Christmas 07-12-14
Here’s one I made earlier. A Christingle. And here’s one I bought, a beautiful Christmas bauble. No prizes for guessing which one is most aesthetically pleasing. The version of the Christingle story I read earlier emphasises the haphazard nature of the construction of the first Christingle, an orange that was a bit past it’s best an old ribbon, a few bits of dried fruit or sweets. And here it is a funny looking rather lopsided thing. It might not even last till Christmas; it might have started to go off before then. The first time I made them in school they began to rot and turn green on my windowsill filling the room with a horrible smell. In some ways they seem a bit of an insult to Christmas.
Whereas this bauble is beautiful, perfect, made for the purpose, reassuringly expensive as the advert has it, I can enjoy this decoration this year and then carefully pack it
away and bring it out year after year to adorn my tree and beautify my home. Surely this is a much more fitting ornament to mark the birth of our saviour and king?
And as I thought about the beautiful bauble and the rather haphazard looking Christingle then I began to think about Christmas, about the first Christmas, about God miraculously sending his only son to earth to be our lord and our saviour, and about our response to that miracle. Is our response to Gods miracle of Christmas a Christingle or a bauble? Are we bauble Christians or Christingle Christians? Or indeed can we be both?
Bauble Christians like to come to church at Christmas time, they like the beautifully decorated churches, they like singing the carols probably preferring the traditional ones, none of this new-fangled stuff, they like seeing children performing nativity plays with tea towels on their heads and fluffy lambs. They love the age old story; they get a warm glow when they think about God becoming man and being born in a stable. And then they sit down and eat a HUGE Christmas lunch.
And there is nothing wrong with any of that except that those bauble Christians often do with Christmas what I am going to do with this beautiful decoration. Once Christmas is over they pack it all away and they don’t think about it till they bring it out again next year. They are Christmas tourists, they want to look at it and experience the wonder and awe with their senses but they don’t want to engage with it, they want to keep their distance; they don’t want to respond to it, get involved with it, get their hands dirty or consider that the message of Christmas lasts all year round.
The wise men who set out to seek for a new king were expecting a particular kind of king. They looked in the place where they expected to find a king, in a palace. Somewhere rich and beautiful with silk drapes carved furniture, all shiny and beautiful, sparkling with gold and gems. Surely this is where a king should be found. But Jesus wasn’t there.
And if we are, or want to be, Christingle Christians then I think we need to travel with the wise men, and maybe even some wise women, we need to see past the sentimental delights of the bauble Christmas to find the reality that lies beneath.
The king the wise men were seeking was found in a stable. Well actually not a stable or even a barn but a cave on the hillside used for keeping animals, that famous ox and ass. A smelly cave with animals, real animals, not the smiling amiable animals of the Christmas cards but actual animals a bit dirty and unkempt, and maybe bad tempered about being disturbed, stamping their feet and snorting. Real animals in a real cave with old straw and mud and animal droppings, a place where you had to watch where you put your feet, a very unlikely place to find a king.
And this king wasn’t a man with a jewelled crown and rich robes this was a new-born baby, a baby born in a cave with only his young and ill-prepared parents in attendance. A baby born like every other baby is born, with blood and sweat and tears, because a real birth can be a messy, frightening, long and painful experience.
And who were the first visitors to this king, shepherds. Now we don’t always realise how shepherds were regarded in first century Palestine. They would have been a pretty scruffy lot and because they were out tending their sheep they missed a lot of temple worship so from a
religious point of view they were beyond the pale. The whole scene, so familiar to us from Christmas cards and nativity tableau, cleaned up and sanitised would have been dirty, smelly and pretty chaotic. And perhaps the Carol ‘Away in a Manger’is correct perhaps the baby Jesus didn’t cry but my experience of babies would lead me to think otherwise!
A smelly and messy and scary scene yet God took it and transformed it into the most important event in history, God becoming man to save his creation.
I think it does us good as we approach Christmas to think about that first Christmas and to think about what kind of king was born in that cave, what kind of king is OUR Lord and saviour. Our King wasn’t born in a bubble of privilege and wealth our king was born into the real world. The
God we speak to in our prayers is not ‘a God who doesn’t care who lives a way up there’, he is a God who knows intimately what it is like for us. Jesus knows about lives lived in the real world, he knows about the joys and the sorrows of family life. He knows that sometimes our lives can be chaotic and frightening, painful and out of control. God sent Jesus to earth to close the distance between God and his creation, God became man and lived in the messy world that we all inhabit. God knows first-hand what it means to live as a human.
So if we want to be Christingle Christians then we need to be aware that we are not expected to live in a lovely Christmas bauble we too are expected to live in the real world, the smelly, mouldy world. We are expected to get our hands dirty as we seek to bring the message of Christmas to everyone. We need to know about the real suffering in our world, the poverty, the disease, the homelessness, the loneliness; the families that are falling apart, the children dying needlessly and we need to decide what we are going to do to make life better for those in our world who are struggling for whatever reason.
Amongst all the lovely words read from the bible at this time of year we often hear these:
‘For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.’
Jesus was sent as the supreme act of God’s love for his creation and our response to that ultimate Christmas gift is the gift of our love to the world.
We cannot be Christmas tourists we need to be Christmas activists using our time our money our prayers and our influence in all the messy, chaotic and scary situations in
the world to bring hope and reassurance to bring love and safety, to bring Jesus.
We cannot celebrate Christmas for one day or one season and then pack it away for the rest of the year, the message of Christmas , the message that the angels gave the shepherd ‘
‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.’
Is the message that we need to believe, to spread and to work to share with everyone in Gods world.
So as we approach Christmas are we bauble Christians or are we Christingle Christians? Well I’m a great one for trying to have it all; I think we can be both. It’s OK to enjoy all the sentimental, traditions. It’s OK to have a huge lunch and watch mindless TV. It’s wonderful to
spend time with family and friends. But let’s remember that is just the tip of the ice-berg, Christmas is about so much more than that.
The reality is that a baby, Jesus was born
‘because of the tender mercy of our God, to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the path of peace.’
So as Christingle Christians let’s make sure that we too shine in the darkness for Jesus, shine in the darkness of our world not just at Christmas but every day of the year, every day of our lives.
 

After Christmas
When the songs of the angels are stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their
Flocks,the work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among people
To make music in the heart
To make music in the heart
Amen

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
¬I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost

Choices

This morning we have already made a large number of choices, most of them not very important, perhaps we had to choose marmalade or marmite on our toast, tea or coffee to drink. Some of the choices we make don’t even seem like choices, to get up or stay in bed, to get dressed or not get dressed, these kinds of choices we make without even thinking about them, we always get up, we always get dressed but even so they are free choices that we make. We all make choices all the time, some of them important and life changing, many of them small and unimportant. We have all chosen to come to church this morning. As a teacher part of my job is helping young people to make good choices in all aspects of their lives. Jean Paul Sarte said ‘we are our choices’ and in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter is told, ‘it is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.’ As Robert Frost said our choices make all the difference. We make choices and they have consequences.

In our reading from Exodus this morning the Israelites had to make a choice. They were about to leave Egypt, they were about to begin their long time of wandering in the wilderness before they reached the Promised Land. Slavery was what they knew but that was about to end. They were coming to the last of the ten plagues. Now, up till then the plagues had been targeted at the Egyptians and the Israelites had been pretty much untouched, the flies, the hail, and the darkness affected the Egyptians not the Israelites, they had stood back and watched as God worked out his plans, as Moses tried to convince the Pharaoh to release then from slavery, but up until then they were not involved in the process of their own freedom. They were like a prisoner sitting in his cell whilst lawyers work for his release.

But now this all changed. The lesser plagues had not changed Pharaoh’s mind but now comes the big one, God was turning the tables on the Egyptians, just as they had killed the Israelite children, God was now threatening to kill the first born of the Egyptians. Up till this point the Israelites had not had choices but now it was their turn to choose. The choice was brought before every household. Should they show their allegiance to God and Moses by following the complicated rules that Moses set out for them rules about how the lamb should be slaughtered, how it should be eaten how the blood should be painted on the doors and so on, or would they stay with what they knew? Every household had a choice to make, as the last visitation from God draws near, they have to take a part, and a very decided part, in showing that they know and understand that they are Israel, God’s chosen people, the covenant people who enjoyed a special relationship with God. The Angel of Death comes, treating everyone who is in Egypt as belonging fully to Egypt, and it is for the Israelites to show by some significant act the deep difference which separates them from the Egyptians. Throw in your lot with God, believe his promises or choose not to, you decide! Everything depends on the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the door, the sign and seal of the covenant with God.
And you know it must in the final analysis have been a hard choice to make. All they knew was slavery, oh yes they moaned and complained but there is a certain easiness in being a slave, other people make the decisions, you don’t have to think too much or take responsibility for yourself. In the excellent film the Shawshank Redemption there is man, Brookes, who has been in prison for most of his life, at long last he is released but he finds that he cannot live on the outside, it is too scary and he kills himself. Freedom is scary. And the Israelites have to decide, choose slavery or choose freedom, Choose death or choose life.

Right from the start in the Garden of Eden God gave humanity free will to make choices. God told Adam and Eve ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ” but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’ Choose death or choose life. The choice was made and the results had to be lived with, because choices have consequences.
And in John’s gospel we read about the ultimate choice and its consequences. Jesus said these very well-known words ‘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.’ And then immediately after what is perhaps not so well known the consequences, he says whoever believes in me is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.’ Choosing to follow Jesus and live in his way is our free choice; God does not compel us to worship him, to trust in him. We are not his puppets we are given free will. God could compel us to love him but as we know one of the greatest things about love is that it is freely given. God chooses to love us and he leaves us free to decide whether or not we will love him in return. Jesus lets us choose but he also makes it clear what the consequences of our choice are. Choose death or choose life.

At the end of September we in Scotland had to make a choice, for some people it was an easy choice. But for others myself included it was a hard decision to make. Everyone wanted to make the best choice for the people of Scotland but without a crystal ball it seemed quite difficult to know which way to vote. I guess it was much the same for those Israelites in Egypt, should they stick with what they knew, what was familiar or step out into the unknown. And a lot of times it must have seemed to the Israelites that they had made the wrong choice, the hardships of their time in the wilderness made them long to be back in Egypt as slaves again. I wonder if it will be the same for us in Scotland, will we have times when we feel that we have made the wrong choice.

As a nation the Referendum choice was the most important choice we have had to make in a long time. But as individuals we all have a much more important choice to make, the same choice the Israelites had. The Israelites had to choose whether or not to trust God and follow his rules. They had to take a step of faith following God into an unknown future trusting that he would lead them aright. And we too have to choose whether or not we will trust God and follow him into the future.

And whatever choice we make there will be consequences, sometimes hard consequences. The Israelites had forty years in the wilderness, many who left Egypt never saw the Promised Land, and the result of their choice was the hardship of the journey. Many of the disciples of Jesus were persecuted, tortured and killed, as were many of the early church as are many Christians round the world today. Their choice had hard consequences. And so it maybe for us, choosing to follow Jesus is no guarantee of an easy life, sometimes it seems quite the reverse.
The Israelites, the chosen people, were told to take a lamb, a perfect Iamb without physical blemish and they were told to kill it and daub the blood on the doorposts. The blood of that lamb guaranteed their freedom from slavery, guaranteed them life not death. We here today are God’s chosen people, God has chosen us. And just as the Israelites had the sacrificial lamb we have Jesus the Lamb of God, Jesus whose blood is the sign and seal of the new covenant. Paul in his letter to the Hebrews wrote that through his blood Christ is the mediator of the new covenant so that those who follow him ‘may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.’ God has chosen us, he has chosen to send his son Jesus to be our saviour and for all those who chose to follow him the consequence is eternal life.

In our lives there will be many important choices for us to make as well as the plethora of trivial day to day choices but choosing to follow Jesus, choosing eternal life with him is the most important choice anyone can make. Joshua said ‘fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ Choose, Choose Life!

SERMON “Honour and Remembrance”
As we look at the media coverage of today’s Remembrance events, we see medals which speak of occasions of immense bravery and dedication in military service to this country. And those occasions in turn represent years of training, discipline, application and sheer hard work, often, without doubt, in difficult, dangerous and unpleasant conditions.

Many in my generation and in the young generation have never known the immediacy of war and so our understanding may be shaped disproportionately by the film industry in which we see depicted heroic, uniformed men doing daring feats to preserve our freedom against evil aggressors – it can be the stuff of epic sagas and lavish movies. The news reports from Afghanistan in the past years, months, weeks and days are therefore stark reminders for us all that war can not only present unimaginable horrors for the combatants, but can rob families and whole communities of loved ones. Only rarely is it a time or place of glory.

The Christian observance of Remembrance Sunday doesn’t glorify war. Remembrance Sunday is a time when we are honest about the horrors of war, recognising the sacrifice many brave men and women have made fighting for what they believe in. Much of our remembrance is focussed on the Second World War, and there is no doubt that in the 1930s a great evil swept throughout Europe and that without the resistance of the allied forces our world would have been overwhelmed by that evil. But the threat from terrorist organisations around the world today is arguably just as menacing. Those who have faced those threats, and continue to do so, deserve our heartfelt gratitude.

We honour them today; the fallen, the survivors, the present combatants. We honour the courage of those who were willing to fight for what they believed was right. We honour the sacrifice of those who stood fast in the face of unimaginable horrors. We honour those who gave, and continue to give, so much.

Yet, honour and gratitude aren’t the complete picture, either. What of debates about the justification for war. War gives rise to such hugely conflicting emotions.
On one side there is the strength of communal feeling, of community, of all being in it together, of being part of a courageous country facing up to evil.

But the other side of the heroic and selfless patriotism of war is the horror: the ugliness and the atrocities, the brutalising, the inhumanity, the massacre of innocents and the terrible, needless, sometimes lifelong suffering of the victims.

And for a Christian, between those two aspects of nobility and ugliness, lies the tension. Is it right to defeat evil through warfare, knowing the terrible costs of war? Or would the costs be worse, would evil get its way, if we refused to go to war? Is war the lesser of two terrible evils?

Jesus said: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27) He also said: “Do not resist one who is evil. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matt. 5:39) And he refused to be seen as the military saviour the Jews were expecting.

But this world we live in today is a very different one. Communications then were nothing like they are now, where we all know appalling details of gas chambers and of prison camps like Auschwitz and Dachau and Belsen; appalling details of the denial of human rights by some governments which is still happening today and the terrible toll of terrorist attacks across the globe.

Perhaps Jesus spoke in the singular: “Do not resist one who is evil”. He didn’t say anything about mass evil. Indeed when he found evil perpetrated by a large group, that is by the rulers of the temple and the moneychangers, he used force against them to clear the temple. He was on familiar terms with army leaders (remember how he cured the centurion’s servant) and in Luke 14:31-32 he uses the army as an illustration to make a point, when he says,” Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace”. So perhaps he wasn’t a pacifist.

We know that war, though brutal, can be an effective and a relatively swift way of dealing decisively with evil. Yet increasingly many people in the west, particularly Christians, feel extremely uneasy about supporting wars.

To war or not to war! That is the question. And it’s a question that’s certainly been rumbling about increasingly in this country. It is a question which I cannot, and would not, presume to answer. But I’m pretty sure that the ultimate desire of all Christians is to experience the state described in our reading from Micah:

The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
3 He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

That’s the ideal voiced in the bible, but for us it seems to be utopia: we simply don’t know how to achieve it.

But I do know this. I do know I’m standing here today because of the sacrifices made by others. I have the freedom to say whatever I wish to say. I have the freedom to worship however I wish to worship. I live in a country which, for all its faults, at least upholds human rights.

In our Gospel reading today we heard: ‘Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.’ The sacrifice of so many through 2 world wars and in the on-going conflicts in our world is brought about by a desire to stand up for what is right, to fight for truth and justice. We can only be thankful for those who are willing to fight for our freedom.

So let us continue to honour our dead and to hold high the torch which they can no longer carry. Let us in our own way fight for justice, peace and truth – and be willing to give ourselves up for that fight, as Jesus gave himself up to death for each one of us.

Amen.

Up to this point we have seen Jesus, as it were, on the attack. He had spoken two parables in which he had plainly upset the orthodox Jewish leaders. In the parable of the Prodigal Son the Jewish leaders appear under the guise of the unsatisfactory son who did not do his father’s will. In the parable of the king’s feast they are the condemned guests for having excuses for not being there.
Now we see the Jewish leaders launching their counterattack; and they do so by directing at Jesus carefully formulated questions. They ask these questions in public, while the crowd look on and listen, and their aim is to make Jesus discredit himself by his own words in the presence of the people. Here, then, we have the question of the Pharisees, and it was subtly framed. Palestine was an occupied country and the Jews were subject to the Roman Empire; and the question was: “Is it, or is it not, lawful to pay tribute to Rome?”
There were, in fact, three regular taxes which the
Roman government exacted. There was a ground tax; a man must pay to the government one tenth of the grain, and one fifth of the oil and wine which he produced; this tax was paid partly in kind, and partly in a money equivalent.
There was income tax, which was one per cent of a man’s income.
There was a poll tax; this tax had to be paid by every male person from the age of fourteen to the age of sixty-five, and by every female person from the age of twelve to sixty-five; it amounted to one denarius (what Jesus called the tribute coin)—and was the equivalent of about 4p, a sum which is to be evaluated in the awareness that 3p was the usual day’s wage for a working-man. The tax in question here is the poll tax.
The question which the Pharisees asked set Jesus a very real dilemma. If he said that it was unlawful to pay the tax, they would promptly report him to the Roman government officials as a seditious person and his arrest would certainly follow. If he said that it was lawful to pay the tax, he would stand discredited in the eyes of many of the people. Not only did the people resent the tax; they resented it even more for religious reasons. To a Jew God was the only king; their nation was based on
this; to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and thereby to insult God. Therefore the more fanatical of the Jews insisted that any tax paid to a foreign king was necessarily wrong. Whichever way Jesus might answer—so his questioners thought-he would lay himself open to trouble. Jesus appeared to be between a rock and a hard place.
The seriousness of this attack is shown by the fact that the Pharisees and the Herodians combined to make it, for normally these two parties were in bitter opposition. The Pharisees were the supremely orthodox, who resented the payment of the tax to a foreign king as an infringement of the divine right of God. The Herodians were the party of Herod, king of Galilee, who owed his power to the Romans and who worked hand in glove with them. The Pharisees and the Herodians were strange bed-fellows indeed; their differences were for the moment forgotten in a common hatred of Jesus and a common desire to eliminate him. A common principle following from this is that any man who insists on his own way, no matter what it is, will hate Jesus.
This question of tax-paying was not of merely historical
interest. Matthew was writing between A.D. 80 and 90. The Temple had been destroyed in A.D. 70. So long as the Temple stood, every Jew had been bound to pay the half-shekel Temple tax. After the destruction of the Temple, the Roman government demanded that that tax should be paid to the temple of Jupiter in Rome. It is obvious how bitter a regulation that was for a Jew to stomach. The matter of taxes was a real problem in the actual ministry of Jesus; and it was still a real problem in the days of the early Church.
But Jesus was wise. He asked to see a denarius, which was stamped with the Emperor’s head. In the ancient days coinage was the sign of kingship. As soon as a king came to the throne he struck his own coinage; even a pretender would produce a coinage to show the reality of his kingship; and that coinage was held to be the property of the king whose image it bore. Jesus asked whose image was on the coin. The answer was that Caesar’s head was on it. “Well then,” said Jesus, “give it back to Caesar, it is his. Give to Caesar what belongs to him; and give to God what belongs to him”
With his unique wisdom Jesus never laid down rules and regulations; that is why his teaching is timeless and never goes out of date. He always lays down principles. Here he lays down a very great and very important one.
Every Christian has a double citizenship. He is a citizen of the country in which he happens to live. To it he owes many things. He owes the safety against lawless men which only settled government can give; he owes all public services. To take a simple example, few men are wealthy enough to have a lighting system or a cleansing system or a water system of their own. These are public services. In a welfare state the citizen owes still more to the state—education, medical services, provision for unemployment and for old age. This places him under a debt of obligation. Because the Christian is a man of honour, he must be a responsible citizen; failure in good citizenship is also failure in Christian duty. Untold troubles can descend upon a country or an industry when Christians refuse to take their part in the administration and leave it to selfish, self-seeking, partisan, and unchristian men. The Christian has a duty to Caesar in return for the privileges which the rule of Caesar brings to him.
But the Christian is also a citizen of heaven. There are matters of religion and of principle in which the responsibility of the Christian is to God. It may well be that the two citizenships will never clash; they do not need to. But when the Christian is convinced that it is God’s will that something should be done, it must be done; or, if he is convinced that something is against the Will of God, he must resist it and take no part in it. Where the boundaries between the two duties lie, Jesus does not say. That is for a man’s own conscience to test. But a real Christian—and this is the permanent truth which Jesus lays down here —is at one and the same time a good citizen of his country and a good citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. He will fail in his duty neither to God nor to man. He will, as Peter said, “Fear God, and honour the emperor”.
And this sense of responsibility is one which must be borne by the Guild as an organisation, and by its individual members. As well as being a source of friendship, sharing of Christian values and involvement in practical projects, the Guild has always been a voice of reason and measured response, both locally and nationally, and this is something to be treasured by the Church of Scotland.
Let us pray –
Dear Father, help us all to see where our duty lies as members of society and as Christians, and give us courage to do what is right. Amen

Exodus 3.1-17
May the Words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight Oh God our rock and our redeemer.

The story we read from Exodus is a very familiar one about the call of Moses to the service of God. As Christians we too are called to be followers of Christ and we are also called to service of God so there may be lessons that we can learn today from an event that happened so many thousands of years ago.
At the beginning of Chapter three we find Moses tending sheep on Mount Horeb for his father-in-law Jethro. As we know Moses had grown up as the adopted son of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s daughter in the Egyptian court. Despite this he still identified with the Israelite slaves as “his people,” and in an impulsive act of retribution for the Israelites oppression, he had killed an Egyptian. Fleeing for his life, Moses made a new life in Midian, married, raised a family and become a shepherd. And it was whilst he was working as a shepherd that Moses saw the sight that surprised him, the burning bush. Now a bush spontaneously catching fire would not have been a strange sight in that area but one that kept burning and burning and did not turn black and eventually burn away was indeed unusual. So Moses approached the bush to find out what was going and it was then that God called to him from within the bush.
God had a plan for Moses, he had been saved from slaughter brought up in the Egyptian court and even though he killed an Egyptian God knew that Moses was the right man for the job. He may have thought that he had put Egypt and the plight of the Israelites behind him but God had other ideas.
And so it is with us God calls us in his time, when he knows it is the right time. He knows what we have done and where we have been and even though we may not feel that it is the right time for us God chooses us at the correct time for him. There is a line in the Hymn Lord in the fullness of my might which says , ‘O choose me in my golden time’ and the implication is that God should choose us when we are young and fit, well God chooses us in HIS golden time, the time that is right for his purposes.

So the startled Moses approached the bush and God tells him to stop, to go no further and to take off his shoes. And God speaks to Moses from out of the burning bush. God begins to give Moses a summary of what he God has been doing he tells Moses that he has seen the misery of the Israelites, that he has come down to rescue them, that he is going to bring them out of Egypt to another land a wonderful land. And then he says ‘So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.’
We can imagine that Moses was a bit taken a back, maybe even a lot taken aback. He was going with the flow listening to God telling him all about what God was doing and was going to do and he might well have expected God to carry on and say that God was also going to go to Pharaoh and rescue the Israelites. But then suddenly it’s Moses who is going to be doing the rescuing.
Moses is amazed and horrified “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” he says, in other words ‘why me?’ And I think many of us can sympathise with that question. Like Moses we know that things need to be done in the world, we are sympathetic to the need but we think that someone else, someone better qualified than us should be doing it whatever it is. I can’t do this says Moses and God responds ‘I will be with you.’ God saw the oppression, he heard the cries of the slaves and he God is going to rescue them and take them to the Promised Land. God is going to do it but he is going to use Moses. God did not need Moses in order to achieve his purposes, God does not need us and yet he chooses to include us in his plans.

When we are called to do God’s will we do it not in our own strength but in God’s strength. God said to Moses I will be with you and he promised him a sign of his faithfulness. When we are called by God we are enabled by God. I have a favourite quotation from Martin Luther King that you may have heard before but it bears repeating. When the road ahead seemed too tough for King he prayed to God for help and God gave him the same answer he gave to Moses, God said I will never leave you alone, no never alone. True for Moses, true for Martin Luther King and true for us now. This promise gives us confidence that whatever the difficulties whatever the trials God will be there with us. It says that God will even carry us when we cannot manage on our own as it said in our reading from Footsteps in the Sand.
At the beginning of the service we committed ourselves to being peacemakers here in Scotland. The weeks up to the referendum have seen views from both sides of the debate put across forcefully; there have been strong views on either side. There have been arguments and I believe two women nearly came to blows in the Lamlash Coop!
But now is the time for reconciliation and that won’t come easily to many people and I believe that the Church of Scotland and individual Christians can be key to the process of peacemaking. Whilst we see the need for reconciliation many of us may find it hard to speak out but Jesus said ‘blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called Children of God and it is in Gods strength that we are called to speak out for peace and reconciliation in our land of Scotland.
This Old Testament story about the call of Moses still speaks to us and to our world and its situations today. But no matter how wonderful Moses call was it was only the beginning. Gods promise to Moses to be with him is fulfilled in us to a degree that neither Moses nor any of the Old Testament saints ever envisaged. We here today can say that through Christ we don’t just have God with us we have the spirit of Christ himself dwelling in us. God is not just with us but through Christ he is in us and we are in him. God promised Moses a sign of his faithfulness and through the death and resurrection of Jesus we have been given the ultimate sign of God’s constant love and care for us.

Through Jesus we are enabled to have a close and personal relationship with the almighty. Yes we should feel awe and wonder and respect for our creator but just as God told Moses his name because Moses was special to God, Jesus has given us a new name for God because since Jesus we have a new and special relationship with God. Jesus has told us that we can call God Father. God is our loving heavenly father; he calls us to salvation and to service, he gives us his strength for the work he wants us to do, he is always with us and in us. Moses only got to see the Promised Land from afar, but through God’s grace we live in Scotland a land flowing with milk and honey and it is our challenge through God’s strength to love it and protect it for generations to come .

“Who am I?”
There has been much media coverage of this 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1. At home we have watched quite a number of TV programmes and there was one in particular that caught me – Kate Adie looking at the role of women during that war and afterwards. The story was told of Lady Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. At the very start of the war, when the Germans had invaded Belgium, Lady Millicent, a 46 year old mother of three, left her home and went to Belgium to set up a hospital so that the wounded would have more prompt attention. She moved to France eventually and stayed there until the end of the war, continuing with her nursing duties. I wonder how many people have heard of her and yet she contributed significantly to many, many lives.

There’s a parallel here between Lady Millicent and the five women we have just read about in Exodus. They are: two Hebrew midwives; Moses mother; Moses’ older sister; and a princess of Egypt, Pharaoh’s daughter.

Five women, who at that time were automatically marginalised because of their gender, not seen critical for the history of a people; not seen as significant in the least. It’s a curious way to begin the great epic story of the Exodus. In fact, we usually tell the story from the perspective of Moses – the innocent little baby floating down the Nile who grows up to lead his people to freedom.

Let’s take a closer look at these five women of Exodus.

Shiphrah and Puah were midwives. Have you ever heard of them before? They are not included on any top ten lists of biblical characters; most people have never heard their names before. We don’t know whether they were Hebrews or Egyptians, but we do know that their job was to tend the Hebrew women when they went into labour.

Pharaoh knew this, of course, and thought it would be an excellent way to stop the ever increasing numbers of the Hebrews right where it started, so he ordered the two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah to kill any male babies born to Hebrew women. In other words “when the baby is delivered get rid of it if it’s a boy”. It was a simple plan of genocide that, in Pharaoh’s mind, would not be too complicated to enact. And so he gave the order to the midwives, dusted off his hands, and went back to dreaming big plans for the building of Egypt.

The third woman of Exodus is not named here, but we know her name from a later passage… it was Jochebed. Jochebed was a Hebrew woman who was mother to at least one daughter and one son—Miriam and Aaron. It was in this climate of genocide that she found herself pregnant and delivering a baby. Who knows what she was thinking going through being pregnant in Egypt at that time? Maybe she didn’t have a choice; maybe she couldn’t bear the thought of making any other decision. Whatever the case she found herself delivered of a baby—a boy—and she knew exactly what that meant. Death.
The fourth woman of our Exodus passage today wasn’t a woman at all—she was just a girl. And her childhood was coloured by the danger and violence of the Pharaoh’s policy; the slavery of her people; the wrenching grief of her mother. She wasn’t that old, but she was old enough to know what was happening in her family and old enough to be a player in her mother’s desperate attempts to save her baby brother.

And finally, the fifth woman in our passage was a woman of the most elite class in the land. She was the very daughter of the Pharaoh, great monarch of Egypt. She had every luxury at her disposal, endless servants to meet her every need. She was not occupied with thoughts of slavery or genocide or oppression or racism. She was bathing in a shallow pool by the Nile, tending to the rigours of monarchy.

They were all different, these five women of Exodus. And they were all the same, because they each in their own quiet way put up a hand in the face of all the violence and death and injustice going on around them… and said no.

Shiphrah and Puah concocted the most ridiculous story for the Pharaoh… “You know those Hebrew women! They are so hardy that, no matter how we hurry, we can never get to them before their babies are born!” Pharaoh, whose plan was to trick the Hebrew women into thinking their babies had been born dead, was stumped. What did he know about giving birth?

It may seem a little humorous to us now, but just think about what it would have felt like for Shiphrah and Puah. Trembling and fearful they must have been, going before supreme Pharaoh with a fabricated excuse for not following his orders. They knew that with the flick of his wrist he could send them to their deaths. But they chose to say no to his plan of death and destruction and yes instead to the task they had been given: that of ushering new lives into the world.

And what about Jochebed? She was already a mother, and maybe it was that experience that made her feel determined she would carry another baby to term. Or, maybe she didn’t have the option to end her pregnancy. It must have taken some significant courage, though, to nurture the child growing beneath her heart; to make sure he had the nourishment he needed; to take a pregnancy to full term feeling the eyes of everyone in the community on her wondering: what will she do if it’s a boy? And then imagine the courage it must have taken to labour through his birth and receive the crushing news that her littlest one was, in fact, a boy. And he would die. What fear she must have wrestled to the floor when she defied the Pharaoh and hid her tiny infant, doing whatever it would take to keep him safe and not imagining what long-term solution she could ever manufacture that would save his life and then going about the business of everyday, caring for her family, doing what needed to be done?

And watching her closely was the fourth woman of the first part of Exodus, Moses’ sister Miriam. Who knows what she thought as she watched her mother weave the pliant bull rushes together and carefully cover them with tar to seal out the water? Perhaps she noticed her mother’s tears and maybe they were what gave her courage when her mother told her to place the basket in the Nile, courage to run along the riverbank, keeping the bobbing basket in her sight, ready to jump in at even a hint of tipping. Can you imagine the fear that must have overtaken her when she stumbled upon the Pharaoh’s daughter, bathing in a small tidal pool on the riverbank? And the fear she felt when she saw the inevitability of her little brother floating into the princess’ line of sight? And what courage it must have taken for a little Hebrew slave girl to speak up and suggest her mother, of all people, as a nursemaid for the found baby?
And the fifth woman… the princess of Egypt. Well aware, she must have been, of her father’s decree. She knew of the genocide, of the Pharaoh’s new law. She also knew immediately when she saw the baby in the basket that he was a Hebrew child. A woman of privilege, she was under no obligation to even notice the basket that floated toward her. She certainly could have passed it along to one of her maids—she wouldn’t have even had to participate in her father’s horrid policy, if she found it distasteful at all. Yet she saw the basket and had her maid fetch it. She opened it to find a crying child, and she gathered him up in her arms knowing everything that she knew about him and his sure fate because of her father’s policies. And she used her power and her position to save him.

The Exodus is a truly compelling and riveting story: God stepping into history and delivering His people from oppression and death.

But the story curiously begins, not with a big thunderclap or a booming voice from heaven. It starts with five women, low on the social ladder… some of them even slave women. For the most part they did not have power; each one of them was a slave to greater powers than their own. And all five of them were confronted with the very crisis that builds to the Exodus: oppression, enslavement, death.

I am reminded of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. He and his people were doing a great job taking care of needy people and spreading the gospel, but some people criticized Booth for allowing women to hold responsible positions. Booth replied:
“All my best men are women.”
Sometimes it is like that, isn’t it! When it comes to people who are actually willing to do something—to get their hands dirty—some of our best men are women.

So why, we ask today, would the sweeping epic of the most notable theme in all of scripture: exodus, swing into gear with the mention—not of great warlords and powerful armies—but of five insignificant women?

The story of Exodus starts this way, with the stories of these five unlikely women, because the work of God is always underway, and it happens most often through the faithful, rebellious acts of insignificant people… people like the five women of Exodus, and people like you and me.

We live in a world where we see constant demonstrations of oppression and fear; death and violence; injustice and inequity. You and I may not have the power of a Pharaoh or the resources of a politician but we do have the power to raise our hands in the service of God to say” no” to oppression and death, injustice and exclusion. And “yes” to a God who offers love and salvation, justice and peace for everyone.

A journalist once said, “Women who behave rarely make history,” nor is she the first person to express the sentiment that ushering in the kingdom of God is likely to happen through quiet but rebellious acts of faith by little people like you and me.

In fact, I think that was probably what Jesus was expressing in our Gospel passage today when he asked Simon Peter “who do you say I am?” It may not seem like too much of a leap to you and me for Peter to stand up and say “you are the Messiah, the son of the living God”.

But for Peter it was huge. It meant speaking out his truth in front of the powers that surrounded him; it meant putting his faith in a man who some others thought was just a crazy homeless man talking nonsense.

And when Peter declared his courage-filled affirmation of faith, what was Jesus’ response. He said: “And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

A courageous declaration of faith was followed with a promise from Jesus: Peter, you summoned just enough courage to speak what you believe and you have no idea how your act of courage will change the whole world.

And so it did.

Women and men who behave rarely make history. I wonder if, 2000 years from now, someone will read a grand story of God’s faithfulness that begins with a tiny but rebellious act of faith undertaken… by you or me.

Let us pray.

We pray for the strength to summon just enough courage to live the rebellious faith to which we are called. Amen.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God our rock and our redeemer.

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And Love your neighbour as yourself.’

Here are some headlines:

5 Million people over 60 say they now consider the TV to be their only source of company.

70% of people asked say they wouldn’t recognise their neighbour if they passed them in the street

60% of people asked said they don’t have much in common with their neighbours.

Jesus parables are well known and often preached about. And this Parable, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known. Jesus told the parable in response to a question from an expert on the Jewish law; the expert asked Jesus what he should do to gain eternal life. Instead of answering Jesus turned the question back as was the rabbinic way. The expert answered as Jesus had answered in Marks Gospel with a quotation from Deuteronomy and a quotation from Leviticus ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And Love your neighbour as yourself.’

The lawyer asked a question to which he already knew the answer but he seemed to want to pin Jesus down, perhaps to put him on the spot so he asked a further question ‘And who is my neighbour?’ This seems like to me like a question that is as pertinent today as it was two thousand years ago. And I think in the parable Jesus answers not only this question but another very pertinent question then and now ‘how do I behave as a neighbour?’

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?

HOW DO I BEHAVE AS A NEIGHBOUR?

So first of all the expert in the law is asking Jesus for a precise definition of who exactly could be counted as a neighbour? He was saying, “Do I have to love EVERYONE? If there is a neighbour that I must love, is there also a non-neighbour I do not need to love? Where should I draw the line Jesus?” Many of the rabbis in Jesus day taught that one’s neighbour was really only a fellow Israelite. And, most Jews followed suit. They never considered that anyone could be a neighbour BUT another Jew.

They had even re-written part of the Sabbath law to say that if a wall should fall on someone on the Sabbath, enough rubble could be cleared away to see if the injured man was a Jew or Gentile. If he were a Jew, he could be rescued—if a Gentile—he must be left there to suffer until the next day. The Pharisees went so far as to exclude any non-PHARISEES from their definition of “neighbour.” The idea of neighbour was exclusive rather than inclusive, designed to keep people out not bring people in.

The parable given in answer is most remarkable. Jesus does not supply the Lawyer with a list of who should or should not be helped he makes it plain that love has no boundaries. Whoever is in need, they are our neighbours. Anyone.

But I don’t think it was just in Jesus time that people have tried to put people in categories of those who are our neighbours and those who are not. Like most of you I have been shocked and horrified by the revelations that have come out about Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, Eddie Waring and others. In fact I don’t know the full details of what Jimmy Saville has been accused of because I stopped listening and reading, his deeds just seemed to awful and disgusting to contemplate. It is tempting to feel that their acts have put them into a category of non-neighbours.

We know that there are those who persecute child abusers, who are violent towards them, deface their houses and we wouldn’t condone that type of behaviour but surely for these most depraved people, those who seem almost inhuman there is a good argument for walking by on the other side of the road. Surely if they were in the ditch we would not be expected to help them, surely no-one could expect that of us.

The lawyer was expecting to hear that only fellow Jews were his neighbour and we too can think that there are some people whose acts have set them apart, people we should have nothing to do with people it would not be sensible to get involved with. Just as it was not sensible for the priest or the Levite to get involved with the man on the Jericho road, he had brought his plight on himself, he was stupid to be there in the first place on the road that was notoriously called ‘the way of blood’, what could he expect and he was nearly dead, if not dead anyway, no one could expect them to have anything to do with him. Just as it was unreasonable to expect help from the Samaritan, the member of the race hated by and who hated the Jews. For a Jew to be helped by a Samaritan was completely ridiculous, unreasonable, almost unbelievable.

WHO IS OUR NEIGHBOUR? ANYONE WHO IS IN NEED SAYS JESUS

But just as this parable made it clear to the lawyer then as makes it clear to us now WHO OUR NEIGHBOUR is it also makes it clear how we are to BEHAVE AS A NEIGHBOUR. The Samaritan didn’t just bandage the man up and leave him there; he didn’t just take him to safety and leave him to get on with it. He patched him up, he put him on his donkey, he took him to a place of safety and care and paid for him to be looked after. He expended his goods, his time and his money helping this man. This is what it takes to be a good neighbour that is what is at the crux of this parable LOVE, sacrificial love.

Because this is a parable about love and love begins with God. This is a story about us lying in the ditch and God coming along. God who created us, who knows what we could be and knows what we are, God who knows all the sins we have committed, the lies we have told, God who knows about our selfishness our greed and our lack of love. We may console ourselves by thinking that we aren’t as bad as some people, but God knows how far short we have fallen and yet Gods love for us is ridiculous, unreasonable, almost unbelievable, it is extravagant and unexpected, endless and everlasting. We are all in the ditch helpless and battered and in desperate need of help and God comes and loves us and saves us. And it is from our position of helplessness that we should reflect upon the question HOW DO I BEHAVE AS A NEIGHBOUR. Then we will know how wide the reach of God’s love is and how wide the reach of neighbour love should extend.

We begin with God’s love for us a love so great that he sacrificed his own son to save us and that is the measure of love. This parable makes it clear that our love for others should be based on God’s love for us.

The expert on the law began with the question, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The answer for us is that we need do nothing. Jesus has done the work for us, eternal life is not something we can achieve by our good deeds, eternal life is already ours bought and paid for by Jesus death. We love God because he loved us first because he is our saviour and lord and we love our neighbour as a response to Gods love for us because we realise that every human being is Gods own creation, and is loved by God with the excessive extravagant love that he has for us.

So this parable tells us as it told the expert in the law WHO OUR NEIGHBOUR is. Our neighbour is not just other Christians, it is not just people who we like or approve of it is everyone regardless of who they are or what they have done. And this parable also answers the question HOW DO I BEHAVE AS A NEIGHBOUR?

Jesus said to the expert in the law ‘What do you think? Which one of these three was a neighbour to the man who encountered thieves?”

And the legal expert replied , “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”

Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

And Jesus is saying the same thing to each of us here today Go and do likewise. We know there is great need in our world, loneliness, homelessness, hunger, poverty, the list goes on and on. The headlines I read at the start give us some idea of how alienated and lonely people in our own country of Scotland can feel. Even here on Arran in our own communities there are those who could benefit from our help, families without enough to eat, old people who are lonely and seldom visited. Jesus says don’t do the sensible, reasonable thing, do the stupid, extravagant loving and merciful thing. Being a Good Samaritan is about using our time, our influence, our money and our daily prayers to help everyone who needs it regardless of who they are or what they have done. Not because of what we can get but because of what we have been freely give.

Let Us Pray

Dear God,

You are Love. You are our loving father. You made is in love and you made us for love.

Help us each and every day to live our life to the full by living lives of love.

Teach us Lord thus your steps to trace,
Strong to follow in your grace,
Learning how to love from Thee,
Loving Him Who first loved me.

Amen

We now continue our worship with our gifts of money; the offering will be given and received

5 Loaves and 2 Fish

Our God is a God of miracles, and nothing is impossible with Him! He can meet every need that arises. Feeding five thousand with a couple of fish and chips was a small thing for Jesus. How did He do it? It was a MacMiracle! He can meet our needs today and is working miracles today in the church that trusts in Him!

One of the things that is enjoyable about reading the Gospel stories about Jesus is that each of them tells the story in a different way. For example, only Matthew and Luke tell about Jesus’ birth. Only John compares the coming of Jesus to the Word of God taking on a human form. The Sermon on the Mount is unique to Matthew and only Luke tells the wonderful stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.

But all four of the Gospel writers include this story of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the multitude with a small amount of bread and fish. The presence of this story in all the Gospels is a clear indication that this was an important event for those first believers, capturing as it does Jesus’ concern for both the material and the spiritual needs of people. When they were sick, Jesus healed them, when they were sad, he encouraged them, and when they were hungry, he fed them. They found their fulfilment in Jesus, whom they called the Lord.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand is also a special story because it recalls the many times in the past when God acted to feed his people. We remember when God provided manna in the wilderness to feed the Children of Israel during the Exodus. In Second Kings there is a story of the prophet Elisha feeding a hundred hungry men with twenty barley loaves. And we all remember the story of how God fed Elijah in the wilderness when he had fled from the wrath of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel.

And one of the reasons why this particular story became so important for the Early Christians is that it reminded them of the miraculous meal they celebrated regularly when they gathered for the breaking of the Bread. Could you not hear the Eucharistic implications in Matthew’s account: he took the bread … he blessed … he broke it and gave it to them. Two thousand years later we still gather in Christian community in the same hope of experiencing Jesus Christ in our lives through the breaking of the bread.

And it is also a message of stewardship.

There simply wasn’t enough food to food to feed the crowd. What there was wasn’t even a drop in the bucket. But Jesus took what was there, he blessed and broke it and had it distributed and all ate and were full. And in addition there were 12 baskets of bread and fish left over.

This is a stewardship message because it speaks directly to us about the resources we have. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are if you are a Christian. It doesn’t matter how rich or poor this congregation is. What does matter? What really matters is what we do with what we have been given to oversee and use.

No matter how much we have, our gifts, talents and our money are not enough to do the work that we are called to do in the name of Jesus Christ. Not only is what we have to offer not enough; it’s barely a drop in the bucket! If we only look at what we have, if we only look at our resources from a purely human point of view, our mission suffers because we will base our judgements on how little we have rather than how much our Lord can bless and multiply. When we look only at what we have then we are not exercising our faith; we are doing the opposite! We are exercising our lack of faith when we look only at what we have and fearfully use it just to preserve our existence. And once we use what we have just to preserve our existence, then we are no longer functioning as part of the Church of Jesus Christ. What we are expressing is a decided lack of trust in Jesus Christ that He will take what we have, bless it and use it for his needs.

So, what can we do to ensure we exercise our faith?

Firstly, we should assess what we have.

The disciples assessed what they had and came up with a disheartening response: There isn’t enough – we can’t feed all of these people – we don’t have the resources.

Today in the church our response might sound something like this:

“The Mission Committee’s budget can’t even begin to cover that”

Or

“There’s not enough money in the entire church budget to cover that”

or

“A church 6 times our size couldn’t even undertake such a project”

or

“Even if we could pay for it, the bus will only hold so many and is in need of a tune-up anyway”

or

“We will never get enough volunteers to help and besides all the volunteers we do have are already working on the up and coming Harvest festival”

or

“We don’t have a logistics expert which is what it would take because some people will want white bread, others whole wheat and some gluten-free”

or

“We can’t afford to re-landscape after all those people sit on and trample the new grass we just put in”

How often as a church do we look at our resources: money, members, volunteers, property and say “Not enough”? How often do we look in the mirror and say “Not enough – I don’t know enough about the bible to teach Sunday Schools; I don’t have enough time to volunteer for that committee; I’m not smart enough, confident enough, rich enough, spiritual enough, you name it, to do whatever it is I am being called upon to do”.

The good news is that whatever we have, when offered in faith, is enough. God can do a lot with a little.

So, having assessed what we have the next step is to offer it to God and when we do this it is not only enough, it is more than enough because in His hands what we give is multiplied. We think what we have is but a drop in the bucket but when we offer it in faith, it becomes a bucket running over.

In 1976 a young economics lecturer Muhammad Yunus, loaned 27 dollars to a group of desperately poor craftspeople in a Bangladeshi village. His idea was to give the poor access to capital since traditional banks were not interested on loaning tiny amounts and village money lenders charged extortionate rates. He went on to set up the Grameen Bank which has lifted millions of people out of poverty by making very small loans for income generating businesses to poor people who have no collateral. Ninety-eight percent of the borrowers are women who borrow an average of $250. Even amid these trying economic times the repayment rate is 99 percent. Grameen, Yunus claims, is a message of hope, a program for putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long. Such is his vision and with God’s blessing multiplying his efforts he has made a huge difference to the lives of those he has helped. In 2006, his work was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1928, Agnes Bojaxhiu (boh-yah-joo), an 18 year old Yugoslavian girl, left home to become a missionary with the Sisters of Loreto. She went to Ireland to learn English and then to India where she was a teacher. Although she enjoyed teaching she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the city and the outbreak of Hindu-Muslim violence in 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror. She left the relative comfort of her order as she felt called to minister to the poorest of the poor while living among them as one of them. In time, with only 13 others, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order which now has over 4000 women in it. These nuns run orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres world-wide, caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, victims of floods, epidemics and famines. We know this woman as Mother Teresa who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

These are a few things she said:

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Be faithful in small things for it is in them that your strength lies.

There are no great things, only small things done with great love.

These are 2 examples of people who offered their gifts which God than multiplied in amazing ways.

But we are not geniuses and saints; we are just ordinary people with ordinary gifts. So what about us?

Many years ago there was a woman who lived in a small town in France. Trained as a nurse, she devoted her life to caring for the sick and needy. After many years of kind and selfless service to the village’s families, the woman died. She had no family of her own, so the townsfolk planned a special funeral for her, a fitting tribute to the woman to whom so many owed their lives. The parish priest however, pointed out that, because she was a Protestant, she could not be buried in the town’s Catholic cemetery. The villagers protested but the priest held firm. It was not easy for the priest either, because he too had been cared for by the woman during a serious illness. But the canons of the church were very clear; she would have to be buried outside the fence of the cemetery. The day of the funeral arrived and the whole village accompanied the woman’s coffin to the cemetery where she was buried — outside the fence. But that night, a group of villagers armed with shovels sneaked into the cemetery. They then quietly set to work — moving the fence.

Five loaves and 2 fish may not seem like much. 27 dollars loaned by a young economist may not seem like much. A Catholic nun working in the slums of Calcutta may not seem like much. A nurse’s devotion to her villagers may not seem like much.

But God can translate what may not seem like much into something much greater. God is in the business of doing a lot with a little. Our resources, both individual and collective – our talents, our time, our ideas, our money – may look puny to us but when we take whatever we have and offer it to God, it is enough. In God’s hands it is more than enough.

Let us pray.

Lord of all,

Teach us to offer what we can, where we can, when we can,

Conscious that, with your blessing,

When we offer all we can, it will be enough.

Amen.

I’m not a great one for jokes, as they say it’s the way I tell them, and I don’t tell them very well. But I do like wee stories so here’s a wee story! It’s about a little girl in Sunday school drawing a picture.

Her teacher asked her … what she was drawing.

“I’m drawing a picture of God,” the little girl responded.

“But nobody knows what God looks like,” her teacher said.

To which the little girl replied, “They will when I’m finished.” (Pause)

Of course we do all know what God looks like, he is very old and has a long white beard, a kind of less colourful Santa Claus!

OK we can’t really imagine that God looks like but we can and should know what God IS like, what God’s nature is because the Bible tells us what God is like.

This is Trinity Sunday and on this Sunday we think particularly about what God’s nature is. As a church we are Trinitarian, that means that we believe in one God in three persons.

The Trinity, God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A basic tenet of our faith, an explanation of what God is like and yet Trinity is never mentioned as a word in the Bible though it is central to our understanding of God.

Right from the start in the creation story at Genesis chapter 1 we see the creative Father, the Word that was with God, and was God. 2 The Word through whom all things were made; and without whom nothing was made that has been made, and we have the Spirit of God hovering over the formless deep. God in three persons.

When Jesus is baptised at Matthew 3 we read ‘As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” At that momentous event the three persons of the trinity were present Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jesus demonstrating his obedience to the plan of God through baptism, the Father announcing his approval, and the Holy Spirit anointing Jesus for ministry.

So the idea of God as a trinity is essential to our understanding of God and yet it can be hard for us to understand. There have been various attempts to help us to get a bit of a handle on what is really part of the mystery of God. One suggestion is that we think of ourselves and the different roles we have. I am a Daughter, a Mother and a wife, one person but three different aspects. However that is NOT what we believe about God, God as we sing is in three persons, blessed trinity. God is not in one person but in THREE distinct and separate persons. St Patrick used the shamrock with its three leaves but that meets a similar problem, God is not some kind of three headed Siamese twin. As we saw at his baptism, the three persons of God whilst all BEING God are completely separate and can work independently of each other. I think the analogy that works best for me, is the idea of an egg. An egg is one thing but it consists of three separate and distinct parts, the shell, the yoke and the albumen. Together they make an egg but each part is a different substance which can exist and be used separately. Once again this is not a perfect analogy because the Father the Son and the Spirit are each completely God and the yolk is not completely an egg!

But if we find it hard to understand then we should know that we are in good company. For centuries branches of the church recited the long and complicated Creed of St. Athanasius on Trinity Sunday. In one section it states, “Father incomprehensible, Son incomprehensible, Holy Ghost incomprehensible.” And apparently George Bernard Shaw used to mutter, “The whole thing is incomprehensible.”

And then there is Augustine. The great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine of Hippo spent over 30 years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity], endeavouring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity.

And the story is told that he was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand.

The Bishop approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?”

“I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied.

“But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”

God is vaster and more powerful and more mysterious than we can ever imagine, how could we put our faith in him, how could we worship him if that was not so? And how can we expect to understand him with our small human intelligence. At Isaiah 55 we read “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

So we have a problem, God wants us to have an understanding of his nature but as humans we can never have a complete understanding of God, in fact we can never even have a complete understanding of the doctrine of the trinity which is meant to help us understand God!!! Help.

So this Trinity Sunday morning I think that the best we can do is try to understand what is important about God, what is important about the trinity for us andleave the philosophical wrestling to the academics or perhaps to those sleepless hours in the middle of the night when it might be a more effective insomnia cure than counting sheep.

Firstly the trinity tells us that humanity meets God in three different forms, we have one God who loves us and that God is made up of three separate persons.

We have a Father who loves us, the Almighty, the creator, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, the law giver, the judge.

We have the Son, Jesus who loves us. Who came down from heaven to be our saviour, who was eternally begotten of the Father yet became became truly human. The revealer, the Messiah and the redeemer

And we have the Holy Spirit who loves us. The Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who has spoken through the prophets, who fills us with new life and power, the sanctifier and giver of eternal life.

Secondly the Trinity expresses the way Christians should relate to God: we worship God the Father. We follow the example set by God the Son and God the Holy Spirit lives within us.

And thirdly the trinity tells us how God wants us to live. As God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit relate to one another, demonstrate love for each other, and work in concert to accomplish the purpose of God in the world, we get the idea of community a community that we can aspire to but never manage to replicate, a community of supreme love and respect, of complete unity, and equality without hierarchy, or ego or competitiveness. This idea of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit has been depicted as a divine dance, Father, Son, and Spirit interacting with one another, expressing love for one another, and complementing the work each has to do. God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, God the Spirit illuminates and equips. In this dance of mutuality, each person of the Godhead complements and builds on the work of other members of the Trinity.

So as Christians we too must live in community, in families, in congregations, in villages and communities and countries, in all the different social groupings. And we must try to live as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit live, without ego and competitiveness with love, respect and equality each person complementing and building on the work of other members.

And thinking like that clarifies so many questions for us, how should husbands and wives treat each other, how do we treat our children, how do we behave towards people of different colours, creeds, religions, people with disabilities, the poor, the disadvantaged? It’s perfectly clear, all the isms must be gone everyone is treated with love, respect and equality.

And in the doctrine of the Trinity, we find our mission. Jesus said to the disciples, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” Just as God the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sends us into the world to do the Father’s work, equipped and accompanied by the Spirit of God. Whatever work we have to do in this world, we do from the standpoint of the Triune God who created, redeemed, and enabled us to do it.

So today as we think about the Trinity we must remember that as followers of Jesus, we are loved by the Father, and led by the Spirit. All three persons of the Godhead are at work in our lives, in the life of this church, and in the life of this world. As we live in this awareness of God in all his expressions as Father, Son, and Spirit, our spiritual lives will deepen, our vision of God’s kingdom will expand, and the work that God has chosen for us will take on a new vitality and urgency so that God’s Kingdom will come and his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

First of all let’s take a look at the background for the reading from Ezekiel.

God had called His people, the Jews, out of captivity in Egypt. For over 100 years, they had been in Egyptian captivity. God brought them into the Promised Land, and gave them a land and a King, and made them a nation. But they turned against God, and God allowed them to go into captivity once again.

Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army invaded Israel. They had reduced Solomon’s Temple to ashes, and had taken many of the Jewish people back to Babylon as captives. This is the condition that Ezekiel is in. The nation of Israel is dead but God has a vision for Ezekiel.

37:1-2 – Ezekiel is carried to a valley full of very dry bones. These bones have been scattered everywhere by the wild animals so that there is nothing but miscellaneous bones as far as the eye can see.

For Ezekiel, this was a vision of the nation of Israel – there was no way that Israel could get itself out of Babylonian captivity. They were like these dead, dry bones … in a graveyard … in a hopeless situation.

I have no doubt that we have all been there at some point in our lives. Some times when we look around things may seem pretty hopeless, as if everything has gone wrong. We see ourselves in a valley of dead, dry bones.

So Ezekiel is looking at millions of dead, dry bones … scattered about 100’s of square miles and God asks him, “Can these bones live?” How would we answer that question?

When we look at a situation and all we see is a valley of dead, dry bones … we really don’t see much hope. It’s hard to imagine those dead, dry bones having life. It’s hard to imagine the situation ever getting better.

Israel has been taken captive by Babylon … Ezekiel can’t see much hope for his people but he answers God’s question:

“Can these bones live?” “I don’t see how … if they do, it will be up to You, Lord!”

Ezekiel is telling God that He is in charge. God can do whatever He wants to do, nothing is impossible. If God wants these dead, dry bones to live, they’ll live!

This is Pentecost Sunday when we celebrate the birth of the church so, let’s look at the life of the church today. What kind of bones do we see in the Church today?

1.- The Tailbone Christian – Who just sits, and lets everybody else do the ministry in the church.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, as soon as they get off their tailbones!

2.- The Fingerbone Christian – always pointing their finger at everybody else, not taking responsibility for their own actions. They blame everybody else for the circumstances they find themselves in.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, as soon as they see that they are reaping what they have sown.

3.- The Jawbone Christian – who puts his mouth into motion before his brain is in gear, who spreads gossip, who intentionally causes trouble by stirring up strife.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, when they snatch their tongue from the Devil, and give it to the Holy Spirit.

4.- The Hipbone Christian – Who sits on his wallet every Sunday when the offering plate is passed.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, when the heart is converted, the wallet will be converted too.

5.- The Drybone Christian – Whose Christian life has withered up, because he/she isn’t in the Word of God.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, when we immerse ourselves into the God’s Word.

6.- The Wishbone Christian – We still keep the Christmas turkey wishbone for our kids to pull. Whoever gets the bigger piece, has their wish was granted (supposedly). For some of us, that describes our prayer life … gimme, gimme, gimme. We come to God with our “wish list”

“Can these bones live?” Yes, when we realize that prayer is a relationship with God that involves, not only asking, but thanksgiving, praise, fellowship, and worship.

7.- The Backbone Christian – Who has convictions … knows what they are … and stands on them. The Christian with backbone, won’t live his life to please the world … won’t live her life to blend in with the world … won’t live their life to conform to the standards of the world.

“Can these bones live?” Yes, and they do live, as a testimony of the grace of God.

8.- The Kneebone Christian – Who realizes that victory in the Christian life, comes only through a life of prayer. “Much prayer, much power … Little prayer, little power … No prayer, no power.”

“Can these bones live?” Yes, and the Kneebone Christian is the one who is living the life of victory.

Can dead, dry bones live? With God, nothing is impossible. Sometimes we look around us, and all we see is a valley of dry, dead bones. It looks pretty hopeless … it looks pretty devastating … it looks pretty grim.

But God has a plan. Get into His Word, and He’ll speak to you. Give way to the Holy Spirit, and He will give you a new life.

“A young man was apprenticed to a master artist who produced the most beautiful stained glass windows anywhere. The apprentice could not approach the master’s genius so he borrowed his master’s tools, thinking that was the answer. After several weeks, the young man said to his teacher, ’I’m not doing any better with your tools than I did with mine.’

The teacher replied, ”So, it’s not the tools of the master you need; it’s the spirit of the master you need.”

We have just heard in the reading from Acts, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit”.

Jesus had promised the disciples before the Ascension that the Spirit would come to them, the Counsellor would come to give them power. It has been 10 days since the ascension and the disciples were waiting in the upper room. Can you imagine the conversations which were going on? Some probably wanted to leave, others were going to wait to see what would happen. Some might have doubted anything would happen, others remembering Jesus’ appearance before had the faith to wait.

Then the great moment arrived. If we look at the text from Acts, we see that the Spirit arrived by itself from out of nowhere. The Spirit descended upon the disciples probably as they were going about their daily tasks. Some were praying, some eating, some cooking, some were just resting, but it happened. The Holy Spirit descended upon them with its own free will. The disciples did not ask for it, but Jesus promised it. It came and filled the disciples with its power as Jesus had promised.

Think about this. The Spirit of the Master, the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit came and entered the souls of those people on Pentecost and collided with their own spirits. We all have our own spirit within us, it is the spirit in us which drives us, empowers us, embarrasses us, frighten us, causes trouble for us, a spirit which wants only what is good for me, myself and I. We have a spirit which is defiant, which takes pride in itself, which wants to be in control, which wants to be independent, which wants to control the self.

It is this spirit within us that the Holy Spirit comes to and wants to change.

It is God’s Spirit which came to those people that day of Pentecost and collided with their own spirit. It is that same Spirit which comes through the word and the sacraments and collides with our spirit day in and day out.

Because of our fallen nature, we are filled with pride, pride in ourselves, pride which says we don’t need a God in our lives. And it is with that spirit in us that the Holy Spirit comes to replace each day.

It is like this Aesop fable:

“A tall, straight fir tree which stood towering up in the forest was very proud of his height and dignity and despised the little shrubs which grew beneath him.

One day a bramble asked him why he was so proud. “Because,” replied the fir tree, “I look upon myself as the finest tree for the beauty of any in the forest. My top shots up toward the clouds, and my branches spread round in constant loveliness while you crawl on the around, likely to be crushed by every animal that comes near.”

“All this may be true enough”, replied the bramble, “but when the woodsmen has marked you for cutting down, and the axe come to be applied to your root, I fancy you will wish that you could change places with me.”

The moral, Pride always goes before a fall.”

We are filled with pride, a pride which says we do not need a God, or anything in our lives. But God comes to us with His Spirit to replace our spirit of pride with His Spirit of love and kindness.

God does not want us to “fall” but to live in Him and His Holy Spirit. Through Jesus, the work of salvation was begun and now through the Holy Spirit that work of salvation will continue in our lives. God wants us to live in Him and through Him.

Anonymous wrote:

“Once in a while the Spirit comes. Sometimes he stings the soul, sometimes he sakes it, sometimes he troubles our conscious, sometimes he soothes it, sometimes he heals our pain, sometimes he just helps us to endure it. He lifts the clouds just long enough for us to glimpse the City that was not made with hands in order that we can go back and take up our cross and follow him.”

The Spirit has been with the Church since the first Pentecost, so that it could enter our spirit and enable us to be the kind of people God intended for us to be. Each day we need to renew ourselves and allow God’s Holy Spirit to replace our pride full spirit so that we can bear His cross in this world.

The Holy Spirit works constantly with our spirit so that our lives may be transformed, be made new and rewarding.

A closing story tells it well:

THE TOUCH OF A MASTER:

Wishing to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took her boy to a Lang Lang concert. After they were seated, the mother spotted a friend in the audience and walked down the aisle to greet her. Seizing the opportunity to explore the wonders of the concert hall, the little boy rose and eventually explored his way through a door marked “NO ADMITTANCE.”

When the house lights dimmed and the concert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and discovered that the child was missing. Suddenly, the curtains parted and spotlights focused on the impressive Steinway on stage.

In horror, the mother saw her little boy sitting at the keyboard, innocently picking out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

At that moment, Lang Lang made his entrance, quickly moved to the piano, and whispered in the boy’s ear, “Don’t stop. Keep playing.” Then, leaning over, Lang Lang reached down with his left hand and began filling in a bass part. Soon his right arm reached around to the other side of the child and he added a running obligato. Together, the master and the novice transformed a frightening situation into a wonderfully creative experience.

The audience was mesmerized.”

The Holy Spirit, working with our spirit, can mesmerize this world.

Amen.