Christian Pathway

Let do this together

Rejoice he is risen
He is risen indeed 😊

This is the thing that our whole faith hangs on, that someone , A God no less would join us and be with us and understand what it is to be human and go through all the joys and sadness of life and
then if that wasn’t enough. Die for us, and
then if that wasn’t enough rise again.

This sermon is about how Easter, Christmas , The Bible and Prayer.

All have something in common

All have this in common, their aim is bring him closer
In fact
they bring God into our lives into the minutiae and the detail, and the boring stuff of life.

I’ll explain how..

I became a Christian because of Christmas, and Easter.

In some faiths he sort of an advisor, on others distant, In Islam you can’t even draw a picture of God,

In our faith , in Christianity he sits on every wall of every church.

This god, became a baby and joined us in our mess

He is always close

Our God is a bit like my bible here. Let me explain

Its my floppy, large print NRSV bible. The one I use to study, the one I read.

it sits on my lap like a big floppy thing, and its comfortable, and I don’t need my reading glasses to read it.
We are made for each other, notes from readings, it has got coffee and jam stains in places where I’ve read it while having tea and jam sandwiches (I do that sometimes). My daughter calls tea and jam sandwiches poor people food?

I disagree perfectly acceptable snacking

but Christianity is exactly that metaphor, the God that joins us in our mundane moments with him. Over tea and jam sandwiches. Whatever your view of other faiths is that is an empirical fact. A fact separates us from all other faiths. This one came to join us and is with us every moment of the day and night.

He made easter happen to be with us, Not as some army sergeant making sure we follow the rules, but as a lover that wants you to be close and wants to be close as you scoff hot tea, a crusty loaf and Tiptree jam and think about him.

When I see strictly enforced codes of conduct in church, babies crying, too much chatter, rites imposed as if the rite is faith, and the faith is rite. I sort of recoil.
While I can see part of it, there is also part of me that says, this is what Jesus lived for what Jesus died for? To join us and be with us in our messy, happy moments with our babies and when we are pleased to see friends on a Sunday.

Then the other thing of course is that he is alive, Easter shows us that, this Jesus that joined us and laughed and went to weddings, and kept the guests drunk at parties, and cried when his friend died, and prayed and was scared of the pain of his death, and did it all for you. Just for you, and just for me , and knowing each of us intimately. This Jesus is alive, and with us right now. In this place in this space, right now he is with us. All you have to do is give yourself a moment to listen.

Pause
Then we come to this bible, the other way he brings us closer. So he didn’t write a book and leave us to follow it. He inspired a human thing, written by broken humans just like us. That contains enough of him so that we can know him and be close to him through that. SO it makes sense that Matthew for instance was written in the style of a Greek autobiography because that what those things aimed to do, help you understand what the person was like, not so much about facts and figures, but about what it was like to be around this person. Marks got all the dates times a place, Luke tells a story, John is about , the spirit moving among us, Matthew is about what he was like to be around. But to do that he didn’t turn the authors into human Dictaphones, he helped them tell the story he wanted them to tell. The Bible is a human book, inspired by God, the book itself is like him fully God and fully human. When you realise that the contradictions, and date slips, and problems with interpretation while we have to work at them, are not the thing itself, they don’t matter. This book brings him closer to us, this and prayer brings him directly into our lives. Jane always said when you read the bible there are three things present, you the bible and God. That’s what he wants to be with you.

We worship a living God, that wants us with him, by dying and rising again he made that possible so that we can come blameless before God. This is something so special. One day all the trials and absurdities of life will drift away. As my favorite poet Rallph waldo emerson one said

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

I love that poem, it encompasses the thing that Jesus enabled today, we can finish each day with him, and tomorrow is a new day and we get to try again, forever, That’s why we as Christians have two defining characteristics, we never lose hope and we should always wake up serenely with too high a spirit to be burdened by yesterday’s well intentioned mistakes.

He did this by taking all our sin and leaving us blameless.

Why did he do that?

Sin is something that takes us away from him, and by taking on our sin at easter, we will never be separated again, as soon as we give him that burden.

This is why we are people of hope, we know we get to do the best we can in our human frailty now, and we know we will be with him forever encompassed and living in the medium of love. We will be love and love will be us, truly in Christ and Christ in us. Not losing who he made us to be, but truly who he made us to be.

That’s for another day hopefully long long way away, a day that holds no fear for those who truly believe.

For now

When you pray, and you feel him with you, when you read your bible and know hes helping you when you see the action of God in your life. This is what it is to be Christian. This God wants to be with you, to snuggle up with you. You know when he was with us he slept ate drank with his disciples, John literally laid on his chest as they rested and just chewed the fat and thought about things. We continue that today when we just snuggle up with him with a battered old bible, and coffee and jam sandwiches.
so as I said right at the beginning, if this sermon has a theme. Its this,
Christmas, Easter, the Bible and Prayer, all those things are about one thing.
This God achieves that by all of those things
This God wants to be with you all the time.

This god loves you that much.

He made that happen today

Because this is what he made happen on easter.

Because he is risen