21^st February 2014

Is it nothing to you? Lamentations 1:21

As human beings we are unique from all other creatures because we can laugh and imagine how our world should be, and secondly we have the capacity to weep when we see how things really are. The question is will you laugh or will you weep this Easter? 

In his book "The Velvet Cross" some years ago the late Rev Geoff Bingham asked the question, "Is it still possible for us to understand the cross and the death of Christ as central to history or have we polished the timber and become so familiar with the cross as a symbol and decoration that we have emptied it of any meaning?" The crowd laughed and celebrated on the Palm Sunday of the first Easter because deliverance seemed close at hand. Shortly after, it was only Jesus who wept in the garden. Only Jesus was in touch with reality, only Jesus could see how things really were.

Today I suspect that as part of a sophisticated Western World and the ‘Lucky Country' we tend to be so comfortable with things as they are that rather than laughing or weeping, the average ‘Aussie' is more inclined to yawn this Easter.

When the disciples were with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane their drowsiness and boredom was in stark contrast to the reality of Jesus pain and struggle. The struggle of Jesus revealed something of the heart of the Son of God, the loneliness, grief and compassion he felt. Yet the disciples, who knew him so well, yawned and slept through it all. The question is, could we be the yawning, drowsy disciples of the 21st century?

But it is not fair to just single out Jesus disciples. Looking beyond the disciples to the immediate and underlying influences at that time it is obvious that the meticulous custodians of religious truth, the Jewish authorities got it wrong. The meticulous custodians of civil justice the Roman authorities got it wrong. More than a full-scale miscarriage of justice, what took place was a total distortion of the truth and a blind denial of reality.

Our yawning at Easter can be either passive or active. We may be more inclined to leave Jesus in the shadows of Gethsemane while we buy up for the BBQ or plan for the holiday weekend, or we may be an atheist who sees Easter as a barbaric religious tale that needs to be forgotten. Regardless of our response our yawning does not alter the facts or make the Easter event irrelevant. Just the opposite, it confirms the biblical view that we all share not just an apathy or disinterest in God but a natural rebellious disposition that separates us from knowing God, a moral condition that distorts the truth and leaves us out of touch with reality. Without knowing it, it is as if we are travelling in the wrong direction, on the wrong side down a busy freeway --- for a while every thing seems normal but we are out of touch, blind to the truth. If this illustration seems extreme we need to ponder the biblical themes.

Paul provides us with a penetrating insight into human nature in Romans chapter one. He says God has shown himself in such a way that every person shares a natural knowledge of God. The Creator's power and glory is seen in the created order and like it or not this awareness is stamped upon the mind and conscience of every person. Paul describes this universal awareness when he goes on to state, ‘their minds became darkened.' In other words we are without excuse, we are actually ‘wired' to know God but sadly ‘we just don't get it!!' It is not a matter of trying more or needing more education, it is a moral, spiritual condition, we are bound by a self-centred focus that distorts the truth. The Bible uses the word ‘sin' not to point to a list of bad things people do but to describe the root cause of this disastrous condition that leads to every kind of brokenness in our lives and in our world today.

Jesus took this seriously when he likened the human eye to the conscience. He said, the eye (or the conscience) is the lamp of the body---so if your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light-but if (what you think is) the light in you is (really) darkness, how great is the darkness? Matthew 6:22-23. Most psychologists today agree that until a person is free in their conscience they are not really free anywhere else. The conscience either accuses us or it approves us but if we think we have a free, approving conscience when it is really a conscience that subconsciously accuses us then it affects our whole personality and perspective of life. Jesus says, "How great is that darkness!!"

The mind and the conscience is like the light on the sign board that says this is the way down the freeway of life and what appears to be the right way down the freeway is the wrong way--- it is a devastating way!!! Paul described the Christian at Colossae as those who were once ‘estranged and hostile in mind.' He described the Ephesians as those who were ‘dead in trespasses and sin'. Paul described the people in Rome as ‘futile in their thinking so their senseless minds were darkened' and in need of transformation. Rom.1:21, Rom. 2:15, Rom.12 :1-2. It was Phillip who said,"Lord show us the Father and we will be satisfied. Jesus said, "Have I been with you all this time Philip and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." John 14:8-9.

As the Negro spiritual (‘Were you their when they crucified my Lord ?') says we were all there in our blindness, ignorance and pride on the first Easter in the disciples, in the crowd, in Pilate and the Religious leaders. Jesus made it clear that he was about to lay down his life for us when he said, "I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." John 10:14-15. We must never accept the absolutely incredible as the normal. In anticipation of a judgement that would befall the shepherd the prophetic word came through the Old Testament prophet Zechariah, "Awake O sword against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me says the Lord of Hosts--- strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered." Zechariah 13:7.

I am glad I was there, fully represented in the man Jesus on the first Easter because in those horrific events and death Jesus Christ took the pain and consequences of my distorted view of life, my ignorance, my mixed motives, my shame, conscious failings and the suppressed guilt of my conscience. God takes the initiative to do something for us that we can't do for our selves. In the darkness that befell Jesus the amazing love of God takes the human condition seriously enough to confront, judge and deal with it. In Christ, God reaches out to you and me to release us from the past, to set us free and to light up our lives in a new way.

The writer of Lamentations asks the question that could fore-shadow the words of Jesus, "Is it nothing to you all who pass by? Is any sorrow like unto my sorrow? Lamentations 1:12. Is it nothing or is it everything to us as we pass by this Easter? You may laugh and weep this Easter but no one with a right mind will yawn.

We can reach out and pray saying, "Yes Lord, your sorrow is my sorrow. What you knew in those dark hours was for me. Your death was my death, your resurrection declares that power of guilt and my past, even death itself has been dealt with once and for all. Thank you for setting my conscience free, lighting up my life and giving me a clear focus of your amazing love, now and forever.
Amen."

Rev E. A. (Ted) Curnow. March 2014. 

 

The Kept Inheritance.      

1 Peter 1:3-9, Acts 2: 22-36.

A journalist recently described his view of life this way. "I am a leaf on a grape vine - there is a period of growth when one is fresh, green and attractive. There are changing conditions and like the leaf on the vine you are alive to provide protection. Then the time comes when you have served your purpose and like a leaf you drop from the vine and---- that is it!

The secular humanism that surrounds us reduces life and human worth to little more than a vine leaf; it offers no hope or guarantee for the future. Like many Christians people in different parts of the world today the church in the first century faced violent persecution, all the indignities and humiliation associated with intimidation, injustice and death. They had every reason to despair amid the grief and pressures that reduced their worth. This Epistle was specifically written to those who were suffering. Look at how Peter begins.

V3. --- Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He begins with praise and blessing, a doxology-hymn. The Psalmist sang "Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name." Psalm 103:1. The Old Testament writers blessed God as the Creator and Deliverer and today Christians bless God as the Father of the Lord Jesus. They bless God because they share the privilege of knowing God's plan in history and because they have been adopted as sons and daughters into God's family. This means they know God in an intimate way as Father. Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father and to my God and your God. John 20:17.

 

Amid the insecurities and things that crumbled around the Christians of the first century and that we can often relate to as the negative tone and challenges of our day Peter is about to build a picture that describes a real spiritual wealth that remains intact and that we can count on. So he says,

V3. --- by His great mercy ---

God is not harsh. He has done something in the past that shows His Great Mercy. What has He done?

V3 --- we have been ‘born anew' ---

It is a term used a number of times in the New Testament. Where by nature we were cut off / dead to God, a Christian is a person born anew, not by being religious or by attending church but by the mercy of God. We are born spiritually so that we come alive to a new life that is not marked by despair or hopelessness. We are born again to---

V3 --- a living hope ---

That is to a ‘living assurance,' (not an uncertain wish.) that will never die. We need to dwell on this a while because it seems to me that there are many within the traditional church who have little certainty or assurance when it comes to this ‘new birth'. I conclude a lack of spiritual assurance occurs when (1) there has never been a beginning, --- a ‘spiritual birth. or (2) there has been a temporary self-confidence, a sort of personal, social security that depends on circumstances around us. On this basis like the journalist's vine leaf, when we are young and green we are full of confidence, when we are old , --‘that's it,' we fade into nihilism,-- nothingness!!!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was asked to describe his first impressions when he arrived in the Western World. He said, " It was a loss of any awareness of good and evil."---it was a view of life largely built on---nothingness. Professor Manning Clark has said, "The present generation is probably the first generation which doesn't believe any thing at all." We need ti begin by asking ourselves, "Have I been born ‘anew' or am I still depending on whipping up my own self-confidence?" We need to know that this Easter it is possible to be born again to a living hope that goes beyond our own resources.

V3 --- through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead---

There are some who say today that it doesn't matter if there was no literal resurrection, it is the ‘spiritual influence' of the ‘idea' that there was a resurrection that is important. If the biblical account of Jesus resurrection is meant to relate to you and me it needs to be more than a mere mystical idea because we ourselves are more than an idea. We are flesh and bone and every person faces a literal death.

On the day of Pentecost Peter declared, "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made Him (Jesus) both Lord and Christ, this Jesus who you crucified.------- this Jesus God raised up and of that we are all witnesses" Acts 1:32-36.

Paul wrote, "If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.1 Cor. 15:14. Christians are people with a "living hope" because we are people of the resurrection, because Jesus resurrection has happened in time and history. We know God will complete his plan in time and history so we live with assurance and purpose. We live with values, direction and with a certain future.
By God's great mercy (1) we have been born anew (2) to a living hope (3) by the resurrection. 

V4 --- and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in Heaven for you.

Are these words of a promised inheritance the words of a dreamer, a cleaver ‘spin doctor' meant to cheer the early church, -- are they a crutch to lean on,--- a way of dodging reality? The scepticism of our age may think so but if we were living in the first century about to be set on fire as a human torch to light up Nero's Roman garden! If our home was ransacked and our family divided by a powerful militant group in a remote part of Africa! If we were stripped of our material earthly securities the sceptic of our day may be in a better position to view life in a different way and to discern what is real.

Jesus shocks us and gives us some incentive to see things in a different way when he says. "Sell your possessions and give alms, provide yourself with purses that do not grow old, with treasure in the heavens that does not fail. Where no thief approaches and no moth destroys." Luke 12:33. In other words trade your earthly priorities in because there are other values and riches that endure. Here Jesus describes these special riches as an inheritance.

This word inheritance stirred Jewish emotions deeply because it was linked with Canaan, but that earthly inheritance had been defiled by the sins of Israel, it was ravaged by armies, its beauty faded but here it is unstained by evil, untouched by death, unimpaired by time. It did not depreciate in value because it is----

V4 --- kept in Heaven for you.
In the New Testament those who are born anew-inherit the privilege of being adopted as children of God. Because the Spirit makes us God's children we are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Paul told the philosophers of Athens about Jesus resurrection and he concluded by saying that in His great mercy God "now commands all people everywhere to repent," to turn around, leave the past behind, ---to be born a new to the gift of a ‘living hope' and an ‘inheritance' that is not created, engineered or maintained by human effort but that is kept in heaven for you.

Prayer: Thank you Lord that as a person of flesh and blood your bodily resurrection and ascension assures us that you are the first born of a new creation, and that to trust you is to be made one with you. Thank you that it means it is possible to be born as a child of the Father now and to share that certain assurance as I face the future. Amen

Rev E. A. (Ted) Curnow. March 2014