Monthly Archives: August 2021

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Our words matter

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 23-minute message. Or watch the video of the message on Facebook (the message starts at about 31 minutes).

Our Gospel and New Testament readings today are nicely synchronised.

Mark 7:1-23 has Jesus telling us that we are not defiled by disregard of human customs nor by what we put into our bodies (though he is talking here about religious purity (see verses 1-8 for context), not about drugs, alcohol, sugar, etc.), but rather by what comes out of our hearts and mouths (sexual immorality, theft, envy, arrogance and so on). He emphasises that it is what comes out of our mouths that is important, not what we put into our mouths.

Jesus criticises the religious leaders of his time for for emphasising human norms of behaviour and forsaking the command of God. And what is the command of God? Simple. To love God and to love our neighbour. These are the most important things in life – more important than any other command. Human rules about how to behave, what to eat, how to eat and so on, are irrelevant when it comes to our standing before God. What is important is what is in our hearts and how this comes out in our attitudes, words and actions. What should be in our hearts and what should manifest in our lived lives is LOVE – love for God and love for others.

James seems to have remembered this teaching from Jesus and picks it up in his letter, James 1:19-27, where James says that we should be quick to listen to others and to the Word of God (these are the things we should quickly allow in) but that we should be slow to speak and slow to anger (speaking and anger are things we should be slow to put out).

Being quick to listen means to be open and receptive to people around us, to make time for them, to be interested in and concerned for them. Our default response to people should always be to slow down and listen, listen with care, listen carefully, and listen with love. And we should also be quick to listen to the word of God – to the scriptures – which he says is “planted in us” (v21) like a tree, that can take root and grow and produce fruit. And the fruit of this Word/tree is our attitudes, words and actions – these should emerge out of the Word that we have allowed to grow in us, out of the love of God in our hearts.

On the other hand, James cautions us that we should be slow to speak and slow to anger. He is clearly speaking about our relationships with other people – in v27 he says that the religion that God wants (accepts as pure and faultless) is for us to to look after widows and orphans in distress (that is, to take care of those who are vulnerable) and keep ourselves from being polluted by the world (that is, not to conform to human customs and worldly norms of behaviour).

James speaks particularly about the tongue, which he says we must “keep a tight reign on”, like a wild horse that is ready to bolt. He actually speaks at length about the dangers of the tongue in chapter 3, where he says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” We have to watch (and yes, even censor) our words, because they are more powerful than we think – whether they are words of healing and restoration or words of criticism and judgement.

Rather, says James, we should be slow to speak and slow to anger. This reminds me of how God is often described in the scriptures, as a “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (e.g., Psalm 86:15). We should be like God – quick to love and slow to anger.

There has been a shift in the world since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. He and his followers shifted social norms about how we use words. Speaking out whatever we think about people, and saying it bluntly and without regard for kindness or niceness has become a new norm. The attitude of not self-censoring and saying whatever one wants has been valorised – made into a virtue. We think we have a right to say whatever we want and that any kind of consideration of how our words might impact someone else is just a form of bleeding-heart leftism, political correctness or a sinister censorship of our right to free thought.

But no! This is completely out of alignment with the example and teaching of Christ and of his disciples! For Jesus, love and consideration for others is THE highest command (along with loving God) and checking what comes out of heart and mouths is clear in Jesus’ teaching in Mark 7. James takes up Jesus’ teaching and unpacks it even more, with strong warnings about reining in (i.e. censoring) our tongues. Just read James 3 and see for yourself.

The path of the Christ-follower involves being full of love, quick to listen, slow to speak, abounding in love and desiring to build up others. Our words matter. This is the way of Christ.

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Bread of Heaven (Part 5)

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 25-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts at 30 minutes). Or read the text summary below.

We complete our five-part series on the Bread of Heaven, this week focusing on John 6:56-69. Over the past four weeks, Jesus has been consistently redirecting us to himself and presenting himself to us as the source of life. Among other things, he has show that:

  • He cares about us.
  • He feeds us, meets our physical needs, abundantly.
  • He redirects us from earthly things to heavenly spiritual things.
  • He directs us towards himself.
  • He invites us repeatedly into a relationship with him.
  • He says he is the bread of life, come down from heaven
  • He invites us to feast on him.
  • He offers us and the world eternal life.

Now the question is: How will you respond to all this?

There are two sets of responses in our reading: the response of the larger group of Jesus’ disciples and then the response of the 12 disciples, voiced by Peter.

The response of Jesus’ disciples

Today’s reading indicates that Jesus’ teachings are hard – who can accept them? What is it about Jesus’ teaching in John 6 that is hard to accept, offensive? In part, it is his claim that he came down from heaven (John 6:42) and in part that he invites us to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:52). On the one hand, he is too heavenly and on the other hand he is too earthly and fleshy. He is too high and too low!

Jesus responds to the first point by asking how they will feel when they see him ascending back into heaven (John 6:61-62). If his claim to have come down from heaven is hard to accept, how much more witnessing him ascending back into heaven! And he respond to the second point by saying they should forget about earthly flesh and concentrate on spiritual flesh and words, which are full of Spirit and life (John 6:63).

But, recognising that his teachings are hard to understand, Jesus acknowledges that some do not believe and some who believe will fall away. It is our choice whether or not we believe in him. Yet, it is important for us also to know that God the Father enables our faith, enables us to believe and even to accept hard, difficult teachings. Indeed, three times in this chapter, Jesus emphasises that it is the Father who inspires and enables our belief:

  • The Father gives us to Christ (John 6:37).
  • The Father draws us to Christ (John 6:44).
  • The Father enables us to come to Christ (John 6:65).

God is sovereign. God does the drawing of our hearts towards Jesus. We rely and depend on God to enable and inspire our faith. And so we pray to him when our faith frays.

Nevertheless, many of Jesus disciples turn away and leave him. God does not force them to stay or force them to believe. We have free well to listen to God’s call and to follow him. God may give, draw and enable our faith, but he does not coerce – we still choose.

The response of Peter

Finally, Jesus turns to the 12 disciples – they are not among those who turned away and left. He asks them, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” (John 6:67). The phrasing of the Greek implies a ‘no’ answer. Jesus is hoping that they will not join the others who have turned away.

Peter’s reply is wonderful:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” (John 6:68) Peter knows the options out there, and concludes that they are all wanting. Even if Jesus’ teaching is hard to fathom, he can think of no better options. And besides, despite the difficult of Jesus’ teachings, he recognises that these are words of eternal life. Not words about eternal life, but the words of eternal life! Jesus very words are Life itself! As Jesus said earlier (v63), “the words I have spoken are full of the Spirit and of life.”

“We have come to believe to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:69) Here Peter describes a process – the same process that we have been following these past five weeks: there is a process (“we have come”) of learning to trust Jesus and to entrust ourselves into Jesus (“to believe”) that leads to knowledge about who Jesus is and what he means to us (“and to know that you are the Holy One of God”). There is a process of trusting Jesus that leads to us knowing him.

All of this (this entire chapter 6 in John’s Gospel) has been about drawing us closer into a trusting relationship with Jesus, redirecting us from the things of the world to himself, and learning to trust that he himself, as the bread that has come down from heaven, is the source of all the nourishment that we need, of life, of Spirit.

Again, the question is: How will you respond to all this?

Featured image of sourdough bread from https://www.independent.com/events/how-to-make-sourdough-bread/
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Bread of Heaven (Part 4)

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 27-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts at 23 minutes). Today’s sermon is delivered by Gaba Tabane, a lay preacher at my church. Or read my text summary below.

We continue with our series on the Bread of Heaven, this week focusing on John 6:51-58. In today’s passage, Jesus dives into the deep end of his teaching so far, focusing squarely on himself as the bread of life, and calling us to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. This is a difficult reading:

“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Jesus appears to confront us this almost cannibalistic image to make intangible spiritual truths as tangible and tactile as possible, even to the point of being gross. He is speaking of the Eucharist (communion, Lord’s Supper, Holy Mass). He wants us to understand that we obtain eternal life by filling ourselves with his presence. By making him an essential part of ourselves. Thus, eating his flesh and drinking his blood is a metaphor or image to help us grasp how seriously he wants us to allow him to fill us up spiritually and diffuse through every cell of our body and every thought of our mind.

When we let Jesus into ourselves, we have life eternal in ourselves. But if we refuse to let him in, we have no life in us. This is what he says in verses 53 and 54. When we let him in, we will have deep, lasting life and we will be raised up again to new life on the last day. He says in verse 56 that when we allow him in, he will come make his home in us. The NIV says “you remain in me and I remain in you”, but this ‘remain’ means to ‘take up dwelling in’, to ‘make your home in’. Jesus dwells in us – in our body, in our mind, in our emotions, in our spirit.

Jesus says that his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink. Some churches think of the eucharist bread and wine as symbols of his body and blood. Others think of them as actual flesh and blood. Our church thinks of them as bread and wine that have been transformed in such a way that the real presence of Christ is present in them. They are real bread and wine, and also real flesh and blood – Jesus makes himself present and available to us in these elements, so that we can feast on him. Jesus says, at the last supper, “This is my body” and “This is my blood”, yet he is sitting right there, alive and without any loss of flesh or blood. So, this middle way between symbolism and transubstantiation is the most workable way of understanding his meaning. Jesus is genuinely and actually present in the bread and wine, but the bread and wine are still bread and wine, and yet far more than just that. We call this consubstantiation, which means both substances at the same time. This is a sacrament: “An outward and visible sign (baked bread) of inward and spiritual grace (bread from heaven), given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace”.

Bruner (2012, p. 436-437) summarises his passage like this:

“Here it is; here I am; take a good look; this is it; the Great Heavenly Visit is now right here in front of you in this little space. You are very privileged to have access to this cosmic, once-in-a-lifetime event. You are looking straight at the meaning of life. This is what it is all about.”

Featured image of rye bread from https://dexam.co.uk/rye-bread
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Bread of Heaven (Part 3)

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 16-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts at 26 minutes). Or read the text summary below.

We continue with our series on the Bread of Heaven, this week focusing on John 6:35-51. Last week (Part 2) we saw how Jesus persisted in redirecting people from worldly work and food to heavenly work and food, from our actions to Christ’s actions, from our small vision to God’s grand agenda, and from bread to Christ. Everything was focused on getting us to redirect ourselves towards Christ, to orientate ourselves towards him.

Our passage today continues that theme, as Jesus unpacks what it means to orientate ourselves to him and how he takes the leading in enabling us to do that. I’ll be extracting five word themes from the passage. We’ll see that Jesus is once again persistent in using the same phrases over and over to drive home his message.

Christ’s invitation – come to me

First, Jesus repeatedly uses language that speaks to us coming to him, believing in him, eating of him, looking to him. Eleven times in 14 verses he uses these terms. He issues us an invitation, an open and generous invitation, to come to him. It is the central message of today’s text – come to me!

35 Whoever comes to me will never go hungry
37 All those the Father gives me will come to me
37 whoever comes to me I will never drive away
44 No one can come to me unless the father draws them
45 Everyone who has heard the Father comes to me
35 whoever believes in me will never be thirsty
40 everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life
47 the one who believes has eternal life
50 anyone may eat and not die
50 Whoever eats this bread will live forever
40 everyone who looks to the Son shall have eternal life

God’s grace – the Father’s will

Our ability to come to Christ is, however, by God’s grace. It is through the will of Father, and not through our own efforts or initiative that we can come to God. Only by grace, through faith in Christ. Six times, Jesus emphasises that it is through the work of the Father that we can come.

37 All those the Father gives me will come to me
39 this is the will of him who sent me
40 For my Father’s will is that
44 the Father who sent me draws them
45 They will all be taught by God
45 heard the Father and learned from him

Christ’s initiative – Christ comes down

As much as our capacity to come to Christ is through the grace and will of God, Christ himself also assists in coming down to us. We don’t have to go far to find him – he has already come to us. In the three places where Jesus refers to his coming down from heaven, he uses three different tenses: I have come, I am coming right now, I came. This suggests that his coming is timeless: yesterday, today and tomorrow, Christ is coming down from heaven.

38 I have come down from heaven
50 here is the bread that is coming down right now from heaven
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven

Christ’s inclusivity – each one and everyone

Jesus conveys his inclusivity in the way he refers to people in both the singular (9 times) and plural (8 times). It seems that he wants us to think of ourselves as being of special importance – just me, every single person, you the individual. And he also wants us to appreciate that he includes everyone, a radical inclusion that, in the last verse, encompasses the whole world!

35 whoever comes to me
35 whoever believes in me
38 whoever comes to me
39 I shall lose not one
44 No one can come to me
46 Not one has seen the Father
47 the one who believes has eternal life
50 any one may eat and not die
51 Whoever eats this bread will live forever

37 All those the Father gives
39 raise them up
40 my Father’s will is that everyone
40 raise them up
44 raise them up
45 They will all be taught by God
45 Everyone who has heard the Father
51 for the life of the world

Christ – the Bread of Life

And finally, Jesus repeatedly refers to himself as The Bread. Six times he calls himself the bread. In Parts 1 and 2 of our series, we encountered this only once – in the same verse that opens today’s reading. But here, he drives home that the bread we hunger after, the bread that sustains life, the bread that fills us up, is indeed Christ himself. If we are hungry and thirsty for something, Jesus is the one who satisfies us.

35 I am the bread of life
48 I am the bread of life
50 here is the bread that comes down from heaven
51 I am the living bread
51 Whoever eats this bread will live forever
51 This bread is my flesh

Today’s reading emphasises, repeatedly, that Jesus is the one we are after, that he is the one who, with the support of the Father, initiates the invitation for us to come to him and makes it easier by coming to us, so that each and everyone of us and all of us together can feast on the bread of life that has, is and continues to come down from heaven.

Come to Jesus!

Featured image of roti from https://www.cookhalaal.com/recipe/my-mothers-roti-recipe/
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Bread of Heaven (Part 2)

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 21-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts at 30 minutes). Or read the text summary below.

We continue with our series on the Bread of Heaven, this week focusing on John 6:24-35. Last week (Part 1) we read about Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 men (plus children and women) with just five small barley loaves and 2 little fish. We recognised that there were two levels to the story – on the ground floor, this is a story about Jesus caring about people being hungry and doing something about it; on the first floor up, this story is an invitation to have faith in Jesus, that he is more than capable of taking care of our needs. This week (in Part 2 of our series), we add on a third floor, which is to faith in Jesus, who is the Bread from Heaven, the Bread of Life.

Today’s passage involves four interactions between the crowd (who had followed Jesus after his feeding them) and Jesus: they as a question and Jesus answers. With each Q&A, Jesus seeks to redirect the people from focusing on the things of this world, on things of the past and on ourselves, and to rather focus on him.

Redirection from worldly work and food to heavenly work and food

The crowds ask Jesus, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus is quite critical of them, saying they are just chasing miracles and food for their tummies. The then urges them, “Do not work for food that spoils, but rather work for food that endures to eternal life.” Note Jesus’ emphasis both on work and food, contrasting work and food that are temporal and can go off and have to be discarded, versus work and food that are enduring, even to eternity.

This reminds me of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, just two chapters earlier, where he said, “Everyone who drinks this water [from the well] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).

Jesus is redirecting us from the things of this world – from food and water and even miracles – towards the things that are of eternal significance – towards faith, towards heaven and (we shall soon see) towards himself.

Redirection from our actions to Christ’s

The crowd seem to be getting with the programme, so they ask, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” This is a laudable question – they want to do the works of God, they want to meet God’s requirements, so they want to know what they should do. It is hard to fault them for wanting to do the work of God! But Jesus gives two redirections.

First, he shifts the focus from that they must do to what God does. The tells them what they must do by referring to the “work of God“, not ‘your work’. This is a huge hint towards the centrality of salvation through faith in Christ. Jesus says that the work we must do is in fact the work of God. This reminds me of Phil 2:12-13, where Paul writes, “[you] work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.” He gives what sounds like a contradiction! You work out your salvation because it is God who is working in you…” We cannot do anything, except what God does in us. We are dependent on God for everything that we do.

Second, he shifts from “the works God requires” to the “work of God” – from plural to singular. The crowds were thinking in terms of the many things they needed to do as signs of faith, but Jesus says, ‘No! There is just one work of God. Just one thing is required. And that is to believe in the one God has sent’. That’s it: to believe, or have faith. Faith alone is what God requires. And this faith is almost a falling into Christ, like a relaxing into him, reclining into him, resting in him. It is hardly ‘work’ at all!

Jesus is redirecting us from a focus on the many things we think we need to do to satisfy God’s expectations, towards a simple (yet also hard) just trusting in God to enable our faith in Christ.

Redirection from a small vision to God’s grand agenda

The crowds now get cocky and impertinent, asking Jesus what sign he will given them to prove that they should deign to listen to him. They seem to have entirely forgotten that he just fed thousands of people from a small lunch box! They refer back to Moses, when they were wandering in the desert, centuries before, who gave them bread from heaven (manna).

But in Jesus’ response, he contradicts everything they have said (and in the process, declines to give them a ‘sign’):

  • It is not about Moses, but about my Father.
  • It is not what was given to them (in the distant past), but what the Father gives them right now.
  • It is not about bread from heaven (manna, which lasted only one day), but The True Bread from heaven.
  • It is not just for you, but for the whole world.

Jesus directs them from a rather small and long-gone longing for manna from Moses towards a far greater, more enduring and more inclusive bread that is True and from Heaven.

Redirection from bread to Christ

Finally, it seems they get it! Instead of referring to Jesus as “Rabbi” as in the start of this passage, they now refer to him as “Lord” (or “Sir”). And they now ask, “always give us this bread”. They recognise that everything they had been setting their eyes and hearts on was quite worthless. But this True Bread that Jesus was talking about now – that was bread worth having! This is like the Samaritan woman, who says “Lord, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

And Jesus replies,

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Jesus has completely redirected them away from bread to himself. Jesus IS the bread of life. He does not give them the bread of life; he is the very bread itself! If we want bread, we want Christ.

Featured image of Turkish bread from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoIGnoakwU