Sermon: Delighting in God – Isa. 61.10-62.7 and Luke 2.22-40

This sermon was preached at Ipswich Road URC, Norwich on New Year’s Day and can be listened to here.

When you see the intensity of God’s love, when you catch a glimpse of God’s sovereign and purposeful plan, when you grasp even the smallest sense of God’s goodness – that God is working out your salvation and the salvation of all people – you cannot do anything but have delight in God.

The prophet Isaiah preached some pretty harsh messages. There is judgment. There is exile. There is punishment for the wicked. There is the proclamation that Israel has lost its way. But throughout Isaiah’s writings there is this strand, this thread of hope and glory. It starts off as some quiet music playing in the background and works its way up into a grand crescendo. By the last few chapters of Isaiah, he cannot hold it in any longer. He is bursting with news of what God is doing. He has seen God’s glory – the train of God’s robe in the Temple. He has caught glimpses of God’s plan – he speaks of the branch from Jesse – the Messiah on whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest. He talks of the virgin who will give birth – “For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government there will be no end.” Isaiah foresees God’s forgiveness too. He sees that the Messiah must suffer. Isaiah foresees:

“He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”

God indeed has clothed us with garments of salvation, arrayed us in robes of righteousness. Isaiah sees God’s creation heading for a glorious climax when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The lion and the lamb will lie down together. The sound of weeping and crying will be heard no more and there will be eternal rejoicing.

Isaiah’s vision is beyond our wildest dreams. We see a God who is relentless in his loving, persistent in his blessing, devoted to a plan that will see his glory flood the universe.

700 years after Isaiah, Simeon and Anna saw that glory as Jesus was presented in the Temple. God has a way of releasing tantalising snippets of information. The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die before seeing the Lord’s Christ. He must have constantly been on the alert – How would God’s Messiah come? Would this baby be the one? Simeon must have lived expectantly – expecting God to do a mighty work.  And Simeon, like Isaiah, sings with delight:

“For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

Have you noticed how everyone who sees God’s plan cannot stop themselves from singing? Mary sings “My soul glorifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my saviour.” Zechariah was struck dumb at first, but after John the Baptist’s birth he sings, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and redeemed his people.” The heavenly host who announces the plan to the shepherds bursts into adoration, “Glory to God in the highest.”

Why do Christians sing so many songs and hymns? It’s because we cannot stop ourselves from singing passionately and joyfully and exuberantly in response to what God has done, is doing and will do for us.

We need to cultivate that sense of delight more and more in our lives. And we need to recognise how God delights in us.  It’s a mutual joy and love. God is looking down on us and he’s smiling. We need to look to God and smile back.

Can you think of times when you have delighted in somebody or something? Maybe you’ve delighted over a loved one, over something one of your children or grandchildren has done? Would anyone like to share? (Sharing)

Delight is a wonderful thing.

I don’t know about you, but most of my life I plod along oblivious to what God is doing; oblivious to God smiling at me and walking with me. I get so absorbed in the here and now; in the details; in worries and fears; in busyness and stress; that I lose all sense of perspective. I zoom in to the miniscule. I focus on my one thread in the tapestry that feels like it’s beginning to fray and I fail to see how God is weaving billions of threads together – each one forever being made new – into a beautiful masterpiece.

We need to trust that God is interested in the one frayed thread. God does care intimately about the details of our lives – I believe it more and more. But as God looks down and embraces our tattered thread, we need to lift our eyes and see the master weaver’s plan.

Delight is linked inextricably with expectation. If we expect God to act, we are much more likely to see God acting. Isaiah lived expectantly. Simeon lived expectantly. They saw God at work. If we are totally self-absorbed and oblivious, we miss God’s miracles every day. Therese of Lisieux, a nineteenth century French nun, wrote, “My God, everywhere your love is misunderstood and cast aside. The hearts on which you are ready to lavish your love turn away towards earthly pleasure instead, as if happiness could be found in more material attachments. They refuse to throw themselves into your arms and accept the gift of your infinite love… If only you could find souls ready to offer themselves as victims, to be burnt up in the fire of your love.”

I love reading the words of devout Christians from down the ages, like Therese. They have such a grasp of what God is doing. They were far from oblivious and self-absorbed. They expected God to act and saw God’s blessings and grace day-by-day. Elsewhere Therese wrote about the ocean of God’s love:

“My God, you know that the only thing I’ve ever wanted is to love you; I have no ambitions for any other glory except that.  In my childhood, your love was there waiting for me; as I grew up, it grew with me; and now it is like a great chasm whose depths are past sounding.  Love breeds love; and mine, Jesus, for you, keeps on thrusting out towards you, as if to fill up that chasm which your love has made – but it’s no good; mine is something less than a drop of dew lost in the ocean.”

If you’re like me though, you will think – well it’s all well and good for a nun to be able to focus on God. She has all the time in the world. She hasn’t got worldly distractions. It’s her job.  Just like it was Isaiah’s job and Simeon’s job and Anna’s job. But what about the rest of us for whom life is much less simple?  Here are some practical pointers:

First, we need to stop and remember who we are. It’s about seeing our primary vocation as being disciples of Jesus Christ. We may have a secondary vocation – we may have many other vocations – as parents or teachers or pastoral visitors or doctors or whatever. But our primary vocation is always as a disciple of Jesus, and it means that we see everything through a different lens. For every decision that we make we have to ask, ‘how does this affect my relationship with God?’ ‘Is this what God is calling me to do?’ ‘How does this glorify God and extend his kingdom?’ We were created to be loved by God and to love God, to know God and to worship God.  But do we believe it or do we push God down our list of wants and priorities?

Secondly, to live expectantly and see God working, we need to make time to slow down. It’s not always possible in the modern world to slow down all the time, but it is possible to craft out some time to move into the slow lane. It is possible to slip off the motorway and take a leisurely country drive.

The Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama used to say that we worship a “three mile-an-hour” God.  He was pointing out that when God came to earth he moved among us at a walking pace. Look at Jesus… he never did anything in a half-hearted, good-enough-to-get-by way.  But nor did he run from place to place. The trouble with running, of course, is that you can miss the things God wants to show you or give you, or the people he wants you to serve.  Jesus walked, he watched, he listened, he connected with those around him.  He seemed to have a powerful sense of where he was called to be and what he was called to do at any moment of the day.

We need to slow down.

Thirdly, Paul talks multiple times about praying continually and giving thanks at all times. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: count your blessings. Keep a mental or written note of answered prayer; of glimpses of God’s grace that have shone through the darkness; of those moments of sheer delight.  God lavishes blessings on us every day – it’s just that like spoilt children we take them for granted. Would you like to take a deep breath? That’s a blessing! You’re alive!

There’s a very interesting verse in Isaiah 62 after Isaiah speaks of God’s kingdom and uses the words that Jesus later applies to himself, “The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…” and so on. Anyway the verse that strikes me says “You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give him no rest.”

Giving God no rest means that we keep petitioning God in prayer. Paul says that we should present our requests to God with “prayer and petition.” We give thanks but we also pray for our world, for God’s kingdom to grow. If our primary vocation is as a disciple of Jesus, our wills and desires must align with Jesus’s. Prayer is one of the ways we align that will and petition God to bring his promised transformation.

But we also have a role to play. And so the fourth practical tip is to get involved with God’s kingdom work. When we’ve experienced God’s delight and glory, we cannot keep quiet about it. We respond with singing and worship, but we also respond in proclamation and action.  As Jesus said, you don’t put a light under a bowl, you put it high up so that it shines out throughout the house. Isaiah says, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.”

The amazing thing is that we can participate with God in making God’s plan a reality. We are God’s co-workers, Paul tells the Corinthian church. The Spirit of the sovereign Lord was on Isaiah so that he could preach good news. The Spirit of the sovereign Lord was powerfully active in Jesus so that he could preach good news. And now, in the post-Pentecost era, the Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on each of us so that we too can be witnesses and bearers of good news.

Like Isaiah, Simeon and Anna, let’s delight in our God. Let’s live expectantly and in hope. Let us remember who we are, let us slow down, pray continually and serve unceasingly in all that we do in 2012 and beyond.

Amen.

 

Sermon: Isaiah 40:1-11 – Hope in the wilderness

An ancient Chinese story goes like this:

A farmer had one old horse that he used for tilling his fields. One day the horse escaped into the hills and when all the farmer’s neighbours heard about it, they sympathized with the old man over his bad luck. “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” said the farmer.

A week later, the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” said the farmer.

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone agreed that this was very bad luck. Not the farmer, who replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and forced every able-bodied young man to go fight in a bloody war. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they let him stay. Everyone was very happy at the farmer’s good luck.

“Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Life can a lot like that. Sometimes it seems like things are going well, and at other times, things seem to be going badly. And we let those things dictate our feelings and our outlook on life. When things are going well, we’re happy and we think God is with us. If they are going badly, we get discouraged and think that God must have abandoned us. We end up being tossed around by our circumstances.

We all have times in our lives when we feel like we’re in a wilderness: whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual, or even a bit of all three. There are times when we find it hard to trust in God. We struggle to see the bigger picture. We search for our escape but it’s as if we’re in a maze and we keep hitting dead ends. We are dislocated people – lost in a world that is constantly changing where the ground is constantly being moved from under our feet.

The prophet Isaiah was writing around 700 BC. He announced good news for dislocated people. The nation of Israel had been caught up in the messy world of international politics. Babylon had extended its reach, marching relentlessly across hundreds of miles of territory that wasn’t theirs. The Israelites were forced into exile and captivity. They no longer had their independence and freedom. They believed that God has deserted them. Their faith was rather too closely linked to their military prowess and their success as a nation. They believed in a God who gives, but not in a God who takes away.

They needed a wakeup call. They needed to see that God is present in the defeats and in the victories; that God is with them in valleys and the mountaintops; that God is with them in the wilderness, and not just in the land of milk and honey.

And so in exile, Isaiah brings a great message of hope: good news for dislocated people. And like many passages of prophecy, it was relevant over an extended time span. In fact it is still relevant to us today – 2700 years on.

First, Isaiah announces COMFORT.

“Comfort, comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem” (vv.1-2).

God is a God who comforts us. And this comfort comes in the form of a promise. A promise that God will act, that there is hope.

For people whose lives are shattered, cheap comfort is not only a waste of time, it’s cruel. You need comfort that is rooted in reality.

Why do you trust your life with a restaurant? Have you ever thought how much power a chef has?! There could be poison in your potatoes; your chicken might not be cooked properly; the waiter could have spat in your soup. But when you go out for a meal do you ever think about any of those things? No – you assume – you have faith that you will be served something edible, and hopefully even enjoyable. And you trust that restaurant because of its track record. You trust it because it probably has those ‘Scores on the Doors’ showing you how good their hygiene is. If they’d been poisoning people, they would have been found out and shut down.

Why should we trust God’s promises, God’s comfort? Simply because of God’s track record: laid down not just in the Bible but in the countless lives of Christians from down the generations who have seen God’s faithfulness at work in their own lives. Isaiah says in verse 8 that the word of God stands forever. If it feels like you’re in a wilderness – even if you’re not in a wilderness – there’s no better place to get comfort than God’s word.

Secondly, Isaiah announces the POWER OF GOD.

Not only is God caring. Not only will God bring us into relationship with him. But God has the power to act in our lives now.

“A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places as a plain.” (vv.3-4)

The idea of every mountain becoming low and every valley being filled in often sounds quite boring to me. I like mountains and valleys; I like varied scenery. But I think Isaiah is making a couple of points. He’s saying that God physically has the power to move mountains and fill valleys. Nothing is too difficult for God. No obstacle in your life cannot be removed by God, if it is God’s will.

Finally, Isaiah announces the GLORY OF GOD.

“And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (v.5)

In our hardship we are comforted, we are forgiven, we have power to overcome our challenges, and through all of these the glory of God is revealed. We see just how strongly God’s love burns for us; we see God’s holiness and perfection; we see the lengths God has and continues to go for us in calling us to him. God’s glory has so many facets. It is like a diamond and it’s absolutely perfect. It is the pearl of great price. It is everything we could and will ever want.

As his followers, we can know that glory and share that glory. The apostle Peter stood in awe of Jesus many times in the Gospels. We too are invited to stand in awe of God’s otherness, God’s greatness; we bow down and then we get up and then – because it’s not just for us – we get up to share the news of that wonder and light and majesty with others.

This Advent, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate God’s coming in Jesus, let’s give thanks for the COMFORT of God, the loving embrace that he so graciously extends to us. Let’s remember the POWER of God, at work even in the most despairing of situations. The light cannot be extinguished by the darkness. The candle may flicker, but it will never go out. And let’s experience with joy the GLORY of God, that shines from the star above the manger, that shines from the empty tomb on Easter Sunday, that shines in and through our lives so that all mankind together will see the wonder of the King of Kings and Lord or Lords. Amen.

 

Patience and Prayer for a ‘Messy’ Vision

Having written an MA thesis and Grove Booklet on fresh expressions, I felt quite a lot of pressure (mostly self-inflicted) to actually start a fresh expression when I entered ministry 15 months ago. It can be so tempting to start something new because it is fashionable, or because other churches are doing it, or because it is in my job description, or because I – as the new young minister – want it to look like I am leading the church forward.

However, I’ve had to remind myself that this is simply not how God works. God doesn’t ask us to start Messy Church or café church or run an Alpha course or start cell church or, in fact, very much at all without a lot of praying and reflecting first. The problem is: how do we know what God is calling us to do?

I work in a team ministry of seven United Reformed Churches, with primary responsibility for three churches within the group. For about ten months, I really wasn’t quite sure what to do at all. I preached on a Sunday, visited the sick, conducted funerals, attended meetings and social events, signed up for a local Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course, and generally got to know the people and communities I serve. I wanted to do something evangelistic – something to reach out to those not being touched by our mostly traditional Sunday services – but the sense I got in prayer was that I had to be patient. Now was not the time. When I did have a vision for a church-run café within the village I live in, there didn’t seem to be a venue that was suitable.

Nonetheless, the patience (and, at times, frustration!) is beginning to pay off. Over the last few months, God’s guidance has become slightly clearer for at least for one of the communities I serve.

At Wroxham & Hoveton URC, we have a worshipping community of about 40-50 adults, teenagers and children. Like many churches, we face an ageing congregation, the loss of teenagers to university and a shrinking Sunday School (known as ‘JAM’ – Jesus and Me). Although the church membership has remained relatively steady for 20 years, the demographic challenges are great and it has felt that we’re in a ‘make or break’ time. If our Sunday School of 2-10 children becomes unviable, there would not be any church-run children’s work in Wroxham. Families have simply not been attracted to what we offer on a normal Sunday morning, and many of the parents who send their children to JAM do not join the congregation for worship unless it is a family service. So what to do to reach our missing families and 20s to 40s for Christ?

Through conversation, prayer, reflection and a seminar over a period of months, Messy Church seemed to be what God was guiding us to. On Father’s Day, we ran our first Messy Church session. All ten of our regular JAM kids attended with their families, including many dads (who are the least frequent attenders), plus we picked up one family from outside of the church. It’s not just the families who benefited though. The church has been incredibly supportive and there were over 40 people present, including an enthusiastic group of volunteers cooking, leading and generally having fun! We ran another event for Harvest, which was equally successful, and have another planned for Advent.

I do not know exactly where God is leading us yet, but I know that it is worth waiting for. We are exploring whether we could run Messy Church on a more regular basis next year, and are seeking to reach out to those beyond our church’s current periphery. Simultaneously, the idea of a regular midweek café-type event seems to keep coming back to our thinking and praying.

Developing a vision takes time and patience. It may be something radically new, or it may be a revisiting of something tried and tested. My advice for any church or pioneer is simply this: pray, pray, pray!

This blog first appeared on the Share the Guide blog (www.sharetheguide.org).

 

False economies

Life is full of false economies.

I am slightly addicted to special offers in supermarkets. As soon as I see those yellow stickers in Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s I start to get very bouncy and excitable – I mean really excitable! (Just ask my fiancée, Jenni, if you don’t believe me!). What might I be able to buy at a silly cheap price? How much might I be able to save on my shopping? It’s a bit like a competition in my family, because we’re all bargain hunters. I want to be able to buy a punnet of (probably almost rotten) strawberries for 50p. I can’t resist a ‘Buy-One-Get-Two-Free’ on Greek yoghurt – even though I won’t physically be able to eat them before the ‘Use by’ date. I feel an uncontrollable urge to stock up on ‘2 for £7’ Andrex, even though I bought 36 rolls last week on special offer.

And then I go clothes or furniture shopping, I don’t add up how much things cost, but how much I’m saving. I’m not interested that these cost £199 (or even whether they’re worth that) but the fact they were £200 off!  £200 off! What a saving! They must be fantastic value! All these things are false economies. If you don’t need something, or you won’t use them, or eat them before they go off, it’s not a saving at all.

But what about the life of faith?

I confess that I pray less when I’m busy. And this is a false economy. When I spend time in prayer, life runs more smoothly. I can’t quite get my head around it, but I do notice the difference. Sermons come together more fluidly. I am more alert to what God might be saying to me and where God might be leading me. I am less likely to waste time on a dud idea. When I don’t pray, life can often feel like I’m swimming through treacle.  I feel frantic and everything feels more stressful. Cutting out prayer is a false economy.

My reading – of the Bible and other Christian books – can suffer when there’s a long ‘to do’ list. And that too is a false economy. My sermons are meatier and more interesting, my Bible studies more detailed, my pastoral conversations more comforting when my brain has been engaged with scripture and theology. Cutting these things out of a daily routine is a false economy.

Worship is another false economy to cut. Some weeks when I’ve been on holiday, I’ve skipped Sunday worship. Some days, I don’t make time just to worship God – I’d rather not have the CD on in the car, I’d rather distract myself with something else. But this too is a false economy. Keeping God’s greatness in mind helps me to be humble. It keeps all of life in its right perspective. Reminding myself of God’s goodness and faithfulness helps me through stressful or worrying parts of the day.

Why do we allow ourselves to be distracted? Why do we think we can save time by cutting out God?

We need to stay focussed on Jesus – with the help of prayer, Bible study, reading and worship – for not only will it show in our lives, but He will equip us for His kingdom work and for the sake of His glory.

 

Disabled by our distractions

Have you noticed how easily we humans get distracted?  You may even be reading this right now to distract yourself from the ironing, from the dreaded visit to the mother-in-law, or from the work your boss has just asked you to do!

I know I really struggle to stay focussed. Sitting in my study, I stare at the pile of things I need to deal with, and end up doing something totally different instead. I make myself another cup of tea. I recategorise the books on my shelves. I alphabetise my CD collection – first by artist then by album title! I check my emails for the twelfth time this morning. I send a text message to my fiancée. I decide to update my Facebook status for the fifth time this week with something like “Matt thinks he really should do some work”. (In case my church members are reading this, I do work hard – honest!).

Sometimes, having distractions can help us work more effectively. When I’m writing a sermon, getting up and doing the washing up can actually give my brain time to process my thoughts. But most of the time distractions are exactly what they say on the tin: a diversion from the path – a “dis-traction” – that stops us from giving something our full attention.

And as Christians, distractions can be a real problem.

Every morning I get up at around 7.30am and it takes me about 45 minutes to get showered, dressed and breakfasted. So by about 8.15am each morning I am free and ready to do something useful. Now I take the view that I should be at my desk by 9am. That’s the start of the working day, which means I have 45 minutes to do something else. When I started in ministry a year ago, I thought ‘Brilliant! I have 45 minutes to pray; to offer the day to God. To pray for the churches I serve, to read the Bible without having to write a sermon, to sing some worship songs, to ask God for wisdom and guidance.’

So I usually sit down on a chair in my study about 8.15am. And on a good day, I might be sat there for twenty minutes. On a good day. But on most days, after about 5-10 minutes I suddenly think of all the work I need to do and turn on the computer. Fatal error!

The problem is that I think my work is more important than prayer; that what I do is more important than what God does.

When I wonder why God never seems to use me as he used the first Christians in Acts, perhaps it’s because I am too easily distracted. Perhaps it’s because I am not focussed enough on Jesus and the nudging of His Spirit within me. In CS Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, a senior devil writes to a junior devil to teach him how to stop a Christian praying. The answer is very simple: by a wandering mind.  And when we don’t pray, we don’t hear and obey the Master’s voice.

In Matthew 15:8, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah and tells the Pharisees, “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” It’s easy for us to say the right things, whilst our hearts and minds are somewhere else entirely – distracted and off-course. On a Sunday morning, we can sing the songs and look like we’re listening to the sermon, whilst our minds are on the Sunday lunch. On a Monday morning, we can mentally know that we are supposed to pray without ceasing, but then forget Jesus as we go to work and meet up with our non-Christian friends. Sometimes we can even want to do the right thing, but we are diverted against our best intentions. As the apostle Paul put it in Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

If we are to develop the kind of intimate relationship that the Father yearns to have with us, if the church is truly going to be salt and light in a hurting world, we need to overcome our disabling distractions. We need Christ to be our centre and our guide; we need dedication and devotion; we need passion and willpower. We must pray for God to strengthen us and to use us effectively for His kingdom and His glory.