Prayer – Lord renew thy church, beginning with me. Lord renew the church that the church may renew the nation(s)
INTRODUCTION
In one of the most dramatic stories in the Bible, we are told how Peter, looking intently on a man lame from birth, and seeking alms, said to him , ” Silver and gold have I none, but in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk.
And as the narrative continued, we are told that Peter took hold of the man with his right hand, and immediately this, previously lame man’s feet, became strong . And who in return, began leaping and praising God.
Later on we are told that because they had been teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is resurrection from the dead, they were arrested and warned not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. To which threat Peter and John replied , Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.
Then came another less well known dramatic moment. When Peter and John returned to their friends and told them about the threats, listen carefully to their response :
Powerful Prayer
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders in the name of your holy servant Jesus.
And the word of God then tells us that : after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God of boldly.
I was inspired to share this story with you as an introduction to a reflection on the OT and Gospel reading for today, for this reason.
The Gospel of Christ, was and continues to be, until this very day, a story about divine matters. About Supernatural happenings. About the establishing of the kingdom of God, where God in Christ Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, reigns supremely in the hearts and affairs of mankind; not about human plans and aspirations. And which kingdom is revealed only to those who fear the Lord, believe in the Life, death and resurrection of His only Son, and humbly seek His ways. And which fear, the Word of God reveals, is the beginning of all wisdom. Wisdom not given to the world….those who do not believe in Jesus.
Therefore as we examine what the Word of God has in store for us this morning, let us remember that we have committed ourselves to become Intentional Disciples, not for a season but for life. In that context then , let us recall also the words of Bishop Thompson written in the Bible Study:
“The invitation to discipleship for Lent is firstly, an invitation to a personal and intimate relationship with God who we know in Jesus.”
And so it cannot be by coincidence, but by the supernatural power of God that a gracious Lord responds by
equipping us for the journey with a focus on the readings for this morning.
The First Instructive Word
Listen again then to the instructive and encouraging Word from the Old Testament:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless….Genesis 17:1
What else can we make of this passage given to us so early in our journey of Intentional Discipleship, when many are asking pertinent questions, as why now, or is it not too late, as we ought to have been doing this a long time ago.
And so inspired by a discussion we had in Bible study on this issue, why now, and not a long time ago, and a response coming from Week One of the study guide, how Nicodemus was told that he had to start over, and become born again, in order to enter the kingdom of God, and that therefore that it is never too late to learn, I took the liberty of rewriting this verse about Abram and substituting St. Andrew Parish Church
When St. Andrew Parish church was 350 years old, the Lord appeared to us in 2018, and said to us, walk with me and be blameless
Can anyone of us respond honestly and say that we are walking with God and are blameless , in the same fashion that the same God who, as recorded by the writer of the Book of Hebrews, said then and continues to say to us His children, Be holy as I am holy.
Can it not be that God in His wisdom and mercy has decided by a great movement of the Holy Spirit across denominations, for we Anglicans are not alone on this journey of Intentional Discipleship, as we are told that, so too are the Roman Catholics, the United Church and the Methodists, that this God has decide to shake up His church, has decided to renew his church beginning with each one of us, so that the church may renew the nations.
Has decided to search the hearts of His people as we in obedience embark of this journey.
For yes, we know in our head, that we can only be blameless before God because of the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. For our righteousness does not come from the law, from following or trying to be obedient to the Ten Commandments. For the law, as revealed by the same Word of God, brings wrath, and condemnation, but our righteousness comes by faith in the grace of God, and which grace is fully manifest in the glorious Redemption of Jesus wrought on the Cross of Calvary for all mankind. So yes, we might know the basics of the faith in our heads, but the great challenge for Christians over the centuries is to be able transfer this head knowledge to the heart and thus follow Christ with passion and determination and zeal.
In other words, to recall the words of Jesus as He responded to the question, “which is the greatest commandment”, over 2000 years ago and claim that answer for ourselves in 2018:
Mark 12:29. Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no command greater than these.
Perhaps an abridged version of a meditation on Psalm 139, from A.W. Tozer, one of the great preachers and Christian writers of yesteryear entitled ” Search Me O God ” might help us to understand this point, about being filled with passion for our Lord Jesus, even better.
TOZER
“The author of the celebrated devotional work , The Cloud. Of the Unknowing, begins his little book with a prayer that expresses the spirit of the deeper life teaching: God, unto whom all hearts be open…and unto whom no secret thing is hid, I bid thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of thy grace, that I may perfectly love thee and worthily praise thee. Amen.
Who that is truly born of the Spirit, unless he has been prejudiced by wrong teaching, can object to love God and worthily to praise Him. Yet this is exactly what we mean when we speak about the ” deeper life” experience. Only we mean that it should be literally fulfilled within the heart, not merely accepted by the head.
Nicephorus, a father of the Eastern Church, in a little treatise on the Spirit-filled life, begins with a call that sounds strange to us only because we have been for so long accustomed to following Jesus afar off and to living among a people that follow him afar off.
” You, who desire to capture the the wondrous divine, illumination of our Saviour Jesus – who seek to feel the divine fire in your heart – who strive to sense and experience the feeling of reconciliation with God – who in order to unearth the treasure buried in the field of your heart and to gain possession of it, have renounced everything worldly – who desire the candles of our souls to burn brightly even now, and who wish by conscious experience to know and to receive the kingdom of heaven existing with you – come and I will impart to you the science of eternal heavenly life…….
This yearning after God has never completely died in any generation. Always there were some who scorned the low paths and insisted upon walking the high road of eternal perfection…..end of quote.
And as I contemplated these things, and recalled Bishop Thompson’s encouragement to begin the journey of Intentional Discipleship by first developing a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus, I heard the words of the hymn writer saying;
THE HYMN
I’m pressing on the upward way;
new heights I’m gaining every day,
still praying as I’m upward bound,
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
CHORUS
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
by faith, on heaven’s tableland.
A higher ground plane than I have found
Lord,plant my feet on higher ground.
A higher ground of faith in the power of Christ and Him Crucified. This is the higher ground that Jesus was calling Peter to follow Him to when He rebuked his disciple and likened him to Satan for trying to prevent Him from going to Jerusalem…going to the Cross to die. A higher ground than what Peter and the rest of the disciples understood. For they, and the Jews who until today have not accepted that Christ is the promised Messiah, had their minds on human affairs ; the rescuing of Israel from the cruel oppression by the Roman Empire. And not on the divine plan to defeat Evil, Death and Sin on the cross of Calvary. That which had held God’s created order in bondage and fear ever since the Fall in the garden of Eden. A plan revealed to us in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Church, when he wrote:
” Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ , who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless. 1:3
And a divine plan where because Christ was raised from the dead, we too, having died with Him in Baptism, have been raised from the dead to new life in Christ by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. Thus fulfilling the Word of God which tells us that : “ If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold all things are made new.
THE SECOND INSTRUCTIVE WORD
So let us listen again to the instructive Word of God in the Gospel reading for today.
Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
LESSONS FROM THE GOSPEL
There are two big lessons that we need to learn from this passage as persons on a journey of Intentional Discipleship.
The first is how different Peter was before the Cross of Christ, compared to the Peter who was so filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, after the Resurrection of Christ, that people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on them. And bring healing!
The question is what made the difference? And the answer is that Peter and the other disciples received something from Jesus after His Resurrection. What was this gift. Recall the words from our Savior before He ascended to be with His Father, as recorded in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:
“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. ” Acts 1:4-5
So the question arises, do we Anglicans, in our daily and worship lives manifest this gift of the Holy Spirit which we received at our Baptism?
This is no ordinary theoretical question but one which goes to the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Christ according to the New Testament revelations. A question that needs deep reflection and prayers. But as we consider this over the next couple of weeks, I share with you a revelation on this matter.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 3:15-18 and you will find this intriguing passage of scripture,
Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, which comes from the Spirit, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
So yes, we can say with confidence, that we who have decided to follow Jesus, we who are in dwelt and branded by the Holy Spirit, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory. A most profound teaching to believe and live.
The second lesson is a troubling and complex one and where I tread very carefully lest I trespass, and fall into error. Consider this question. In the same way that Peter before the Cross, motivated by human reasoning, and not influenced by the divine appointment given to Jesus, looked only to the salvation of Israel and not to the defeat of Sin, which was the root cause of Israel’s troubles, are we not perilously close to the same error, when we look to the church to solve Jamaica’s crime problem, without acknowledging the Sin and the power of God to defeat evil. And which evil, and not just poor parenting , as important as that and other causal factors are in the scheme of things, is the root problem. So yes, as part of the fabric of our society, we have a duty to wage war against injustice and immorality, for as Bishop Leon told us on Deanery Day, Justice and Righteousness are both sides of the same coin.
And so we join forces with other sectors of the society in rescuing our nation from Crime and Violence, and do so with passion and guided by prayer. But as Paul reminds us in his second letter to the Corinthian church,
” Though we wage war in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to destroy strongholds .…
and the chief stronghold that requires divine intervention is sin and its devastating effect on the human heart….separating people from God, and placing them in the bondage of the evil one. For ultimately our goal as disciples is to establish God’s kingdom, his reign over the affairs of men, and not just to deal with crime in the inner cities whilst gross immorality flourishes in the boardrooms and bedrooms of the nation. Hence the call to repent and believe the gospel is for everybody. Whether you live in Norbrook or Tivoli.
Finally we turn to the third instructive verse of scripture, and very familiar words.
THE THIRD INSTRUCTIVE WORD
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
These words are so powerful that the great German theologian and modern day Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who paid the ultimate price for standing up to the evil of Hitler, explained that when Christ calls you He calls you to die. And the author of the very popular devotional guide, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, explains that when Christ calls us, we care called to attend our white funeral. But perhaps the most impactful reflection on this issue of denying oneself I have read, came from one of the early Bishops of the church, Hilary of Poitiers:
” Although I am dust and ashes , Lord I am tied to you by bonds of love. Therefore I feel I can speak freely to you. Before I came to know you, I was nothing. I did not know the meaning of life, and I had no understanding of myself. I have no doubt that you had a purpose in causing me to be born, yet you had no need of me, and on my own I was on no use to you.
But then you decided that I should hear the words of your Son, Jesus Christ. And that as I heard his words, you enabled his love to penetrate my heart. Now I am completely saturated in his love and faith, and there is no remedy. Now, Lord, I cannot change my attitude to my faith, I can only die for it.
So denying oneself is fairly clear, we die to self and live for Jesus, because of the divine love shown to us on the cross of Calvary. And there is no remedy for that kind of love. Only death.
The kind of love which inspired the hymn writer to pen these profoundly important words:
My God I love thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby,
nor yet because who love thee not
are lost eternally.
Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me
Upon the cross embrace;
for me didst bear the nail and spear,
and manifold disgrace,
And griefs and torments numberless,
and sweat of agony; yea, death itself – and all for me
who was thine enemy.
But taking up ones’ cross daily, what does that mean.
We can agree that it is our cross and not the Lords cross as we cannot manage that one. Having spent some time during Lent continuing my reading of a book entitled ” Walking with God thought Pain and Suffering”, and having reflected on God’s Holy Word, the following thoughts come to mind on this issue of taking up your cross.
One, that act of bearing one’s cross is a kind of discipline that leads to holiness….the same thing that God invited Abraham to do…walk with him blamelessly. And that this kind of discipline involves some level of suffering or hardship.
Recall the words of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews….right after the famous passage in Faith….” endure hardship as a discipline. God is treating you as sons. ….If you are not disciplined then you are illegitimate children and not true sons….our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness….No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on however it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:7-12.
Recall also that in this same book we are told that : Jesus though he was a Son, learnt obedience by what he suffered. That is By experience…so too we by Gods various disciplines, must learn to be obedient to God, by faith, and not by sight , not by dint of human reasoning; not listen to the world, the flesh and the evil one all of which will lead us away from holiness, which is what happened to Adam, and allowed Sin to enter the world. Note in the great story of the people of faith, it starts with …by faith Abel, by faith Enoch, by faith Noah, by faith Abraham….. Adam is missing…..all because Adam did not deny self…did not trust God…did not walk blamelessly with Him
Two, that we cannot ignore the reality that time and time again in the New Testament persecution helped in the spread of the Gospel and so brought glory to God.
Three, and perhaps most challenging is that fact that on the night before He died, it is recorded at the very end of John 16, that having told his disciples words that have comforted and instructed Christians over the centuries……If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the father to give you another Counselor, to be with you forever – the Sprit of truth…….If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him……Jesus finally says….I Have told you these things, so that in me you will may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
I draw your attention to these things as many Christian are going through immense suffering, and are sometimes confused why a loving God allows these things to happen. And ask with some degree of amazement, is this part of bearing one’s cross…..and there are no easy answers to offer them.
I found an approach to suffering in Keller’s book that might help. He suggests that we keep two foundational balances in mind when we contemplate suffering.
One that suffering is both just and unjust….. just, in the sense that all that is wrong in this world, sickness, evil, sin, death, came into the world because of The Fall in the Garden of Eden….Creation, Fall, Redemption and Judgment.
But unjust, because sometimes suffering is random, the bad guys get away with murder, sometimes literally, while faithful Christians sometimes suffer from all kinds of ailments, and devastating illnesses.
Two that God is both a sovereign and a suffering God. For in the midst of suffering, just or unjust, God is still in charge. But often His ways are beyond ours and difficult to understand. However, because He is a suffering God, He is always near to the broken-hearted, and He says always, my grace is sufficient for you.
So we close with these thoughts. That our mission as Intentional Disciples is a huge mission, because it is God’s mission to the uttermost parts of the world. And if it is God’s mission it is a supernatural mission, which can only be fulfilled by the power of His Holy Spirit, and not by our puny human efforts. We must therefore always ask God to stretch out His hand to heal and perform miraculous sign and wonders in the name of His holy Son Jesus. And we can stretch out our hands as we pray because this God, Yahweh, this God, The great I am, this Holy One of Israel, this God lives in us because of the great Redemption wrought on the cross of Calvary, and though faith in His Son.
That in our mission as Intentional Disciples we will meet upon opposition from supernatural forces. That in common Jamaica parlance, trouble will tek us. For we are waging war against evil, as Gods agents of reconciliation , calling Jamaica and the world, to be reconciled to God. Calling gunmen, scammers, corrupt public servants of low standing and of high standing to repent. Calling for just wages…better roads…a better health care system…. a more efficient justice system..seeking to empower parents by teaching them Christian morals…..guiding students into a closer relationship with God…..fighting against our own fears and feeling of inadequacy, for we know we cannot manage alone in this struggle for justice and righteousness. And so we ask God to consider their threats and enable us to speak boldly in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. And to open our eyes so that we may know that those who are with us are more than those who are with them.
That in our journey as Intentional Disciples we are called to have the same mind, and same love for humanity as that which was in Christ Jesus. For in the same way that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus to suffer and die, so that men may not perish but have everlasting life. So we too are called to love as Christ loved. Turning our backs
on the old leaven of selfishness, and fear and greed, which is idolatry, and what the world teaches, and values. And instead , with Gods help through His Spirit, live always under the cross, thus reflecting Christ’s Joy and Peace and mercy to all.
And so with the cross of Jesus before us and the world behind us, we can sing with confidence:
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus.
No turning back back now.
No turning back now.
The cross before me the world behind me.
The cross before me, the world behind me.
The cross before me,mother world behind me.
No turning back now, no turning back now.
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