The disciples find themselves in a boat in the midst of a ferocious storm (Mark 4:35-41). They cry out to Jesus: “Don’t you care?” We sometimes find ourselves in a similar situation. The world seems to swirl around us, exploding, destabilising. We wish for a granite foundation, but instead we are in a boat in the storm; at sea. But the disciples learn three things in this experience:
Jesus is in the boat with them. He is not standing at a distance, watching. He is right with them in the boat, in the midst of the storm.
Jesus demonstrates that he has the power to subdue nature. He is more than able to overcome any adversity we may experience, to calm any storm we may experience.
Jesus reminds his disciples that they have experienced his capability in the past; and so should remember it in the present. “Do you still have so little faith?” he asks them.
When we are in the midst of the storm – as we are now with the third wave of Covid threatening to overwhelm us – we need to keep turning back to Jesus. He is the source of strength, healing and wholeness.
Featured image by Bernard Allen at https://twitter.com/bernardallenart/status/900703185479897090 I appreciate how we see Jesus both sleeping (in the lower left) and calming the storm (in the upper right), with the sea reflecting the storm and calm in the two sections.
Our Eucharist readings for today align around the theme of generous giving. Read the texts:
Extracts from Psalm 112
1 Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands.
3 Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever.
4 Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.
5 Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.
9 They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their righteousness endures forever; their horn will be lifted high in honor.
Extracts from Matthew 6
1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2-4 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Extracts from 2 Corinthians 9
6-8 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
10-11 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
Key lessons about giving generously
God consistently and insistently calls us to generosity. This giving is to be sacrificial, in other words, we give until it hurts a bit; we give so that we feel the loss a little.
Givers will be rewarded according to their generosity. There is a kind of economy of giving, with a return on our investment, possibly in this life, and certainly in the next.
Giving should be done freely. We should not give grudgingly, reluctantly or out of obligation. We should also not give in order to obtain a reward or recognition – indeed, we should give privately, secretly. Our generous giving is rather motivated by our response to God’s generous giving to us.
Mark 4:26-29 provide a short parable about the Kingdom of God, a parable that has no similar parallel in any of the other Gospels, and that is sandwiched between two much more familiar parables about the kingdom – the parable of the sower and the parable of the mustard seed. It is worth spending a bit of time reflecting on this less-well-known parable:
Jesus also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like: a person scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether they sleep or get up, the seed sprouts and grows, though they do not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, they put the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
As we approach this parable, we must ask, “What does this story tell us about the Kingdom of God”, since Jesus uses parable almost exclusively in his teachings about many things, including the Kingdom. As Mark writes a few verses later, “Jesus did not say anything to them without using a parable” (Mark 4:34).
A few interesting things to note about this brief parable:
The human character is referred to only as ‘a man’ or ‘a person’ and then simply as ‘he’. This suggests that the human is not an important character in this story.
The rich part of the story is what happens between the two actions of the person – between scattering the seed on the ground and harvesting it. Between these, the person does nothing. This focus of the story is this in-between space between human actions and in which God works.
While the human character is thin and peripheral, two other non-human characters have prominent roles, both of which are preceded with a definite article (the) instead of the ‘a’ used for the human:
“The seed sprouts and grows”. It is clear that the human does nothing to enable this. It is something the seed does on its own. This is what seeds do.
“The soil produces grain”. It is clear that the human again does nothing to enable this. It is done by the soil. Indeed, Jesus emphasises this by preceding the phrase with “all by itself” (αὐτομάτη / automatē) – the soil produces a crop of its own accord, through its own volition.
These activities of these two characters, who show agency and power, are a mystery to the human, who does “not know how” it happens.
Those who garden or farm will know that to produce good crops (or flowers, etc.) you need good soil. If you have good soil, you’ll have good produce. It’s all about the quality of the soil. Those who garden will also know that there is nothing you can do to make seeds grow – that is something they do themselves – all you can do is ensure conducive conditions for growth.
From this analysis of the parable, I suggest Jesus has three main lessons for us regarding our place and work in the Kingdom of God:
We must scatter spiritual or evangelical seeds. Our words and our actions must scatter Kingdom of God seeds around the world.
We must work to ensure that the soil into which we scatter the seeds is well composted and conducive for growth. We get the most detail from Jesus on this in Mark 4:1-20. We can do this by nourishing and nurturing the values of the Kingdom – justice, love, inclusivity, generosity, truthfulness, integrity, humility, service, sacrifice, etc.
We must trust God to do what God does, which is to make seeds grow and to produce a crop for harvest. This is in God’s domain. We cannot make seeds grow in another person; only the Spirit of God can do that.
The church’s teaching on the Trinity (God as three persons in one being) is one of the most complex and difficult concepts for us to grasp. While 1+1+1=3, 1x1x1=1, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to get our minds around when we think about the Triune (three-in-one) God. God’s self-revelation to humankind was progressive: first, the world met only God the Father (in the First Testament); then later God the Son appeared (in the Gospels) and there was a gradual realisation that Jesus was not just a prophet or teacher, not even just the Son of God, but in fact God the Son; and still later (at Pentecost most clearly) God the Holy Spirit appeared (in Acts 2) and there was a gradual realisation that the Spirit was not a force or power, but also God.
The early church was now faced with the challenge of three divine persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) yet still holding to the believe that there is but one God, one divine being or essence. Gradually, over the first centuries after Christ’s earthly ministry, the church come to settle on the Nicene Creed that sets out the orthodox theology of a triune God: three divine persons somehow blended together in one divine being.
Many metaphors are used to make sense of God as 3-in-1: the three states of H2O, the egg, a clover leaf, a man, etc. All of these diminish God and tend towards the heresy of modalism – the idea that there is one God who manifests in three modes, ways of presenting to us or masks/faces. In other words, they tend to over-emphasise the oneness of God at the expense of three distinct persons. Modalism contradicts what we see in Scripture, particularly in Jesus’ words, where he clearly and repeatedly refers to the Father and the Spirit as being separate persons from himself and persons with whom he as a relationship.
It is, therefore, more aligned with the facts as we have them to start with the three persons of the Trinity and try to figure out how the three might be one being. In the recording of the sermon (particularly the video recording) you will see an exercise I do with the congregation to consider this three in one, the challenges of it, and the potential ‘solution’ to it (as much as one can hope for a solution).
We have to imagine what might be powerful enough to bind three distinct persons together into one being, and the only force powerful that I can imagine is love. A love that is so extreme, so fiery, so consuming, so utterly self-giving, so passionate, so deep in its joining, yet also so delighted in diversity and distinctness, that it welds the three persons together into one being. Love is thus the centre of the experience of the Godhead. And it is not that God was three and then become one; no! Rather, God has eternally been three persons in one being, joined together by ultimate love.
This itself is almost unimaginable, so the best we can do is to simply gaze upon a love so amazing, so divine, that three are one. And appreciate the depth and expansiveness of this love. And delight in the fact that this is what drove God to create everything that is – to share that love with us, so that we might share it among each other, and with God. We are therefore, most human and most divine and most in the image of God, when we live in relationships characterised by ultimate love. That is the centre of God. And that explains why Jesus is always going on and on about Love. It is the quintessential character trait of the triune God.
For those interested in reading up more about this, search for the terms perichorsesis and social model of the Trinity (or social trinitarianism). I’ve here provided Wikipedia links, which provide a good brief introduction to the formal theology that underlies this sermon. Beyond these, there are numerous volumes written on this.
Today we celebrate Ascension Day – the day on which the risen Christ ascended from earth back to the right hand of God the Father in heaven. We get the narrative for this from Luke 24:46-53 and Acts 1:1-11.
It is helpful to think of history as divided into three main phases:
Era of God the Father, which we get in the First Testament – humanity’s encounter with Yahweh.
Era of the Son, which comprises the 30 years of life or 3 years of ministry of God the Son
Era of the Spirit, which is the era we are living in now, where our most immanent contact with God is in the person of the God the Spirit
What bookends the Era of Son? It is inaugurated by the conception – when Mary conceives a child who is both human and divine. This is the incarnation, when God the Son leaves his glory and becomes smaller and smaller, emptying himself out, until he is no more than a single cell, an embryo. This is called the ‘kenosis’ – the emptying out of God, which you can read more about in a past sermon on the incarnation or another one on the mother of God.
After the incarnation at the conception, we have a continuing emptying out that leads ultimately to Jesus’ death on the cross. After that he rises from the dead, back to human life, and then he continues to rise in the ascension back to the right hand of God. I call this the Kenotic U, which you can read more about in a past message called The Kenotic U. Illustrate this way of thinking about history below.
So, Jesus’ ascension back into heaven completes his human life’s work on earth, which began with the incarnation (or conception) and concludes with his ascension. Now that he his back at the right hand of the Father, he intensifies his work of distributing forgiveness and reconciliation of humanity with God. This has always been and always will be his life’s work. And he sends Holy Spirit on Pentecost to continue his work in our immediate vicinity – right alongside and within us.
This Ascension Day, let us reflect on God’s continuous work on behalf of humanity and the great love that Christ has demonstrated for his children and the glory that he now enjoys again in heaven.
In John 15:12-17, Jesus declares that we are his friends. Imagine that! Friends of Christ!
Indeed, there are only a few times Jesus uses the word ‘friend’ – a total of 22 in the Gospels, of which two thirds are in parables or Jesus referring to others’ critique of him (e.g., he is a friend of sinners). In two places he refers to his disciples as ‘my friends’ and in three he speaks to individuals – the man lowered by his friends through the roof, Lazarus and Judas (just as Jesus was being arrested). And then 3 times in John 15.
Friendship means many things to us – loyalty, openness, trust, dependability, truth, safety, comfort, and so on. And Jesus is all these things as our friend.
In John 15, he asks two things of us as his friends.
First, he says we are his friends if we do what he commands. And what does his command? That we love each other – this command comes up repeatedly in this passage. When we read that we must love others ‘as’ Christ loves us, that might seem a bit daunting. It implies a standard that is above us – to love like Christ loves. But the Greek word can also be translated ‘from’, implying a source beneath or from within us. In this sense, we are called to love others out of the abundant love that we already experience from Christ. His command is simple – not easy, but simple: love each other or have a heart for each other. As 1 John 4:5 says, God’s “commands are not burdensome.” Indeed, there is just one command – to love others
Second, Jesus says in v15, that he no longer calls us servants (who don’t know their master’s business) but friends (because he has shared with us everything God has told him). In effect, Jesus says that we are friends in that we are privy to the mind and heart of God. God reveals to us what is important to God, so we can follow God out of knowing and understanding, rather than out of blind or fearful obedience. That’s what is means to be a friend. And this passage tells us that there is one primary motivation behind everything that God does – one primary point on God’s agenda – love!
So, this week, I encourage you to reflect on what it means and feels like to be loved be God and to be Christ’s friend, to experience the fullness of Christ’s love for us, and to share it with those around us.
In John 4:35, Jesus says “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” And later in the same chapter (v48-51), he says,
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
Earlier in John’s Gospel (4:13-14), Jesus says something similar to the Samaritan woman at the well:
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.
When we are going through stressful, difficult times, or are feeling out of sorts, we have to choose what kind of bakery we go to, to get some bread to satisfy and calm ourselves.
Sometimes, we engage in things that are psychologically and socially healthy, like meditation, going for a walk or some other kind of exercise, meeting up with a friend or resting.
But oftentimes, we engage in things that are not psychosocially healthy and that can even have harmful consequences, like going on a shopping spree, drinking too much alcohol, watching pornography, lashing out physically or verbally at our loved ones, driving too fast, using drugs, skipping work and so on. These mechanisms provide temporary relief, but leave us hungry for more, and often create more problems than we had in the first place. They do not truly satisfy our hunger. Indeed, we might end up more hungry than before, and need more of this kind of bread next time.
Jesus invites us to come to his bakery when we are hungry for something to satisfy our souls. The bread he offers is healthy, wholesome, long lasting and satisfying.
When we reach these points of difficulty in life, we have the opportunity to make a choice – to pick our bakery. Do we go to the one on the corner where we can buy the soft white bread that lasts only a moment? Or do we choose to drive a distance to get the healthy bread that lasts a long time?
Or can we choose to turn to Jesus, the master baker, to get the bread that will last for eternity, bread from heaven?
The final chapter of Luke’s Gospel (chapter 24) tells us of the fall and rise of faith. Ordinarily in English, we’d talk about the ‘rise and fall’ of something, but in this narrative, the order is truly first the fall of faith and then the stumbling, feeble rise of faith. It is a story of the fragility of faith, and tell us about some of the key ingredients that help to build faith: walking, friends, scripture, fellowship, the Eucharist, and worship. It is through our encounters with these elements – in all of which Jesus is fully incarnated and present – that we discover faith. With all its ups and downs and faltering.
v1-10: The women visit Jesus’ tomb early on the third day, on Easter Sunday, and find it empty. But they encounter shining men, like angels. They rush back to tell the men.
v11: But the men “did not believe the women”. Just so. Perhaps a clear example of patriarchy, because Peter immediately goes to verify what they have said. Or perhaps a clear sign of the fall of faith.
v12: Peter finds the tomb empty, but is baffled. We goes away, wondering to himself what had happened. We applaud his thoughtful reflection. But there is a sense of Peter feeling disoriented and lost – wandering alone. His faith falters and falls.
v13: Still on that same day, two of the disciples leave Jerusalem to head to a village called Emmaus. It’s still Easter Sunday and already we see the start of a scattering of the disciples, a fragmenting of the fellowship that had sustained them for three years, and of a movement away from the centre of the Easter narrative – away from Jerusalem. Faith falters when we fall out of fellowship with each other and when we walk away from the church.
v14-18: As they walk a man joins them – it is in fact “Jesus himself” – but their eyes are kept from recognising him. So they engage him as a stranger, and we get insight into their true feelings and thoughts about current events.
v19: When they describe Jesus to this traveller, they use language associated with Moses – a great man, but just a man. A powerful prophet, but just a human prophet. All sense of Christ’s divinity and majesty, all the prophesies he mentioned, linking himself to the suffering servant in Isaiah, are forgotten. Faith has fallen.
v21: “We had hoped” they say – meaning the hope they had had, has now been lost. And they mention that “it is the third day since all this took place”. Somewhere they remembered Jesus saying that on the third day he would rise again. It was now the third day and there was no sign of him (or so they thought). Whatever shreds of hope – of faith – they had had were rapidly slipping away. Faith falls further.
v22-24. They mention the women – that the women “amazed” them – and confirm that the tomb was found just as they said. “But they did not see Jesus.”
v25-29: The traveller (Jesus, but still not recognised) then explains to them how everything in the first testament scriptures point towards Jesus. But still they do not recognise him. Though they appreciate him enough to persuade him to stay and join them for dinner.
v30: “At the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.”
v31: THEN!! Ah, this wonderful THEN! “Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him!” It was in this moment of sharing a meal together that they recognise him. No fanfare. No miracle. No sermon. No revelation. Just a simple meal, where Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave the bread, just like at any other Jewish meal. And then their eyes were opened. Faith surges!
v32: And though he disappears from their sight, they then remember that as he taught them from the scriptures, their hearts were burning within them. Faith rises!
v33: Two two rush back to Jerusalem, still that same Sunday night. They rush back towards the fellowship with the other disciples and the women. Back towards the ‘church’ – the gathering of the believers in Christ.
v34: Simon had, in the meantime, also seen Jesus, and the disciples were exclaiming, “It is true! The Lord has risen!” Jesus, no longer just a prophet, but The Lord. Faith rises some more! And the two disciples share their story with the group. Through sharing faith continues to rise.
v36: In that moment Jesus appears among them, with his familiar post-resurrection assurance, “Peace be with you.”
v37-38: Immediately, however, they are startled and frightened, thinking him a ghost, troubled and doubting. Faith so quickly falls.
v39: Jesus’ response is to provide evidence: “look, touch, see”.
v41: But “they still did not believe it”! When faith falls, it struggles to rise.
v42: Jesus provides more evidence by eating food, to demonstrate that he is no ghost, but flesh and blood. But still no faith response.
v44-49: Then Jesus teaches, as he taught the two on the road to Emmaus. And he “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures”. We are not, however, told how the disciples received this and how it influenced their faith. Indeed, curiously, neither of Jesus’ teachings (in vv25-27 and vv45-49) appears to prompt a rise in faith.
v50-51: Jesus then goes out, blesses them and is taken up before their very eyes into heaven.
v52-53: THEN!! Ah, this wonderful THEN again! “Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and stayed continually at the temple, praising God.” Finally! Faith rises. In v32, faith rose through the simplicity of a shared meal, friendship and the symbolic breaking and sharing of bread. In v51, faith rose through the lifting up of the Son of God and of the disciples’ eyes towards heaven – a visual lifting up towards God.
Your faith, like my faith, like the disciples’ faith, rises and falls, falls and rises. It is seldom a nice smooth, continuous, upwards line. It ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes, rises and falls. But we see in this narrative, with all the real humanity of humans, the important ingredients of walking, friends, scripture, fellowship, the Eucharist, and worship.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
This follows probably the most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16, where Jesus says,
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
In both passages, there is a pattern of speaking from Jesus: not this, but this:
Not to condemn, but to save
Not perish, but eternal life
This ‘not-but’ pattern helps to make Jesus’ mission in the world – or rather, God’s mission for Jesus in the world – clear. Jesus’ mission is NOT about condemnation, judgement and death, BUT rather about salvation, health (in the Greek, the word for ‘save’ also means ‘heal’) and life (eternal and abundant).
A first implication of this is about our own thinking. Often we get caught up in spirals of negative thinking, where we focus excessively on the negative things about this world. While there are, of course, many negative things around us, dwelling or ruminating on these does not lead us towards salvation, health and life, but rather towards condemnation and death. In our obsession with negativity, we overlook or miss the many good things that there are in this world, the many gifts and blessings from God.
In the same way that Jesus’ mission is oriented towards salvation, health and eternal life – in a world that is full of darkness, corruption and despair – so should our thinking about the world be oriented towards salvation, health and eternal life.
A second implication of this ‘not-but’ pattern concerns what we stand for as Christians in this modern secular world. Too often, when Christians decide to stand up for something in our faith and to speak into the world, we stand up to condemn something – gays, trans, premarital sex, abortion, and so on. And our standing up for the things of God is often expressed in angry, judgemental, condemnatory and even hateful ways. All the things that Jesus says he did NOT come for.
Instead, let us stand for salvation, for health and for life abundant. For example, let us stand for access to health care, for quality and free education, for decent housing, for a higher minimum wage, for expanded social services. Let us stand for the sustainability of our planet, for building human fellowship and compassion, let us stand for the poor, let us stand for life. These are the things Jesus stood for. As Christians we should be standing for the same things.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Today we celebrate Easter Sunday – the culmination of weeks of Lenten fasting and penitence, and a week of daily soul-searching services. On Good Friday, we watched our Lord’s life slip away on the cross and experienced darkness fall over the earth as the Light and Life of God was snuffed out. And then we waited, through Friday and Saturday – wondering, what might happen, how might this all turn out.
It is relatively easy for us, because we are so familiar with the outcome of the story. But for those first believers – such as Mary and the other women in Mark 16:1-8 – it must have been surreal and terrifying. The unthinkable had happened. No wonder Mark relates the confusion of the first women to arrive at Jesus’ grave, and their fear and silence after encountering what they thought was a young man (but probably an angel).
For us, though, we now understand and appreciate the resurrection of Christ as the fruit of Christ’s triumph over death, of God’s generous and complete forgiveness of sins of all humanity, of a profound and utter reconciliation with God, and the restoration of Christ as the light of the world. God gifts back to humanity the very one that humanity sought to extinguish, as a sign of their joint unconditional and extravagant love for humankind, and indeed the whole cosmos.
Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!!
In Romans 6:3-11 we gain further insights from Paul into the ways in which our salvation follows the same path as Christ’s death and resurrection. In our baptism, we die to self in a watery grave; only to be raised again to new life in Christ, a life filled with Holy Spirit. In our service today we baptise little Onyedikachuckwu Christian Okafor – a visible sign of God’s salvation – and renew our own baptismal vows, said originally on our behalf as infants, and today renewed freely by ourselves.
Lord, you have nourished us with your Easter sacrament. Fill us with your Spirit and make us one in peace and love. We ask this through Jesus Chris our Lord. Amen.
Reflections of God's Love 
