Monthly Archives: February 2023

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The primacy of love

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 14-minute message. Or watch the video here (the message starts about 26 minutes into the recording). Or read the text summary below.

This sermon is the first in a series of five on the Lent theme, “Love one another”. This theme is part of a larger theme on ‘Identity’, which our Diocese is focusing on this year – who are we as Christians, as the church? Within this broad theme of Identity, our parish is focusing on Jesus’ command to ‘Love one another’. And today, our particular focus is on the primacy of love.

Our Gospel reading for today (John 15: 1-17) has a strong emphasis on remaining in Christ as he remains in his Father and in us, and on remaining in Christ’s love, as he remains in his Father’s love. This passage ends with, “This is my command: Love each other!” (John 15:17). It echoes an earlier passage (John 13:34) where he says, “A new command I give you: love one another”. This is a repeat of his Great Commandment (Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 13): to love God with all you have, and to love your neighbour as yourself.

About this Great Commandment, Jesus says, hang all the law and the prophets. Gal 5:14 echoes this, “The entire law Is summed up in a single command: love your neighbour as yourself.” And Romans 13:9 similarly says, All the commands and “whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command: Love your neighbour as yourself. … Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” You can hear that this command is repeated again and again across the New Testament.

In addition to the command to love one another, there are dozens of other passages in the New Testament that speak about ‘one another’ or ‘each other’ and they all seem to refer to our relationships with people within the church – with other Christians, in the household of faith. There is supposed to be a special bond of love among Christians. As Jesus says in John 13:35, “By this [love that you have for one another], everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”. We are what Paul later describes as the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 23.

The big question is: Are we exemplifying this kind of love for one another here in our church?

This love that Jesus talks about incessantly is more than just behaviours; it is our very identity. Deut 6:6-9 unpacks how the great command of God, to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, is to become the very fabric of life: “The commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and why you walk along the road, when lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

You can hear from this how central the Great Commandment is to God. It is a summation of the entire law, because it is the primary value of God. In Jesus, the command to love each other is the summation of God’s revelation to humanity and his central and persistent message. This love for each other reflects the very heart of God. We are called to develop a culture of love – a pattern of living that is deeply embedded in our habitual practices as a community. Our love for one another here in the church should be so engrained that we barely think about it.

There is a lot of caring in this church, but I think we are not yet living up to Jesus’ example and expectations. During this Lent we want to immerse ourselves in this central teaching of Jesus and this central value of God. Let us become deliberately conscious and mindful of how we interact with each other, and purposefully work to be more loving and more caring towards each other.

Featured image, “Love One Another”, by Emma Taylor, from https://www.emmapaints.com/shop/ski5coarmeyb8vhyk7uo4b0prs6wmq

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Principles of fasting

Click here to listen to the 16-minute audio message on principles of fasting, or read the written summary below.

During Lent, it is customary for us to fast. It is not a rule or a requirement – you should decide for yourself whether you will fast. And you should also decide for yourself what you will fast from. In this message, I offer seven basic principles of fasting.

1. Fasting is an important spiritual discipline, backed up by plenty of Biblical precedent. Jesus himself fasts in the Gospels, and of course his ministry started with a 40-day fast in the wilderness. But although Jesus does fast and does provide guidance on fasting, he does not instruct or command us to fast.

2. Fasting is between you and God. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Jesus says in Matthew 6 that we should fast in secret, hidden in a closet, even putting on makeup so that it does not look as if we are fasting. It is a private matter between you and God.

3. How you fast and what you fast from is between you and God. There are no clear rules in the Bible about how fasting should be done. There are diverse examples of fasting in the Bible, but no specific singular pattern that is set down. There is thus flexibility in how fasting takes place – prayerfully figure out for yourself what will be helpful.

4. There are no dire consequences to breaking your fast. I am not encouraging you to break your fast, nor to be flippant about fasting. But I am saying that if you break your fast, it is just like any other sin you might commit. Sometimes we make fasting into such a big thing, that if we slip and break our fast, it seems like the end of the world. It is not the end of the world. It is simply sin.

5. Breaking your fast is an opportunity for learning. Again, I’m not encouraging you to break your fast or to be negligent in your fasting. But it is probably true that most of us break our fast from time to time. Breaking one’s fast is, arguably, a ‘small’ sin – it’s not in the same league as adultery or murder. It thus gives us a valuable opportunity to practice repentance (saying ‘sorry’ to God) and asking for forgiveness – and then for receiving God’s forgiveness. And then getting back to your fasting. For me, the moments of breaking my fast, repenting and accepting God’s forgiveness are among the most spiritually enriching moments of fasting.

6. Fasting is primarily about the heart, not the action. When we fast from chocolate, for example, we are not giving up something sinful – chocolate is not a sin. Most things we fast from are not sin. The reason for this is that the point of fasting is less about giving up sin (since we should be doing that already all the time!) but about giving up something. It is the impact of giving up something that is at the heart of fasting. It is what happens in our heart, in our faith, in our relationships with God that makes fasting meaningful. Joel 2:12-14 stresses this with the words, “Rend your hearts and not your garments”:

“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing— grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

7. Fasting should be paired with charity. We are called to give generously while we fast. In practice, we could calculate the cash value of the things we are giving up and then give that cash to God’s work in the church or a charity or directly to people in need. This is stated particularly clearly in Isaiah 58:3-7:

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

I wish you God’s richest blessings during your Lenten fast this year.

Feature image from https://www.nurtured-wellness.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Fasting.jpg

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Light in the darkness

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 18-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts about 23 minutes into the video).

The story of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain top, in front of Peter, James and John, is well known to most Christians – in our church we celebrate this event at least once a year just before Lent starts (Matthew 17:1-9).

But this year I noticed for the first time the narratives about Jesus’ death on either side of the transfiguration story. In Matthew 16:21-23, Jesus tells his disciples that he will shortly be killed. Peter challenges him for this negative comment, and Jesus in turn rebukes Peter with strong words, “Get behind me, Satan!” How devastated Peter must have felt, both hearing about Jesus’ fate and hearing Jesus’ stinging rebuke.

And shortly after the transfiguration, in Matthew 17:22-23, Jesus repeats this statement, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. And they will kill him.” The disciples were filled with grief at these words. What dark encounters to have immediately before and after the transfiguration.

In addition to hearing these words, the disciples hear other difficult-to-swallow messages. In Matthew 16:24-28, Jesus tells his disciples that if they want to follow him, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and lose their life. A hard teaching – they thought they were going to journey with their saviour towards the Eternal Life that Jesus so often spoken about. But instead, they hear these hard words.

And after the transfiguration, they go out to heal people and cast out demons (Matthew 17:14-20). But there is one child they cannot save. Jesus comes and heals the body immediately. They ask Jesus why they couldn’t drive out the demon, and Jesus responds “Because you have so little faith.” Ouch! Tough, harsh words from their Lord.

It is like there are these tall walls on their left and their right, before and after the transfiguration, that block out the sun and that undermine and disrupt the disciples’ faith. Almost like they are at the bottom of a chimney tower, with walls all around that reach up into the sky, so that no light gets down.

And yet is it is in this very space – in this dark place – that the transfiguration takes place. It is here, in this darkness, that the light of Christ, his dazzling divine nature, is revealed to Peter, James and John.

Here is an important lesson: It is often in the darkest spiritual times that we we have the brightest encounters with God.

It is clear from Matthew 17 that Jesus goes immediately into the transfiguration – he wastes no time. It is as if this is exactly why he brought them up the mountain – so that in the midst of their darkness, they could encounter his light. And they hear the voice of God speaking, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

Here are hope and courage and spiritual resources to sustain the disciples, in the midst of spiritual testing.

Have a look back at Exodus 24:12, where Moses is invited to go up the mountain to meet with the Lord and to receive the Ten Commandments. God says to him, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here.” What a remarkable invitation! To be not only invited up the mountain to meet with God, but also to stay there with God. And Moses stayed there 40 days and 40 nights. All around the mountain, the Israelites saw a storm, thunder and lightning, dark clouds – it was terrifying. But Moses was safe in the light of God within the darkness of the cloud, just staying with God.

During the period of Lent, which kicks off on Wednesday this week, many of us will experience an intensification of spiritual attack. We will be working to deepen our faith, to nurture our spiritual life, to strip down the outer layers of excess, to step away from sin and get down to a more fundamental and authentic relationship with God. But in this very time, when we are trying so hard to grow spiritually, Satan attacks us the most. We experience increased difficulties, challenges, disruptions, criticisms, failures, hardships, losses. These are the dark walls of the chimney tower rising up around us.

It is in these times that we are most in need of the light of Christ. Peter, having recounted his experience on the mountain top, provides us with some helpful advice (2 Peter 1:19):

We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

‘The light shining in the dark place’ and the ‘morning star rising in our hearts’. This is the transfiguration of Christ taking place within us as we seek to follow Christ, even when the world is dark around us, even when our faith seems weakest, even when we feel besieged by evil. This is where we encounter the transfigured Christ.

“Transfiguration” by Lewis Bowman, from https://fineartamerica.com/featured/transfiguration-lewis-bowman.html