Lent two-8 March 2020: Have faith in the future
Message: – Jesus calls us to entrust ourselves into the care of the Holy Spirit who will carry us into the unknown future of God.
Our Psalm 121 today commencing with :”I will lift up my eyes to the hills” jogs my memory of a gathering at the International Hospital Chaplains at Toronto during the early 90’s when a leader Dr Howard Clinebell stated that he spent each of his birthdays travelling to a mountain to be closer to God.
Some who feel depressed or who want to feel the closeness of God through nature make a point of getting up early to view a sunrise or maybe, more conveniently watching the sun set over a range of hills as I did recently at the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberly.
People down through the ages have been inspired by the words of this Psalm, basing their lives on the same faith in the same Lord, sharing in the life and worship of the community which is the continuing Body of Christ. It raises the question, who might you and I share our faith with today?
During the forty days leading to Easter, called the season of Lent, allows us to ask ourselves again, whether we have got what it takes to be the people of God and followers of Jesus.
We are confronted by challenging messages from the Bible today about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It is one thing to be warned to count the cost, but another to be told there is no way of calculating the cost. This latter is today’s message.
As we hear, Abraham is one of the key figures whose footsteps we are to follow in if we take the life of faith seriously.
As “Love to the World” which is a book of daily Bible readings that many of you may be familiar with, says of the Genesis reading, there are few more revolutionary claims: “that God speaks” in the Christian faith than these simple words. The message from God to Abraham was “Get up and leave your country, your relatives and the family of your parents and move to the land that I will show you”. It’s just “Get up and make tracks and you’ll find out what it all means as it unfolds. Just trust me. He did, and so must we.
May we recommit ourselves led by the wind of God’s spirit but understand that no one can tell you all that it will mean or where it will take you. It is simply a matter of putting your trust in Jesus, of entrusting your life into the hands of one who will take you who knows where, but who is utterly committed to your best interests and has proved faithful to generations of Spirit led people before us.
In the John Gospel 3: 16 ,it is arguably the most quoted verse from the Bible:- “God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life.”
As ‘Love to the World” points out, this does not refer simply to more life nor after life, but to an abundant and full life in the here and now: the life that really is life. Through Jesus life, death and resurrection we are all brought out from death and into life!
The daily readings in “The Friendship Book” [ used to be called the “Frances Gay Friendship Book”}, for February 23 reads: – “In a fable, a man learns of a magical stone that can turn anything into gold. He would know it by its warmth. Unfortunately, it was somewhere on a beach full of stones.
Every day for a year he picked up stones, declared them cold and threw them into the sea. Then he picked up a warm stone. His heart jumped, his mind celebrated, and he threw the stone into the sea! Habit had conditioned his body so thoroughly that heart and mind were automatically over-ruled.
When our habits have that sort of power, let’s make sure they are good ones!
In the discussion Jesus had with Nicodemus, there is talk of faith and especially the idea of making a new start using the metaphor, of new birth, or being born again.
The change that God calls us to make is so radical that it is as though we emerge into life all over again, starting again, leaving the old behind. He compares this encounter with the unknown to the wind: -“the wind blows where it chooses”.
When the wind of change offers us the chance of a new beginning, a new birth, we can either cling to the known or let go and allow ourselves to be carried off into complete unknown of a new beginning. A real test of this church congregation will be our willingness to let go of our past and allow the new wind to blow where it will and take us to a promised land through faith. God will be with us and Jesus will carry us into a wonderful future, I am confident.
One more take on this Gospel reading is from Eddie Askew, President of Leprosy International in his book “Breaking the Rules” who reported that the first recorded composer of European music was a twelfth century nun. Recorded in a manuscript, not on a CD, she described herself as a “feather on the breath of God”. This is something, someone, utterly at God’s command. Ready for the Spirit’s direction. Sensitive, trembling at the least movement. Surrendered to his will. Carried along by his strength.
Not only does the breath of God give a sense of purpose, but it gives life itself. We are told that when God made humanity, he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” [Genesis 2:7]
But the image breaks down if carried too far. We’re not lightweight creatures, weakly giving in to every wind that blows. We’re not completely inanimate feathers, totally helpless on God’s breath. As human beings, created in God’s image, we may live and move and have our being in him [Acts 17: 28] but we can usually choose the direction we’ll go and the response we make.
That’s the joy of Christian life, and also its responsibility.
Finally, a quote from the late Rev Gordon Dicker as he concluded his famous textbook: – “Faith with understanding”
“If we take seriously the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament, we may have hope for a life beyond death. Jesus never dwelt on the nature of that life, but we get the impression it includes peace, joy and fulfilment. The real business before us is the living of this life, whose span is limited and in which, therefore, no opportunity must be missed for the service of God and the service of our fellow human beings. WE are encouraged to live with the confidence that nothing we do as an offering to God is done in vain and that nothing, neither death nor life. Nor things present, nor things to come, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
A Prayer: -I am no feather blown by every wind, but your creation, body, soul, mind, Lord, and will. Given me for use, not decoration. Freshly fashioned for your spirit’s dwelling place. Not as a monument, fast rooted in the earth, static, but vital, part of your dynamic purpose, which is love.
Geoff Serpell
