the owner of the fig tree is us and the gardener is God. The man who owned the fig tree had given up. We can all do this. It might be giving up on praying as much as we used to, it might be not reading our Bible as much, it might be us not being as patient with others, it might be us giving up on people who have let us down again and again. The fig tree needed to grow and to do this it needed even more love. It is the same for us and our faith. We need to live more and more like God so we can become more like Him in the ways that we treat others.

The gardener who is the wise one, is as I have said, God. The gardener refused to give up on the tree and wanted to wait and give it another chance. This is how God sees us and forgives us. He gives us chance after chance waiting for us to grow more and more into His likeness.

We love and worship God who sees us as we truly are. Whether we are praying more, or doing more Bible study, being a better person,  at the end of the day in this time of lent we can know that the main thing is to do as we always should. That is to make sure that we know where we are going and that is to God. As we do this we will grow more and more into His likeness.

In lent we are taking time to think more about who we are before God and others. It can be quite an intense time, a time when we don’t think that we match up. Actually it is a time when we remember that God has given us  yet another chance and He will keep doing this. 

I am hopeless with directions and I always blame it on the fact that I don't drive, if there is an easy and obvious direction to go in, I am likely to go around the houses first. It can be like that in our life of faith, we can think that we are doing everything right, but we may have forgotten the most obvious part. This is that God invites us and we can go straight to Him. We can also know that if we lose our way at all, we can keep going to Him for forgiveness and start again.

Back to the Bishop if we know where we are going .... we are more likely to end up there. Where we are going is to grow closer and closer to God. So, may we be ready to turn to God knowing that He will always give us chance after chance and may we keep trying to be more like Him, growing into His likeness. AMEN

Promises

 

Life is full of agreements and promises. From a promise to someone else to a promise to God - our lives are full of promises.

There was once a little boy who was in trouble with his teacher. The teacher said, ‘Didn’t you promise to behave.’ ‘Yes’, said the little boy. ‘Well,’ said the teacher, ‘What did I promise to do if you misbehaved.’ ‘ you promised to punish me’ said the little boy. The teacher said, ‘ Well then you know what to expect.’ The little boy replied, ‘ well, as I broke my promise I don’t expect you to keep yours.’ 

Promises are great particularly when they are kept. In our readings this morning we have heard about promises and we have also heard about what happens when we don’t trust someone to keep their promise.

In the Old Testament reading (Gen. 15:1-12,17,18) we heard of the great promise from God to Abraham, a promise that God kept of Abraham having a huge number of descendants. 

It is often quite interesting to read about Abraham. He was a man who trusted God but like us, he still had questions. He wasn't convinced that he would have children although God had promised him. God had promised him a wonderful home, but he still wasn't convinced that he would be able to find it.

God had promised Abraham that not only would He protect himk but he would have a great reward and rather than saying thank you - Abraham asked what the reward was. Can you imagine it? A great man of faith was actually a bit cheeky!! 

Perhaps rather than seeing Abraham as cheeky we should see him as someone who can provide us with comfort. After all,  I am sure that even though we follow God and trust Him, there are times when we naturally question Him and try to find out what is going on.

It’s not a lack of trusting God and His promises, it is more to do with wanting those promises to be fulfilled straight away.

After the comfort that it is natural to question God and His promises, we were reminded of the protection that God gives us. We can trust God and His promises because He never lets us down. In the Psalm we were reminded that because God is our light and our salvation and we have no – one to fear. 

That is the same promise that God made to Abraham, he had the protection of God and we do as well. It doesn't mean that bad things won't happen to us, but it does mean that with God as our light and our protection we know that He is always there for us and we can turn to Him, knowing His love for us.

In the epistle reading (Phil. 3:17-4:1) we heard more about promises as we heard of the change that God can make in our lives. Paul the writer of the epistle was bemoaning the people who did not trust God’s promises. That is the people who didn’t turn to God. The people who wanted to rely on small things as a way to experience a better way of life. How many times have we seen people put their trust in things expecting them to be the best thing ever and then for those things  to collapse around them?

Paul in the epistle was pointing out that there is only one thing that we all need. There is only one promise, there is only one offer that will never fail and that offer is the transformation that Jesus brings.  Those who follow Jesus are able to enjoy glory and not humiliation. We have a promise of a life where we can enjoy the glory and love of God both now and in eternity. 

In the gospel reading (Luke 13:31-35) we heard the harsh words of Jesus calling Herod a fox. This is not very nice and not what we would expect from Jesus, however Herod like the Pharisees questioned the mission and work of Jesus and tried to prevent Him from the work He needed to do. That work was to go to Jerusalem and be crucified for us. Jesus had the ultimate promise to fulfil and that promise was for our salvation. In this passage Jesus grieved. You can hear the pain as He talks of Herod being like a fox trying to take His children away from Him. 

Jesus pictures Himself as being like a mother hen protecting her brood. Jesus was protecting people by doing the incredible for them. That incredible was to die for them and for us. This passage comes after a sentence that we only get in the gospel of Luke. This sentence is that Jesus had set His face towards Jerusalem. He knew what was going to happen and nothing was going to deter Him. 

The determination of that sentence is perhaps one of the most humbling sentences we can ever hear. Jesus set His face to Jerusalem and He did it for us.

Regardless of the ways that people turned away from God, regardless of the fact that people didn’t trust the promises of God there was a plan. That plan was to bring us back to God.

In the same way that God had determined to keep His promise to Abraham, as the psalmist saw that God was his light and salvation  so He keeps Hs promises to us. God never leaves us.

Paul saw that we were able to be transformed by the glory of Jesus both now and in eternity.

In our readings we can see the promises God makes to us, promises that always become true. 

God has made a promise to us and that promise is not just that God cares and understands our need for help, but it is also that God wants us to turn to Him like a chick to a mother hen. What a beautiful image.

God loves us and wants to protect us, He is our light, He is our salvation and we do not need to be afraid. How will we show our gratitude? Will we be like those in the epistle who had sought after other things, or will be those who are ready and waiting for the transformation that only God can bring? May we be ready to be transformed as we trust in God’s promises. AMEN

Take a breath.

 Well we are in Lent and the first Sunday of it.  Lent is one of the great seasons in the Church when we take time to take stock of our lives, to consider where we stand with God and other people. 

Lent is traditionally the time when we give something up and take something up. This means we give up anything that takes us away from God and take up something which will bring us closer to God. 

I remember in one Church where we worked a teenage girl explained to me that she was finding lent really hard. She had given up chocolate and had done so for two weeks, she asked me in a very exasperated way when lent was due to end. I had to explain to her that it wasn’t due to start for another two weeks !! 

Anyway, we are definitely in lent and you can tell this because we haven’t said the Gloria and the reason is that we are getting ready for Easter. It is a somber time. I once asked a friend the best way that I could describe this time and he said, it is like taking a deep breath.

He said when you are about to sing really loudly you take a deep breath. He said not saying the Gloria or using the word Alleluia during lent is like taking a deep breath ready to rejoice at Easter.

I loved the idea of lent as being a time to take a deep breath. This morning in our gospel reading (Luke 4:1-13) we heard of the temptations of Jesus. Straight after His baptism Jesus went into the wilderness to take time, to reflect before He entered into His public ministry. 

Jesus took time, He took a breath and this is what we are doing as well. Jesus was then tempted by all the things that would take Him away from God the Father, all that would stop Him trusting, all that would take Him away from His mission to bring us salvation.

Jesus took a breath and in taking a breath He was tempted but He stayed strong and He did it for us. He was tempted into an easier life, He was tempted into a life that would make Him seem more popular with everyone and not just His followers. He was tempted to trust in worldly power and authority. He refused and He did it by showing that His way was better. 

We are taking a deep breath and in our time of taking a deep breath, we are taking time to reflect on our relationship with God. 

In our readings today we have heard about the type of things we can do as we take our deep breath both during Lent and always. In the reading from Deuteronomy we heard about the need to remember. In that reading written to a people who had been freed from slavery in Egypt by God, we heard of the people being reminded to remember.

It sounds strange that they were being reminded of the need to remember. When the people left Egypt they kept wandering for over 40 years until they got to the land that God had promised. By the time they had reached the land families looked quite different as some members had died and new members had been born. The people who settled into the new land were living on the memory passed down from others about how they had been freed from slavery by God. 

This is another reason why they needed to be reminded to remember.

In the reading from the letter to the Romans we heard about remembering again. This time all you needed to remember was that Jesus Is Lord and He had been raised from the dead. You were also to say this when asked, and it was to be your belief. This is quite an easy one for us I think. 

In the gospel reading we heard of Jesus being tempted in the desert by Satan. Each of the Temptations made to Jesus were biblical, and he of course, responded with biblical answers.  Each one of the Temptations came from the book of Deuteronomy. This is an interesting fact as our Old Testament reading was also from Deuteronomy. 

In the gospel of Luke, as I said earlier, the account before this was of Jesus’s baptism. A moment of rejoicing when Jesus was blessed by the holy spirit. Jesus had received strength and this led him to the desert. I think this is how Jesus although fully God but also fully human was able to stand against the temptation set before him by Satan. Obviously, Jesus could stand against anything, after all He is God. But I like to think that it is by our own time spent in prayer asking for the strength of the holy spirit that we are able to stand against temptation.

I am not saying that we will that we will find ourselves in a desert, but each day we can be tempted in all sorts of ways. I’m not just talking about what we eat but more about what we say and how we act. Imagine if Jesus walked up to us right now, will we be able to say that we are never tempted to do or say something that’s not quite right. This is why we confess, no one is perfect.

Lent is a great time for us to grow closer to God and to each other as we think more about him and how he changes our lives and helps us in how we relate to each other.

It’s a little like an extreme exercise time. I have never done one of these for my physical health. However, it does sound brave to say that we can do this for our spiritual life. 

Back to remembering, how about if this lent we saw all we do as a way to give thanks to God for all he has done for us. It doesn’t sound very scary and also it is the perfect way to live.  As we take our deep breath may our  praises be to God both now and always. AMEN