I am a bit stuck on this giving thanks stuff right now. I focused on it last Sunday morning and have to confess I am not sure that I did the subject justice; hence my second try via this medium.

One of the verses that I mentioned last Sunday deserved far more thought and so here goes:

Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. John 6:23

The bread spoken of here is referring to the feeding of the 5,000. Now, there was only a kid’s lunch – five barley loaves and a couple of little fish – but after Jesus gave thanks, five thousand were fed and they picked up five baskets of scraps after the meal! The author points out that people saw Jesus’ giving thanks as the catalyst for a miracle.

I talk a lot about climate change and am convinced that a simple act of thanksgiving can change the environment in which we live. People today just assume that what they get they have a right to! With such a mindset thanksgiving is hardly a high priority. While my Year Two Scripture class might think that Pastor John fulfils the task on automatic pilot, the two or three, who each week, without fail, come up to me and say ‘Thank you Pastor John’, have no idea what an encouragement that is. Incidentally, by Year 5 and 6 we have knocked that grateful chromosome out of them and I rarely hear a similar word from those older kids.

Why do I believe so strongly in the local church? Mainly because I am so deeply grateful for what a local congregation in Victoria did for me a good many years ago now. I remain so thankful for the friends who continue to support me from previous congregations and am humbled by the continued love, care and support of this local faith community at NorthWest Uniting. If you haven’t felt thanked lately, my apologies!

Why is the Christian faith more important to me than a set of moral laws to live by and a tag that says I am apparently not an atheist? It’s simple really. You know that stuff in the Bible about God giving his Son to come and live among us and show us an alternative to the bland ‘religious’ existence that we have become used to? I believe that. The words of Jesus: ‘life in abundance, streams of living water, take up your bed and walk, Lazarus, come out! Father, forgive them.’ All those and many more, I believe! I believe and am grateful.

The whole Jesus story, birth, life, ministry, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension; I believe and am thankful, because without this amazing truth, I am unsure where I would be today.

In the same chapter as the above reading about giving thanks we find that Jesus’ popularity has dropped away and people were leaving him. Jesus turned to his mates – the twelve – and said, ‘Do you also want to go away?’ Simon Peter gets a bit of bad press, but surely his reply is one of the great moments in Scripture:
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. John 6:68

I give up! Where else am I going to go? As a pastor who for the past twenty years has been involved in a challenging ministry of clearing, ploughing, sowing and nourishing new ground, there has been any number of disappointments and hurts. But man, where else am I going to go? Amidst all of the hard ground, pilfering birds, stones, rocks and weeds, I have seen God powerfully at work. I have been given so much and experienced so much blessing that the best I can do is continue to be thankful to God through Christ and hopefully encourage a similar spirit among others.

If something else works for you, that’s cool I guess; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

By what standard

I asked the question last Sunday: Are you a disciple of Jesus or simply a Christian by current standards? The question is not my own as I read it somewhere and I read so darned much that now I can’t find the source. I think that it is a question worth consideration.

The current standard will offer a wide range of choices depending on the context and culture in which we live. Being a disciple of Jesus – a follower of Jesus – is a very different call indeed.

We will all have a favourite Bible verse that speaks to us and I guess that mine change on a regular basis. However one verse sticks with me and I am aware that it is a favourite of many:

‘He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.’ Micah 6:8

It is an Old Testament reading and I like to think that it might have been a favourite of Jesus also. I have several Bibles but I like to keep one as my ‘working’ Bible. I have two on my desk that offer me a whole bunch of trimmings. One is an excellent study Bible and the other a great devotional resource; but my working Bible is the one that gets dog eared, sweat stained, underlined, highlighted and scribbled on. Maybe Jesus had special parts of his Scriptures highlighted and old Micah was one of them?

Certainly as a disciple of Jesus I see his justice shine through as I follow him along the road. I see him take time for an outcast woman so desperate for healing that she had faith enough to just touch the hem of his robe. ‘Who touched my clothes?’ Jesus asked. Who touches us today? Who is it pushing through the usual crowd of our favoured ones, just seeking to be touched, seen or heard among the throng?

I see kindness as I follow Jesus along the way. I see it in the way he called children to him in a time where little ones had little or no status. I see it in the crying out of a blind beggar and Jesus stopping on his way to simply offer him hope. Perhaps Jesus’ stopping and taking notice was the beginning of healing for a man who not only could not see; but others failed to see him also? People talk about doing random acts of kindness. There was nothing random about Jesus’ kindness, it was who he was.

As I follow after Jesus, I see a life of humility. For Jesus it wasn’t a matter of ‘look at me’ but ‘look at them’. It all began in the feed trough of animals in a stable and it ended on a rubbish dump hanging from a cross. In between he rejected popularity and power, instead choosing to follow another voice; a quieter but a greater one.

At the end of his life Jesus stood before the ‘powers’ of the day. He was called before the religious leaders who scorned him, spat on him and struck him. He was sent to the political power of the day in Pontius Pilate who had him whipped and then crucified in exchange for a bandit named Barabbas. His best friend denied him and the crowds who cheered him on Palm Sunday gathered for the execution on Friday. Predicting Peter’s betrayal Jesus promised: ‘but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail’. To those gathered at the cross: ‘Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.’

Am I a disciple of Jesus or simply a Christian by current standards?

What's it all about church?

Many years ago now I attended a workshop at an evangelism conference that focused on reaching young people. It was almost twenty five years ago but I still remember the workshop leader’s name and I can recite the main verse of his text from Ezekiel chapter 3 by heart:

‘I came to the exiles at Tel Abib, who lived by the river Chebar. And I sat there among them, stunned, for seven days.’

Whenever I risk getting a little down on myself and begin to doubt my ministry and calling, I recall those words from Ezekiel and give myself a swift upper cut and get back to things. I am an evangelist and teacher. There may be times when some will think I am not very good at either, and that’s okay because I am not here to pander to others, but rather to serve an audience of one.

Another key verse for me is in Luke 19: ‘For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

I am really good with ‘exiles’ and ‘lost’ people and not so good with those who are already found, because I see the lost as the work of the church and the found need to be about that work.

Ezekiel was called to ministry among his own people. God was kind and made sure that he was well equipped: ‘See, I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads. Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead.

I was reminded this week of the ‘Liverpool kiss’. If you are a Scot it can be known as the Glasgow kiss also. In fact it was a Scot who tried it out on me one day during a soccer match. We had been having a good tussle all day and at one point, late in the game, my opponent grabbed me by the shirt and clearly was about to administer his trade mark love tap to my nose. Now, I am not fond of pain and in positions of danger my reflexes used to work really well. As his head powered forward I dropped mine and our foreheads collided. I was okay but my friend lay at my feet bordering on unconscious! God gave me a hard head.

He also gave me a soft heart and particularly soft for those who – in church parlance – are lost. You see, I was lost for a long time and I know the feeling. In fact while the lostness has long gone I still retain a good memory of these times and it is that which continually shapes my ministry.

I still like to sit among the exiles and very often I am stunned in their presence. Oh, many play a good game; but you see I played that game as well. I could probably have captained the team; I was that good. There are different things that tell about being lost. Eyes are windows into people’s world and it is hard cover the feelings of being lost and empty. Mouths are clues to people’s worlds as well. We try to cover being lost with clever words, loud words, deceitful words or insulting words. Of course it is not just the ‘lost’ that suffer from these symptoms.

When I begin to tire of church budgets, Occupational Health type stuff, property and meetings for this or that matter - When feelings of disappointment, disillusion and/or any other dis’s I might think of, begin to invade my territory; I remember the exiled and I remember my gifting and call.

The call is not mine alone; it is the central call of our lives as Christ followers. If we follow Christ then He will lead us to serve with him among the exiles. It is in our DNA. We can do no less.

Joined and knit together

I have been reflecting on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians of late and particularly chapter 4. My focus has been on the role and responsibilities of leaders within the church as I seek to bring a more regional style of ministry to the church in this region. However, once I got past our task to ‘equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ’; I then dallied on the rest of this magnificent picture of the church. Challenging – but magnificent!

Paul uses some great nouns in this chapter: humility, gentleness, patience, unity, truth, kindness, forgiveness. How many of those did you tick?

He uses a lot of ones. One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith one baptism, one God; Unity was really big for Paul. It was big for Jesus also:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17

My quote in the first paragraph was incomplete and it goes on to paint what Paul saw as the ultimate goal of the church: ‘..until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. That was Paul’s goal, but he was no blind optimist: We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.’ Here is a Pastor/colleague who sees what might be but is ever aware of what is.

I have often said that I see one of my key roles as being that of defining reality. Everybody else has a go at it, so surely those who believe that we are created in the image of God are entitled to enter into the debate? Paul builds on the image of a body ‘joined and knit together’ that has each part contributing to the whole as it builds itself up in love. This might be the moment when you take a little ‘dream moment’ and reflect on what that could look like for you, your faith community and the world.

We have just survived yet another election here in New South Wales. These events bring language very much into focus for me. We hear different words at these times: factions is a popular word, and we hear that some are left or right of centre, wet or dry, conservative, labour, green and so many other shades or interest group. You don’t hear ‘joined and knit together’ all that much?!

I love Paul’s touch of irony: You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.

There are truly delicious pictures here! I have no idea why people would opt for a bland, lifeless, formalized – can I toss in anaemic – faith, when an offer such as this is on the table?

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

I don’t know, it’s got me beat. We are offered this amazing gift and sometimes we might stop for a while and ponder; but too often, our response is, ‘Nah! Thanks all the same. I’m cool.’

Paul begins this chapter by begging his audience to take seriously their call to faith and he ends it superbly:

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Thanks Paul. If no one else reads this bit of trifle today; the exercise of reflection in the midst of a busy day has done my heart good.