Sermon of Holy Thursday 1 April 2010 Can you drink the cup of Christ? Mark 10.32-45

Mark 10.32-45

I was thinking recently about the questions to be answered
on entering full communicant membership of the Church

Questions on the basic commitment of a Christian.

The first one is about personal trust in God.

1 Do you believe and trust in God:
in your Creator and heavenly Father,
in Jesus Christ, your Lord and Saviour
and in the Holy Spirit, your Sanctifier and Guide?

The other 4 are about Christian discipleship
how we live out that trust

2 Do you promise to join faithfully with your fellow Christians in worship on the Lord's Day?

3 Do you promise to be faithful in reading the Bible and in prayer?

4 Do you promise to give a fitting proportion
of your time, talents and money for the Church's work in the world?

The fifth is the hardest and yet maybe expressed in soft way

5 Do you promise, depending on the grace of God,
to be ever ready to declare without shame that you are Christ's,
to serve him in your daily work,
and to walk in his ways all the days of your life?

I am thinking of going to our General Assembly some year
and proposing that we rewrite the questions to make them harder
in some way to bring out that following Jesus is difficult and unpopular.
Speaking out for him can be a lonely experience,
like Peter when Jesus was arrested, we’d rather be somewhere else
and like him when confronted we often bottle it.
Living like Jesus, becoming more and more like him
which is the call to be holy isn’t congenial.

Does anyone here find it easy to be a Christian in our time?
Even Good Friday is becoming like any other day.
Many moral values generally accepted 20 years ago have changed
and we who try to follow what the Bible says
are increasingly mocked and marginalised.
Worse than that, voices are raised telling us to keep quiet,
you can have your strange views we are told if we keep them private,
don’t dare offend other people, don’t upset them
by telling them that they might be wrong.

We are allowed to comfort people but never ever disturb them
even though it has been well said that the gospel of Jesus
should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

I wish some times I could just preach a message of comfort
and never disturb people.
If I could just say to people that God loves them
and it doesn’t matter how they live their lives
that there’s no hell, only heaven
and we’ll all get there in the end.
With such a message I might become very popular
but I would also become very unfaithful.
The message we share disturbs as well as comforts:
it speaks of hell for those who reject Christ
as well as heaven for those who trust him

In this reading we are presented with an uncomfortable Christ.

In v 32 we see Jesus 'leading the way' to Jerusalem
and his friends follow him, astonished and afraid.
It was becoming increasingly clear what would happen to him;
'The Son of man will be betrayed to the religious authorities
They will condemn him to death
and hand him over to the secular authorities,
who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him’
and after that, resurrection'

But James and John were not really listening.
Or had the fast forwarded to the last bit about rising on the third day?
They wanted to by pass the cross and get to the glory
they had a mental or spiritual block about the cross,
but 'if you will not bear a cross you can't wear a crown'
These Boanerges brothers Sons of thunder as Jesus called them
wanted to be a big noise, wanted a good place,
wanted to be high and mighty
but there is no such thing as a high and mighty Christian.
That is simply a contradiction.

Do we want the friendship of Jesus
but go easy on the suffering and service?
We cannot fully read their minds.
Did they want to pull a stroke over Peter.
They had shared the profound experience of transfiguration with him.
Did they want to keep him out of the ultimate spiritual high?
Because their father Zebedee had a good going fishing business
did they think they deserved a good place?

Whatever their motives Jesus' challenge is, are they ready for suffering?
38 'Can you drink my cup or be baptised with my baptism?'
To drink someone's cup meant to share that person's fate;
it also meant to experience the punishment
God would pour out for human sin.

To 'share the baptism' meant to go through the same experience
that Jesus was going through
to be submerged in the same floods of suffering.
Jesus was saying:
'Can you bear to go through the terrible experience
which I have to go through?
Can you face being submerged in hatred. pain and death as I have to be?'
In effect he was saying If you will not bear a cross, you can't wear a crown.

The problem for us is we have sanitised the sacraments.
The problem with the water of baptism
and the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper
is that they are too nice.
We pour on our baptismal water and make sure it's heated in winter
We polish a silver chalice and iron a white tablecloth.
We enjoy the peace of Christ and the beautiful promises which are there
but we soft pedal the humiliation and suffering which are also there.

Christ was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles;
he was crucified on a cross, a common scaffold, between two thieves. (George McLeod)
James & John had little idea of how true glory comes:
glory is found in self giving sacrifice, not in status, power and prosperity.

And the other ten were not much better.
If James & John were out of order in seeking such privileged position
the others showed by their indignation that they were insecure too.
They wanted to be first.
It's the old problem which you see in children's games
Everyone wants to bat no-one wants to bowl.

I vividly remember my very first game of soccer
We charged around the field all trying to kick the ball at the same time.
No-one wanted to be goalie, or play in defence.
No-one had an idea how to pass the ball.
None of us understood how it might be a good idea
if we could sacrifice your starring role for someone else to score.

That’s ok when you are 4 or 5 learning about sport.
It’s not so amusing and cute when you grow up a bit
and you still don’t want to let anyone else have the ball



Against all our craving for glamour and number one ness
Jesus says those four short crisp words in v 43 'Not so with you.'
Every time we are dazzled and seduced by human power and prestige
we will do well to say those words to ourselves
or even write them on our cheque book cover or in with our credit cards
or stock them above our TV screens
Not so with you.'

How much of our efforts and energy are spent in gaining
a secure position in society, not caring about those less privileged?
How much of our time is spent as masters rather than as servants?
But Christians are supposed to belong to the 'upside down kingdom'
'Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant
and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.' (43-44)
When Daniel writes about the Son of Man (45) (Daniel 7.14)
this divine figure is to be worshipped and served,
but here Jesus makes it clear in his life on earth it's the other way round.
Jesus is come not to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.

It is of course only Jesus' suffering that sets us free;
he pays the price for our sin and bears our punishment.
But as we drink the cup and share his baptism of service and suffering
we open the way up for people to consider Jesus Christ.

(as John Stott challenges)
'Where are the Christians who are prepared to put
service before security, compassion before comfort,
hardship before ease?
Thousands of pioneer Christian tasks are still waiting to be done,
which challenge our complacency and which call for risk.
Insistence on security is incompatible with the way of the cross.
What a breach of convention and decorum
that Almighty God should renounce his privileges
in order to take human flesh and bear human sin!
Jesus had no security except his Father.
So to follow Jesus is always to accept at least a measure
of uncertainty, danger and rejection for his sake.'

James and John coveted honour, power and comfortable security,
while the whole career of Jesus was marked
by sacrifice, service and suffering. ...
It is the glory of Christ's cross which shows up their selfish ambition
for the shabby tatty threadbare thing it was.
It also highlights the choice for the Christian community always,
between the way of the crowd and the way of the cross.'

This is the choice for us this Holy Week:
not the culture of the crowd but the culture of the cross
living the way Jesus lived on earth
serving as Jesus served
and accepting suffering as Jesus accepted suffering.

When we come to the Lord’s table here this Sunday
there can be these two themes of service and suffering:
We serve each other as Jesus set the example of serving.
It's important that the minister and elders who have authority in the fellowship
serve the people first and themselves afterwards
as a reminder of how it should be in the body of Christ.
And of course the bread and the cup remind us of his suffering for us
the body broken in our place
the cup representing the blood of the new covenant
that Christ's death seals God's promise
that because his Son has died for us
he will take away our sins
and nothing can ever change that.

The next time you come to Christ’s table
try to think what it means that Jesus serves you
think what it means that Jesus suffered for you.
Think what it means that you can serve others in his name
Think what it means even to suffer for his name.

Lord, let us not criticise James & John.
Their weakness is our weakness, their desire to be first is ours too.
Show us what it means to serve, help us to take the way of suffering.
Help us to look lovingly and prayerfully at the times we live in:
may we give thanks for whatever is good and lovely and wholesome
may we offer comfort to the disturbed
but by putting Jesus first and being willing to serve and to suffer
may we challenge everything in us and around us
that would promote self above Jesus.

Let us this Easter time no longer block out the cross
but show by the way we live and treat each other
that we are humble followers of one who gave his life for us
and set us an example to follow in his steps

Sermon of Good Friday 2 April 2010 This day in Paradise Luke 23:26-43

Luke 23:26-43

Tonight we look at the two people who came closest
to sharing the experience of Jesus
because they also died on a cross alongside him.

The suffering of these three tells us something important
about suffering itself, will it make us better or bitter
about looking to Jesus for salvation, how simple that is
and about assurance in the face of death, how sweet that is.

These two men shared the same suffering as Jesus
but in the one case it made the man bitter
and in the other it made him better
in the sense that he found acceptance from Jesus
and a sure hope beyond his death.

Don't think that the mere fact of suffering qualifies you to go to heaven
or to find some special blessing from God.
Suffering is unpleasant and cruel, let's not be pious about it.
But literally the crucial test, as we go through suffering, is
do we become better or bitter?
We don't know anything about these two men beyond what we read here:
they were both criminals, possibly terrorists, not innocent men
unlike the man besides whom they hung.
As one of them said to the other:
41 'We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.
But this man has done nothing wrong."'

That's the reality, the contrast, two guilty men and one innocent man
yet when all three died two had hope and the other only bleak darkness.
Two men close to the innocent Christ -
Wouldn't you think they would both be moved by his suffering?
Why didn't they both turn to him and seek salvation?

But they didn't.
One talked mockingly of Christ saving him. (39)
His suffering had made him so bitter.

It makes me shudder to think you could be so near to the Saviour
and yet miss salvation.
It makes me shudder to think of the times
I have let my suffering make me bitter
and put me in danger of rejecting Jesus.

Think of some time when you have suffered.
Some moment of disappointment, rejection, bereavement
of physical pain or emotional anguish.
It could be relatively trivial, like your car or your computer breaking down
and yet it created trouble for you.
It could be something like an attack or a break in
and maybe you bravely said
it was little enough compared to what others suffer
but it still meant a lot to you.
It could be the pain of illness that clouds your life
or fear and worry about illness.
Then ask yourself
Did that tragedy, be it big or small, bring you closer to Jesus
or did it create a distance?
Did it make you more humble, more sympathetic to other's troubles
did you learn patience through the set back
or did you send out invitations to a pity party
and put the blame on someone else, or even on God?

It depends who is at the centre of your life. Is it God or is it you?
If it's you who are the controller of everything in your existence
then you are bound to lash out when you suffer, as that man did.

HOW SAD IT IS IF SUFFERING MAKES US BITTER
BECAUSE WE ARE TRYING TO RUN OUR LIVES INSTEAD OF MAKING JESUS KING

HOW SIMPLE IT IS TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN BY TURNING TO CHRIST.

If in some way you do fear God, as the other criminal said
if you do bring him into the reckoning
then there is another way of reacting to suffering.
It can turn you to Jesus, as it did with the other criminal.

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said,
"since you are under the same sentence?
42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
As someone has put it:
'While everyone else sneered at Jesus' kingdom and kingship,
he alone begged to be a citizen of that kingdom,
and his naturalisation papers were instantly processed.'
(Peter Kimber SU Encounter with God notes 3/97)

This is a model for what it means to become a Christian.
You don't need a load of theology, to become a Christian.
You don't need to reach a standard of goodness to become a Christian -
You don't need elaborate prayers to become a Christian.
Living as a Christian will demand much in terms of thinking out our faith
and reforming our lives and keeping close to God in prayer

but becoming a Christian is a simple thing.
It is simply, like this man, looking away from yourself to Jesus.
It is simply like the publican in the temple
crying out 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!'
Or it is as Paul said to the distressed jailer at Philippi,
'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.'
Do you see the similarity in all those situations?
It is people crying out, Lord, I have nothing, you have everything.
Remember me! Help me! Save me!

It was one point of light on the darkest day in world history
that this wretched man, this disgrace to civilised society
who deserved everything coming to him
is somehow moved to see beyond the placard and the jeering
about Jesus claiming to be king
to see that he really is the king and to sense that his death will not be the end.

How good this 'Good Friday'
if someone here was to cry out to Jesus for the first time:
'Jesus remember me!' Be king in my life.

HOW SAD IT IS IF SUFFERING MAKES US BITTER
BECAUSE WE ARE TRYING TO RUN OUR LIVES
INSTEAD OF MAKING JESUS KING

HOW SIMPLE IT IS TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN BY TURNING TO CHRIST.

How sweet it is to look forward to meeting Christ beyond this life.

Here is another point of light on a dark day:
43 Jesus answered him,
"I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
Assurance of life beyond death, of acceptance by God,
to be with Christ today, the day of their deaths
not in some remote time to come, in paradise.

Paradise literally means a garden
the restored creation in which the righteous dwell.
If you want to be technical
it is the place where our spirits are in relationship to Christ
while we wait for the resurrection of our bodies
but we don't need to be technical,
it is enough to be sure that when you die you will be with Jesus
that death has lost it sting.

Is this not a true test of whether we are Christian believers or not:
that whatever we feel about the process of dying
we are not afraid of what lies beyond death
because how could we be afraid
of being welcomed by Jesus in paradise?

Sermon of Easter Sunday 4 April 2010 Is compost all that there will be? 1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians 15.1-20
written perhaps 15 years after the first Easter

Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen is famous for his style and designs
someone who improves the quality of life for many people.
I read in an article about his personal views
that he has no sense of a new life beyond death.
We had best accept, he said, that we ‘gently compost’.
Our lives only have meaning in this earthly life, there is nothing else.

Is he right? If he is right, are we not wasting our time here?
But his position that this is all there is, is empty and dissatisfying.

It reminds me of Peggy Lee’s song:
‘when I was 12 years old,
my father took me to a circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears.
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And so I sat there watching the marvellous spectacle.
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "is that all there is to a circus?
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is …’

There were people in the New Testament times
who echoed Peggy Lee’s words.
They said as Paul quotes them in v 32
‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’

But many of us find that idea hard to accept.
Life has a hollow ring if our fate is only to end up as compost
and more than that, we have a deep seated fear of death.
That finds expression in Hamlet’s famous speech ‘To be or not to be’
He speaks of
‘the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of’

What is the Christian answer to these things?
Is there something for us beyond compost
and must we be afraid of death
as the undiscovered country from which no traveller has returned?

Resurrection truth: God keeps his word; v 3

This is what is ‘of first importance’ for Paul
'that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures'

Christ died for our sins We can be forgiven,
Christ was raised from the dead we can have new life
it was planned and predicted in the Scriptures
in Isaiah 53, in Psalm 16
'My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices
my body also will live in hope nor will you let your Holy One see decay'

On the first Easter evening Luke tells us about two friends of Jesus
walking on the road to Emmaus outside Jerusalem.
They are in bits.
Their friend Jesus is dead and now his body has disappeared.
Their hope has been shattered and they are confused.
A mysterious stranger appears - we know it is the risen Lord, but they don't.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus did not at once tell them who he was?

Instead he gives them a bible study in what the Old Testament says
about his death and resurrection.
Then at supper when he takes bread and gives thanks and gives to them
their eyes are opened and they do recognise him
but they also comment
'Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road
and opened the scriptures to us?'

That's authentic Christian experience:
the risen Christ making the scriptures clear
bringing reassurance to the frightened, hope to the despairing,
understanding to the confused
because what God says, he does.

In our post Christian world
which has lost the Christian assumptions of previous times
we need simply and unashamedly to get this message out
most of all to tell to ourselves these exciting liberating truths
that God keeps his word; that life has meaning, that God has not rejected us,
that death is not the end, that that sin can be forgiven
and that there can be something so much better beyond death for the believer.

Resurrection truth: something to look forward to v 42-44

Easter gives us hope beyond this life.
It's a big question: what happens when we die?
It make us afraid, we are uncertain
but the Bible points to us to a picture from the natural world
the difference between the seed, small, shrivelled, colourless
and the flower or the plant, blooming fragrant alive

When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed,
perhaps of wheat or of something else.
38 But God gives it a body as he has determined,
and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead.
The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory;
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;
44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-
52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we will be changed.
53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable,
and the mortal with immortality.

There is a life beyond this life
we shall have an existence, we shall be the same people
but we shall be transformed
It makes me wonder why we have so many flowers at funerals
because the picture the wreaths give is of great beauty
but beauty that does not last.

The flowers wither, a sad picture of human mortality
Surely Christians ought to bring not flowers but seeds
to the funerals of believers?
As good as this life can be, isn't it always overshadowed by death?
There is something better yet to be where death is defeated.

Resurrection truth: keeps us going v 58

Right through this chapter Paul points out the futility of unbelief
and the need for Christians to continue to believe
2 By this gospel you are saved,
if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
14 if Christ has not been raised,
our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;
you are still in your sins.
18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ,
we are to be pitied more than all men.

Paul highlights the futility of human life without faith in the risen Lord.
That is the big question which should be posed to people who will not believe.
What is your purpose? Why do you do what you do?
That's the big theme of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.
The writer considers everything that happens 'under the sun'
'God has made everything beautiful in its time,
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;
yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.'

An Easter faith does not give us answers to everything
but it connects us to the one who does know and care and save.

Resurrection truth tells us that God does what he says
that there is a new life to look forward to in faith in Christ
but pity those who think it’s only compost afterwards.
In rejecting Jesus, they make the most awesome and eternal mistake.

What's the bottom line then? Don't give in. Don't give up.
Receive the victory over sin, be confident in the triumph over death
and therefore keep going

58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you.
Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.'

The truth of the resurrection encourages us
not only to look forward to meeting Jesus after we die
but also to do whatever we do now with renewed joy and hope.

Maybe you are tired and burned out spiritually today.
You’ve done your best for Jesus but so few seem to listen.
People go their own Christless way and it’s dispiriting
and you wonder why you bother.
Paul is saying to us that the resurrection means
we should stand firm and let nothing move us,
always giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because we know that our labour in the Lord is not in vain.

But this truth goes further than just spiritual realities.
What Paul has been writing about the resurrection of the body
means that this life matters as well as the next
and how we live in this life determines how we shall be in the next.
And it means that all of this life matters
what we do and how we relate and live at any point.

The problem is that many have been deceived by an old Greek philosophy
which suggests that this present physical life is soiled and degrading
and the sooner we can be rid of it the better.
That is not what the Bible says at any point.
Yes, this present life is soiled by sin
but God’s plan is that we be rid of the sin and its judgement
to serve him in a new creation.
It is not that we escape this tainted body
and our pure spirit flies off to some air fairy heaven
but that this body, and this present life
weak and frail as they are, are transformed into resurrection life.
There will be not only a new heaven but also a new earth.
And there is a profound carry through from this life and this earth
to the new life and the new earth
so that everything we do in this life, even the everyday earthly things,
caring for the environment, doing our work well, respecting other people.
has an eternal significance.